American Internet Censorship Bill

[redyoshi49q]

IIts worst; I getting tired of misinformation and panic of the anti-SOPA folks.  The  of the largest myths are that it will break the internet and it censorship.  The internet will be fine I fell it will not affect the DNS or physical of the net. The only sites that will be affected are those who are violation of copy right laws. Google and Ebay would come around and change   their TOS before being forced to close.   Second it is not censorship since it is the copyright owner not the Government to initialize the complaint. People  will still be free to produce political speech but there not right to unauthorized  use without  permission, furthermore some  like Time Warner and Viacom will be strict  others like  Hub(?) (Think My Little Pony   ) and Funimation will be more relaxed.  It will be the holder not government who decides  to pursue legal action against foreign   websites.

Below is a quote from Wikipedia:

According to critics of the bill such as the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the bill's wording is vague enough that a single complaint about even a major website could be enough to cause the site to be blocked, with the burden of proof then resting on the website to get itself un-blocked. The focus of much of the criticism is on a statement in the bill, that any website would be blocked that "is taking, or has taken deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability of the use of the U.S.-directed site to carry out acts that constitute a violation." Critics have read this to mean that a website that does not actively monitor its content for copyright violations, but instead waits for others to notify it of such violations, could be guilty under the law.[37][27]

Law professor Jason Mazzone wrote, "Damages are also not available to the site owner unless a claimant 'knowingly materially' misrepresented that the law covers the targeted site, a difficult legal test to meet. The owner of the site can issue a counter-notice to restore payment processing and advertising but services need not comply with the counter-notice".[38]

What you've said appears to make a number of assumptions, namely

• that SOPA accurately categorizes websites that primarily exist to violate copyright laws,
• that copyright holders will only use the provisions of SOPA against websites that are predominantly piracy based rather than predominantly based on legitimate services, and
• that copyright holders will not use the provisions of SOPA as a pretense to shut down a website for reasons other than copyright infringement (for example, to take down a parody covered under fair use).

The Wikipedia snipped I quoted indicates that the first assumption is being questioned, which makes the validity of the other assumptions relevant.  (A theoretical bill that had SOPA's power, but without a question could *only* be used to target piracy based websites, would not have nearly as strong as a censorship argument against it; whether the bill could be used to censor legitimate services would almost be a moot point to argue in that case.)  If the second assumption fails to hold, then the burden placed on legitimate websites to prevent piracy and copyright infringement is enormously increased.  Under the current laws, a site like Youtube can be take down content that copyright owners declare to be infringing, whereas under the provisions of SOPA, a site like Youtube would have to prescreen all content for anything that a copyright holder might find infringing to avoid the penalizing provisions of SOPA.

The issue of censorship comes from the fear that the third premise I listed above might not hold.  The fear is that the provisions of SOPA might be used, for example, to remove an entire blog website because it contains a blog with negative product reviews and corresponding pictures of said products (copyrighted material whose use is protected under fair use).  Keep in mind that services even as basic as image hosting, email, forums, and even IRC could potentially be subject to SOPA's provisions as well, as all of these services allow the distribution of content which could arguably be copyrighted.  The concern isn't so much that the government would be implementing censorship; rather, the concern is that copyright holders would become censoring by using the provisions of the the new law interpreted and utilized liberally to eliminate access to material that they do not want others to access.

In summary, a large reservation against SOPA is that its scope is very poorly defined to the point of being destructive.  This is in addition to (among others) the previously stated reservation that SOPA's anti-piracy provisions are relatively easily circumvented by various existing technologies; it won't succeed at doing what it's (supposedly) intended to do in the first place.

[Avan]

Edit: Any frustration expressed below through the choice of wording and/or font parameters is directed to the MAFIAA and the american political system. Just wanted to clarify that my intention is not to direct my frustration at members here, in case anyone misread anything.

The following is a relatively lengthy reply to Acton's post which goes "in-depth" (relative to the discussion here) into the workings of SOPA. If you would like a TL; WR (too long; won't read) summery of my 'analysis of sopa', here it is:

TL; WR:

SOPA is a complete joke. A very bad one at that. One that, if it were comedy, would probably result in rotten tomatoes and sharp eating utensils being thrown at the comedian delivering the joke in question.

It WON'T stop piracy.

It WILL cause collateral damage.

It CAN be EASILY abused.

It IS stupid.

IIts worst; I getting tired of misinformation and panic of the anti-SOPA folks.  The  of the largest myths are that it will break the internet and it censorship.  The internet will be fine I fell it will not affect the DNS or physical of the net. The only sites that will be affected are those who are violation of copy right laws. Google and Ebay would come around and change   their TOS before being forced to close.   Second it is not censorship since it is the copyright owner not the Government to initialize the complaint. People  will still be free to produce political speech but there not right to unauthorized  use without  permission, furthermore some  like Time Warner and Viacom will be strict  others like  Hub(?) (Think My Little Pony   ) and Funimation will be more relaxed.  It will be the holder not government who decides  to pursue legal action against foreign   websites.

Ok, I'm not really sure where to start with this, so I'll dissect it line by line. I'm not a lawyer or professor of law, but I've done web development and management professionally (in the music industry to boot, and have directly dealt with copyright violation on the internet with regards to my client's work), and have dealt with copyright law quite a bit in the past as one of the admin of the Transcendence (For clarification, that is http://transcendence-game.com ) community, as well as in a summer job.

"The  of the largest myths are that it will break the internet and it censorship."

Personally, I've never heard anyone say it would break the internet, and its not going to "Break the internet" in the sense of causing the internet to cease functioning as intended on its most base level (blacklisting is done DNS-side on the level of domains). And while yes, I agree that the sentiment of "SOPA == Internet apocalypse!!!!111!!11!one!1one!!1" is silly, I do so for a very different reason: SOPA won't work. - see last paragraph for explanation. That still however does not fix the facts that its:
1) Stupid. (It will fail to achieve its intended goal; any pirate worth his virtual salt and his dog (and social networking friends, and email contact list, and the cats of all those people) would know all the easy bypasses of SOPA by... about... oh, say, a couple months ago.)
2) Has the potential for serious fallout. (It can create wide-reaching effects which inconvenience legitimate users, while ironically doing little to hinder piracy)
3) Its method of operation is in fact a form of censorship.

"The internet will be fine I fell it will not affect the DNS or physical of the net."

Ok, I'm not entirely sure what this sentence is trying to say. I believe a more accurate translation would be "The internet will be fine; SOPA does not affect DNSs or the physical infrastructure".
Although it is correct that SOPA does not affect the physical infrastructure, it is also like saying "SOPA will not affect your car". Its irrelevant: SOPA does not have any direct dealings with internet infrastructure, the postal service, personal transportation, or the price of tea in china.
On the other hand, saying that SOPA does not affect the DNSs is completely false; SOPAs main method of operation is by DNS-side blacklists. What it does is - with a simplified explanation - basically require the DNSs to prevent a connection to a blacklisted domain from being established.

"The only sites that will be affected are those who are violation of copy right laws."

You do not understand how SOPA intends to function. SOPA "works" (I say "works" because from a technical standpoint, it doesn't actually do anything than provide a *very* slight inconvenience to copyright violators, and a hassle to everyone else - more on this later) very much like youtube copyright complaint filing (which I think works in a horribly stupid way). On youtube, someone can file a copyright complaint against a video, and (presumably by showing some basis for it) it will then get removed. However, this has led to a number of incidents (most infamously regarding the original Nyan Cat video) where someone who was not the copyright holder filed complaint against a video that the actual copyright holder had no qualms about, resulting in a removal (the copyright holder in question eventually did manage to get the video reinstated, but not until after they had already taken undue blame for the removal of the video). In fact, many sites hosting user-uploaded content use a similar method. To be quite frank, I was alarmed at how easy it would be to fraudulently require removal of material, as I have had to request content removal from multiple sites on multiple occasions, and found many of them did not even bother to validate my identity (I had left contact information, and only one ever responded asking for credentials). This is a "guilty until proven innocent" process, although not explicitly required, is generally "promoted" by the way the DMCA and associated Safe Harbor legislation works. However, this is something that pertains specifically to individual items of content uploaded by website users. SOPA functions at the level of entire domains: not at the level of individual units of content; not at the level of individual users; not at the level of subdomains. Meaning, it is entirely plausible for someone (even if they were a 'valid' copyright holder), to request a domain blacklist, and it would be blacklisted until shown that the primary intent of the content was not copyright violation (or presumably, remove the content, if user-uploaded). Fraudulent blacklisting would be relatively easy to perform; I would frankly not be surprised if some larger sites secretively blacklist themselves over highly dubious infractions (such as a search engine providing a link to a copyright-infringing website, which technically does fall under SOPA, the last time I checked) to make a point, even though I don't actually expect things to come to that. Even when the complaint is filed by a legitimate copyright holder, the system can still be easily abused, or even misfire in the case of 'mistaken identity' (such as when content being used under fair-use terms is misconstrued as a violation of copyright, or when something that is legitimately allowed may be taken action against because somebody didn't get the memo about it).

"Google and Ebay would come around and change   their TOS before being forced to close."

This doesn't make sense in the context of a SOPA discussion. They cannot change TOS agreements to get around SOPA, based on the way it functions, as explained previously. I'm honestly not even sure what you were trying to get at here. With regards to Google, they also have their own domain name servers, and thus would (theoretically - this is google afterall; they have gotten away with "Corporate civil disobedience" before) have to comply.

"Second it is not censorship since it is the copyright owner not the Government to initialize the complaint."

Clearly, you do not understand what censorship is. [Edit: To clarify, this is meant in a matter-of-fact way, not in a condescending sort of way]
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censoring (Censorship was defined as the "practice of censoring", so I didn't bother linking it)

"People  will still be free to produce political speech but there not right to unauthorized  use without  permission, furthermore some  like Time Warner and Viacom will be strict  others like  Hub(?) (Think My Little Pony   ) and Funimation will be more relaxed."

Again, this statement implies that you do not understand what censorship is. Furthermore, some companies have it as policy to over-react to any potential copyright violation (often in the name of "protecting the brand", which to some extent is 'legitimate' under the current legal system (For an example of what happens if one does not protect their brand, see Kleenex). That doesn't make it right by any extent, but merely 'less wrong', in my eyes).

"It will be the holder not government who decides  to pursue legal action against foreign   websites. "

Its not merely foreign websites, but domestic ones as well. Furthermore, SOPA affects only domestic DNSs. This brings me to the point of why it would only mildly inconvenience pirates, and would be a much greater irritation to legitimate users.

When a domain has been blacklisted, for whatever reason, under SOPA, the domain name servers will simply not provide the IP needed to connect between the client and the server. Which means that there are two relatively simple ways to ignore it: 1. using a foreign DNS, which will not be required to blacklist domains under SOPA (As they are outside US's/SOPA's jurisdiction), 2. using an IP to directly connect to the server, which will bypass the need for a DNS. Also, on the side of the website managers, they could rely on multiple domains, so if one were to be blacklisted, others would continue to function. If anyone attempted to block these methods, because they are umbrellas covering even more legitimate uses than the umbrella of domains, which themselves cover large enough swaths of legitimate uses for blacklisting to be seriously controversial, would essentially be political suicide (Death by internet backdraft: as wisely quoted (And foolishly ignored) by the company Ocean Marketing ( https://www.google.com/search?q=ocean+marketing  - see oceanmarketinginc.com for the quotation on their main page), "Your brand is no stronger than your reputation- and will increasingly depend on what comes up when you are googled." -Allan Jenkins).
For the majority of software pirates (both the civil disobedience kind who do it in protest against the MAFIAA, and those who simply wouldn't have bought it anyways), this is just another hurdle easily surmounted with a quick search (theoretically needed only once, to get the IP of a foreign DNS). In fact, the real pirates probably have their contingency plans all worked out by now, and couldn't care less what happens  (the ones who pirate it anyways).
For the majority of average users (who probably don't have an inkling of what a DNS is), finding the solutions to circumventing the issues that can arise (be it due to shady copyright complaint filing, to over-extensive or over-zealous complaints taking out entire user-driven sites over the infractions of single users, to legitimately needing the same services as the pirates for non-copyright infringing reasons (legal in the united states anyways, which is what SOPA concerns)) is going to a be very big challenge for them. Even if most pirates may not actually be all that "technologically literate" (or, well, quite frankly, literate at all (these are mainly the "wouldn't buy anyhow" group, which would appear to have an average age of 10 years)), a simple how-to guide (with pictures considerately included for the illiterate 8-year-olds!) on the innumerable places that cater to them will point them in the right direction, telling them exactly what to do. Meanwhile, the average user is unlikely to come across these, and blindly wander around until they can eventually get help from someone.




TL; DR:

If you are reading this, you have either read through the whole post and are reading this simply to see what I wrote, or you somehow managed to skim over the whole thing and miss the summary at the top in the bold-red-text TL; WR. >.>

[Kobuk]

If you guys intend to write lengthy posts, then out of common courtesy, Please put them, or at least the majority of your text, behind a spoiler tag. Thanks.
http://forums.furtopia.org/index.php?topic=39242.0

[Foxpup]

If you guys intend to write lengthy posts, then out of common courtesy, Please put them, or at least the majority of your text, behind a spoiler tag. Thanks.
http://forums.furtopia.org/index.php?topic=39242.0

Huge blocks of text in a spoiler tag? Is that a joke? How are you supposed to scroll down to read it all without accidentally moving the mouse away and losing it all? Not everyone has mouse with a scroll wheel, you know. Hell, not everyone even has a mouse! Out of common courtesy, I'd like to ask people to please use spoiler tags only for actual spoilers, and not huge blocks of text. Thank you.

[Kobuk]

If you guys intend to write lengthy posts, then out of common courtesy, Please put them, or at least the majority of your text, behind a spoiler tag. Thanks.
http://forums.furtopia.org/index.php?topic=39242.0

Huge blocks of text in a spoiler tag? Is that a joke? How are you supposed to scroll down to read it all without accidentally moving the mouse away and losing it all? Not everyone has mouse with a scroll wheel, you know. Hell, not everyone even has a mouse! Out of common courtesy, I'd like to ask people to please use spoiler tags only for actual spoilers, and not huge blocks of text. Thank you.

Watch your tone, Foxpup.  I was simply asking out of "common courtesy". If a person can't or doesn't want to, then that is up to them.

[Avan]

I think he mistook it as being a bit more official than you intended it to be. I sure did. but yeah, spoiler tags that use hovering are not touchpad friendly, so it would probably be prudent to not use them until a buttonbased one can be implemented I suppose

[Alsek]

     Redyoshi and Avan both hit the nail on the head,   though i think i should re-emphasize that the current model for a LOT Of websites no-longer work.

Websites like eBay,  Amazon,  YouTube,  and Facebook are all based on user submitted content which is far to vast to be individually screened.

Websites like Google and Yahoo use crawlers to bring in data and display it in a prioritized way on request in order to help people find content.  There is no way for them to individually scan every piece of information they collect and check to see if it's copyrighted.

[Chiscringle]

Which means that the crawlers will be given SOPA based instructions to flag and blacklist automatically.  People will have to appeal and it will slow down the process of content creation from seconds-hours to days-years.

[Avan]

That has no real feasability. Its one of those things in the world of programming that is so very much easier said then done. (Plus the SEO crawlers would not blacklist, but rather ignore)

Crawler based detection would be an even larger disaster than SOPA itself, because they are so prone to false-positives, and even more-so to false negatives. You'd get a better return for your money by burning it.

[Chiscringle]

That's what I meant.  The crawlers would have to ignore most of the internet because caution is better than being sued and so their sensitivity would be enormously high.

[Libis]

On the same topic, I found an interesting video talking about why all these companies (Disney etc) are pushing so hard for SOPA, and how they're actually liable for the pirating from downloading during the 90's that they've been crying about and suing people over and that they are using to push this law:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJIuYgIvKsc

[Kobuk]

And what about the people who have and use DVR's, etc.? For instance, a person has to go to work and will miss watching his favorite tv show. So he sets his DVR device to record it while he's gone. How would SOPA affect that, if any?

[Narei Mooncatt]

SOPA wouldn't apply to someone simply recording a show I don't think. It sounds like it's mostly addressing websites distributing copyrighted media. Besides, if DVR'S were an issue, it would fall under other regulations. It's no different than recording on a VCR or even a cassette from the radio.

[Mylo]

SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act, so I doubt it'll affect DVRs.

[Avan]

It will not affect DVR systems.

[Acton]

What missing here is ant reference to the act. Can any opponent me to the sections of the law which you feel detrimental. So far I see appeal to authority while the authority engages in the same non sequitur fallacies. Or worst a few Straw Man argument s thrown in for good measue.
The solution is simple if it’s not yours, ask before using or  do use copyright media. Do Not download  illegal pirated material.  How  in the Lords name we got to a belief  we are entitled to what other produced.  If they say no you can be a adult and live with it. 

I may have more but I tired of dealing with the younger generation. 

[Alsek]

    Acton,  please understand i mean no disrespect,  but the debate regarding SOPA is not,  "online piracy," vs. "The Law."   I would guess that most of the people here if not all are also against the theft of intellectual property;  What we are against is the mechanism that this bill uses in an attempt to solve that problem.  SOPA would not solve the theft problem.  It would drive it farther underground,  but it wouldn't stop,  or even put a dent in it.  It will however cause serious problems elsewhere,  and mass inconvenience for the law abiding user, small businesses,  and even net giants like Google.

What Avan and Redyoshi were doing was explaining why the bill does not take the current model for the majority of major websites into consideration,  and how it allows entire websites to be removed from the web without even a court hearing.  They also explained in great detail the mechanics of why they believe the bill not work and explained their experience in that field (having a lot of experience on a topic does not make your opinion invalid)...  

There has been a lot of explanation on the specifics but you never actually argued on or acknowledged those points.

[redyoshi49q]

(*see edit at bottom of post*)

What missing here is ant reference to the act. Can any opponent me to the sections of the law which you feel detrimental.

The Wikipedia snippet I quoted in my previous post contained a quote of one of the controversial segments of SOPA.  This text does actually appear in the bill (see this link, section 103.a.1.B.ii.I).

So far I see appeal to authority while the authority engages in the same non sequitur fallacies.

It's worth noting that appealing to authority itself is not necessarily a logical fallacy (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority).  It is a fallacy if the authority is illegitimate, and it is a fallacy if an authority's belief is used as absolute proof rather than an assertion to probable truth.

For example, it's not fallacious to believe Michael Jordan when he says that basketball tactic A is one of the most effective techniques available when used as part of a team's strategy; he is, after all, an authority when it comes to basketball, and is usually makes accurate statements on related topics.  It would be fallacious to believe the same statement from Warren Buffet's lips; he is an authority on investment, not basketball (to my awareness), and he would probably be no better at making an accurate statement about basketball than an average citizen would be.  Additionally, it would also be fallacious to believe Michal Jordan's statement beyond a shadow of a doubt; he may be frequently correct about statements involving basketball, but it's incorrect to believe to that he will *always* be correct when he makes statements about basketball.  It is, after all, possible that basketball tactic A is easily defeated by some other tactic B unknown to Michael Jordan, which in turn would make tactic A obsolete.

The authority I appealed to in my Wikipedia quote was EFF.  EFF is an organization that focuses largely on the preservation of personal liberties as they apply to current and emerging computer related technologies.  They are authority figures when it comes to computer technology as a consequence of their focus.  Due to the work they do in United States law (including that of legal defense), they are also authority figures when it comes to the law as it pertains to computer technology.  Asserting that EFF is possibly or even probably correct in their assertions regarding SOPA is not fallacious if their status as an authority is held as accurate.

Furthermore, EFF details in articles on their website that there are companies who *currently* use copyright enforcement laws outside of their intended scope (for example, to claim copyright on reviews, and sue for copyright violations against those who post negative reviews (the linked article was linked from a different EFF article as a source)).  It does follow that, all other things being equal, these companies would probably use a new copyright enforcement law outside of its intended scope if it was possible to do so.  Therefore, it's important to make sure that proposed copyright enforcement laws are specific in their scope so this type of abuse is less likely.

Or worst a few Straw Man argument s thrown in for good measue.

What arguments are straw man arguments?

The solution is simple if it’s not yours, ask before using or  do use copyright media. Do Not download  illegal pirated material.

The argument I gave in my previous post applies irrespective of one's beliefs on the ethics of piracy.  Assuming that the possibility of censorship was the only problem with the bill, questioning the appropriateness of the bill reduces to a values decision between free speech and copyright protection.  Having said that, even for those who are substantially in favor of protecting copyrights, there is another reason to be opposed to this bill.  As I and others have alluded to before, the bill does almost nothing to stop piracy, in spite of its title.  Let me explain through a metaphor.

Let's say that Congress was looking to write a bill to stop illegal drug trafficking.  They construct a bill that says that removes the entry for suspected drug dealers from US phone books.

What would US drug dealers and drug users do in response to this bill?  They'd stop using phone books to contact each other.  Drug dealers would contact their heaviest users in person or over the phone to give their users their own phone numbers.  Drug users would talk to each other over the phone or in person and tell each other the phone numbers for drug dealers that they personally knew.  After that, the drug users would call the drug dealers directly without consulting a phone book.  The change would be mildly inconvenient, but completely feasible.  The bill would not stop illegal drug trafficking.

DNS servers serve the same purpose for the Internet that phone books serve for the phone system.
Domain names serve the same purpose for the Internet that phone book entries serve for the phone system.
IP addresses serve the same purpose for the internet that phone numbers serve for the phone system.
Online pirates would circumvent the provisions of SOPA in the same way that the illegal drug users would circumvent the bill I described above.

The metaphor holds very well.  If SOPA were to be implemented, software and media pirates would simply resort to using IP addresses rather than domain names.

Try it yourself.  Go to http://www.google.com/.  After that, try going to http://74.125.227.80/.  If Google were to be blacklisted under SOPA, the first link would stop working (there would no longer be a DNS entry for the domain name "www.google.com"), but the second, functionally equivalent link would not (resolving an IP address does not involve the DNS, and SOPA implements its blacklist through DNS).  Circumventing SOPA's blacklisting would be trivial for the technologically savvy (for example, pirates).  The only people who stand to be hurt by such a bill would be individuals who lacked the knowledge to access blacklisted sites.  For the most part, this would include the general population and not pirates.  If for no other reason, this bill should be opposed because it is grossly ineffectual.

How  in the Lords name we got to a belief  we are entitled to what other produced.  If they say no you can be a adult and live with it. 

It might be possible that some in favor of the bill feel entitled, but I see the legal question of copyright enforcement as enforcing a balance between copyright holders' right to profit off of their own ideas without fear of unjustified harm or loss and the public's right to use both purchased and freely obtained copyrighted material in fair ways without fear of unjustified retribution.  It's in the best interest of copyright holders that laws protecting copyrights hold strong consequences for violators.  It's in the best interests of the public that laws protecting copyrights be precise, targeting only legitimate infringements and not uses of copyright material that are fair.

There are some uses of copyrighted material that even the owners of that material should not be able to definitively say no to.  Such uses include "commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship".  Allowing copyright laws to blindly penalize for fair uses of copyrighted material would be an unjust infringement of free speech rights.  Similarly, allowing any use of copyrighted material that was even remotely justifiable as some type of fair use would be an unjust infringement on copyrights.  Appropriate copyright laws should balance these interests for the sake of the greatest mutual benefit.

Without fair use provisions in copyright laws, the copyright holders of Hello Kitty could send you cease and desist orders (and sue you for noncompliance) for discussing Hello Kitty to any extent in your blog, whether positive, negative, or neutral.  With those provisions, you could claim in court that your commentary is fair use, and that you shouldn't need the copyright holder's permission to discuss, showcase, or criticize their product, even if it is copyrighted.


(*edit*)

It seems that SOPA is being amended to remove the DNS blocking aspects of it, assuming that the article I stumbled upon is accurate.  Having said that, it still has its other provisions, including advertising and payment service cutoff for suspected websites (and there seems to be no indication that the blacklist process has been amended to any notable degree).  This seems to obsolete some, but not all, of the argument against SOPA.

It'd be interesting if the response to this modified bill was a universal adoption of foreign advertising and foreign/distributed payment services (a Brittish/Australian version of Google or Project Wonderful and Bitcoin, for example).  You end up on SOPA's blacklist because some user posted a rickrolling link?  So what?  You no longer get US advertising and payment services, but you stopped using them a *long* time ago, and foreign companies don't have to stop serving you, because American laws don't apply to them!

(Or, at least, that's what I think would happen given SOPA's text; the US government could be trying to overstep that bound as well for all I know...)

Though the modified bill is not as bad in my eyes as it was, there could be some *serious* repercussions for domestic internet advertising and online payment companies if the above happens, particularly since it would be *much* easier for a website to transition to foreign support services than it would be to censor it's content to the degree that would be necessary to stay off of SOPA's blacklist.  Hopefully, the domestic companies of those industries will realize that this would make them extremely unhappy and start fighting this bill harder.  At the very least, though, it seems SOPA won't be breaking DNS services...

[Kobuk]

It's started!

Wikipedia has now started to black out all it's content as a means to protest SOPA. I tried browsing for some naval ship info. for model building research and got hit with a black screen saying the blackout would be in effect for 24-48 hours. 
Has anyone else seen any other websites begin to blackout in protest?

[Narei Mooncatt]

Google has a black box instead of their banner name, but can still search.

[Alsek]

It's just starting.  ^^

[Avan]

I didn't notice at first because google ssl search uses a different banner.

[aspect]

A lot of my favorite comics have gone blackout. qwantz.com, inhuman-comic.com.

Reddit is blackout too of course. I think they started the whole thing.

For me at least, Twitter has become a stream of nothing but #SOPA. Here is an interesting one: "MPAA calls the Internet going dark in protest of SOPA "An abuse of power". In related news, the Eye of Sauron accuses Hobbits of terrorism." -beach_fox

By the way, I think it's still possible to see a Wikipedia article if you need it? The whole article still shows while the page is loading. My computer, at least, is slow enough that I can select all the text and copy it before the blackout notice appears. I then paste that into a word document.

[Kobuk]

In related news, the Eye of Sauron accuses Hobbits of terrorism."

        

[Kobuk]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhwuXNv8fJM