Maybe we could try to make it so that newgrounds falls within the journalism department. Since they've been able to infringe upon everyone's rights simply for the fact that it is "Press". Obviously the government shouldn't ever have had power over social media ever, cause they've never understood what the population does.

At 12/20/11 11:54 AM, TomFulp wrote: This morning I received a DMCA notice for an unlicensed image someone posted on their user page. It's not a huge deal; I removed the image. It reminded me however that I've been meaning to make a post about SOPA, something you've probably heard about by now.

I guess its getting pretty serous business :(

~X~

Fuuuuuck old white men.

At 12/20/11 12:59 PM, byteslinger wrote: KEEP THE LAND OF THE FREE FREE!!!!!!!

I wasn't aware that Americans had ever really been free. All that "land of liberty, justice and opportunity" stuff sounds an awful lot like propaganda spread with the intention of stopping people realising just how much you're all being shafted.

I've already signed a couple of those petitions.
This is a really serious issue that doesn't just affect the United States but every other nation too.
And the NDAA is ridiculous! who is it protecting?! because it's certainly not the people...
Good post Tom.

*starts rooting for Anonymous*

Ive heard about this many times now. It's much worse than the german government internet censorship act (that could be stopped by community effort !) since theyre giving the power of censorship to every fucking shady company out there. Just another unneccassary law giving lawyermaggots much more overpaid work. If this comes through agencys and enclosed networks will form, "protected" by special private law-agencies fighting each other in a shady market of power and technical warfare ...

Maybe newgrounds has to move underground then, only reachable over TOR Network authentification or by invitation.
Yes Im fantasizing a dystopic vision of the net here, but if the high finance rulers (content industry, banks (would'nt hurt to censor some pesky critics and movements)) want to push this through they will be able to do it.
The people in the parliament just know the things the lobbyists and media tell them about the net.

Online petitions are fun and all but the bill hasn't passed yet which means you can still contact your representatives and let them know exactly how you feel!

Call both of your Senators and your Representative offices. You can fill out an email form as well if you don't mind your name and email being public record. The more people who call in opposition to SOPA (and NDAA while we're at it!) the less effect a deep pocketed lobbyist will have!

Check the public records to see who has taken campaign donations from SOPA supporting companies or PACs. Let your reps know that they shouldn't accept that money and should pledge to return it if they wish to get your vote. 2012 is an election year. They are more likely to listen to potential voters now more than ever, especially if they think accepting cash from shady individuals might jeopardize reelection and SOPA support is as shady as you can get!

To all you living in Europe, Australia, Asia, Canada etc. Don't think this doesn't affect you.

These bills don't just block the site in the US. They have to potential to destroy a site or completely remove it.

If you are reading this it means you are on NG. If these bills pass it is possible that THERE WILL BE NO MORE NEWGROUNDS. Tom and crew have fought and complied with many various cease and desist acts, (older users will remember when LEGO was being a giant dick of a company) but these new bills make fighting back impossible. They also make complying impossible.

Right now if a big corporation sees a problem image or video on a website, they need to contact the administrator, which Tom proved happens in his opening post. Normally the admin will remove the offending image and all is well. If the admin chooses not to the company will HAVE to take the matter to court if they care enough. These new bills skip the court, skip the admin contact AND GO STRAIGHT TO BLOCKING OR FORCEING THE DELETION OF THE ENTIRE SITE. This can be done ON THE FIRST OFFENSE.

So dont worry about other countries following the US. Worry more about the sites that you enjoy being largely US based and run, AND THOSE SITES NO LONGER EXISTING.

At 12/20/11 11:56 AM, Natick wrote: $50 says it doesn't pass.

The NDAA already fucking passed, the integrity of our free nation has already been compromised. Remember when they told us we were so lucky to live in a nation where we would have the ability to criticize our country? Well now we don't, because if they think we are a threat or believe we are capable of damaging the infrastructure (Which even a 12 year old with a box of matches is) then they can come to our house and take us away forever.

This new bill is even more fucking bunk. For a time we were trying to pretend corporations didn't already run the country, and that all the government would never favor tycoons over us; the people. Now it is pretty blatant that they aren't trying to hide it from us. Now the corporations have the right to choke out the innovators and creatives if they don't like what they are doing.

Is this all bad? mmmmm, maybe not. If newgrounds can avoid being shut down then some good might come out of it. Whose going to want to sign to a label who is obviously committing virtual shakedowns? Some. But it will give more of a push for independent music. DYI culture is making a comeback bitches!

Though that's probably me being gullible and believing America is not going to shut down newgrounds and lock up Tom for the rest of his life serving him dick every night.

At 12/20/11 12:58 PM, deathink wrote: I created a forum post in the "politics" section addressing this issue a month ago asking NEWGROUNDS to look in to this a little more, because I didn't know what to think, but the post vanished only a couple hours after I posted it... THERE IN THE SYSTEM ALREADY!!!!!! I didn't bring it up again because I figured I may have said something I shouldn't have in the post (and I think I did). :P

I'm assuming other people had made SOPA threads in the politics forum, so a mod considered yours a repeat and deleted it. I imagine that can feel off-putting though. :)

If it passes this could be the beginning of the end let your voices be heard denizens of newgrounds!

At 12/20/11 12:28 PM, DeadEndWorldStudios wrote: Dose useing Sprites fall under the piracy thing? I use sprites because my art abilities are lacking and unless your popular on NG no one wants to work with you on anything.

It really comes down to how individual companies want to handle how their IP is used on-line, but yes, under SOPA we could be shut down for having sprite movies.

I like to assume that most video game companies enjoy the publicity they get from stuff like sprite movies and machinima but it isn't always the game companies making the call. A lot of them pay third party services to police their IP and those services can get a bit cavalier about it.

For example, when the Murloq RPG came out on Newgrounds, Blizzard featured it on the front page of the World of Warcraft site. Since then, we received a takedown notice from the company that polices their IP. I told them that Blizzard was supportive of the game and had featured it on their site. I like to assume it will never go any further than that... But under SOPA, maybe that company wouldn't have even contacted us directly. Some of the companies that went directly to our bandwidth provider in the past were companies that police IP - usually mistaking content on NG for pirated copies of commercial software.

At 12/20/11 02:17 PM, Mfan wrote: most of you don't even realize what sopa is, just because a law is passed doesn't mean that the government will automatically turn totalitarian

freedom, democracy and capitalism, with these as our founding basis, we will live in stable environment

yet, you're all acting as if Hitler has just taken power

Its going step-by-step. They mihgt not utilize the powers theyve given themselves now. Maybe not next (election)year. But the time will come when they use their full power against the net and the people.

Hitler didnt take over the country in one night either. It took the nazis quite some years of elections, advertisment and law-bending to commit the crimes that haunt us till today.

Long live the Republic of Newgrounds.

At 12/20/11 02:17 PM, Mfan wrote: most of you don't even realize what sopa is, just because a law is passed doesn't mean that the government will automatically turn totalitarian

The government has nothing to do with SOPA, or its affects, once the bill has passed.

From what I understand, what will occur is that Big Corporation X, which corners the market in streaming videos online (for a nominal monthly fee) will start going to all of its competitor's sites and finding images/videos that it can claim violate copyright law - it doesn't matter whether the images/videos actually ARE in violation of copyright law, for their purposes.

Then Big Corporation X will contact the host for the competitor's website and threaten to bring down a SOPA shitstorm upon them because a website on their servers is allegedly violating copyright laws.

The host, in this situation, would have to decide whether it makes more financial sense to a) Keep the site up and collect the monthly server rental fee, while risking a huge potential hit from a SOPA lawsuit + legal fees to defend the lawsuit, or b) Take the site down and wash their hands of the situation.

Under current DMCA Law, most hosts have immunity for the copyright violations of the websites on its servers, and wouldn't feel compelled to take the site down just because Big Corporation X is threatening them.

However, under SOPA, I believe that immunity would beremoved - which means that hosts are liable. Thus, the host would be staring down the barrel of a SOPA copyright infringement suit that will cost over hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of dollars and would drag on for years while Big Corporation X dragged their feet and forced the host to pay ever-increasing legal fees AND potentially cost them even more money in damages. In that situation, 99/100 hosts would cave under the pressure of Big Corporation X and take down the site.

Notice how Big Corporation X could completely destroy any of its competitor's sites without ever proving that copyright infringement actually occurred.

I did all of those. We are America not Communist China. We should set an example to the world. We wont censor the Internet. We are a free people. The government should realize we are their HR department. If they don't do their jobs. FIRE THEM.

thing is, all of us foreign types (that includes me, i am not american) will be affected by this- how many of the websites do we go on day-to-day will be affected by SOPA? for example: I use on a regular basis the following websites:
-Newgrounds
-Kingdom of Loathing
-Cracked
-4chan
-Explosm
-XKCD
-TVTropes
-The Best Page in the Universe
-Youtube.
all of which will probably be affected by SOPA. this would change the internet for good, and not in a good way. This bill must not pass.

here's the worrying thing, most politicians know sweet fuck-all about the internet- they don't understand that this bill would destroy the internet.

so, basically if this law passes, newgrounds is going to go away forever, and on top of that, because Tom fostered animosity towards this bill, he's going to be put in jail forever... Tom, i know some mexicans in georgia that can take care of you. fake ids, passports, a good job and a new life with your new wife paloma working at the leather factory. beats spending the rest of your life in military prison.

Signed all three, Tom. NG strong.

"Of course I better not criticize the US government now that NDAA has passed, or I might get indefinitely detained without trial. THANKS, FUCKERS!"

I can't believe that law passed. As a kid I dreamt of going to the USA, I'm sorry but now you would have to pay me serious money if I was to ever consider living there.

What the actual fuck? Are they trying to shut down the whole internet? This is just as bad as, if not worse than, what China and North Korea have been doing.

Block your domain name, essentially shutting off your site to the US.

This probably wouldn't affect people using things like OpenNIC (as long as they don't also ban IP addresses). However it would be a total pain in the net.

Block your search engine listings.

Google doesn't do this for pages that advertise themselves via forum spam or that sell fake merchandising pretending to be an official page, so it would be pretty stupid and pointless (but far from unbelievable) that they started doing this now.

Block your advertisers and payment processors.

Well, this would really suck.

shutdown notices directly to our bandwidth provider

The only solution around this would be to buy a server on a foreign country.

If your website has even one piece of infringing material (such as an unlicensed picture on a user page), this material could be used as an excuse to:

Well, I bet YouTube and Google Images have zillions of these (unnoticed), and I doubt a company would directly sue them for this. Sadly, you're not YouTube, so...

Why promote the wares of a massive consolidated industry when you can support individuals working alongside you on NG?

A very nice point of view, why be subject to licenses when you can actually get cool stuff for free (legally), helping freelance people with little resources or fame to get in the industry? The problem is that I'm afraid big companies will find a way to claim those open-licensed products are illegal because blah blah fallacy blah, or make things hard for them.

Am I being too pessimistic?

Signing online petitions is one thing, but I would urge everyone in the United States to call their representative and either (a) support him/her in their decision not to support SOPA, or (b) express your disapproval about their support of SOPA.

Having your name on a sheet of paper is fine, but actually having the representative's offices contacted individually in opposition of SOPA is a much more powerful message. Note, however, that this is not an invitation to hound your representative with calls - you don't want to put an anti-internet taste in their mouth.

If you don't know your representative's contact information, you can plug your zip code into this website.

At 12/20/11 03:05 PM, Timmy wrote: Signing online petitions is one thing, but I would urge everyone in the United States to call their representative and either (a) support him/her in their decision not to support SOPA, or (b) express your disapproval about their support of SOPA.

Having your name on a sheet of paper is fine, but actually having the representative's offices contacted individually in opposition of SOPA is a much more powerful message. Note, however, that this is not an invitation to hound your representative with calls - you don't want to put an anti-internet taste in their mouth.

If you don't know your representative's contact information, you can plug your zip code into this website.

Thank you (and another person who said this). CALL YOUR REPS AND SAY SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

The only reason why companies have said "control" is because we let them by simply doing nothing. Sign the petition, call your reps right now, and let your complaints be heard.

At 12/20/11 03:02 PM, cousteau wrote:

Block your domain name, essentially shutting off your site to the US.

This probably wouldn't affect people using things like OpenNIC (as long as they don't also ban IP addresses). However it would be a total pain in the net.

First off I like how you are thinking. We could all use proxys to get around it. But alot of users on newgrounds aren't hardcore members. Why go to newgrounds to play flash games in school when you can go to any other website and not need to use a proxy.

Sure you could get around it, but would there be a newgrounds left? Would Tom be able to keep all his employees hired?

Probably not.

At 12/20/11 02:00 PM, Malachy wrote: Online petitions are fun and all but the bill hasn't passed yet which means you can still contact your representatives and let them know exactly how you feel!

Call both of your Senators and your Representative offices. You can fill out an email form as well if you don't mind your name and email being public record. The more people who call in opposition to SOPA (and NDAA while we're at it!) the less effect a deep pocketed lobbyist will have!

I've both signed the petition and e-mailed my representatives.

I wish I knew more about this previously, I'll admit the first I heard of it was just a few weeks ago.

Last month I met our governor face to face and I sure woulda attempted to bring it up with him. Worst that could've happened is he just wouldn't have had time to talk about it.

Check the public records to see who has taken campaign donations from SOPA supporting companies or PACs. Let your reps know that they shouldn't accept that money and should pledge to return it if they wish to get your vote. 2012 is an election year. They are more likely to listen to potential voters now more than ever, especially if they think accepting cash from shady individuals might jeopardize reelection and SOPA support is as shady as you can get!

I'm having trouble finding it on my local politicians' platforms. I'm also hoping now it has everyone's attention, we'll see it debated more.

Any politician who deems it as "unimportant" is obviously not versed in current events and oblivious to our technology driven society.

this might a bit saddest if I put this out but if SOPA (or PIPA) pass, america has pretty much screwed not only the internet but every internet and technology company out there. this results in a spiraling ecomonic crash to america because the innovation and creative leaves america and goes to other countries with a more stable legal system.

what does this tell you? it tells you america loses being the centre of the majority of industries because of the legal enviroment.

this again allows the world to stop following america as an example in law making because the public says otherwise. mass hacking and protest anyone?

on a side note SOPA (and PIPA) protect internet porn.

well that's my rant over.

Death to governmental censorship

At 12/20/11 02:07 PM, ornery wrote: If you are reading this it means you are on NG. If these bills pass it is possible that THERE WILL BE NO MORE NEWGROUNDS.

This is why as a non-American citizen I am strongly against SOPA. While I understand combating piracy, this is doing it all wrong and goes way too far with taking control of things. I only expected this to go down the drain just like ACTA but the talks made it a much bigger threat.

It's called SOPA, eh? That's "soup" in Portuguese. And it looks like that soup exceeds in its levels of sodium chloride.