[Palomine]

Maybe now many of you can understand what we gun owners have to continiously fight when anti-gunners want to regulate us out of existance. The misuse by a few should be no excuse to deny all their civil rights, especially those emnumerated on the Constitution.

No offense, but that's the silliest and most spurious analogy I've heard in ages!

As much as I thoroughly detest SOPA, over-zealous copyright protection is responsible for ZERO lives lost in the United States each year. On the other hand, the staggeringly excessive quantity of firearms in this country (conservative estimates generally range from 192 to 235 MILLION guns in a country of only 307 million people TOTAL including chi1dren) plays a major factor in the deaths of thousands of Americans each year (8,875 in 2010 per The Guardian).

"Regulate gun owners out of existence!?" That's alarmist rhetoric not based in reality. That's like all the right-wing demagouges constantly complaining that Christianity is under attack in America with their 'war on Christmas' nonsense: how self-identified Christians, who make up between 60-76% of all Americans according to Wikipedia (the next largest group other than unaffiliated are Jews, who make up between 1.2 and 2.2%), can manage to see themselves as a persecuted minority is just an example of propaganda... just like the 'trying to take away all privately-owned guns' meme. It's nothing more than a convenient fiction used to play on base fears, manipulate followers and raise funds for lobbying (in exactly the same way that SOPA gained congressional support: money). Thusly: there are roughly 35 TIMES as many Christians in the US vs the next largest self-identified religious group (Jews at about 2% max) yet the 'poor persecuted Christians are under attack' meme thrives daily thanks to Faux Nooz et al... similarly, there's at least one (and probably more like 1.something) gun for every single adult in America: about/at least 200 million firearms in private hands, yet the NRA and it's lackeys/propaganda/lobbyists/purchased politicians would have you believe that too is a precarious situation about to be reversed any minute now (as if such a thing were even ever possible... such paranoia of Big Bad Government coming to take away guns reminds me of nothing so much as the pathetically paranoid fictions of "The Turner Diaries" ...that's how little sense it has in the actual world of our shared reality). The fact that the NRA continues to leverage these lies to raise cash simply proves that it's happy to lie to people if doing so serves desired ends and from that, we can easily infer that it has a very low opinion of the intelligence of NRA members given how eager it is to foist such fictions upon them.

SOPA sucks, but even if implemented exactly as the MPAA and RIAA would like, it wouldn't ever kill a single person. Neither will copyright infringement for that matter. You can't say the same thing about firearms, especially when owned and sold in vast quantities, some to folks proud of their own ignorance and paranoia.

[brakblake]

FUCK SOPA!

2nd

[Palomine]

SOPA BLOWBACK:

After the forced closure and legal action against Megaupload the other day, FileSonic just discontinued all sharing of online files this afternoon (the only DLs possible are from within accounts: i.e.: only the party that ULd something can still DL it... the days of clicking on a link there to see something that someone else uploaded are over). Other services may be likely to follow... I've noticed that a ton of very-recently-uploaded stuff was lately purged from Wupload too (just prior to the Megaupload thing). More here courtesy of Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/filesonic-has-disabled-file-sharing-in-wake-of-megaupload-takedown.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss

There's speculation that the Megaupload crack-down happening so close to the consideration of SOPA isn't entirely coincidental... that it's the Justice Dept's way of saying to the interested pro-SOPA parties: "don't worry, we've got your back even w/o SOPA". Though it's always been a wise policy to consider ALL content at third-party hosts TEMPORARY it would seem that's going to be even MORE TRUE than ever before now.

Not to come off like Chicken Little, but recent events would suggest that online material will likely have fewer safe harbors than in years past, and when something is posted, it's lifespan (of availability online) is likely to be much shorter than before. Given their distributed nature, individuals utilizing peer-based networks shouldn't be impacted (though aggregators remain potential targets of course).

Added Sunday evening: I gather that Uploaded.to has discontinued access to it's file hosting services to all US users, though I haven't verified this personally. Turbobit.net has done the same: U.S. users can no longer use it.

And tangentially related, it would seem that US Customs now requires your solemn oath that media you receive in the mail from overseas doesn't advocate anti-American ideologies: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.339243-USA-Customs-are-policing-DVDs-now ...the irony of this: how inherently un-American such a demand is... seems lost on our government, no matter how well-intentioned they might be (or think themselves to be).  

Added Jan 24: the Ultrafiles server is gone now too. Not such a loss since Ultrafiles' server never 'had any slots available in your country' pretty much no matter which country you were in and what time of day you were trying. IMO, they 'offering' the *theoretical possibility* of a free DL was merely their way of marketing paid DL subscriptions. Yet another fileshare site now apparently vanished is Uploadstore.net though I don't know if it disappeared recently or not.  

Added Feb 6: as of today FileFactory is 'temporarily' suspending all free downloads beyond 500M... after MegaUpload and Filesonic, Filefactory was/is probably the most heavily used file host, so this limit will impact some. Also, today turbobit.net suspended all downloads to the U.S.

Added Feb 11: FileFactory continues to be overwhelmed due to traffic... if something you want is hosted there, you'd better access it sooner rather than later since I'd not be surprised to see it go the way of FileSonic. Other hosts that still work more-or-less include: Oron, Hotfile, Crocko, Furk, Rapidshare, Depositfiles, Mediafire and Fileserve... some purge new ULs quicker than others of course. 

[pedonbio]

SOPA sucks, but even if implemented exactly as the MPAA and RIAA would like, it wouldn't ever kill a single person. Neither will copyright infringement for that matter. You can't say the same thing about firearms, especially when owned and sold in vast quantities, some to folks proud of their own ignorance and paranoia.

One of the deepest pieces of anaysis I've come across about guns in the U.S. is Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" movie. What is amusing about it is that I have read scores of rabid, right-wing and gun enthusiast denunciations by people who have never seen it. Those of us who have seen it know that after considerable exploration, Moore concludes that the difference in murder rates between the U.S. and Canada is not because of gun ownership, but because of the ignorance and paranoia resulting from the failures of local television news reporting.

Of course it is necessary to parse out the various ways of dying. Owning a gun makes it much more likely that a person will die by suicide, or that a family member will die in a gun-related accident. 

[Poli]

Big brother is watching your ass.. and fucks it up..

[pedonbio]

.

[Palomine]

With Megaupload and Filesonic, etc... now out of the filehosting biz, as expected the remaining host companies are picking up the slack whether they like it or not. In response to numerous complaints, here's a reply to a user asking about recent service degradation from FileFactory which is (IMO) probably the next biggest/most widely used host for the kind of stuff BEA users are fond of now that Filesonic is gone.

Hi Bill,

All the 3 issues are related. Within 3 days our traffic has increased 3 fold. As we were not prepared for this not everything can be fixed immediately. However we are constantly in touch with our datacenter and hopefully tonight they can implement a very large increase in our bandwidth capacity. This is not an instant process as switches need to be configured and new cables installed - it's not simply a matter of flicking a switch.

The problem with bandwidth means that:

- download servers take longer to serve out files, so the load increases, meaning new people can't get through so files appear to be down when they actually are not

- downloads are slower because a lot more people are trying to download at once

- FTP transfers are delayed because when trying to move a file to a download server, if the server is under heavy load, this can take longer to do and sometimes the transfer will fail

All these problems will be resolved when the additional bandwidth is implemented.

However given the amount of traffic overall most things are going quite well, although we do know there are some issues.

Regarding the future of FileFactory we have been online since 2005 so we have a very long history and we have always operated with legitimate business model and practices. This is why we have never been quite as popular as other services, but it also means we can continue on because it's business as usual. We see no need to take dramatic action like disable file sharing services.

Hope that answers your questions!

IMO even though SOPA didn't go through as planned, the resulting chilling effect of it's aftermath is the biggest blow to happy internet wanderers since Mario's little boy gave all the ISPs a convenient excuse to stop carrying all the alt.sex.binaries newsgroups. For that, Andrew is fated to experience an intimate weekend of tender yet totally lubricant-free loving from a trio of fully-grown silverback gorillas hopped up on vast quantities of Viagra. At least, that's what'll happen if there's any justice in the world.

[rtpoe]

It's not just the weirdos sharing porn...

Music blogs such as Madrotter, Mutant Sounds, and Global Groove have had years' worth of carefully collected, digitized, and annotated rare and out of print music from around the world wiped out.

[TheZookie007]

There's three lessons to learn.

One, the people legislating should for God's sake get a clue when it comes to how the Internet works.

Two, not every filesharing service is being used for copyright violations -- and even if they were, there are ways to get infringers without SOPA/PIPA-style BS. The law that they used to bring MegaUpload down, PRO-IP, has been on the books since 2008.

Three, backup, backup, backup.

[Palomine]

It's not just the weirdos sharing porn...

What's 'weird' about sharing porn!?

But speaking of all the recent hullabaloo affecting content other than commercial porn or other copyrighted materials:

As it happens, when Megaupload was shut down, I lost three large archives of personal data that I'd been keeping zips of there for distribution to family members. Of course, I still have the files on my drive so it's not like they're lost... but just in the week or so since the kibosh, I've already received two requests to burn DVD-Rs and snail-mail them instead of using another online host. How very 1990s! 

[pedonbio]

Three, backup, backup, backup.

That is always good advice, Zookie, but I had backed a bunch of stuff onto 3.5 disks back in the '90s.

[calcifer]

http://gizmodo.com/5879793/the-fbi-is-already-getting-sued-for-shutting-down-megaupload

[TheZookie007]

Oh noes. It gets worse.

ACTA

[Bad Kitty]

actually ACTA is not even remotely as sinister as SOPA/PIPA.

it's a treaty, not a law. and it's got some copyright infringement provisions in it, but it follows a due process of law, and is more a treaty between signing countries, to not obstruct the pursuit of copyright infringements. It could be abused, but we've had it since 2005 (it's not new), and so far it doesn't really look very sinister at all.

whereas SOPA/PIPA attempted to criminalize half the population of the planet, and hand the internet over to a handful of media corporations to do with as they please.



there is however a new bill I've heard about, which is titled something like "stop **09** pornography act" or something like that, which I hear has some very unrealistic provisions (like sopa/pipa), but I can't comment knowledgeably about it at this time.

[pedonbio]

there is however a new bill I've heard about, which is titled something like "stop **09** pornography act" or something like that, which I hear has some very unrealistic provisions (like sopa/pipa), but I can't comment knowledgeably about it at this time.

I always plead with people to be very skeptical of any act done or law proposed against "chi1d pornoography" or sex crimes against chi1dren. Remember that the last congressional zealot on this topic was Mark Foley, who mostly just wanted to keep other molestors away from his stable. Also, Governor Cuomo used that as an excuse to "persuade" ISPs to drop free newsgroup service and start charging $20 a month for it...See, he figures the $20 will stop all the perverts.