11 replies to this topic

[hinachan]

I'm deliberately spelling the name of the site, to avoid having my post and this forum turn up in Google searches.  Please misspell it also, if you respond to this post.  I've used TinyURL for the links, so that the site's name won't appear in the URLs of these articles, either.

http://tinyurl.com/795bkwx
From Escapist Magazine:
The indictment, which was just unsealed today, accuses Meg@upl0ad of breaking anti-piracy laws and claims its pirate-enabling ways have cost copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue. According to reports, charges have been laid against seven Meg@upl0ad employees - four of which are already in custody in New Zealand. The Department of Justice reckons this is "among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States," and listed the coming charges as "racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement."

http://tinyurl.com/87s6uzj
More from the New York Times:
As part of the crackdown, 20 search warrants were executed in nine countries, including the United States. About $50 million in assets were also seized, as well as a number of servers and 18 domain names, the authorities said.
Ira P. Rothken, a lawyer for *****, said in a phone interview on Thursday afternoon that he had not yet seen the indictment, but he added: “Clearly we have due process concerns. This was done without a hearing.”

Remember my other post in this forum, about SOPA?  Well, folks, they're doing this stuff already, even without SOPA in place.  Taking down sites without a hearing.  It's the legal equivalent of sentencing someone to prison without a trial.

It won't be long before this B.S. starts to hurt those of us who want to keep up with (and purchase) the latest K-pop and J-pop.

[Moon&Sunrise]

I don't know why anyone isn't responding this. These bills are real serious business. Places like ebay and amazon can be shut down. Facebook. twitter, and it could possible be the end of 99% of forums as signatures and avatars contain pictures of celebrities that we are not "authorized" to use. You guys should email the men of crongress and let them know how much bull these bills are

[searingblade]

I totally agree. This needs to be stopped! It's a violation of our First Amendment rights, first and foremost. And it's not like we're being paid every time someone happens to see our signatures/avatars. It would/should only be a problem if that was true. There's no laws against the use of those images unless (1) you're getting paid when people see them, or (2) someone has asked you not to use it because they have the rights to the image, and you refuse to take it down or remove it. You can blame the record company, etc. for releasing these images on the internet.

And don't even get me started on websites being shut down... what would the internet be for then? No Facebook/Twitter/MySpace/other social media sites will get people upset as it is, and then the threat of job loss and screwing with our foreign relations... I'm shocked none of these politicians have children of their own telling them how bad this is, and will end up if it passes.

And if I lose my daily K-Pop/J-Pop related news... I'll go crazy! Oh well... I guess we'll get the final verdict when it's finally voted on on the 24th....

EDIT : And one thought about losing YouTube... sure, tons of people are illegally uploading videos/other copyrighted materials, but if you eliminate the entire website, you're also making the people who are actually legally uploading their material (i.e. record labels, people's self-taken videos, etc.) suffer.

Edited by searingblade, 19 January 2012 - 06:02 PM.

[yunapolaris]

Moon&Sunrise, on 19 January 2012 - 05:43 PM, said:

I don't know why anyone isn't responding this. These bills are real serious business. Places like ebay and amazon can be shut down. Facebook. twitter, and it could possible be the end of 99% of forums as signatures and avatars contain pictures of celebrities that we are not "authorized" to use. You guys should email the men of crongress and let them know how much bull these bills are

I have no idea why there weren't more people respond to this. I posted on my Facebook along with my other posts, it got next to zero responses! I think people are still oblivious of what is happening. But when they finally realize, it'd be too late.
I tried my best in speading the 'Stop SOPA', I don't know what else to do and I'm feeling hopeless...

*after a while of thinking*
However, I don't see the reality of this bill, it sounds so unreal to me. Assuming the bill gets passed, so they will take down everything that everyone is on internet for: Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Amazon, eBay, Google, Yahoo or whatever. So what will billions internet users be on internet for? Then why don't just get rid of internet?
What about First Amendment rights? What about freedom of speech?
And if the bill get passes, and those sites get taken down, there'll be billions rageous customers for the internet company to face. I don't think they can afford the lost of their revenue, thus they will do their best to make sure that stupid bill will not get passed.
The bill will not be passed. They can't scare me with a Megaupload website ( I use Mediafire anyway . I won't miss MU)
Speaking of the MU case, all I saw & read was about the owner, the CEO, the lost of their revenue blah blah, not a word for MU users and their lost? Millions people paid the MU Premium account, so now they just basically lost their hard-earned money up to $200 for the life-time MU Premium ?
--------------------------------------

http://www.craigslist.org/about/SOPA  <<< How Craiglist is fighting against SOPA & PIPA, learn more of what you can do to protect out internet community.

Edited by yunapolaris, 19 January 2012 - 09:12 PM.

[trelag]

They didn't need SOPA to be able to imprison those involved with the site. Down to the graphic artist, who could've only been designing graphics for the website's layout and interfaces.

What I fear is, if MU was shut down, then they have a lot of reasons to shut down the other upload-download websites. But MU was different in a way due to their video services. I don't know. :/

But I also noticed that Mediafire took action recently during their latest layout overhaul. They seem to have taken down a lot of links due to copyright issues.

As for SOPA, we can only take action. This site provides infos and means to help stop SOPA, if anyone's interested: http://americancensorship.org/

[BoA_4ever88]

trelag, on 20 January 2012 - 07:24 AM, said:

They didn't need SOPA to be able to imprison those involved with the site. Down to the graphic artist, who could've only been designing graphics for the website's layout and interfaces.

What I fear is, if MU was shut down, then they have a lot of reasons to shut down the other upload-download websites. But MU was different in a way due to their video services. I don't know. :/

But I also noticed that Mediafire took action recently during their latest layout overhaul. They seem to have taken down a lot of links due to copyright issues.

As for SOPA, we can only take action. This site provides infos and means to help stop SOPA, if anyone's interested: http://americancensorship.org/

I signed this and a bunch of other ones. Any more? I want to sign as many as possible. This needs to be stopped. As for Mediafire I have noticed since last year something was up waaay before this SOPA thing started. I had 2-3 links suspended due to "copyright infringement" from someplace in London believe it or not.

I have no idea if anymore since then have been suspended or not (wouldn't be surprised) but I find the whole thing to be absolutely ridiculous. As for what happened with MU....unfortunate really. I really feel sorry for the people who paid for premium.....I wonder where all their money went.

*Sigh* Lord have mercy.

[Cammie]

Yes reponse has been strangely quiet. I got someone on FB posting up the link and it also got zero responses and comments. I think perhaps in addition to ppl not being aware, they're probably also afraid of saying anything.

Edited by Cammie, 20 January 2012 - 07:04 PM.

[Moon&Sunrise]

yunapolaris, on 19 January 2012 - 08:24 PM, said:

I have no idea why there weren't more people respond to this. I posted on my Facebook along with my other posts, it got next to zero responses! I think people are still oblivious of what is happening. But when they finally realize, it'd be too late.
I tried my best in speading the 'Stop SOPA', I don't know what else to do and I'm feeling hopeless...

*after a while of thinking*
However, I don't see the reality of this bill, it sounds so unreal to me. Assuming the bill gets passed, so they will take down everything that everyone is on internet for: Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Amazon, eBay, Google, Yahoo or whatever. So what will billions internet users be on internet for? Then why don't just get rid of internet?
What about First Amendment rights? What about freedom of speech?
And if the bill get passes, and those sites get taken down, there'll be billions rageous customers for the internet company to face. I don't think they can afford the lost of their revenue, thus they will do their best to make sure that stupid bill will not get passed.
The bill will not be passed. They can't scare me with a Megaupload website ( I use Mediafire anyway . I won't miss MU)
Speaking of the MU case, all I saw & read was about the owner, the CEO, the lost of their revenue blah blah, not a word for MU users and their lost? Millions people paid the MU Premium account, so now they just basically lost their hard-earned money up to $200 for the life-time MU Premium ?
--------------------------------------

http://www.craigslist.org/about/SOPA  <<< How Craiglist is fighting against SOPA & PIPA, learn more of what you can do to protect out internet community.

Well kind of but not really.All this began with the distribution of pirating software, which unbeknownst to many people was distributed by the very companies like CNN that are now attempting to sue millions of people. They created this pirating software, like limewire,frostwire,etc,etc. Made billions of dollars off it and are now jumping behind this bill so that they can sue every single person that downloaded so much as a pixel from their pirating software. Trust me. Money is not an issue for these people/


Also their only aim is not to make billions of suing half the world but also to exhibit control over foreign affairs. This bill will give them the power to seize and shut down sites and businesses that are not even based in america.

Also The only reason they shut down MU was because it was a massive host for billions of pirated files. This bill cant actually shut down forums. or sites like facebook or twitter as social networking sites do not impose any sort of piracy,. but rather this bill will make it so that if you so much as post a picture of another person you are liable to be sued for millions of dollars. EVEN IF the person you posted a picture of doesn't want to sue you.


And here is the real kicker. 99% of congress and the senate DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THIS BILL TRULY DOES LOL. They are blindly being manipulated by these corporations like Microsoft and CNN into thinking that piracy is this big awful issue so that they can gain control over the internet and foreign businesses as well as stopping new businesses from forming


TL;DR the Aim of this bill is essentially for Big corporations to get complete and total control over the internet and make millions in the process.

Edited by Moon&Sunrise, 20 January 2012 - 08:00 PM.

[trelag]

Cammie, on 20 January 2012 - 07:04 PM, said:

Yes reponse has been strangely quiet. I got someone on FB posting up the link and it also got zero responses and comments. I think perhaps in addition to ppl not being aware, they're probably also afraid of saying anything.

Or maybe they're silently doing their part in all of this.

Seriously, SOPA will turn the internet into a graveyard. It will be like how journalism can be censored forcefully by the government if a country is declared under martial law. That's too much power to be held only by the government—too unbalanced.

Web 2.0 happened because of interaction between people who are free to do anything they want without having to worry about anything. And, honestly, the internet has thrived throughout these years unguarded, with the promise of being able to voice out through visual and verbal means. People were given the power to voice by the internet—and a lot of people like to keep it that way.

[Cammie]

I hope what you're saying is true.

Some people are in favor of it and welcome policing/censorship, feeling that getting things for free should be stopped. I think that the world is changing. Both society and the entertainment industry need to adapt to the changes. It's not like getting things for 'free' hasn't happened in the past. It's just with globalization and the internet, it's easier to obtain those things. Even with the policing, the behavior won't die. It'll just serve to drive things underground all the more just like prohibition.

[Martinkin]

sure  thats incredible )

[verilostnconfusd]

There was a lot of protests going on. Google and Wikipedia were one of many that blacked out their website or had a note regarding sopa/pipa to protest it (I don't remember which date it was.) There's also going to be a protest in March called Black March. http://black-march.com/