Stop Online Piracy Act
 

If this isn't an appropriate topic please delete it.

If anyone didn't know United States Congress is set to vote on a bill this Thursday (12/15) that will essentially create an Internet filter that will block websites that link or post another persons intellectual property. I urge anyone in America to call or email their congressmen and congresswomen and tell them that you do not support this bill (HR 3261).

Even The Technodrome isn't safe. Viacom now owns the Teenage Mutant Nina Turtles and if this passes into law they could shut this website down just because of the content on these forums. No due process at all. One day it is here, the next day it won't be.

Just do a google search on Stop Online Piracy Act and you will easily find information on how you can help.

-ms

This won't last long even if it does pass. It's too invasive. The government can't stop drug cartels or illegal immigration. They act like they're trying but reality is they know someone will always find another way and piracy is the same thing. The worst part about the bill is websites like Youtube and Facebook will become legally responsible for the content posted on their sites. Meaning they can be sued instead of the person who posted it. This will cause those sites to tank or have really strong screening processes. Say good bye to pulling images offline for the most part. See ya Deviant Art and all your fan art. Granted some news related websites will be able to keep their images not everyone will.

I doubt the entertainment industry can argue that piracy is bad for them anymore. It's actually not and music sales have increased since digital downloading started. They only lost out in the first few years before itunes introduced a way to pay for that content. Also Avatar is the most pirated film in history and guess how much money it made?

Occupy the Internet? :ohwell:

Really????? Can they really do this????? The internet is owned by the people, its not government property. I dont support priracy in any way, but in fact against it, but when it limits the right of an individual and there FREEDOM OF SPEECH I think it should be stopped.

yeah no doubt

This site has some more information about the bill and its opposition.

They could do that anyway. They always could have.

While that is true I would find it more unlikely that a smaller company such as Mirage would do something like that while Viacom (which is actually a supporter of this bill) could and I can imagine would. This bill just makes it much easier to do that without any sort of warning to the website owner. Forget a take down notice, the site just gets taken down.

And when I say taken down, the actual server isn't turned off and the website deleted, the DNS entry would be rerouted which would cause the website to be inaccessible. Modifying DNS is not a good thing for anyone.

-ms

We Americans are headed into some scary times.
Especially since the President did not veto Military Detention of American Citizens this week.

America has been going dowhill for a long time, and it isn't going to get any better anytime soon. We might as well get used to it. If this does pass, then we might as well not go on the Internet at all.

Don't let it happen, you can help prevent this by contacting your congressman or woman today! Don't think that just one voice won't be heard, because your voice along with the other thousands upon millions who do the same will make a difference.

www.americancensorship.org

-ms

There's a live streaming of today's hearing of SOPA, and it's in session right now.

http://keepthewebopen.com/sopa

Gotta admit, if this passes I'm excited to see how quickly workarounds will surface to dodge censorship of the internet.

hm... well once it hits the US, Canada might not be too far behind, but i hope not

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJIuYgIvKsc

I'm unsure how much of this video is honestly true, as I haven't poked around the links provided (and I doubt I'd understand most of it if I did), but assuming it's true - Woooooww. :/ Despite this guy's goofy mannerisms, there's a lot of interesting info in this video, so I'm seeing what I can do about passing this vid around so it can get in the hands of as many people as possible.

Also, assuming again that this vid is all true, it makes sense. There's no way the supporters and drafters of this 'law' think it's really gonna stop piracy, there had to be an in. This could easily be it.

pretty good dirty blond lol

Re-start
 

We can just re-start the site and stop publishing images. But I hate laws like this. I think all images should be free on the Internet as long as you make no money of them (I an understand that they don't want movies, music and video games being downloaded).

In the late 1970's and throughout the 1980's and early 1990's, movie music industry feared the videotape and cassette tape. You could tape songs from radio and movies from TV.

A Ron Paul supporter and a good find!:tlol:

Has it been killed yet?

If "Anonymous" has their way it will be

I would like to suggest that The Technodrome and all other fan sites go dark on January 18th, 2012 from 8a.m. to 8p.m. est in a coordinated effort to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect-IP Act (PIPA). I recommend that instead of serving up the normal websites we go dark and instead provide information on SOPA and PIPA and the harm they will cause for the internet not only in the United States but across the globe. If anyone would like any information on what they can do to help or how they can participate in the blackout day on January 18th please let me know and I would be happy to help in anyway.

Do not think for one second this will not affect you, Viacom is a supporter of these two bills, if they pass Viacom will have the power to effectively shut down ANY Ninja Turtle site they feel violates their copyright, this can and most likely will include TheTechnodrome.com, NinjaPizza.net, GoGreenMachine.org, MutantOoze.org, TMNT-NinjaTurtles.com, terrible2z.com, and many, many, more TMNT blogs, tumblrs, and fan made websites.

-ms

Contact Krang about it. Of course I cannot speak for each 'Dromer,but I think a majority would happily go along with the idea and it should be done to see if it will effect the outcome. Thanks for keeping us informed about this,Splinter.

I dunno... as noble of a gesture as it'd be, I'm having trouble imagining Viacom executives, lawyers (on either side of the argument), or senators, or judges, or really anyone with any decision making power in all of this surfing the internet and going, "Oh noes... there's a lot of fan-sites down today. I was going to endorse the bill but, well now, this very well changes everything!"

If anything, you'd think they'd be like, "Oh good, the fansites are taking a day to rehearse the big shutdown they've got waiting for them when this passes. Good for them."

Heh, that's about my thinking. Does anyone know of a time in which an internet boycott actually changed anything in the real world?

The protest would not be for Viacom to notice us, it is for regular users who do not know the effects of SOPA/PIPA and doing the blackout would give them a taste of what is to come if they do not stand up and fight for their right to a internet without censorship.

Just a few weeks ago a boycott of GoDaddy resulted in over 82,000 websites being transferred from GoDaddy to other registers who do not support SOPA. Including big names like Wikipedia and the Cheezburger network. GoDaddy has since changed their stance on SOPA but the damage has already been done.

I just want people to understand that you can either sit on your hands and let this pass and then hate what the government has done or you can do something about it and prevent it from happening. The choice is yours. I know where I stand.

-ms

I'll be participating.

Seriously though, the US government has been quite accomplished in censorship, propaganda, and detention of US citizens (Japanese-Americans WW2 anyone?) for a LONG time. The fact that we live in the instant information age just puts some of it out in the open, then we get armchair politicians and activists. Go ask a Native American how honest and fair we are. Yeah that's what I thought.

If 80% of the country coulda smelled the sh*t on their knees about 30 years ago, we could've avoided this defining choke point in American history. The 9/11 era has sped up the process, but the plan of corporations and the private sector (the 1%) to completely rip the country from the masses has been in motion for, as mentioned before, the better part of 30 years.


This country, as a whole, sh*t the bed. Now we're lying in it.

Well... whaddya know! I am proud to stand corrected.

Still... I don't think a Technodrome Forums black-out would be of any significance. It's gotta be something on a bigger scale to really hit the companies where it hurts.

But you see, Splinter, that's a totally different style of protest. Those boycotting godaddy.com are "voting with their wallets" so to speak. godaddy is gonna feel the pinch and rethink their strategy and wither or not they will still support these bills. 5 or 6 TMNT fan sites going black won't cause anyone financial hardship, especially Viacom. Now if on the same day, people didn't frequent Viacom's many site or watch their many TV networks...that might...MIGHT... make them take some notice.

I agree the godaddy boycott was a protest with their wallets. But it was organized on the internet, which is an example Oldman asked for. I've said it once already, doing a blackout is not a protest against the companies, I know it will not affect them at all, the point of the black out is to inform the users of the internet of what the internet will be like if SOPA/PIPA passes. It is an informational protest. A good majority of Americans do not even know what SOPA/PIPA is and I would like to believe if they did they would not stand for it. Again it's not about protesting the companies, it is about showing what the internet will look like if your favorite websites went down because of these bills.

The Technodrome doesn't have to go completely down, maybe changing the top banner to a #stopsopa banner with a link to information about the bill or something...

A quick example of how this could affect the technodrome, this thead has links to scans of manuals from Nintendo, etc.. Most (not all) of the video game companies are pro-sopa, hypothetically if SOPA/PIPA passed and made into law they could legally have this site shut down because of those infringing links, and the OP would receive jail time for violating copyright. And that is only the beginning, you upload a video to youtube of your kid running around your house and the t.v. is on in the living room and The Simpsons is on, you could get fined and or jailed for that. Fox wanted $10,000 for 4.5 seconds of The Simpsons shown in the background on a t.v. during a documentary. Do you think they won't want money from you if they could have legal recourse to get it from you?

-ms

I'm also against SOPA/PIPA, and I'd like to do what I can to help prevent it from passing, but I don't think a blackout would be the right approach for us. As others have mentioned, we're not a big enough site to make any difference by doing that.

This is something that we could definitely do, though.

TMNT-L has a banner on the top of their site about stopping SOPA. Maybe that would help. I think a total blackout wouldn't do any good, and that people who may not understand why may think that said sites are having difficulties rather than it being a protest. I understand what your intentions, are, MS, but I highly doubt it'll really do anything. I'm against this, too, but honestly, there are people who aren't going to care what we think. That's how politics works. They're only in it for themselves, and they don't care how it affects people like us. It's sad but true.

I can understand why you wouldn't want to blackout the entire site. I made this banner, let me know what y'all think, I can change it if needed. If anyone can come up with one too post it.

http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/3...sopamockup.png

Here are some other links with some tools others can use on their sites if they wish to participate.

Tumblr and Website censorship code
http://fffff.at/stop-sopa-blackout/

WordPress SOPA Blackout Plugin
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sopa-blackout/

WordPress STOP SOPA Ribbon Plugin
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stop-sopa-ribbon/

Google Chrome SOPA Supporter Extension
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/d...jccpjjnhgcmpnd

Twitter Blackout Profile Image
http://www.blackoutsopa.org/

Additional Links

http://defendtheinter.net/

http://censoredbysopa.com/

http://americancensorship.org

http://keepthewebopen.com

http://fightforthefuture.org

http://demandprogress.org

http://stopcensorship.org/

http://publicknowledge.org/e-parasit...ine-piracy-act

http://projects.propublica.org/sopa/

Also, here is a list of those in congress that are for or against the bills. Find your rep and senators and contact them and let them know you do not support these bills.

http://sopaopera.org/

-ms

Just curious, but are you trying to get all fansites involved in this, like you breifly mentioned a while back? It would have a better chance of educating people about the bill if they saw it everywhere. Like a web-nerd recruitment day. A dinky, little banner is too easy to overlook. And, I appreciate your message, saying "blackout" sites to show that this could be the future for fan-communities in general if the bill is passed.

I guess it will be up to the individual. We can ask Rose and Vaugh and others that have their own sites. Also, anyone that is friends with non-TMNT related sites that someone runs. We may only be reaching out to a few thousand people yet its better than only a handful that may look at this particular thread. If all goes our way it won't pass anyway. Yet to do that I would also suggest that each person agrees to write to thier respective congressman or congresswoman and ask them to vote against it. Every little measure helps.

The Truth about SOPA
 

Please watch this video and help spread the word about the truth regarding SOPA:

Excellent find, John. This needs to be stickied ASAP.

P.S. - Should anyone need this video for editing or redistributing purposes, let me know.

It appears that the house has shelved SOPA (for now).

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/pol...helf034765.php

Let's hope PIPA finds it way out very soon as well. This is very good news for the internet. I still think on January 18th we should put up a banner in support of internet freedom and opposition to PIPA which is still in the Senate.

-ms

I think the government has more pressing concerns than people pirating. such as this economy.

Our kids can't read or multiply. Our kids are getting knocked-up while they are still kids. Unemployment is at an all time high.
But, let's pass a bill that helps the wealthy stay in power.

Well, at least it's been shelved for now. That's a good sign. I think the government should worry about bigger issues. And even if PIPA still passes, there are still going to be people pirating stuff. It's just like how they want to ban gun rights. They can do that all they want, but it's not going to do any good because people are still going to get ahold of guns underground anyway. What do they think they're going to accomplish with any of it? If you take away the guns, terrorists will just take advantage of us. If you try to stop pirating, it's just going to keep happening.