Friday, January 20, 2012

Save the Blogosphere

If the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) or the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) get passed, or the FBI carries on raiding file sharing sites as it did with Megaupload.com this morning, blogs like Plunder The Tombs and thousands of others like it will be TOAST.

If you live in the US please contact whoever your representative in Congress is and make sure they know that you do not want this to happen.

5 comments:

  1. Interestingly enough, the author of SOPA has been caught red handed using STOLEN photography works in his official campiegn website [which has since mysteriously gone offline].

    What's good for the goose is good for the gander, we should expect SWAT to grab Congressman Lamar Smith and throw him in a cold dark cell in the middle of the night as they confiscate all of his assets [so that they may be later turned over to the photographer, the victim, in this case]. Fair is far, after all. Under existing US law Congressman Smith, the author of SOPA, is clearly guilty of one count of infringement for every person who has "downloaded" his campaign website.

    Not that this will ever happen; because in the US corporations get more protections than people do. But one can dream.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Vyldr has posted a useful, if depressing overview on the state of play here: http://desolation-infinite.blogspot.com/2012/01/file-sharing-status.html
    Looks like the file-sharing host Plunder The Tombs now uses (Media Fire) is also about to come under scrutiny. We may need to go back to Rapid Share which is conveniently based in Switzerland. I suppose we shall see...

    ReplyDelete
  3. After what they did to megaupload I would expect everyone who falls under the jurisdiction of the ACTA treaty to stop offering this type of file hosting. It's probably also a matter of time before they set their sights on youtube.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I imagine they will eventually go after Youtube, which really would be the end of Plunder the Tombs since virtually all of our audio content comes from there. However, I doubt they'll actually take Youtube down outright because so many film and music companies (ie: the same ones behind the push to close down file-sharing sites) use it for legitimately promoting their product.

    In the meanwhile, anyone who wants to start up a file sharing host in a country not signed up to ACTA stands to make a killing.

    ReplyDelete