ThePumpkins.net

There are two bills coming before the American Congress around January 24th/January 25th that right now are receiving bipartisan support that could effect rather serious changes to sites such as this site, youtube, and several others. One bill is called SOPA, another called PIPA. They both make an effort at holding the owners liable for anything that appears on their website, under penalty of prosecution, whether the owners knew about it or not. It also could allow the government to block certain sites from being viewed if they're under review for copyright infringement.

There are a lot of youtube videos about this bill, but one of the more thorough ones is:

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The wikipedia site on PIPA is: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_IP_Act

The wikipedia site on SOPA is: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

And I discovered this through an odd series of random events on a blog that is part of a hardware store's site that happens to give a pretty good explanation of the bills, for which the link is here: www.tomshardware.com/news/toms-hardware-...IP-Senate,14393.html

I'm posting this not to scare anyone or to argue politics but to make all of us aware of what changes are going on in the way we interact with online music, because it's so crucial to what we do these days as fans and listeners.

Creepy shit!

Well it's for real.... a lot of people think it won't pass... but intellectual property can't remain free forever.

i've seen quite a bit about that on Reddit. they've been campaigning against that pretty hard. i suppose though it probably will be only a matter of time before they try to charge you for every little tune or mention of one. the music industry has changed with the digital age. people aren't buying CDs or even paying for anything and artists can release stuff themselves online. big record companies need to find new ways to soak people for money. what i'm sick is how they keep going around and killing the audio on half of youtube.

Well the White House released today that they will not be supporting SOPA or PIPA. So there's that.

But there is a giant boycott of the internet going on on January 18th where sites will be shutting down in protest. Don't know if that is still going to happen since the White House is now against it.

This policy as I understand is under the same censorship that countries in Asia and the Middle East have for their internet. So if it were to pass, thepumpkins.net could be a victim of this act and we would be shut down.

SOPA is bs.

Just so you know, today is "protest day" for these proposed bills, causing some controversy. Major sites like wikipedia and several others have shut down for the day in protest. Point being if you're against the bills and want to be heard, today is the high time day to make that happen.

TaureanStar wrote:
Yeah, I noticed many sites were down today. Oh well, if it works against SOPA, all the better.