Scary Facts About Stop Online Piracy Act

[ktlight]

"The truth behind the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is explained by The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur."

"I don't think many people are seeing a MAJOR loophole in this. Government finds site they don't like say wiki leaks, Government comments on site with link to a site with pirated content, Government legally gets rid of site. With this bill ANY site the government doesn't like or the top corporations don't like can be wiped off of the internet legally allowing the government to stop the spread of information they don't like or for corporations to make themselves the only companies on the internet.
bobomb26 12 hours ago"

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[Aryslan]

Better start filling those hard drives now. ;)

[KosmicKat]

This would be where ideas like Meshnet will pick up.

[RMorgan]

Remember Napster? eMule? Kazaa? We always find another way... :)

[Jonathon]

This is precisely why offerings such as the Amazon Kindle/Fire (electronic vs hard copy media forms) and the move toward "cloud" based storage are so dangerous. It's effectively a metaphorical RFID on information - all you have to do is "turn it off" and it's gone forever. I consider it essential to collect hard copies of information - it's the only way some information will survive. Probably a good idea to start storing as much as you can on physical media - even the best articles and posts from this site - just start a binder and print out the inserts as desired. Imagine the info you might lose on diet/food/health and healing - imagine what you would not be able to know and start there.

[eric charles]

Remember Napster? eMule? Kazaa? We always find another way... :)

yeppers , then those blew up into the massive torrent search engines , and they are spread worldwide , Pirate Bay a few years back told the U.S gov to F*ck off on the 2 million $ fine .

[RMorgan]

Remember Napster? eMule? Kazaa? We always find another way... :)

yeppers , then those blew up into the massive torrent search engines , and they are spread worldwide , Pirate Bay a few years back told the U.S gov to F*ck off on the 2 million $ fine .

Exactly. All these old P2P file sharing programs were disrupted because they used to rely on a very localized system, if compared to the torrent protocol. If it was easy to take the torrent network down, the gov would have done it a long time ago.

Anyway, I use utorrent for downloads, which is the best client in my opinion. I use it with the encryption option turned on, which takes a little download speed but downloads and uploads only to encrypted peers as well. I also use peerguardian, which is another terrific tool to keep your downloads private and to eliminate black listed IP addresses from your seed list.

Nowadays, I can´t imagine a sharing tool more perfect than the torrent protocol, but if they manage to take it down, we will come up with something even better. That´s for sure.

Cheers,

Raf.

[noprophet]

I find the world to be a better place with pirating in it.

I can think of many digital artists and musicians who would never have made the music they're making or the designs they've come up with by the simple fact that the software to do so would have remained unavailable to them due to exuberant costs.

[KosmicKat]

I will continue to share whatever I can from my own studio because:

I rely primarily on freeware to facilitate my work
nobody wants to pay for what I produce anyway:p

For anyone who's interested, there's a couple of e-books,* and a lot of artwork (http://kittybriton.deviantart.com/).
*Nine Dayes Wonder (http://www.scribd.com/doc/29600090/NineDayes)
Danny Boy (http://www.scribd.com/doc/28303925/Danny-Boy)

[noprophet]

I will continue to share whatever I can from my own studio because:

I rely primarily on freeware to facilitate my work
nobody wants to pay for what I produce anyway:p

For anyone who's interested, there's a couple of e-books,* and a lot of artwork (http://kittybriton.deviantart.com/).
*Nine Dayes Wonder (http://www.scribd.com/doc/29600090/NineDayes)
Danny Boy (http://www.scribd.com/doc/28303925/Danny-Boy)

Someday I hope we can live in a world where the money game is gone completely and we can all just make art and share it freely with one another - learning form each other.

Ars gratia artis

Thank you for being part of that energy. <3

[Bollinger]

The neurosis of possession runs deep, even among the most gentle and wise souls. It is engrained in us from birth and implied in so many different ways that you cannot avoid it, escape it or even refuse to be a part of it.

The electronic age has brought many facets and many challenges to the way intellectual property is treated. Countless people download stuff for free, whether it is music, film, software or pictures; our governments tell us it is stealing. But do you notice how the people who hold the moral high ground on this issue are usually those who can well afford to buy these things because they have the money. Is it surprising then that those who find it hard to fork out payment for these "leasure" items will simply help themselves because it is there for the taking and think nothing of it?

I would put it to the entire human race that possession is a sickness, a neurosis and an unfair rule designed to create poverty for the vast majority while the tiny minority live in riches. A person may claim to own the rights to a piece of music or film because they created it. Where did they get the creative ability to do that? Did they pay for it? There is no such thing as intellectual property or any kind of property. At the end of our tenure, are we not simply worm-food on a planet that will one day become dust and possibly have no more significance than a piece of iron floating in space? What then is this obsession with owning things? It’s all so temporary and transitory, and yet we pay so much heed to calling stuff “mine”.

Nothing, not one match stick, not one spec of dust belongs to anyone. Given that, yes everything should be available to all. But then, the counter argument goes something like this. If everyone gives away everything they make or create, what would be the incentive to work? This brings us right back to how this post started. The sickness of possession is driven by the artificial value that is placed on it. This “reward” psychosis is what propels the idea that we own things or have intellectual rights to them and there is in place a vast legal machine to ensure the reward and ownership always goes to the right party. Nice idea on paper but just look at the huge problems it causes: poverty for the masses because the owners put too high a price on their goods and services which arises from endemic greed and corruption. And we have the audacity to call ourselves a free and fair society.

It is only stealing if someone claims to own it. If the idea of ownership is lifted, there is neither the need nor a reason to steal. As for the incentive, we need to look beyond prestige and monetary awards. These are artificial concepts that work towards one end and one end only; service to self. The greatest reward should be service to others. If we must have a competition, let it be who can help the greater number of people, i.e. who can do the most for the most; not who can earn the most for doing the least.

The internet “piracy” phenomenon is currently the best model for promoting the new paradigm of doing the most for the most: long may it continue.

[noprophet]

For an extraordinary look at intellectual property in a very large situation:
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