Victory! (for now)

http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/20/27214 ... amar-smith

Just got the email about this from Fight for the Future. Halle-freakin-lujah, let freedom ring.

They just proved they don't need SOPA by shutting down Megaupload, so wheres the freedom?

But it is good that the SOPA was withdrawn, although I don't know what it is (& I'm not in america), when so many companies protest against it, it can't be good.

They shut down Megaupload under existing copyright infringement laws. SOPA would've given them an INSANE amount of power over the Internet (at least in the US), so I believe my previous comment stands.

Yes!!! YES I SAY!!! W00T!!!!!

But until they're overturned completely, this sig and avatar will stay.

They were never in force? SOPA's dead and PIPA is "postponed".

I still agree that the current legislation is not acceptable anyway - we saw what they did to Megaupload with no help from SOPA. They still have too much power.

Well it's a victory, but the we haven't won the war (yet).

They finally realized that both bills are not the solution to the "piracy". Changing the model is the best solution but they don't realize it.

Fun fact. When bands have released albums on a "pay what you want" model (including the option to get it for free), they STILL make plenty of money. I believe that if that model were more widespread, piracy would take a nosedive because people would no longer see it as necessary. If you want it, download it, and if you like it you can make a donation in whatever amount!

But most companies don't see it that way. If they didn't make a sale, it was a loss... Or rather if they didn't make a profit, it was a loss...

I know. But the "pay what you want" model DOES generate profits. Just not as MANY profits as overpriced physical media or distribution through online stores. So they think it's not as good, even though the good PRESS it generates (leading to FUTURE sales) would more than likely lead to a greater long-run profit than their traditional distribution methods.

Well, as much of a relief as it is, I'm not at all surprised, considering that the public hated just about everything regarding the bill itself, especially given the fact that even the president himself was bitterly opposed to the whole thing.

Rather than supporting such legislation, I rather support much more constructive approachs to combating piracy.

this is great news both for me and BA

As I said, I didn't know what SOPA is, but now I am happy to hear its being postponed, or abandoned.

SOPA may be dead in the water for now but there is nothing stopping the US government from making adjustments to the bill and trying again sometime in the future.
As with Megaupload the US have thrown there weight behind taking down a site that was LEGAL with a few bad apples posting copyrighted material on there. Megaupload removed copyrighted material at the request of the copyright holder. If you don't believe me ask SI Games who tweeted yesterday that on numerous occasions when asked Megaupload removed files relating to FM12. A lot of people who had paid for membership to Megaupload has now lost money and some of them have lost the family photos, videos and other documents that they stored on the site as a backup. Are the US going to compensate all the legitimate users who have lost this important data or allow these users to have access to the data they thought they had lost. I know that anonymous are trying to bring Megaupload back online but this doesn't mean that the files will still be accessible for those that were on there legitimately.
It is time that the Movie and Music industry moved into the digital age.
iTunes was the start of bringing the music industry into the digital age but the big companies are still playing catch up and are complaining despite making record profits.
The movie industry needs to be dragged into the digital age and sites like Netflix could be the first step.
As for the gaming industry all 3 consoles can download games digitally but the prices are almost 50% higher (going by ps3 store) than on Amazon or in your local games store (Fifa12 is £55 on PS3 store yet i paid £37 on release day). PES 2012 even uses p2p technology to download the updates released by Konami. If game prices on the stores were to drop down to the same price as on Amazon or in my local games store I would use digital downloads especially as I can download again if my HDD becomes corrupted or I upgrade the drive. If they would allow you to make a backup disc aswell then it would be even more tempting to use the digital store.

I agree. Government closed MegaUpload just for its own profit.

what would happen though if the legitimate users start suing the US government. I am sure some of those legit users are american and some of them must be looking at that option. Seeing as though the US are trying to get people from NZ extradited to the US to face trail for a site based in Hong Kong. The US don't own the internet nor did they invent it so instead of trying to work with sites to cut piracy they shut them down. If we started to shut down American sites as the inventors of the Internet (Sir Tim Berners-Lee is British) then prehaps the US would stop thinking they are the most important people in the world and that everyone must obey what they say. The US government is being controlled by the big businesses in the Music and Movies industry and this needs to stop. The SOPA bill being withdrawn from the US house to be voted on is the first step of the government listening to who voted them into power and not the big companies throwing money their way as incentives to get what they want.

I agree with you too

I don't agree. From what I see, there was a mistake about it, with the mistake being that MegaUpload was mistaken as having permitted (if not even supported) copyright infringement, yet in reality, they were not guilty as such.

If it was my website, I would try to explain to the governmental officials what actually happened, rather than assume that the government just closed it due to saying that "it has copyright infringing material, therefore the owners support copyright infringement", which is a false syllogism, by the way.

As has been said before, even the authorities (even well meaning authorities) are not perfect, and sometimes people are blamed for the actions of others, but that does not mean that the authorities were indeed in the know, yet just decided to punish the others due to being friends with the criminals, or happening to house people of whom may be criminals, etc...

So, it's not as if they knew that MegaUpload was "against piracy", yet still punished them just because their website happened to contain pirated material (calling that criminal guilt in itself, regardless of the professed stance of the website owners), just that there was a mistake about it, which needs to be addressed by those of whom are involved.

Yeah I got a letter from fight from the futture as well! Wikipedia shut down for like a day, Anonymous done some DDoS attacks!
I guess this is the beginning of World Wide Web War! I guess the whole dommesday thing was real *For the internet anyway**

that good news to hear. butt don't get too excited folks the flight far from over!

SOPA can be withdrawn, but the Hollywood fools won't stop preventing us to break immaterial rights like they did with Edison's kinetograph.

It is good to hear that SOPA is dead and PIPA is withdrawn , but it is bad to hear that the war is still not over. I just wish the war would end as fast as possible and the internet would be back to normal

I think SOPA will be back on the table next month because of Obama's Veto.

What does Obama's veto have to do with anything here? It was withdrawn by its sponsor, not vetoed.

Huh, I had word that Obama vetoed it. I should probably double check that.