Stop Censorship

[Sothh]

Why is there a big “Stop Censorship” banner across the Panda3D banner?

[DangerOnTheRanger]

Because of SOPA, most likely - I actually like the banner; it creates awareness of SOPA across the Panda community.

[coppertop]

Actually, all you need to do to find out is click the banner…

On a humorous side note, I always laugh when I see the name of the Senate bill – PIPA. This is actually a genuine word in Polish. It means “pussy” (not as in “cat”) and can also describe a dumb person. Kinda fits, if you ask me. I would also like them to call the next one (and I can bet there will be a next one) DUPA (as in Disable Uncooperative Providers/Portals Act), because that means “ass”.

[jhouck]

reuters.com/article/2012/01/ … Q320120116

SOPA is header either for a major makeover or the dust bin …

[rdb]

Because of the potential effect of the legislation on the proper functioning of our community, we’ll be joining Wikipedia, Reddit, BoingBoing, Mozilla and many other sites in the Jan 18 blackout. From Jan 18th at 05:00 UTC to Jan 19th at 05:00 UTC, the main Panda3D resources including the homepage, forums, documentation and blog will be inaccessible. The runtime hosts and Debian/Ubuntu repositories will remain running, and downloads will remain accessible by means of direct links only.

[jhouck]

Shutting down this site, for even a day is utterly pointless …

From the Reuters article:

"With public sentiment on the bill shifting in recent weeks and an implicit veto threat now emerging from the White House, Congressional staffers are resigning themselves to writing replacement language or possibly entirely new bills.

The White House said in a blog post over the weekend that it wouldn’t support “legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cyber security risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”

Three key section of the existing legislation seem likely to remain, a person familiar with the matter says. They comprise provisions aimed at getting search engines to disable links to foreign infringing sites; provisions that cut off advertising services to those sites; and provisions that cut off payment processing.

But critical provisions that would require Internet service providers such as Verizon Communications and Comcast Corp. to cut off infringing sites through a technology known as DNS blocking are now likely to be eliminated."

SOPA is dead in the water. How is shutting down this site construed as constructive in this issue?

It appears to me that this site, along with the others you mention, are simply guilty of the same things you’re protesting against, ie; arbitrary shutdown and denial of access to information. “The proper functioning of our community” to use your own words.

Seems rather hypocritical …

[bluskies]

Shutting down for a day illustrates the potential effect the bill would have had, and I agree with the action. Also, the fact that this bill seems to be dead doesn’t mean other bills like it won’t make it. The longer the banner is up, the more people become aware of the issues.

[jhouck]

The longer the banner is up, the more people become aware of the issues.

Well, that’s the point. SOPA wasn’t about “censorship”, it was about trying to protect against piracy and IP infringement and theft. But, instead, it’s being construed as an attack on “freedom of speech” and “unilateral censorship”, which is a load of crap. Additionally, “most” people won’t take the time, or expend the brain power to actually read the language. So, in effect, all the you get is an “angry mob” who don’t really know what they’re angry about, “Rebels without a Cause” …

I’ve read the proposed legislation, it’s rather short at only 33 pages. Here’s a link: judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf … 203261.pdf

In the very first part of the proposed bill it states: “Nothing in this act shall be construed to impose a prior restraint on free speech or press protected by the 1st amendment under the Constitution.”

Pretty plainly stated IMO.

I would also suggest reading Section 102 most carefully as it lays out the procedure under which “a foreign infringing site” may be prosecuted. It’s not “wham, bam!” and they are shut down. It requires the Attorney General and the court system to be involved.

I invite, or challenge, anyone to read the proposed law (moot as it’s pretty dead in the water anyway) … and think for yourselves instead of being reactive “banner clickers” …

Cheers.

[coppertop]

Well, that’s the point. SOPA wasn’t about “censorship”, it was about trying to protect against piracy and IP infringement and theft.

I don’t believe in imaginary property and piracy is by no means theft. Enough said.

Besides, this bill will not, in any way, help in stopping piracy. Piracy is something that cannot be stopped. In case of games, the only thing that can possibly stop it is shifting all gaming to the cloud, but in case of music and movies it simply won’t work, for obvious reasons.

In the words of Warren Spector:

Anyone who minds about piracy is full of shit.

And in the words of Gabe Newell:

We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem (…) If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.

And there are tons of similar comments from guys who should, theoretically, be rather concerned about piracy and protecting their imaginary… I mean, intellectual property.

If there’s anything this legislation can do about piracy, it’s making it much, much, much worse. Just like DRM, but worse.

[rdb]

EFF has a good article that should clear up some of the confusion:
eff.org/deeplinks/2012/01/h … ree-speech

[lord_gengoro_kitsune]

To stop the pirates they will have to stop all the torrent sites to do this will require the eventual illegalization of P2P peer to peer protocols, this will effectively shut down many game and chat projects and any existing products that use them (Roomancer… a popular 3d chat in Europe for one) it would destroy projects like MV3D which is already somewhat running and my own FoxyWorlds which I’m still coding.

They wouldn’t even have to formally illegalize P2P and make it a felony which would require another bill AFTER SOPA and PIPA all the ISP companies would have to do is change their existing TOS service agreements to outlaw the use of P2P claiming that they needed to do this in order to comply with SOPA, many ISP’s already forbid residential users from running small servers by “ballgagging” them behind dynamic IP numbers and blocking up their incoming ports like PORT 80 HTTP.

They just want to force us to pay exorbitant fees for using big servers in the “cloud” that they can easily scan for content they wish to censor. Those of us like me without a credit card will just be S O L.

Lord Gengoro Kitsune