I'll believe it when I see it. I just don't believe the US government wants to shut down Reddit, Wikipedia, YouTube, and all of the other major sites the alarmists are claiming.
It's not a conspiracy theory that the government wants to kill these sites.
But SOPA would open these sites up to problems that would be enforced by law, and which would cause them much harm, quite possibly to the extent of them shutting down.
The politicians either don't understand these problems, or don't care about them - you can be the judge on that.
> The politicians either don't understand these problems, or don't care about them - you can be the judge on that.
The politicians simply know SOPA will never be invoked against those sites because they play nice (as an example. see google giving UMC a private way to remove youtube videos). It will be invoked on thepiratebay, etc. and any other site someone decides they don't like or doesn't play nice.
I think people are being a bit hysterical. I remember the same thing happening when the DMCA was passed. The government just wants to end flagrant abuses of piracy. I don't think they are going to sic their dogs on Reddit. Sites like YouTube are already in compliance. So, I think it does smack of conspiracy theory, yes.
The trouble is that SOPA doesn't require government intent to cause site closures; a copyright holder must merely send a letter to a site's advertising agency or payment processor to cause its funds to be cut off in five days. No court order required.
Now, the criteria is that the site is "dedicated to the theft of US property", but advertising agencies and payment processors are held immune to liability for actions they take under the law, so they have no reason to verify that the site is, in fact, dedicated to theft before shutting it down.
There does not need to be an active government conspiracy for this to harm websites.
Interestingly enough, if you bothered to read the comment by reddit's admin you would note that the DMCA has increased the cost of running reddit. We've also seen the DMCA abused by media companies to take down content they have no rights to. Usually, these cases involve a victim without the money to hire lawyers to fight it.
There were never claims that the DMCA would literally shutdown sites like youtube and reddit. But the criticisms of it certainly seem justified in hindsight.
Yes ending flagrant abuses is the stated goal of the bill, but the methods it uses toward that end leave lots of unintended consequences which will be very, very damaging. Those in support of the bill either haven't taken the time to understand those consequences or simply don't care.
The conspiracy theory is that the unintended consequences are in fact intended by the MPAA/RIAA. Given their past and present behavior, it's not a stretch.
The ones passing it now first care more about the money they received, and second, they actually believe what MPAA/RIAA are telling them. That this is absolutely necessary and that they will only use it against serious offender. The thing is, if SOPA existed a few years ago, Youtube could've easily been considered a serious offender. No question about it.
Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Youtube, because it had so many of its videos posted by users. Also, other sponsors of SOPA, such as NBC, would've wanted Youtube dead, too. After all, the only reason they started Hulu was to fend off Youtube, even though they didn't like having Hulu at all, since it undermines their real cash cow, the old traditional business model.
Its not that they want to close down any of those sites, its that they are simply unaware and do not care one way of the other.
Those passing this bill have an agenda which simply does not speak to any of the things that concern us, and our concerns (and our agenda) simply does not speak to the things that concerns those who are passing this bill.
I don't understand why this should be downvoted. Are those downvoting it suggesting that the government does indeed want to see these sites go? Or that they will go?
One thing that has been confusing me during the course of the proceedings is that it has been repeatedly suggested that SOPA will be only affecting foreign websites. Is this not actually the case? Or are people more concerned with the precedent that will be established?
It's a statement akin to "Yeah, he may driving drunk, but I don't think he intends to kill anybody." People rarely intend the ill consequences of their risky behavior, but closing your eyes and humming doesn't make it safer. The legislators who passed child pornography laws probably didn't intend to cause 13-year-olds to get prosecuted under the law, but that's what ended up happening. Passing a law that allows terrible things to happen and just trusting that nobody will ever actually do those terrible things is naive at best.
So any question that starts with "Do you really think they intend…" is a red herring.
It's being downvoted because the governments intentions are somewhat irrelevant.
The law - as it is written - can be used to shutdown sites like Reddit. There is nothing stopping someone using it in that way, even if it isn't the governments intention.
> I don't understand why this should be downvoted. Are those downvoting it suggesting that the government does indeed want to see these sites go? Or that they will go?
The Government doesn't care, and the sites will go because it will be too expensive or impossible for them to monitor user-generated content.
> One thing that has been confusing me during the course of the proceedings is that it has been repeatedly suggested that SOPA will be only affecting foreign websites. Is this not actually the case?
Wrong. It will also affect foreign websites because ICANN controls the DNS system.
