I watched about the first 45min of that and wanted to choke Charlize Theron's character. Walked away from it soon after that. I've been catching up on a bunch of old movies throughout the years that I've missed. I think I've caught up on all of Leonardo DiCaprio's stuff. I also had no idea that I didn't watch Mission Impossible 3 and finally watched it. Same thing with Hancock, Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and The Terminal. I'm thinking of watching a chinese propaganda film soon.. Beginning of the Great Revival.
I just think this whole Occupy the internet thing (as I call it) is just STUPID. I mean, what's the whole goal of SOPA? Just that, get ppl like Khaid away from their computers and do something productive. Much like Occupy it's just stupid. Occupy what do you have? stupid kids and unemployed ppl that pretend like their blue collar workers yet all their doing is messin shit up.
So you're in favor of censoring the internet? In favor of letting some greedy corporate asshats and powertripping government officials take one of the greatest things mankind has ever created and shit all over it? Maybe we should join the blackout. We talk about piracy and our hatred of the US government and their corporate overlords so much around here that PVC would eventually get blacklisted if SOPA went through. Assuming they could ever find us, considering our search engine optimization sucks and we're very hard to find on google.
As I said before I really don't care, my torrenting days are pretty much over. I wouldn't care if they did pull the plug on the internet now, it;s become like the evening news, nothing but complain complain complain. (Newegg reviews, Youtube comments, heck blogs in particular! all it shows me is 70% OR MORE of our time is simply spent COMPLAINING) As for occupy, the intent was good, but the execution was terrible. I don't know about where you live, but here in portland they had occupy 'movements' and all it ended up being was a ton of kids who missed school for a few days and a bunch of extremely run down city parks afterward. I'm sure there were other mishaps too, but in the end SHIT ALL GOT DONE (that's 'Queens English' for NOTHING)! And the city had to spend a large chunk of it's budget cleaning up after these assmonkeys who pretty much just used it as an excuse to put on a lalapalooza or something. Sorry but that is nothing but irresponsible. This internet thing is looking to be going the same dirrection.
Maybe you should go live in communist China, where there is no freedom of speech, and complaining on the internet means a nice ride in one of their mobile execution vans. Or better yet North Korea. Their values seem to be pretty much in line with yours. People have too much freedom and what they really need is an oppressive government to put them in their place. And this internet thing is just an annoying fad that will go away in time.
Well that's not really the goal of SOPA at all. The purpose of Occupy and this internet blackout is to get the word out. Let's look at it this way. If you never browsed PVC.. if cmdr never made the SOPA thread.. if you never read tech blogs... would you have ever heard of SOPA? This is the purpose. The media is not covering it at all. Nobody knows what's going on and then the bill gets passed and it's too late to do anything about it because of ignorance. If these sites go down (xda going down kind of baffles me though), clueless people will be like wtf?!?! and then find out why and then they will understand. wikipedia is the biggest player here. Imagine if twitter and facebook got involved. And you better care about SOPA or else we'd get to the point of a policed internet like China. SOPA is just a US only issue right now, but it effects the world too. FYI, Spain just passed their own SOPA like bill recently. It's all downhill for them now.
In order to stop this from going through, Joe Sixpacks need to be aware and angry about it so they call their congressmen and complain en masse. A handful of geeks on tech sites aren't going to accomplish anything by themselves. The blackout will accomplish exactly that. I guarantee you if facebook got involved there would be riots in the streets and government officials who support SOPA would get death threats. If google got involved, the world would pretty much shut down for a day.
Italy is just as bad as China. I know, breaking copyrights was my thing for the last decade and really, nothing's gonna stop me but taking away my toys. I'm willing to take that chance. My Italian friends (Mario Luigi and Bowser) have been doing that for years. HEY! I wanna keep my rights as well as the next American, I just pick and choose my battles and this one is not one worth fighting. Besides we can all hold out hope Obama would veto it right (yeah right)?? IMO the answer is not to hold a 'sit in' what they need to do is take away their support and let THAT do all the talking. All the rest of this mess will do little but anger the folks who would be affected by SOPA... just like Occupy 'sit ins', all it does is hurt the folks who are following the rules ie the good folks they protest to be protecting! Heck! it's akin to the Crusades! So stupid. How do you feel about this Khaid? is this helping you in any way? no.
Freedom of speech isn't worth fighting for? You do realize that SOPA extends far beyond piracy and would allow the government and corporations to shut down websites without any due process and for any reason they like? Typical fascist "if you're following the rules you have nothing to worry about" bullcrap. People who allowed the nazis to rise to power had similar ideas. Ever read this poem? The guy who wrote that ended up in a concentration camp. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came%E2%80%A6
You realize you can be arrested for thinking the wrong way now?? Free Speach has been nixxed for about a month now. I ceased to care when that whatsitcalled law passed. It's really not worth it IMO. It probly wont pass or it might, what anybody other than Obama does at this point and time does is all that matters. It's not like informing the lovely housewifes of the world would do any good, anybody who keeps up with tech or even political news will know by now. lol lot of good that did him than.... lol as if... even I don't complain to my congressman I'm sure some might, some won't even understand the issues or really care... some just won't! At this point it doesn't really matter what either of us think, we'll see what the 18th brings. but I'm betting it's just gonna result in some more sour eggs. I guess you got the hollocost on your side as an example, I got the crusades either of them could happen, neither is very pretty.
The US may be done for, but SOPA would affect the entire world, since they rely on our domain name servers. It would effectively kill the internet as we know it. Everyone should be pissed off. I'm surprised Brits aren't chiming in because it affects them just as much as us. No they really don't. Average Joes who get their news from the TV don't know about SOPA. It's not being covered. The companies who want SOPA passed are the same companies who own the news networks. He was rescued by the allies and survived to tell people about the dangers of political apathy.
I don't think sopa is really all that terrible. Sure some piracy sites may get shut down and sites that illegally stream tv shows would be gone too but I don't think it would be passed if it's as dangerous as some people seem to think it is. Yeah the government would have the right to shut down sites without due process but I can't see them simply going around the Internet blocking every site they see just because they feel like it as so many people fear will happen. They wouldnt be so stupid as to do something that wouldn't just piss the public off (more riots), it would also further cripple the economy and shit would hit the fan. I don't like sopa by any means but I just can't see the government going berserko-nuts and ending the internet. It's like that bill that passed recently in the us that allowed the government to arrest and detain anyone on us soil, and everyone instantly envisioned us troops storming houses of innocent civilians taking people down for no reason. Just because they CAN do something it doesn't mean they WILL do it. And in any case you could just take the advice of someone I spoke to on the web who said in the event of their fascist government trying to control them they would use their second ammendment right to "rise up against and stop the government. " I think he literally thinks the us citizens could topple the army. I guess my point is stop being so melodramatic guys!
I'm sure people said the same thing when Hitler passed the Reichstag Fire Decree and Enabling Act of 1933, which were very similar in a lot of ways to SOPA and NDAA. They also suspended free speech and habeas corpus. The US is turning fascist, and these laws are just the start. A government given too much power will always abuse it. We have the power to stop this, but only if we stand together and say that we're not going to put up with this crap. The world defeated fascism once. We don't need to see it come back.
On top of that, we're probably going to be moving the forum over to vbulletin very soon. I'm talking to ichiban about maybe using this SOPA blackout, when everyone expects stuff to be offline anyway, as an opportunity to do that.
Besides my senator (Senator Ron Wydan) is the one who proposed that mini SOPA bill that instead reports offenders to the FCCC or whatever and gets their advertising pulled. I doubt writing to this senetor would do any good, he seems to be the sanest of the bunch .
I went ahead with the GoDaddy renewal because they basically declined to transfer my domain 3x. I might try it again later this year, instead of waiting until the last minute. Did you drop some serious cash on vbulletin Dr. moneybags?