SOPA: Intellectual property protection or excuse to privatise the Internet?

Like the title says, what do you think?

All opinions and debates welcome, but please add if you generally agree or disagree with Lamar Smith's hope for the US government (or whatever the relevant department is called) to pass the SOPAwiki (Stop Online Piracy Act) bill.

I'll add my full opinion by request, or later; it's rather late now.

In the meantime, here's pic that I thought summed up my gesture of the so-called SOPA nicely - that is, apart from taking a huge dump on the floor.

http://ifunnypic.com/pictures/795c7a...841019b9e9.jpg

Have fun! =P

i voted yes on sopa.

I think they're just mad at us for making fun of their pizza vegetable law. In all seriousness though they should've just made this law when the internet first came into being if they didn't want pirating and such to happen. And I believe they shouldn't pass such a thing.

Ummm, no!? The person that made the bill should be purged.

.....Another SOPA thread? Why not dig up one of like 3 that we already have >__>

The government can regulate what I eat, get us deeper into debt, and attack whichever Muslim or Communist country it sees fit, but when it wants to lay its dirty fingers on my internet, it has crossed the line.

Everyone is aware of Sopa, dude and we already discussed it.

So Ill just say it can burn in hell

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Originally Posted by blueangel06661

.....Another SOPA thread? Why not dig up one of like 3 that we already have >__>

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To tell the truth, the amusement of that picture in my 1st post got to my head... perhaps too much, and consequently, the urge to put it up in a new (rather than existing) thread got the better of me. Realising that this would be a crappy justification for a new thread, I decided to add a more specific question to encourage debate along with a poll. On lurking I found only 1 SOPA thread (not to deny your claim of there being 3 of them), but no poll in it so I simply thought it would be okay to make a thread on SOPA with a poll.

If a mod finds good reason to close this thread, I'll just take it as a learned lesson and lurk more thouroughly next time.

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Originally Posted by Neukifly

To tell the truth, the amusement of that picture in my 1st post got to my head...

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Except I originally posted that image here http://www.animeforum.com/showthread...=1#post2642435

although the link is now broken but a few post down you can see a member post "that scum" in relation to the last frame.. So a poll and an old meme constitues for a new thread... o.O OOOKAY. Because you just give a link to a wiki and a stupid meme... Could've easily resurfaced an existing thread with that information that everyone already knows...

Not to mention SOPA was already dropped... Do you know about ACTA? Yeah, something on that would be more relevant.

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Originally Posted by blueangel06661

Not to mention SOPA was already dropped... Do you know about ACTA? Yeah, something on that would be more relevant.

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Perhaps, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if both SOPA and ACTA were tied to same motives, and I daresay, along the lines of the latter half of this thread's title. As for the bill, I'm perfecftly aware that it was dropped (that much I do know); however, I found no statement confirming that such a bill (or anything to its intended effect) would never pass in the future; therefore I think the topic is still relevent, whether on SOPA or ACTA, as I'm sure they both concern all Internet users. Perhaps the thread's title could have used more revision granted, but essentially the question is the same.

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Originally Posted by Kaitou+

Everyone is aware of Sopa, dude and we already discussed it.

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Raising awareness was never the point of, nor was it implied in this thread. It's not a "Hey I know something that you don't!" thread. I realise that the lack of popularity of SOPA was already established. However, I don't believe that everyone releases the full rammications of such a bill (and if they did they might have done much more than simply "vote" against it), - and while many have been quick to state that they oppose it, few have backed their statements with good reasons.

Personally, I oppose the bill, but to think of its effects in terms of the Internet imo is rather short-sighted and to overlook the bigger picture, and without a pro-active debate, I wouldn't be surprised to see the bill passed in some other guise and under some other acronym in the future. And then we'd only have ourselves to blame for allowing that to happen.

For the record, one could say that since SOPA only applies to US intellectual property, it shouldn't concern the likes of a Brit like me; but in most cases what is passed in the US is effectively inherited in the UK (among other countries) through backdoor politics. Likewise, although technically we're not part of the Euro, we are inheriting its symptoms nonetheless. On top of that, we're paying the price for opting out of it (abeit for the wrong reasons).