SOPA / PIPA Awareness

[4strings]

Hi, All,

Just hoping to raise awareness about these two bills in congress that may affect many US internet users.  I can't say that I am super informed on these bills but there are plenty of others that are.  Please take the time to look at these potential pieces of legislation and the potential they have to affect the internet as a whole.

[The Buddha]

The Irony of ironies is that google is protesting sopa. Funny, google is a double irish with a dutch sandwich company that paid under 3% of its revenue in taxes to the us government, and they will easily skirt the regulation ...

I wish sopa shuts down google and the rest of the corporate tax cheats hiding under the guise of the "internet".

And a quick google of "Double irish with dutch sandwich" shows -
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/google-2-4-rate-shows-how-60-billion-u-s-revenue-lost-to-tax-loopholes.html

I want free internet and free searches sure. However I want the "made in america" $$$ to be taxed in america.

Cool.
Buddha.

[Roxtar]

^^^

so, you're siding with the RIAA and MPAA against google, youtube, wikipedia, gstwins, facebook, etc?

[The Buddha]

^^^

so, you're siding with the RIAA and MPAA against google, youtube, wikipedia, gstwins, facebook, etc?

That looks like a nice way to twist what I was saying ...

I just want the google/youtube/facebook/wikipedia guys to pay the same taxes that gstwin guys do ...
Cool.
Buddha.

[Roxtar]

tax loopholes and SOPA are not related...
you said you wanted SOPA to shut down google. you want to kill access to content because somebody else is in position to exploit a loophole.

create a bad law to punish everyone because 1 group exploits a different bad law.

[The Buddha]

Yea, have you figured out a way to stop google ? - and no its not just google, microsoft, apple and every other name you know of ...
If they were to shut down google, I will promptly open a search engine called buddoogle and on the front page declare the taxes I am paying and my revenue.

The tax code may be unfair, but the employees @ google have to pay it, why not the rest of em.
Nothing unique or creative or even remotely special about google ... they really dont need any preferential treatment.
BTW GSTwin doesn't link to content, it will not be affected - of course yamahon's propensity  to link to people doing stupid sheite on youtube will be the only casualty if youtube goes kaput ...

Think of google as the behemoth that killed yahoo, excite, infoseek, flipdog and several others and got to pay 2.4% in taxes.
Think of Face book as the behemoth that killed myspace and got to pay under 4% in taxes.
Think of apple as the behemoth that has 12 year old chinese girls by the 1000 assembling their products using toxic chemicals that would never be approved for use in USA and gets to pay under 4% in taxes.

These companies are the robber barons and the slave runners of the 21st century. The only saving grace is that someone else is likely to come along and crunch them sooner or later unlike the 19th century.

SOPA is poorly thought out, but so is the tax code. SOPA wont affect the small companies and small things like our forum or most any other non revenue generating linking algorithim. Here is a clue -
You type in GS500 into google - there will be a 1000 paid and free sites coming up. That is a target for SOPA.
Type GS500 into craigslist - you see people's for sale posts - that isn't a SOPA target.
GSTwin will not be affected at all cos it doesn't serve up links blindly.

Google is a tax cheat, throw them in jail for violating sopa. Al Capone was a bootlegger, extortionist and a murderer. He got thrown in jail for tax evasion.

Cool.
Buddha.

[Roxtar]

yeah, the MPAA and RIAA would never use this law to go after the little guy

go on thinking you'll be safe if they pass this law.

[dohabee]

[/quote]

That looks like a nice way to twist what I was saying ...

I just want the google/youtube/facebook/wikipedia guys to pay the same taxes that gstwin guys do ...
Cool.
Buddha.
[/quote]

Sounds legit, you should start an occupy Google movement.

[The Buddha]

yeah, the MPAA and RIAA would never use this law to go after the little guy

go on thinking you'll be safe if they pass this law.

A search engine can be written by near about anyone and several already exist.
Content that is intellectual and copyrighted property is protected even under existing laws.
The beauty of this law is that it moves the laws on paper to internet.
Anyway I guess I should occupy google or boycott google or whatever, yea that sounds like a feasible plan.
Cool.
Buddha.

[The Buddha]

yeah, the MPAA and RIAA would never use this law to go after the little guy

go on thinking you'll be safe if they pass this law.

A search engine can be written by near about anyone and several already exist.
Content that is intellectual and copyrighted property is protected even under existing laws.
The beauty of this law is that it moves the laws on paper to internet.

Finally the links loaded - The 2 links you posed are very sensationalistic, sorta like the old lady who slaps danny glover for shooting back and killing her kid who was shooting @ him in lethal weapon 3 or 4 or 2 or 35 whatever. You get arrested for driving drunk and you-mama starts wailing about what a nice student you were in 3rd grade. Seen it all. No relevance, just sensationalising around the facts. I was in court a couple years ago with some traffic offence when this woman starts her story by saying "I went to church wednesday and when I was comming home on thursday this cop stopped me for running the stop sign". OK WTF. You sell bootleg movies on the street, the old school video camera in the movie theater types - you are likely to get arrested. I think that law is proper and it needs a update for this century.

Anyway I guess I should occupy google or boycott google or whatever, yea that sounds like a feasible plan.

Cool.
Buddha.

[The Buddha]

Not to beat a dead horse again - but the law of unintended consequences always is lurking around the corner. However the intended consequence of the RIAA, MPAA downloading laws is the individual. Not corporations, cos well, corporations dont go about downloading movies and music. Individuals - aka, napster (remember it was 1 guy with a file sharing program that became napster, and it never turned into a behemoth corporation with billions in revenue and share holders etc - it was killed before that ) and these grandpa and 12 yr old using things like napster ...

The linking of copyrighted content, is done en masse by google, youtube, facebook, wiki users and google, facebook, youtube, wiki make $ from it on which they barely pay any taxes I might add.

The responsibility would now be put on these corporations to not allow copyrighted material on their sites.
BTW you buy a CD or a dvd, guess what, you can play it a million times, call 1000 of your friends and play it till the disk turns to dust, you cannot however broadcast it, you cannot put it in a theater and charge people for it, and you cannot play it in a PA system unless it is a restricted gathering - like you invite people and its held in a private location.

The rule already exixts it is just repeated for the internet. BTW I am from a country where software piracy is not only accepted its pretty much expected. If 1 person has a software, its like the whole country has it. India and china are still that way BTW, and unless we properly extend these to china and india we'd be filling a tiny hole in the levy when there is a massive crack growing in it. Anyway ... content sharing pretty much is piracy. SOPA will move that responsibility to the hosting entity. The unintended consequence would be if you have your own little website and people have been posting copyrighted content on it, you could get in trouble ... and then if you were a grandpa or a 12 year old, you would even get a news article, like this -"12 year old grandpa's website sued over barney cartoons"
Cool.
Buddha.

[adidasguy]

If someone were to use an avatar that was copyright by someone else - even if someone totally unknown to the world, GStwins could be shut down instantly with no notice.

That's the problem - the law makes itr the job of the site to police each and every posting, image, video to check them for copyrights. And where do you check?

Presently it is the job of the copyright holder to notify the site of the copyright violation, give them time to remove it, before the site gets acted upon.

[The Buddha]

That is the unintended consequence.
The intended consequence is to stop facebook and its ilk to make $$$ off movie clips that belong to other people.
So we should start out being like adidas guy and post your own pic with a monster mug of beer as your avatar ... 
GSTwin is easy to police ... really, dont mean to sound like a nazi but all we have to do is post and make sticky and everyone falls into line. Try that for facebook.
Cool.
Buddha.

[Toogoofy317]

Well,

See, is my avatar breaking SOPA? Would Metal Muhlisha get all butt hurt because my logo was (not anymore) on my bike and it appeared in a pic that became an avatar?

I think the law needs to be rewritten.

Mary

[SAFE-T]

I think there is a world of difference between the law itself, and how the law is applied.

[madjak30]

How many pics that have been posted & re-posted on here might have copy rights on them that are currently being violated?  Do you really want to leave the door open to someone having a bad day coming across this site (or any other forum for that matter) and deciding to have it shut down? 

Slippery slope man...this law would include personal videos of a trip to Disneyland, music playing in the back ground or anything that you aren't directly recording, but gets in there unintentionally (is the TV on...playing a movie on the BlueRay??)...someone gets their nose out of joint and wham...it's not likely to happen, but it could...

Later.

[The Buddha]

I'd rewrite the law, if it is a non profit it should not be turned into a labor intensive burden of proof on the site manager/owner. Its the user/poster's responsibility.
If it is a profit making site, it needs to get copyrighted material prevented. It is the responsiblity of the site owner.
Anyway looks like its on hold forever ...
The billion $$$ internet behemoths win again.
Cool.
Buddha.

[SAFE-T]

How about this ?

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/01/19/joseph-c-gioconda-a-better-way-to-fight-online-piracy-than-sopa/