Vagrant0 Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 I'm not saying that SOPA is like Chinese Censorship, but what I AM saying is that it starts us down a slippery slope on VERY shaky grounds. "Denying Pirates the Ability To Use Host Services" does not stop them from being able to type in their IPs. So the Piracy angle is not even covered, let alone stopped. These are people who are known to risk viruses, install special software to crack games, and use port-hopping anonymizers to keep people from tracking them down. Does anyone really think having to type 4 triplets to get to a website is going to even slow them down, or discourage them? Hell, it'll just give them street cred.Somewhat this. Regardless of what other powers are granted IP holders in these bills, they do virtually nothing to even touch the problem. The fact that these powers can be used to negatively impact legal and open services on the internet just because of a small fraction who might misuse them only adds injury to insult. Piracy, atleast the initial part doesn't happen on one of the dozen or so torrent sites. It happens on closed forums, IRC chats, and through E-mail. The bulk of this sort of stuff isn't on publicly searchable networks. Posting a torrent for a day 0 crack, or a movie bootleg is just there for bragging rights initially (many groups honestly HATE those who are downloading their releases through a torrent). And yes, I have had friends who were part of the scene and have heard enough to know how things work. The one constant is that they know how to work around any security measures as soon as those measures are put in place, and there are many ways to go under the radar. Care to guess what other measures might eventually be enacted to try and target these too? SOPA isn't the first, and won't be the last. Anything which potentially ruins the money that the MPAA and RIAA and similar agencies can get out of people is fair game. And lawmakers are in their pocket. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlyingHigh10000000 Posted January 19, 2012 Author Share Posted January 19, 2012 Aye, the bigger problem with piracy is that it's handled as a typical problem. It's not something easily stopped, and likely can't be stopped, due to the very nature of the scene. As Vagrant0 says, these folks go through security like it's not even there. And to a majority of the scene, it seems, it's mostly for fun. There are some sites that get revenue out of piracy, yeah, but they're the exception, and not the general population. The MPAA and RIAA are so obsessed with getting every last cent out of a person's wallet, though, that they refuse to accept the truth of the matter; people are treating this like a game because the corporations have turned it into one. More security, that's just a challenge pirates overcome like anything else. Laws targeting the common citizen as a pirate just make more people angry at the MPAA and its kind. People know piracy is there; it's if anything, tolerated in the sense that we know there's nothing we can do to stop it; it's just a matter of keeping it out of law-abiding sites like Nexus, which is done very well here. tldr; piracy is too adaptive to just outright "stop" and attempts to do so always end up hurting the wrong people. Advanced DRM causes trouble for people with slow internet connections, laws like SOPA and PIPA can cause more collateral damage than good, and people just plain don't like having freedoms taken away, when there's already so much of that happening outside the internet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ginnyfizz Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 Anyone seen this? File sharing website shut down The Megaupload.com page is not loading for me, so I guess that report may well be correct. So they can already use the current laws to do that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SavageArtistry Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 Anyone seen this? File sharing website shut down The Megaupload.com page is not loading for me, so I guess that report may well be correct. So they can already use the current laws to do that.Seen it. I've been reading the indictment posted on this law blog. http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/01/19/sopa-who-fbi-charges-seven-with-online-piracy/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
urdrago Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 Just wondering if Nexus will be participating in the SOPA Strike campaign. http://sopastrike.com/ Sites like Nexus would very easily be under the thumb of the government if SOPA and PIPA passed. Nope, the megaupload servers where all along the world not only America, it afects all of us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ginnyfizz Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 They must have had the co-operation of law enforcement agencies in other countries to actually shut down servers outside USA jurisdiction. However it was probably all a done deal before the recent uproar and internet protest blackouts. Given that recent furore, it's possible that in the future, other countries might not be quite so co-operative. Those of us outside the UK need to be lobbying our political representatives, just in case. The difference between Nexus and Megaupload of course is that everything at Nexus is upfront and public, and there is a clear anti piracy policy, whereas at Megaupload files could be uploaded privately and therefore there probably was a lot of dodgy stuff up at Mega. You could say that since above board sites like Nexus have not been subject of similar indictments already, then it is very unlikely that they would be in the future. There again, the USA seems to be on some kind of seriously bizarre and worrying power trip over all things internetz at the moment. I mean no offence to our US members, really, but is the US Government really trying to alienate everyone over this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlyingHigh10000000 Posted January 19, 2012 Author Share Posted January 19, 2012 ginnyfizz, the average American citizen does /not/ support any of the crazy stuff our government has been doing lately. Just look at the Occupy protests, and the outrage over the way cops have been called in to "deal" with them. People are getting sick of it over here, and in a show of force I honestly applaud as an American and as a citizen of Earth, Anonymous took down the US Department of Justice site, along with Universal Music and other targets, in response to the Megaupload takedown. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ginnyfizz Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 ginnyfizz, the average American citizen does /not/ support any of the crazy stuff our government has been doing lately. Just look at the Occupy protests, and the outrage over the way cops have been called in to "deal" with them. People are getting sick of it over here, and in a show of force I honestly applaud as an American and as a citizen of Earth, Anonymous took down the US Department of Justice site, along with Universal Music and other targets, in response to the Megaupload takedown. I know that American citizens do not go along with this insanity, that's why I used the term "US Government". I've spoken to US friends who are appalled by this sledgehammer to crack a nut approach that seems so popular these days with the US powers that be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NorthWolf Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 Mostly entirely agree with Ginnyfizz here. Censoring the net always costs a lot, accomplishes nothing it was intended to, and annoys everyone. :confused: Can't imagine it's going to help the United States with its commerce, either, but I don't claim to actually know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheCaptn Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 (edited) @TheCapn, I'm glad you have at least admitted that a targetting of the Nexus is unlikely. Seriously, any games company would be cutting off their noses to spite their faces in doing that. It would not be a pragmatic thing to do and would potentially cost them far more than they stood to gain. Why on earth they would want to bomb the modding community I cannot imagine.Yeah, I do tend to agree, but I also made the point that the game company behind -our- game isn't the only one with a potential copyright stake. A competing game company could conceivably push through a claim against Nexus based on, say, their game textures (Triss Armor?), or a media company for something like those Colleen Delaney audio captures that were my previous example, or a piece of music, etc. Edited January 19, 2012 by TheCaptn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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