SOPA Blackout Protest 1/18/12

Hello, I am here to inform WDA as a whole and re-discuss SOPA. SOPA is an anti-piracy act that will ultimately make your life here on the internet a living hell. See more details in Kimo's thread here:

Spoiler:

and here:

Spoiler:

Here is their [alleged] goals:

• Stop Piracy
  
• Stop trolling
  
• Stop Cyber Bullying for children on a global scale
  
• Censor anything threatening or distasteful
  
• Anti-Terrorism
  

I have done my research and their real goals are to not only control the Internet, but to control the Internet's economy so that they can make profit off of it all. Even logic points to this: if Congress classified Pizza as a vegetable to save the frozen food industry, then they will control YOUR Internet. Yes, it is a service provided by the United States government, but it is a right that we all have. It is the Freedom of Speech and the Pursuit of Happiness that constitutes our right to our current state of the Internet.

What will happen if SOPA bill passes? This:

• No more Torrent sites
  
• Anything that involves any aspect of copyright infringement will be stripped down (youtube, DuelingNetwork, PirateBay, fan-dedicated forums, etc.)
  
• Very strict social networking
  
• FBI Searches (they still do that right now, but the amount of times they are allowed to search you will increase.)
  

What can we do to stop this? Protest, protest, protest. There will be a global scale "black out" (mass inactivity) to show disfavor of this bill. What do protests do? They voice the public's opinions and has shown in the past that they are effective. What do you do to join the black out? Do not use your internet at all on 1/18/12 (this upcoming wednesday.) This is from your loving admin, Digi and your friend Kimo.

Please just voice your choice whether or not you are going to protest or not. It is highly recommended and appreciated if you do. Thank you.

*If you are going to spread the word out to the rest of the YGO community or any other forum you love, feel free to use my post and these campaign posters. (BTW sorry for the 2nd poster MoC, I kinda felt like doing it myself because I'm feeling a little picky about it atm.)*

Spoiler:

Go Anonymous down SOPA! I also invite the entire WDA to protest!

No more trolling? DOWN WITH F*CKING SOPA!

Down with SOPA.

by the way, this will also stop memes dead.

Internet neutrality must be a law, just like the freedom of speech. If SOPA will come through, I'll always try to get around that law. (host servers in North Korea anyone?)

Although we are a minor community, I think we all should stand up as a mass and join this.

[REDACTED]

I'm doing it.

You can seperate people into 2 kinds, just like you can divide them into many of those dualities. There are those that understand truth and truly value the truth and those that value it less and are content with what they are seeing. And this may be a bit higher than the average understanding here, if not for the understanding of every person here, which is likely.

In regards to the news I have been through 3 stages growing up.
1st stage was the kid that bitched and moaned about the fact the TV has nothing but boring news between 8 o'clock and 9 o'clock and just wanted that hour to pass so he'd watch the popular programs of the night zone.

2nd stage was for a bit before I became an adult, when I would find interest in and follow news, as well as politics, while often being agitated by how things were presented but looked for truth in the 8 o'clock news, while occassionally I believed I found it, and that behind the glass exist allies.

3rd stage was after I came to the university and used the internet extensivelly. From that point onwards the news disgusted me and they still do. I can remember a time I would get nauseous simply out of the reaction my brain would bring up to the forceful, dirty propaganda I witnessed before my eyes and would accept as a kid. At this point I am proud to be able to see intend and clearly the lie behind every word in the news, or even people that appeared as allies behind the glass.

Be it private or not, premium or not, the vast majority of the information one can get out of his TV has the single goal of manipulation or social "sleep", and before we go into viewing something as crazy let me pose a question,
You have amassed large amounts of control in society with the medium called money, assuming the possibility to establish said control, through a medium implanting ideas, exists, would you not make use of it? Would you not wish to maintain the control you struggled to get? Would you pass it up?

Simply because of the costs involved with it, with the cost of every man to pass the contents of his mind through the medium of television, its function is left to the financial elite entirelly and therefore is completely under control for all those who want to maintain the control they've established, fabricated information is spoon fed, very specific aims behind every function do exist and opposition is easy to silence if it is affecting in any way the social lullaby.

Things were simple for a long time and just like it was before, the age of information initially had no difference in the process of hindering the control of the flow of information. However that was only in the beggining, since in the middle of it a medium that would allow for free exchange of information rose in popularity. This medium would do everything opposite from the well established television network, it would allow people to know, to understand, to be educated, to unite, to establish connections between each other directly regardless the distance and understand each other. And all this was uncontrolled. You cannot name people freely in television, you are not allowed to bring up things you are not supposed to bring in television, and there are people who have been presecuted for saying something disagreeable through windows of the law. That would not happen on the internet, if a person had an opinion he would be allowed to bring it up anonymously, even if that opinion was disagreeable or had disagreeable information, your friendly neighborhood government official would not be able to take you to court for whatever accusations you brought up. Television would not allow people to know of Guantánamo Bay, it would not allow people to know of the "diplomacy" that started civil wars for profit, it would not allow people to know about the acts of financial terrorism commited by the banking system. Yet the internet did, the internet is truly free and that is truly fearful.

I'd like to note here that even though a simple TV is cheap, I do not own a television and do not wish to own a television because it is completely unneccessary. Of course, my course of action and that of people with similar mindsets, does not serve the purpose of television.

But of course a good businessman needs a solution, you can't just have people going around saying how you dropped entire countries in poverty with a system you established and abused for massive profit. So this is what you do. You control that medium as well. How? You turn it into TV. Stop anonymity? Check. Now you either filter your information or go to court. Financial control? Check. If you go around looking at sopa one of the main things you will be finding is that small companies cannot function under it, you need to be well organized for it, and by well organized it's implied that you need a large fund to function http://www.dotblock.com/blog/?p=327
similarly to how television networks operate and are efficiently controlled today.
Censorship? Check. You would be surprised by how wide the scope of "copyright infringment" is in that bill.
And of course a good businessman needs to go through with his ideas, don't think it is a decision that is up to the congress or something you can convince your congressmen to do. And even if you do, the mechanisms of propaganda have already been in motion, and I imagine looking at your television in the US you will either learn nothing of it or be slowly convinced that SOPA is the right thing to do, so a mass resistance to SOPA is again not possible. If you were to see how this world works it should be something obvious. Still I would support this movement to give my "voice" as well, if not to affect the decision itself, to give my little support, along with everyone else, to those that are willing to truly fight against it.

I do believe in the people that will claim their rights, what I fear is whether it happens in my lifetime, and I know it does not affect most of you as you are too young, but react, to everything, and understand, and know what is gained by taking action is always greater than whatever may be lost by it. In the form of today's society the internet has gone from a supporter to our freedom of expression to perhaps the entirety of that freedom, and to truly be free in mind and, by my definition of a human, to be human, it is something we must hold free and protect.

Wow... Al, I think I gained like 20 IQ points from reading that. lol

Well, I cant really follow up on that. You pretty much covered all that I wanted to say and then some... Well, I hope you dont mind If I quote this tomorrow in a YouTube video.

Here is why I'm against SOPA... Forget the fact that the big industries' excuses for why this is needed or fabricated to meet their own agendas and ideas.
The media wants this for complete control over us. This makes me sick thinking that if this goes through, nothing media related will be legal. Every idea has it's origion in previous exposures. There is no such thing any more of an origional thought. Because we have been given so much media input, we can't come up with an idea that is 100% origional. Everything now is a splash of this and a dab of that. Aliens invading our world? That's 50+ shows and movies. Superheroes with powers like this or that? Pretty much every power has been made and assigned to a hero. Really the media has control over our lives. If someone takes ultimate control over all media, we lose free will (or whatever remnant remains).

Art and music that is not at least 50 years old can be removed because of similarities to other works.
Inventions and drama not at least 10 years old can be removed because of similarities to other works.

SOPA will prevent anyone from spawning a new business, band, creative work, etc out of fear of it being taken away and that person losing all that they have left.

SOPA will take away from us the remainder of our own "creative ideas" because we know a vast amount of stuff which can be attributed to the media introducing to us.

Down with SOPA!

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/63637/Whitehouse-Opposes-SOPA-Bill-Gets-Shelved

It got shelved.

Until next time they try to pass it I guess, be prepared

Shelved means that they are not focusing on the issue anymore, they have put the Bill away.

In other words there is too many people against it for them to go through with it and have it work, so they are putting it on Pause for a while until a later date (or hopefully never)

The Joker wrote:

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/63637/Whitehouse-Opposes-SOPA-Bill-Gets-Shelved

It got shelved.

HIP HIP!! HOORAAAAAY!!! Well guess we're shelving the protest until they feel like bringing it up again.

If I remember well the statement was for PIPA as well
but it is far from over, it will be tried again, perhaps with a different name, shortly

The thing is, anti-SOPA groups are going to have people monitoring all Congress bills now for anything that mentions piracy or copyright and then look into them to see what they are about, if anything at all suggests a similar SOPA bill the public outcry against it will start again, the U.S congress tried to throw it;s weight around with this bill and it failed, I doubt they will try it again for a while or this year at the least.

They may try to rush it through on 12/20/12 because people will be partying and not paying attention to that crap... jk people.

I'm glad it's no longer in the process to be passed, but shelved is only delaying it.

Thank God for small miracles though.