I guess I have been living in a hole for the last few weeks, cause I have no idea what this SOPA and PIPA protests are about! Anyone care to break it down in laymens terms?

The Americans trying to say that THEY and they alone OWN the internet and can dictate how it is used and policed.
Pretty dumb really, but there you go

Tomder mentions it here: https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/current-events/amhd-protest-sopa-pipa-628485.html

I'll do my best.

SOPA will require internet service providers to block websites that violate copyright laws.

Example: some guy uploads part of a movie to YouTube, it turns out it's a copyright infringement. You have Verizon Fios. Verizon is now bound by law to prevent you from going to YouTube.

Amerrrrka!

Oh those silly MAericans and their ownership issues... :p

So what specifically are they saying we can and can't do?

It just puts the screws on internet service providers to scrutinize websites their subscribers. Earlier in 2011 or 2010 (I forget) AT&T tried blocking 4chan.org. It lasted a couple hours because everyone was irate.

EDIT
Make that 2009 (http://www.pcworld.com/article/169100/atandts_4chan_block_raises_issue_of_net_neutrality .html).

I just want to point out that most of us "silly Americans" think this is ridiculous.

And yeah... like I want Congress in charge of the internet. They can't find their a$$es with two hands and a flashlight.

To break it down to its bare minimum. What they are talking about is shutting down a site on pure speculation without cause. The problem being that there is no safety net in place to stop a site from being shut down. This doesn't only affect America but can happen world wide. This would only be the first pebble in the pond before the internet is completely stifled. Its censorship of the highest order.

To break it down to its bare minimum. What they are talking about is shutting down a site on pure speculation without cause.
This is wrong. SOPA will not shutdown websites—a cease and desist—because SOPA can only regulate websites and servers that are on US soil, and many are not. Instead, SOPA forces US ISPs to blacklist websites who violated a copyright. Secondly, ISPs won't blacklist websites on pure speculation, that would be a terrible business model. The first ISP that blocks a YouTube because they think there is a copyright infringement will be liquidating its assets within weeks.

This is wrong. SOPA will not shutdown websites—a cease and desist—because SOPA can only regulate websites and servers that are on US soil, and many are not. Instead, SOPA forces US ISPs to blacklist websites who violated a copyright. Secondly, ISPs won't blacklist websites on pure speculation, that would be a terrible business model. The first ISP that blocks a YouTube because they think there is a copyright infringement will be liquidating its assets within weeks.

According to the text in the new laws they are wanting to pass they can shut down servers which in effect shuts down websites. Why do you think they couldn't turn off the pipes going into and out of YouTube?

If you give them the power to do so then there is nothing to stop them. Yes part of the language says its about foreign sites but it can be much more severe then that. Take a good look at countries like China and look at what happened in Egypt. It can happen and with the right powers it will happen. Its not some joke. Why should sites like YouTube be granted imunity? They even want to block search engines.

Don't be fooled. This is a major blow if it passes.

Many countries control what can or can't be seen on the internet. I have no doubt, that the US can shut down any IP they want anytime they want.

Sopa and Pipa explained

The US bills are designed to block access to sites containing unauthorised copryight material.

Content owners and the US government would be given the power to request court orders to shut down sites associated with piracy.

Advertisers, payment processors and internet service providers would be forbidden from doing business with infringers based overseas.

Sopa also requires search engines to remove foreign infringing sites from their results, a provision absent in Pipa.
BBC News - Wikipedia joins blackout protest at US anti-piracy moves (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16590585)

Kind of sums it up.
Why the US legislature believe that they and they alone should be the final authority of what happens on the WORLD WIDE web is beyond me..

I logged on yesterday and went gormless trying to figure out that page that popped up. I take it it's just America?

Why the US legislature believe that they and they alone should be the final authority of what happens on the WORLD WIDE web is beyond me..

Maybe because they invented and started the Internet and paid for the initial R&D and infrastructure? ;)

We do need to remember that the Internet originally started as a US Dept of Defense initiative to allow better communication between the DOD and researchers working on defense contracts.

BBC News - Wikipedia joins blackout protest at US anti-piracy moves (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16590585)

Kind of sums it up.
Why the US legislature believe that they and they alone should be the final authority of what happens on the WORLD WIDE web is beyond me..

The thought is that other governments would follow suit and do the same. One concern is who decides what constitutes an infringement? Some would be blatantly obvious, but others may not be.

I wish I could have read all this BEFORE I was shut down.

Synnen, I wasn't trying to be offensive with the "silly Americans" I know that the majority of you (everyone, world wide) thinks this is absurd.

What the heck will everyone do with their spare time if this gets passed?

Thank you for breaking this all down for me. I think "irate" is going to be the understatement of the centaury if this does pass.

Hollywierd is very upset with the President because he waffled on support for this once the news got out that these bills were pending .

Now they are threatening to withhold their campaign contributions .

http://www.deadline.com/2012/01/exclusive-hollywood-moguls-stopping-obama-donations-because-of-administrations-piracy-stand/

I personally think there are enough laws to cover piracy . But with these two bills they threaten to cross the line to censorship.

What the heck will everyone do with their spare time if this gets passed?



One shudders just thinking about it... might even have to resort to actual face to face conversations with people... ;)

That thought terrifies me D.

Bottom line is that SOPA sailed through the Senate Committee ;and both bills were on fast track for passage. This protest gave pause to the Legislators .

Clearly the bill was crafted only with the input of the Hollywierdos ,who although have legitimate concerns ;did not care one bit about the broader impacts to 1st Amendment rights .

This certainly was an eye-opener to our lawmakers. Sen. Marco Rubio was an original sponsor of PIPA... He has now withdrawn his support .
Again... well done AMHD for participating !

So, is this why everything is running so slow?

This is all a reminder that it's the big corporations that run the US government.

I would remind you that it was big entertainment business that lobbied for the bill and the fast track on the bills passage ended with Wiki going down for a single day . So where do you think the real power is ?

I would also remind you that US "big business" wanted the Keystone pipeline to bring Canadian oil to the Gulf refineries ;and that it was an out of control President ,bowing to environmental wackos ,that killed that .

We just want to keep our oil and not destroy the earth in the process...

That's not what I hear. You're government will just pipe it west to Vancouver instead and sell it to the Chinese .

They then will process it with no where's near the environmental controls that the US has... and the pollution will float east across the Pacific to Western Canada and the US.


At least Joe Oliver gets it.

Open letter: Radicals threaten resource development | FP Comment | Financial Post (http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/01/09/open-letter-radicals-threaten-resource-development/)

And we note that places like Yahoo or Google did not actually shut down. And the few sites that did, would it really change life if they went down forever, ( sorry I know this includes our site) but when askme went down, people just found new sites to use. So did the close down send millions to the phones. Did it really scare anyone, or did it even perhaps add fuel to the idea that the government feels it needs more control

We just wanna keep our oil and not destroy the earth in the process...

What a lovely seniment. Lets face it no one is going to change any time soon, we can't go back to the horse and viable alternatives mean generation of more electricity and despite claims to the contrary we cannot generate it out of thin air and not cause greater pollution. Bring on the bicyle. Sometimes I think Pol Pot had the right solution, get rid of the academics, politicians and start again

And we note that places like Yahoo or Google did not actually shut down.I'm pretty sure everyone knows that - it was a blackout in protest. If the bill becomes law then who knows what will happen because it's so broad.

Get an overview here: STOP PIPA/SOPA! - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTeKVbF-kUM)

Fr Chuck ;I think it had an immediate positive affect.

As I already noted ,one of the Senate bill sponsors withdrew his support. That never would've happened without the public pressure the "strike" generated .


SOPA is “shelved” for now .
Controversial online piracy bill shelved until 'consensus' is found - The Hill's Hillicon Valley (http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/204167-sopa-shelved-until-consensus-is-found)

PIPA is still being kept alive by the Senate Dems .
Harry Reid Says He's Concerned PIPA Will Break The Internet, But We Must Move Forward With It, Because Of 'Jobs' | Techdirt (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120116/02442717414/harry-reid-says-hes-concerned-pipa-will-break-internet-we-must-move-forward-with-it-because-jobs.shtml)

Like everything else ,we have to remain vigil. These clowns have been known to slip bills through in the dead of night.

Bottom line is that they want greater control over the internet. 2010 they tried to slip in an “internet kill switch” (“Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act”) which would have allowed the government the ability to shut down the internet during “emergencies.”
Internet 'Kill Switch' Would Give President Power To Shut Down The Web (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/17/internet-kill-switch-woul_n_615923.html)

And more recently they proposed that we all have a registered internet ids.
Obama Eyeing Internet ID for Americans - Tech Talk - CBS News (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20027837-501465.html)

So I for one appreciate that AMHD took the stand they did in favor of internet freedom.

Piracy and intellectual property theft can and should be addressed .
But ,as Corey Doctorow wrote :

The important tests of whether a regulation is fit for a purpose are first whether it will work, and second whether it will, in the course of doing its work, have effects on everything else. If I wanted Congress, Parliament, or the E.U. to regulate a wheel, it's unlikely I'd succeed. If I turned up, pointed out that bank robbers always make their escape on wheeled vehicles, and asked, “Can't we do something about this?", the answer would be “No". This is because we don't know how to make a wheel that is still generally useful for legitimate wheel applications, but useless to bad guys. We can all see that the general benefits of wheels are so profound that we'd be foolish to risk changing them in a foolish errand to stop bank robberies. Even if there were an epidemic of bank robberies—even if society were on the verge of collapse thanks to bank robberies—no-one would think that wheels were the right place to start solving our problems.

Lockdown: The coming war on general-purpose computing - Boing Boing (http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html)

According to the text in the new laws they are wanting to pass they can shut down servers which in effect shuts down websites. Why do you think they couldnt turn off the pipes going into and out of youtube?
I stand corrected, you were right, they do want to actually shut down services and servers that violate copyrights. The insult to injury is they also want to remove the domain/IP mapping in DNS servers to violators. So, users would have to type in the IP versus the domain name.

Why do you think they couldnt turn off the pipes going into and out of youtube?
They can cut the cord, but keep in mind, all of YouTube's content is on a CDN, so it's on servers all across the globe. So even if all the American servers are destroyed, the content will still exist somewhere else. Which, implies, it's going to find it's way back to America.

Trying to fight the internet is a really bad idea and a huge waste of resources.