Hi,

http://sopastrike.com/strike
http://americancensorship.org/modal/state-dept-petition/index.html

Petition signed .....

OFF

Well threads on SimHQ suffer from another issue, that being acceptance of propaganda or acceptance of information uncritically. See any discussion of Iran's nuclear program as an example and you will see positions which are based on wild assumptions and/or false truths which have been debunked by specialists in their respective fields. As such ignorance isn't a function of apathy, but a function of ideology.

This is the issue. There is ignorance due to apathy and there is ignorance due to ideology. Both tend to make issues difficult to change. Add in bureaucratic problems (inertia) and PACs (the addition of money and propaganda into the mix) and you have an exceeding difficult situation.

As regards SOPA here is an interesting lecture

Yes, I've written in opposition to SOPA/PIPA.

Hi,



Good show !

OFF

Yeah, the Internet does that. Anyone over 30 probably would have noticed that attentions spans of people kind of correlate with how much time they spend watching TV or web surfing.

People have access to more information, but their attention spans are split up between a mass of continuous updates and instant messages. People are more connected, yet more detached. The irony is that more information divides how much you can be pissed off about anything. Why just this? How many other things can you find that actually erode freedoms or affect them negatively, and people just let it slide after a few complaints? I've already watched on the street interviews with people on the news, and most of the people saying they are against this don't even say what it is they oppose or even know what it is they oppose.

To tell the truth the Internet is not going to become a black void simply because if this, certainly people aren't going to explode over it. Life goes on.

[quote=FearlessFrogRelying on govt legislators not to 'overstep the mark, and do the decent thing' is an interesting approach, and conveniently lazy for those involved too. Nothing bad would happen in the US, I mean, we just wouldn't allow it, would we? lol

[/quote]

People are aware of what the government can do. The government could declare martial law and shoot you dead if it wanted to. I also think it can be overraching to declare something like this end of all freedom and the beginning of a blackout.

Unfortunately for America, this whole 'freedom of speech' thing was always going to come back and bite someone.

The internet is full of sh*t and should be censored, to a point.

It is arguably America that created this mess, now it's America who doesn't want to deal with it (without going into it deeper).

And I say this as a pro-American, and is in no way intended to cause trouble.

Yes.

Personally, I like the Internet as much as the average person. But I recognize it can't just simply go on the way it has been or worse. Just like Youtube, there was no way that was going to last like it was in the beginning. But it's not gone away at all, it's self regulating, pulls content due to copyright claims.

When I see posts in the comments section of Youtube like, "How dare they bombard us with ads," or, "How dare Youtube pull content," it conveys the impression of how a lot of people don't have realistic ideas about how it all works.

Looks like the US authorities don't want to wait till SOPA/PIPA is passed. Megaupload has been shut down, too bad for all the people who had legitimate files there:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424...ech_LEFTTopNews
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/techno...iracy.html?_r=1