Anyone have any views on this, it got passed by old men that obviously want the internet and technology to go backwards, take away peoples rights and to control something that nobody should own as a whole. I think its due to come into force today.

Scary stuff.

Why, USA? bunch of idiots, if this truly does happen they will ruin the future.

I hope most Americans really are doing what they can against this SOPA stuff.

Wait, what? It actually got passed?

Yea without 'the people' being consulted, a lot of power hungry old geezers passed it. Looking at different articles on the net, its going to have a massive impact on pretty much anything we do or read on the web. From taking out sites that use free speech to taking sites out with minimal and debatable copyright infringement.

I don't know the full story, but it was tested on Megaupload recently. The internet shouldn't be owned or governed by anyone, unless blatant criminal activity is found.

The US government like getting their greasy hands on everything they don't own.

Scary stuff, could totally change the whole web!

Been following this and it is a joke, the whole idea of the web was free access to information and for it to be pretty much unregulated (other than blatant criminal activity).

It won't stay passed for long. This is so unconstitutional it's not even funny.

Edit: It hasn't even been passed yet. A vote is schedule for tomorrow in the House, then it would need to go to the Senate, then need to not be vetoed by Obama, etc.

Edited December 20, 201113 yr by ace

Cant see it being passed as its so extreme, although governments have wanted to regulate the Internet for years.

This could be the stepping stone to doing just that

It will go through, but, where there's a will..there's a way!

http://www.theatlant...nsorship/46425/

I presume we will see the internet split eventually, in fact Ive always though about that happening. There will the "commercial" internet, youtube, google, amazon etc for casually users. Then there will be the "net", of which there are already quite large parts of underground sites you cant simply navigate to, something akin to the old BB scene.

Edited December 20, 201113 yr by dkw

ISP's here in the UK are already blacklisting sites.

ISP's here in the UK are already blacklisting sites.

Werent BT asked to do that a few months ago and refused? Where`s the Shed End gonna sit mod, legit or underground? Lets go all gritty and go underground.....The (hidden) Shed End....

Well I know some ISP's work alongside a database for websites. If a site enters that database, it is blacklisted and you can't access it. I know this cause Sky had it the other week with rapidshare temporarily.

As for the forum, we are lucky Chelsea like us. They don't like use of the badge in the design so that's out the question.

My only worry is that with things like this coming into effect, larger companies or websites will start a power trip of their own and go reporting websites for pretty much nothing, getting them taken down. This will then push a lot of websites underground and more vigilante web groups.

Who knows, some of these web attacks on companies could be staged to make sure people are okay with the whole control going in on it. This is the American government remember, anything is possible.

This will roll into next year, and remember that anything this controversial that might become law is instantly sued by concerned parties, and the federal or supreme courts step in. If they don't throw it out, a new batch of legislators will probably repeal it. Our checks and balances at play, so that some wacky congressionals can't harm us all.

Power hungry American politicians thinking they can rule the internet

News flash! The internet was purposely made so nobody could rule or govern the whole thing so free speech was encouraged by the internet; therefore what the US government is trying to do is nigh on impossible and quite frankly a joke.

there are numerous ways to get round it, the easiest being this if you are a firefox user:https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/desopa/

But before you can get round it, you have to know it's happening. How many casual users of the Internet have any idea that this is occurring? Had it not been for Mod, I wouldn;t have had a clue. So thanks, Mod!

That's how they like it unfortunately. Push it through quietly, then claim it as a law when they decide to use it.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudiosi/2012/01/16/obama-says-so-long-sopa-killing-controversial-internet-piracy-legislation/

Fear not, Shed Enders, for our president has killed SOPA with the promise of a veto. Other similar efforts may come around because there's big money behind this. But opponents of internet regulation can take heart that their voices were heard, and that the proponents have to start from scratch knowing that it's an uphill battle.

I love Obama

The US killing sites at a top DNS level would be comical because you'd end up with the root servers (the big central servers that every ISP goes to in order to get domain info) being out of sync with each other which would have all sorts of weird and wonderful consequences.

Wikipedia will be down all day tomorrow in protest to SOPA and Protect IP (i think that's the other one?)

The Dark Lord grows stronger.

I do have to just sit back and laugh at all these sites participating in the blackout, you would think sites like Wikipedia would have more sense than that. Yes, shutting up and cutting yourself off from outside communication with millions of other people is a fantastic way to "raise awareness."

Also irony at it's finest, someone already has come up with an extension to bypass the blackouts http://techpp.com/2011/12/26/desopa-a-firefox-extension-to-bypass-sopa-restrictions/

A message of solidarity intended to fight Government's crackdown on hackers and script kiddies...is overridden by hackers and script kiddies, awesome work guys. That blackout message really got through.

The "crackdown" is aimed more at protecting copyrights isn't it? Blocking access to and taking down websites who contain copyrighted material? I didn't think it really had anything to do with "hacking".