The Energon Pub

I apologize for getting political and starting possible flame wars, but the word needs to be spread about this.

If you're not sure what it is, watch this. TotalBiscuit explains the whole thing and why it is bad.

The short version: This piece of legislation can and will destroy the internet as we know it if it passes. IT NEEDS TO BE STOPPED.

We've gone through this already. The result: Thread Locked.

Ah.

Lock this then. I don't want to be the source of a flame war.

The main reason the last one devolved into flames was because of misused phrases and etc, not really about the topic itself.

As for this, I'm still in serious doubt this will actually stick. I doubt Obama would not veto it, and I doubt no one would try to go to the supreme court and try to shut this down.

It'd dying. It's major sponsors are either backing out or trying to amend it to be less, you know, unconstitutional. The vote is scheduled to take place on Wednesday. Get your lucky rabbits' feet ready, kids.

I wish I had one, but like 5 minutes ago I went to opencongress. org to send a letter to my reps...and it stated that 98% of people who had viewed it on there had disapproved of the act Daaaamn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJIuYgIv ... e=youtu.be

Be a HERO and Help STOP SOPA Now!! I'll tell you How! This Video that Must Be SHARED!

This law could completely ruin society. Not only will it destroy the internet, it will make computers practically useless. I'm running a Mac, so that would be a waste of $1,300. Obama is supposed to be helping the economy, not destroying it.

prowl123 wrote:Obama is supposed to be helping the economy, not destroying it.

That has literally nothing to do with this issue at all. This is an issue in Congress, not the White House.

Obama has to sign the bill for it to be passed, does he not? Forget it.

prowl123 wrote:Obama has to sign the bill for it to be passed, does he not?

Yes, but only after the bill is passed in both the House and Senate. The President has nothing to do with it at this point.

Shadowman wrote:

prowl123 wrote:Obama has to sign the bill for it to be passed, does he not?

Yes, but only after the bill is passed in both the House and Senate. The President has nothing to do with it at this point.

Well then, the Senate and House of Reps had better not pass this.

Let me try and put this in simpler terms, as we really do need to discuss this.

If SOPA (or PIPA) get through, it will give the American authorities the ability to permanently remove a website from the Internet over an allegation of copyright infringement that doesn't even need to be from the copyright holder.
The owner of the site is then held responsible and faces fines and a jail term.

Now look at the images just on this page, in your sigs, over in HMW and on the comics pages. All of them are actionable images that could potentially get this site shut down. How many of you use photobucket? Wikipedia? Facebook? Twitter? Yahoo? These will all have to go too, which is why they have joined other big sites on the net like Reddit to publicly stand against this bill.

Bickering over cemantics isn't going to help, this bill needs everyones help to get it stopped. Sitting back and saying 'well, this might not happen' is taking a pretty major risk considering what you stand to lose here.
Think about it guys, I assume you don't want to lose this place?

If this bill passes, both youtube and seibertron, along with facebook and COUNTLESS other sites will suffer for it. But what can I do? How can I help?

First up, arm yourself. Read up on both SOPA and PIPA on wikipedia and know what it means if it passes. Contact your representatives in all levels of government, tell them that you oppose this bill and if they support it ask them why, ask them if they understand what they are doing to a global resource and if they understand the damage that this act is capable of. Ensure they know that whilst we stand against piracy, draconian censorship measures like this aren't what's required and holding the websites owners responsible for something that is impossible for them to control has the potential to destroy the internet as we know it.

Then ask everyone you know on the internet to do the same.

And whilst I don't really like to refer people to another website, check out reddit.com/r/SOPA as that's where most of the opposition to this appears to be rallying.