STOP SOPA NOW!

[Piccolo Daimaoh]

All I see here are pallid curmudgeons (i.e. politicians) doing what they think ought to be done (i.e. what ought not be). Support for this legislation will wane, and those pollies will just go back to justifying military expenditure or calling teenagers fickle and spoilt.

[TripleRach]

BAD NEWS GUYS!

http://www.yousaytoo.com/congressional- ... PKM.tumblr

We're screwed :C

That news is a few days old, and there was one opponent (a lawyer from Google) at the hearings. But the deck was definitely stacked in favor of the bill.

There's still hope regardless. There's a potentially nasty election coming up in just under a year, and Congressmen will want to please their constituents so they can get re-elected. So if you're an American voter, you can bug them about it and make them realize they need to oppose this to get votes. Or if you're not an American voter and you're concerned about this, you could bug your friends that are.

[Saiga]

I didn't mean replacing the system, but the people in it.

My apologies for misunderstanding, yes that sounds like a good idea considering the people currently in.

[BlazingFiddlesticks]

Another question; if this applies only to American companies, what does anything Dragonball based in the States really have to fear? As it is, the only thing Funimation attacks are straight uploads on Youtube and such. There hasn't been any recent hostilities towards Abridged or fansites that I can remember.

Didn't Funimation initially take down DBZ abridged?

I believe it was Toei who originally took down DBZ Abridged.

That. If I recall, Funi hasn't done any sort of take downs of legitimate "content" in some time, which would be a good sign, since they're the only Dragon Ball-related party empowered by this bill if it passes.

[jjgp1112]

And doesn't FUNimation more or less support Abridged?

[dbboxkaifan]

Over at YouTube, FUNimation and Toei Animation, more likely Toei has been blocking/suspending YouTubers because of Dragon Ball videos due to copyright issues, even though it's non-profit, they still get taken down.

I wonder what happened to TheGreenQuality.

Weird, FUNimation had a Freeza impaling Kuririn Kai video up and Toei Animation took it down, I thought they were close friends, aren't they? 'guess not.

Toei has made YouTube Dragon Ball video uploaders hate Toei Animation.

[samuraix123]

I'm not the smartest person in the world, But let's say A Huge percent of people kept putting stuff on Youtube and other places. are they going to lock up A huge percent of America? the jail's and prisons would start over flowing right? I mean really? just lip singing a song can get you jail time? that's freaking madness!

[Gonstead]

I'm not the smartest person in the world, But let's say A Huge percent of people kept putting stuff on Youtube and other places. are they going to lock up A huge percent of America? the jail's and prisons would start over flowing right?

Pretty much.

[Drabaz]

WE NEED TO STOP HOPING AND ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING.

LOCATE & CONTACT YOUR STATE REPRESENTATIVE:
UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Send them a polite email about why you are against this Bill. Do not write an angry rant. The more emails they see in their inbox of people showing their concern about the bill, the better.

I'm not the smartest person in the world, But let's say A Huge percent of people kept putting stuff on Youtube and other places. are they going to lock up A huge percent of America? the jail's and prisons would start over flowing right? I mean really? just lip singing a song can get you jail time? that's freaking madness!

Youtube will most likely be shut down completely. How youtube works is it has an automated system that checks the video to make sure it's appropriate to be uploaded. But that's not going to work if this bill passes. An actual person would have to check each and every video to make sure it's appropriate. And there are hundreds of thousands of videos being uploaded every day. (Maybe even millions) Youtube will not be able to survive.

[Akumaito Beam]

I'm not the smartest person in the world, But let's say A Huge percent of people kept putting stuff on Youtube and other places. are they going to lock up A huge percent of America? the jail's and prisons would start over flowing right? I mean really? just lip singing a song can get you jail time? that's freaking madness!

The funniest part about this to me is the fact that the prisons here are already well known to be vastly overcrowded.

[SHINOBI-03]

I'm not the smartest person in the world, But let's say A Huge percent of people kept putting stuff on Youtube and other places. are they going to lock up A huge percent of America? the jail's and prisons would start over flowing right? I mean really? just lip singing a song can get you jail time? that's freaking madness!

And what will they do if the culprit is from outside America? Will they waste all the time, fuel and money just to locate this one pirate? All the technology and they took years just to find Osama Bin Laden! How are they gonna do about those international pirates? Hire the Interpol?!

[DinoChow]

Using this link, https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml, I just wrote to my Congressional Representative, and I wanted to post the text of my letter here: I think it sums up our thoughts fairly well. Please feel free to use the text of my letter, but whatever you do, PLEASE write to your representatives. Let them know what the Constituency thinks. If you do not use my text, please keep in mind the language I used: we can't look like we support piracy. Point out that piracy is wrong, but that this legislation is oppressively broad. And remember to be polite and diplomatic!

Dear Mr./Ms./Mrs. Representative,

I am writing to urge you to oppose the "Stop Online Piracy Act" (H.R.3261). While I recognize the importance of preventing online piracy, this bill oversteps its boundaries in several crucial areas. It is written too broadly, and would have many more effects than simply waning online piracy. As a Congressional Representative, I am sure you are familiar with the language of the bill, so I will not go into great detail on what it says, but I am most immediately concerned with the effects the bill would have on Social Networking and Search Engines. Experts from the Electronic Frontier Foundation have pointed out that under the bill's current language, linking to content SOPA finds illegal would be a crime in and of itself, not just for the person linking, but for the organization linking, and this would inevitably harm or shut down major websites such as Twitter, Facebook, and most importantly, Google, for search engines would not be allowed to point towards illegal content. This would be punishing not the people who actually uploaded the illicit material, but innocent bystanders, and I do not believe this is acceptable. Keep in mind that the internet creates many jobs, and a bill that criminalizes substantial job creators like Google and Facebook would be harmful to the delicate economic status of the United States.

More importantly, I and many others in the Internet Community are concerned about how the bill would effectively kill many perfectly innocent Internet activities currently covered under Fair Use, such as creating music videos set to commercial content, creating parody videos, showing footage of video gameplay to others in the internet community, etc. These and many other non-commercial activities are all major components of current Internet communication, and take absolutely nothing away from a Corporation's revenue stream. They are very different activities than simply uploading or pirating a film or film clip; those activities should indeed be prevented, but not Fair Use, non-commercial activities. SOPA lumps them all together. And because of the no-linking provisions in the bill, Internet Forums built around celebrating, re-imagining, and parodying commercial content would be forced to close; these are important pieces of the online community, and as they do no harm to commercial content in the United States, they should be allowed to exist as part of Free Speech, currently covered under the sufficient Fair Use laws of the US.

Again, I want to re-iterate that I am against online piracy. It is a problem. But this bill is not the solution. It is too broad. It oversteps its boundaries. It would essentially put the control of the Internet into major media corporations, rather than the citizens of this Country, and that goes against everything the United States of America stands for. One might call it Censorship, and Censorship is wrong. We should try to assist these media companies in what ways we can, but at the end of the day, we should not do so at the expense of the consumer and the Internet community. SOPA should be tossed out to make room for narrower, fairer, and more logical legislation.

In the most recent election, I voted for you without thinking twice, and I intend to again during the next Election cycle. As my representative, I would ask you to please consider my opinion, and remember that I stand for a great deal of your constituency, especially those interested in Free Speech and the progress of our Internet community.

Thank you for your time,
YOUR NAME HERE

[Ashura]

It gets woooorse:

http://act.demandprogress.org/act/sopa_ ... rce=auto-e

You don't want to censor the internet? Well, we'll censor you too.

[Eire]

IIRC there was something like that in European Union about 5 years ago. There was similar action with sending mails and users succeed. Now pirate parties are breaking into real policy. Don't give up.

[Ashura]

So that was actually a little old:

http://stopcensorship.org/

They're trying to filibuster now.

[TripleRach]

Another way of opposing both SOPA and PROTECT-IP:

http://stopcensorship.org/

That site has a form you can fill out to show support for Senator Ron Wyden, who plans to filibuster if any of this comes to a vote. And it also sends a message to your local Congressmen asking them to do the same. Senator Wyden is a cool guy who's consistently opposed this kind of stuff.

EDIT: Boo, beaten by a few seconds.

[Pokewhiz7]

So that was actually a little old:

http://stopcensorship.org/

They're trying to filibuster now.

This. Even a single name could make a difference.

[dbboxkaifan]

If this gets accepted in US, then most likely will spread elsewhere and YouTube will be revamped (tons of accounts getting suspended).

Toei definitely agree with this SOPA thing.

[Gonstead]

I see a lot of mass rioting that makes the London riots and Occupy Wall Street seem like child's play if it does get passed into law.

[Saiga]

As an Australian, is there anything I can do to help oppose this bill? Probably not eh?