Tag Archives: pipa

The Wired Fish Podcast Season 2 – Episode 2

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Ahoy Fellow Fishes. This week is half SOPA, half retro. Because of how close the ruling of Protect IP is, and the protests and blackouts against PIPA and SOPA, the time has come for us to finally talk about the two and how catastrophic these bills are. On a lighter note, we resume our regular wackiness with retro stuff and what we grew up with as kids.

[MAJOR UPDATE 1] As of this time, ruling of PIPA has been postponed indefinitely. Ruling of SOPA has been shelved indefinitely. The battle may be over, but the war is still on. We want these two bills to be killed off completely. From the looks of it, the authors of both bills are hoping to postpone it long enough to try passing it without the public noticing. However, we were able to catch these bills as they were flying through Congress and stop them in their tracks. We can do it again!

[MAJOR UPDATE 2] After the indefinite postponing of the two bills, the ESA had dropped support of the bills. While it’s awesome and all, it’s somewhat meaningless now. In light of all this, I guess your can kinda skip the first half. But I still recommend watching just to see how bad these bills are. But if you’ve had your fill of SOPA and PIPA, you can hit the break to see which time to skip to.

As usual, timestamp table of contents after the break.

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Capcom Supports SOPA, Then Doesn’t, Blames “Bad Journalism”

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Lately, what else is there to say about Capcom. I mean, they cancel Megaman Legends 3, make UMvC3, then make a really crappy Megaman X port for the iPhone, they piss off the king of Spain, and now… they support SOPA. That is until later on the week when Capcom stated that they kinda don’t. Earlier, a spokeswoman for Capcom USA emailed Digital Trends stating that the ESA, a lobby group made of of big name videogame companies, “represents us on these matters.” Thing is, the ESA (the Entertainment Software Association) supports SOPA. Therefore Capcom supports SOPA. Other companies, like Epic Games, do not support SOPA. Other ESA members have stated that they do not support it. With Capcom hiding behind the lobby group, then we can come to an understanding that they are for SOPA.

Then Christian Svensson comes out and says that they never said they supported it. He states, “We’ve only ever stated that the ESA represents us in legislative matters (again, like every other publisher). We have not stated any stance on our support (or not) for SOPA. Inferring more than that is bad journalism.” How dare he. Listen Mr. Svensson, this was not bad journalism. They had a right to say what they said. Being coy about it only means that you probably do support it. At least have the balls to say that you do or you don’t and not hide behind the blanket of the ESA. SOPA is a serious issue, and being cute about and teasing is not going to win you any fans (or get back any for that matter).

Capcom Says It Never Said It Supported SOPA, Won’t Say It Doesn’t Support SOPA, Either [Kotaku]

Protect IP Act/SOPA Must Not Pass, Will Cripple The Internet

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Fellow Fishes, we’ve come today to discuss a serious topic. A bill titled “Protect IP Act,” or PIPA, is being evaluated by Congress right now. They started hearings for the bill on Wednesday, November 16 (yesterday at the time of this article). There is another bill in congress, called “Stop Online Piracy Act,” or SOPA, that is meant to be combined with the PIPA bill. What these bill call for is basically for sites like BitTorrent or other sites like this that provide illegal content to be shut down. Thing is, these bills are too broad in defining what a “rogue” site is. Anyone can be defined as a “rogue.” The Entertainment Industry is the one that wants these bills to pass, for they feel DMCA is not enough for them. In trying to “Protect IP” and take down sites with copyrighted material on it, they will instead hurt the internet and what makes the internet awesome. Currently, under the DMCA, anyone who has copyrighted material on their site is given time to take down the offending material. The worse that could happen is you’d be fined. With PIPA and SOPA, it will be a felony to have a video of you singing karaoke, and be put in jail for 5 years. That’s right, you will be no better than that crackhead down the block, or that rapist on the loose. To make matters worse, these bills are set to fly through congress. This KYM article (and the video in it) can explain things in better detail.

While we at The Wired Fish don’t support piracy, this is not the way to combat it. Sites like 4chan, Know Your Meme, DeviantART, Wikipedia, Mozilla, Facebook, 9gag, Halolz, the Channel Awesome network, ScrewAttack, etc. would be affected, and even shut down. Youtube will be a largely different place to be in. NicoNico will be gone as quickly as they started. Let’s Players like Chuggaconroy and ProtonJon will be gone. Smaller sites like us would have to leave, and our videos taken away. These bills cannot pass!

Do your part and send a letter to congress (trust me it doesn’t take that long). These bills will change the internet as we know it, and it won’t be pretty. Do you want the internet to be like China’s? (no offense). Do you want the internet to be run by a bunch of little Shinra Corps.? Then stand up and knock this bill out. We got one bill knocked out. We can do it again!