Originally Posted by u-Bob

I was referring to the "if... kill the fucker" part as well as the "carpet bombing" and similar remarks in this thread.


Well, because some people cried wolf once and nothing happened, doesn't mean that there aren't any bad things out there.


My whole point (as well as that of the EFF, Google, Microsoft, Zynga, Twitter, Wikipedia,..., civil liberties groups, law professors etc) is that while it is called the "Stop online Piracy Act", it will harm a lot more people than just the pirates. It is overly broad and can easily be abused.

A small list of people and organizations who are worried:

source: EFF:

Open educational resources

Some sites with reason to be particularly concerned are international communities dedicated to ?open educational resources? (OERs), which are created to be shared, built upon, and used in education. Sites like the Japan Opencourseware Consortium or Universia, which offer resources from more than 1,000 universities and represents over 10 million students, could fall into this category. In the past decade, these resources have become increasingly popular across the world, aided by the dropping cost of digital distribution and the availability of technologies and platforms for hosting and sharing. SOPA could reverse those changes by placing prohibitive liability burdens on sites that offer these resources and the platforms that enable them.

http://www.librarycopyrightalliance....opa-8nov11.pdf

...The Library Copyright Alliance, a group whose members include the American Library Association and two other major library organizations, has also written a letter to the House of Representatives raising major issues with the bill.
...SOPA, could lead to criminal prosecutions of libraries, even for activities that are a fair use and conducted without the intention of commercial gain....

http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/indus...05633152.story

SOPA and PIPA are not the way to help musicians

Ryan Chisholm, a manager at Bill Silva Entertainment:

SOPA/Protect IP could make it harder for tomorrow's innovative services to be developed. Today, we are only beginning to realize the potential of sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, SoundCloud - along with numerous popular blogs and thousands of music sites - in driving discovery of and monetization around music. These platforms have become some of the greatest tools we in the business have ever had at our disposal. These sites provide fans the opportunity to participate more directly and meaningfully in the content provided by artists and rightwsholders. In their current form, SOPA/Protect IP give far too much leeway for legitimate expression to be silenced on the grounds of combating infringement. This affects far more than the entertainment industries.

http://www.wga.org/content/default.aspx?id=4774

The Writers Guild of America West recently made the rounds on Capitol Hill to talk about a number of issues. On the list? How SOPA will do more harm than good:

On the House side, Keyser and Barrios met with Reps. Henry Waxman, Howard Berman, and Janice Hahn. They thanked Waxman for his strong support of Guild issues and discussed concerns with the recently introduced Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Because Berman is a co-sponsor of SOPA, the pair discussed their concerns with the bill?s implications for competition and an open Internet. Although the WGAW strongly supports combating piracy, the competition, First Amendment, and due process concerns the bill creates must be addressed.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...ny-times.shtml
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