Reddit's Erik Martin on SOPA: "The End Of Reddit"

burn SOPA burn!

Well, if there is enough lobbying and enough money, anything flies.

wth this is not democratic!! the population should be taking those decisions!!

This is America. They're only "democratic" on TV. Everything else is governed by money. People want one thing, corporations want another? Screw the people.

Considering some of the other retarded things that have been passed recently, I have a bad feeling this is still going to make it through when they get back around to it. I hope to whatever deity is out there that Im wrong.

For a country that preaches personal freedoms, and espouses the belief that there is justice and liberty for all; they sure do have a lot of rules regarding what you can and can not do.

america is turning into a beautiful utopia... for giant corporations.

If it passes in any form close to the current one, it will kill the internet in general. Companies will start accusing each other of things that gets their sites shut down just to keep a competitor out of the market for a time. Apple will probably accuse Google of infringement just to keep Android repressed and shut down one of the biggest search engines. It will be a total furball of accusations all over the place.

On top of that, the court system, already overloaded with frivolous lawsuits, will see a massive influx of corporations and small businesses trying to defend themselves against false accusations, only to have hearings delayed time and again, stretching out the penalties of simply being accused. A site could be offline for a year or more, killing the business, just because of a false accusation.

Small businesses all over will be totally shut out of the internet. People will be put out of business entirely, with no unemployment to collect because they were self employed. Millions who make their way under their own terms right now will have to go to work for large corporations in order to make a living. (Sure, small businesses make up 80% of businesses in the US, but they only employ about 20% of the people and make up less than 10% of the GDP.) Everyone will have to work for existing corporations, severely stifling innovation and progress. We'll be totally stuck in a noble/serf economy again.

If this doesn't cause a second American Revolution, I don't know what would.

Why don't sites like Reddit then move to Europe?

If this thing passes, I'll be ready for the second American revolution.

The funny thing about this bill is that it won't even put a dent in piracy. People who want to pirate will do so; it's impossible to stop. There will be systems put in place to circumvent any filter the government puts in place. This bill will only serve to hurt liginemt businesses, and empower the government and corporations to restrict information.

Amerika is a failed state. The future is in the Free World (3d World). Flee now, the lifeboats are filling up fast. And yeah I'm already gone.

Of course, the people (outside of the tech-heads on sites like these) are totally unaware of SOPA, Protect-IP and whatever the third one was (basically Protect-IP-lite). The cable news outlets haven't mentioned a thing about it and I doubt they will because it'll cut into their coverage of the Kardashians and holiday shopping trends (of course, their parent companies are some of the lobbyists that are pushing for SOPA).

This whole thing angers me to no end. The idiot senators and representatives are buying the argument from RIAA and MPAA that piracy is destroying their dinosaur business model, which is what they say every time a new tech comes out. They complained the home VHS recorder was going to destroy the film industry, they complained recording radio using a cassette recorder was going to destroy the music industry, they complained the mp3 was going to destroy the music industry, and so on and so on. Not a single one of those things ever did anything other than just change how the industry functioned and, in most cases, made far more lucrative markets than the old model.

I think Gabe explained it best when he stated piracy was a service related problem and not a cost one. Most of the people I know that used to be 'active' pirates have long since abandoned their illegal downloading now that services such as Netflix, Steam, Amazon, iTunes, etc. have made it that there's very little reason to pirate anymore (other than unavailability or just being total cheapskates). There's little reason to set up an overnight (or few night) download (and hope the seeds don't drop out) of a movie when you can just instant stream it from Netflix/Amazon for a buck or two, (similarly why bother stealing music when you can likely get it from iTunes for 0.99 or just listen to Pandora/last.fm). Pirating software and fiddling with cracks/hacks/potential viruses/clicking 3 banners to get a password for the tar.gz/etc just seems like an unnecessary headache when you can get it off Steam, D2D, or whatever very easily (and for ridiculous discounts if you're willing to wait for a sale).

Legislators should stop sticking their nose in places where they don't belong. There are over 2 billion internet users and a lot of websites, so I don't think any law can make a significant difference, unless they'll find a clever way to enforce it. Otherwise just a few websites will be singled out and shut down.
Taking down a website for a simple complaint is absolutely extreme, it's like putting a man in a coma while the cops gather evidence and prepare for trial.
In the name of progress, patent-related laws should be loosened, not tightened. What kind of world do we live in, where a company can stop another company from selling its products in a specific state, while in the rest of the world it's sold without any problems (ex: Apple vs. Galaxy Tab - Germany)? This is madness and absolutely unfair to the consumer, who cannot buy the product.

Welcome to Corruptocracy (Ruled by Corporate Greedy Owners), this is not Freedom anymore this is SLAVERY (because the lack of freedom is THAT¡) and if you fight for money and not for freedom you are Mercenary Not a Soldier ¡¡¡... This shit has gone wrong long time ago with the possibility of Lobbys (money that corrupt our Leaders instead of compensate us for not having the Power to defend ourselves against Corporations). DO NOT VOTE FOR REPUBLICANS BECAUSE THEY ARE GOING TO STEAL YOUR RIGHTS... any company supporting any party should be exposed to know who are really supporting and will punish them by not buying their products.

The Greed and Hipocracy of Corporatecracy / Corruptocracy will destroy your dreams of a free world, we need NEW RIGHTS¡¡¡ NEW RIGHTS¡¡¡ and if this OBSOLETE SYSTEM CAN NOT GIVE US WHAT WE NEED THEN IT´S TIME CHANGE IT¡¡¡

Fck Corruptocracy and their Greed Assholes...

well, at least some good news if SOPA passes I guess...

It would be a Democratic President signing SOPA into law, and a Democratically controlled Senate passing it. I don't see how you get to typing in all caps do not vote for Republicans when it's only through the will of the Democratic party that any such law could pass. There is 0 possibility that the Republican party could pass SOPA without Obama backing it, or a 2/3 vote in the legislature, which would require a lot of Democrats.

So I know if SOPA passes, the only possible presidential candidate who'd fight to repeal it is Ron Paul. A Republican.

if this bill passes america will fail as a country, if technology cant be freely expressed/used without consequences then there cant be developments, but i can just see now how Europe might just take this opportunity and totally dominate the america in the technology field, cuz lets face it how many nerds will america have in the future? fewer. Europe might get allot more nerds due to people moving cause they need internet for work or something etc....

IF this bill passes i hope europe steps up

SOPA, another attempt to defend a business model that is no longer viable.

My solution: Let´s move the web to Russia! Or Brazil, I don´t know. Well in Brazil, Internet is free and uncensored at all.

In StarTrek, we imagined humanity driven by curiosity, while most of the other human characteristics were put on alien species. How is it going, seems like we got the prediction wrong, as humans appear more like feringi.

But here is the catch, the 99% is not like that, and if the 1% pushes like they are doing, then indeed a revolution is at hand as coexistence would be very unpleasant.
And after the revolution, new laws will be put in place, laws that will be designed to prevent any future attempt to things like the SOPA.

Practically, if this passes will be a giant step towards the whole system failing big time.

Please guys, don't just fuss about this; write your congress. Please

Obama knows he is not going to get elected to a second term, this is the beginning of all the crazy big governemnt policies he wants to get out the door before he leaves.

Actually, in America we don't have a direct democracy, we have a representative democracy. In a direct democracy, everyone would vote on everything. In a representative democracy, we "freely" select representatives who then make the decisions. We just seem to have gotten hold of the wrong lot of representatives. (paraphrase of a line from the play Good Evening)

So move? There are lots and lots and lots of places that would be happy to have US internet giants relocate to their backyard. Wanna come to Trinidad & Tobago? We'd love to have you.

It always amuses me when people blame republicans for copyright garbage. IIRC, Sonny Bono was a DEMOCRAT and look what he did for us.

Republicans lean toward personal freedom and personal accountability. SOPA is more akin to nanny state legislation.

I've written an article that talks about "Piracy" and why it is really the last stand of reason! It pretty much agrees with Gabe's statement that piracy is rather a service-related issue than a cost-related one. Here is the article:

http://loudenvier.blogspot.com/201 [...] eason.html

I'm not in favor of piracy, I'm stating just the obvious: it does exist because the concept of copyright have been twisted by the powers that be.

Wrong again. The USA is a Republic (remember the "to the Republic for which it stands..." phrase?). This means we have an electoral college and all that happy horse crap to vote for "representatives" (there's a house named after them btw), which in turn are supposed to pass laws and the like in the people's best interest. If not, they get replaced (hopefully) next election. But things don't always work out as well as they look on paper....

You are mistaken on multiple levels. This is a bi-partisan bill and the guy heading the committee and co-authored the bill is a Texas Republican who won't even allow 'internet experts' to testify outside of the one Google lawyer invited to the hearings. The only people Lamar invited were MPAA/RIAA lobbyists who all were convincing the congressmen that this law is the best thing since sliced bread and the only Google representative was basically lambasted during her testimony as being on the 'side of the pirates'. All you need to do is find and watch this sham of a hearing in the archives and you'll see how disgusting and corrupt our process has become, regardless of a -D or -R behind the name. Both parties have been bought and paid for and have been convinced if they don't pass this 'merica is gonna lose jobs to the evil pirates. The issue isn't the Dems or Repubs, it's both and it's naive to simply wave your hands in the air and blame all the problems on Obama (not that I'm absolving him of any fault in this, I honestly wish he'd grow a pair and start vetoing crap like this). Similarly, all the Dems out there blaming this on the Repubs equally naive. This is a bi-partisan bill and both sides are working to convince the public that it's the other side's fault that bad legislation like this gets through, and they are quite successful at pitting us against each other.

I think on Day One that SOPA is in effect (assuming is passes) people need to accuse the following websites of copyright infringement. Remember, it doesn't have to be proven, just an accusation.

Everything listed here... http://www.usa.gov/directory/federal/index.shtml

I bet when ISP's shut down every gov't website, in accordance with the law, the legislators responsible for this tripe will think twice.

I always wonder, how can the United States be so persistent in trying to pass these ridiculous provisions?