Comment 73160

By Pxtl (registered) - website | Posted January 18, 2012 at 13:45:18 in reply to Comment 73154

It's not just Google and other companies that spider existing content, the big risk from SOPA is any site that takes user submitted content. Google owns Youtube, Google Code, Google Plus, Blogger, and a plethora of other sites that users could be using to host or link to pirated content. Google polices all these sites in compliance with various existing laws on IP protection, but there's only so much they can do.

What SOPA does is let IP owners get a site de-listed from DNS with no warning or contact. That is, somebody complains about a video on Youtube that has a pirated song... but instead of complaining to Google who promptly takes the song down, they complain to the US government through SOPA and suddenly Youtube is ripped off the internet.

Now, nobody would actually do the above because Google has big legal teeth.

But what about a site that nobody cares about and has no money for lawyers? What about RaiseTheHammer? Would you still come here if Ryan had to take down the comment box for his own legal protection?

Because let me demonstrate something:

(may contain NSFW advertisements)

http://isohunt.com/torrent_details/14885...

The link above is a torrent of Steamboat Willie, a Disney animated short. By linking to that, I am now making RaiseTheHammer a party to piracy. If SOPA goes through, Disney is now within their rights to order a DNS to remove RaiseTheHammer and basically take this site down, without even contacting Ryan to simply edit or delete this post.

Obviously, a comment box or upload field or anything like that suddenly becomes a terrible liability for any site administrator. Even worse, you get things that aren't merely websites but actually user-driven applications... things like Cube 2, a multiplayer videogame that allows users to collaboratively create maps. One user has painstakingly modeled the Enterprise. Aardapel, the man who made the game, had nothing to do with this model. In Cube 2, I can log onto a server that's hosting the Enterprise for co-op edit and fetch it automatically. So in this case, we've gone beyond a simple website being illegal and into an entire game.

And likewise, Quadropolis (the map-hosting site I made with some online associates) itself is also vulnerable to SOPA.

Basically, SOPA forces developers to tell their users to sit down, shut up, and stop contributing because otherwise they might contribute something illegal.

So your own comment? Wouldn't exist.

That's not just an inconvenience, it would basically mean the end of discourse online. Only carefully authorized voices who won't abuse the input would ever be permitted to speak.

Comment edited by Pxtl on 2012-01-18 13:48:37

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