I know this thread is more for general discussions related specifically to Panda but has anyone given any thought as to how some of our projects could be affected if this bill passes, specifically those sort of projects involving P2P (peer to peer) communications protocols or any forms of user generated content Eg: 3D VR worldbuilders?
Lord Gengoro Kitsune
For the record, US Congress has dropped SOPA, so it is not likely to go into effect anytime soon.
PIPA is still alive, though.
PIPA is still alive but it has been “indefinitely suspended” while they go back and rewrite it. This could mean that it will be rewritten or they are going to bury it due to public outcry over it.
Either way, I am not concerned about PIPA because no one in congress probably will pass it if there is another huge outcry against it.
Back to the original post…Regarding PIPA you can only guess what would happen if that bill was passed. My understanding of PIPA is that all complaints would be put through a judicial system where penalties and decisions would be handed down there. That bill does not allow for IP holders to demand ISPs that certain domains be blocked. The only way for anything to happen would be if a judge decides that there is a problem, and since judges are not elected they should be immune from MPAA/hollywood/etc putting pressure on them. Regarding games: I feel that if you have to stop and ask yourself if what you are doing/using is illegal then its a good idea not to. Regarding P2P: you will always have problems with P2P if you are talking about file sharing.
those laws, passed or not wont solve anything.
downloading copyrighted material is illegal in many countries, doesnt stop anyone from downloading or hosting.
china is the world leader in “filtering” the internet. even with deep packet inspection and manual port probing, they still cant entirely shut down the activities they declared as illegal.
this is not a problem of the internet, it happened before, people copied cd’s, floppytisks, vhs tapes, even poems and songs were subject to such activities.
in short. if you want to stop that, you have to put every human on this planet into a small box with bars on the window , thus entirely preventing any form of communication. iirc there was a 5j prison sentence on sharing copyrighted material in case of sopa/pipa? so putting everyone behind bars might be their plan to begin with, but i dont know.
about games, be sure to create everything yourself, or be sure you only use material with appropriate licencing. you should do that regardless of sopa or pipa cause it just aint nice to use other people’s work without permission.
We need to be more worried about ACTA at the moment - this is a bill in similar style to SOPA that was created in private and will be enacted in many countries around the world. It has already been signed by the European Parliament.
On 1 July,2012 ALL U.S. ISP’s will block ALL “illegal” downloads. In collusion with RIAA and MPAA they will spy on ALL traffic and will have to resort to blocking ALL P2P ( peer to peer ) protocols to kill all torrent sites. This is a DEATH BLOW for FoxyWorlds and me as well. We will ALL be permanently “ballgagged” and there is NO future anymore for free 3D VR websites and user created gameworlds anywhere in this country. On that day I am cutting my net connection and telling Ass Turd & Toilet ( AT&T Uverse ) to go to Hades, bye Facebook, bye Yahoo and bye Google… kiss my $90 a month for broadband goodbye. I am also boycotting all music, movie and theater purchases!
That’s analogous to the police breaking into your house while you’re in the shower, searching everything while totally ignoring your existence and then saying “sorry, we have to make sure no crime is happening anywhere” before leaving.
My project FoxyWorlds originally began 3 years ago just before my late wife’s death as a cooperative thimg between me and one of my stepson’s exes, Jessy, as a P2P 3D VR chat for the “furry” community, she was running a 2d system and wanted something better. I ended up generalizing the concept into a full P2P “second life” killer. Unfortunately during the interim, she moved to Portland, was forced to shut down “FurryOasis” ( losing me my beta test crowd ), my wife passed away dealing my finances the second death blow ( since 9/11 ) and loss of my bank account ( her SSI yanked back everything after I’d already paid off most of her final bills resulting in a “charge off” ), Jess and her husband’s house burned resulting in a total loss of their computers ( now they’ve separated and I’ve lost both of them and a third friend of theirs who was going to help with serverside security issues ) and as for me the plastic molding jobs I’ve been getting thru a local Cleveland temp agency are becoming scarcer and scarcer ( therefore no money to put together the non-profit needed to run the thing without it being destroyed by my own financial mess )
Now they’re going to do deep packet spying and port and protocol blocking to kill the torrents so P2P becomes impossible, while not torrent based we have many similarities, if it walks like a duck quacks like a duck it gets shot down like a duck.The only reason I’ve kept at this was a promise to my late wife to continue, which meant I was a lone programmer and modeller on a HUGE project. Its long since stopped being fun, now on July 1 its about to stop even being possible.
A year ago my stepson dropped this HP laptop destroying the LCD, CD/DVD drive and damaging the fans, it “safety shutdown bluescreens” daily and I have NO funds for a replacement or repair.
Making FoxyWorlds totally server based like “second life” is would destroy any hope of having a free option for those like me who will never again be able to have credit or bank cards or who just do not have funds to pay. I’m currently wasting $90 a month on AT&T’s fastest U Verse speed for a connection that will soon only be good for paid streaming like Netflix and Hulu+ ( things I have no card to buy and no funds to pay the card for ).
Having no “Ivy League” degree and in fact no degree at all ( blame Reagan 30 years ago ) I cannot get any kind of job doing programming commercially, so I’m just quitting and yanking out the cord so to speak. To the folks at the Panda BBS who were nice and helpful “kudos” to the so called “professionals” who were snotty to me and nagged about my webpage color scheme “PHTTTTTT!” Ive replaced my SOPA protest landing page on Google Sites with a goodbye page:
sites.google.com/site/foxyworlds/
Everything in the world anymore is all money, greed, power, lawsuits etc especially the computer field, I’ve had my fill.
YIP! YIP! YIP!
goodbye ( w/ sincere affectionate lurps to the deserving )
Lord Raven Gengoro Foxfire-Ninetails
" the Dirty 'Ol Fox "
I am against SOPA!