>> It went to extraordinary lengths to hide the identity of its operators.

> How many legitimate business don't have their owners wrapped in layers of corporations strewn around the globe? Nothing particularly unique or illegal here.

I might be slightly off-topic here, but I think this is a good opportunity to point out the danger of falling for a "Halo or Horns" fallacy.

Wikipedia doesn't compare the Halo effect with the Horns effect but it does have an article about the Halo effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect

Simply put, if you believe one aspect of a person (or thing) to be bad, you're more likely to judge its other aspects in a negative light. Similarly, one good characteristic can make you more likely to judge the other aspects in a better light.

You can see examples of Halo vs Horns all the time if you look for it. It's very common when mob psychology comes into play, and often causes a change in the status quo.

Did you read the indictment before attempting to "analyze the propaganda"? Unless you believe the FBI's evidence is manufactured, then some of your rebuttals are already known to be false. The owners of the site were uploading DVD rips and music albums to the site, not just users.

>> The site charged for access to, and provided advertising around, pirated content.

> This is true in the same way YouTube provides advertising around, and your friendly local ISP provides access to, pirated content.

I can get the full "The Dark Knight" in 720p on YouTube? Links please

Not 720p, but I don't think that was really the main point. By the way, I just got the link by going to YouTube and searching for "the dark knight part 1".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuaUcGr32SM

The point is it still provides access to and advertising around pirated content.

You can host videos on Youtube that don’t show up in search results and link to them from 3rd party websites. That’s exactly like Megaupload, but with streaming.

And that is illegal and when DMCA complaints are filed access to the content is removed.

The other side of this SOPA battle is playing us like a fiddle. This WSJ article took our stance (it's not my stance but the majority here's stance) and attacked us with it by saying we're pro-piracy. That doesn't go over well outside this community. If we just got off the copyright/privacy topic for a minute and focused on the big picture we could fight more effectively.

Point out that SOPA/PIPA are unnecessary because the Feds are shutting down sites just fine without it. Point out that due process is done away with by SOPA. Etc.

They want us to be talking about copyright and piracy but this isn't about those things at all! This is total misdirection by the other side and we all just played into it. What this is really about is the government and entertainment industry trying to grab the power to do the things they've already been doing without having to go do all that annoying stuff like gathering evidence, building a case, or holding a trial. For being such a big group of smart people I'm surprised I haven't heard anyone else point this out before.

> saying we're pro-piracy. That doesn't go over well outside this community.

Just a side-note: that's not necessarily true, and a perception that is partially based on scare mongering. Vast numbers of people engage in "piracy", and it isn't seen as harmful by the general public. Hollywood and music industry aren't exactly as popular as their products either, and it's the biggest fans of those products that "pirate" the most.

Piracy and illegality isn't necessarily something that scares the general public either. I'm thinking for example of the illegal pirate radio stations in Europe in the past. Hugely popular, and eventually the reason for their existence was accommodated by the law.

On the other side of the coin: the mainstream US public hasn't been particularly concerned about throwing due process out of the window since 9/11... Fuck, it's public knowledge that the US is detaining and torturing people outside the law, the people are cool with that.

Since when has "due process" suddenly become a convincing argument for the masses? Maybe you should actually be waving the pirate flag instead...

Though the public may be pirating a lot there's a disconnect between what they perceive as pirates and piracy and downloading torrents of the new Lady Gaga album. This is all about PR and when the opposition uses piracy to describe the bill the public has an easy time getting behind that. Whenever I hear SOPA on the news it is always described as "a bill that aims to reduce online piracy".

You make a good argument but that argument isn't aimed at the right audience. I for one have pirated copyrighted material but I wouldn't want my own work to be pirated and I'm actually for copyright. I'm pretty honest with myself so I recognize this disconnect and understand that SOPA is bad for the public but others like me hear "piracy" and immediately think of shady websites that steal credit cards and other individuals. It's always "someone else should be arrested for doing this but not me because (insert excuse here)". They just don't think of themselves or what they do as piracy. They think of it as isolated incidents that aren't a big deal even if their entire music collection came from the Pirate Bay.

The negative perception of piracy/pirates is fear mongering but it works. Also, despite the attitudes of Europeans that doesn't help. This is a US law and US citizens don't think that way. I don't want to offend anyone but I think that a lot of us here live in a bubble. We're surrounded by techies and programmers and people like us so we forget who we really need to convince.

It's people like our parents who we have to convince. Young people like me may get it completely of theyre tech savvy. If they're not then they get it to a decent degree. But young people in the US aren't as active in politics as they should be. There's been an impressive response to this but I still think our little bubble blinds us to the fact that far fewer people get it and are doing anything about this. Don't look at Occupy Wall Street, that issue comes from something that they personally relate to. Not having a job, being poor, and seeing the rich get richer while their financial situation isn't improving is very relatable, personal, and the cause lends itself easily to broad support. Piracy doesn't lend itself as well to such broad support. People aren't as concerned with the web as much they are about putting food on the table. To them this is a tech industry problem, not theirs.

I'm lucky and unlucky enough to be surrounded by mostly everyday folks and few techies. I'm 25 and I work primarily with people 10 to 40 years older than me (most are between 55-65). They're the people who vote. They can barely get MS Word to work. Those are, unfortunately, also the people who represent us in the US.

So while there may be decent support for piracy we still should broaden our scope and make this relatable to far more people. Make it about things people care about and use all the time like search engines and Facebook. If you tell them they could lose the ability to find what they search for because of censorship they'll come on board. If you say they can get sued or kicked off Facebook or YouTube for posting a picture or video of something copyrighted they'll be more responsive.

You're right that they may not care about due process so we can take that argument a step further and tell them in a way they understand. Instead of mentioning due process tell them their kid will (will not can) go to jail for posting the wrong thing on Facebook or downloading a single song. Or say they'll get a huge fine in the mail without warning. Let them know their online store will get shut down without warning and payments will be freezes. You'd be surprised at how many people who can barely use a mouse have had someone set up and online store for their little mom and pop shop or MLM business.

We're all so focused on logic and facts around here and that's not effective enough. It's one thing to have right on your side but it's another thing to be able to explain it to someone else. The web designers/developers here should understand this. We have to give our audience something they care about. We have to get people interested and listening before we can educate them and you do that by appealing to emotion by making it personal and relatable. I know it shouldn't be that way but that's how things work in the US. I'd rather swallow my pride and go about this in a way that works rather than insisting on being right and talking at people who don't want to listen.

You don't see the opposition talking about the facts, do you? They use emotion to get support. They make the word piracy negative and scare you with it while saying "we're doing this to protect you" which makes people okay with it. "Oh, so you just want to stop those dirty pirates? That's fine, put them all in jail because piracy is stealing and stealing is bad. Sure, I download a few torrents every now and then but I'm not a pirate" is the public's thinking. There's a lot of issues involved with SOPA and by trying to shove them all down the public's throat we're just overloading them and they're not listening. We have to focus on what gets this bill killed first and then try to change the attitudes of Americans. If we can just tell them how SOPA hurts the average working man without preaching about piracy and copyright we can kill this bill. Then we can all go off into our little splinter groups and do the same thing for piracy and copyright. 1. Kill SOPA. 2. Change attitudes towards piracy and copyright. 3. Stopping future SOPA style bills and getting pro-piracy/anti-copyright passed becomes far easier.

I won't be waving the pirate flag any time soon either. I'm still not convinced about it but I'm open to suggestion. The one reason I support copyright and am not a piracy fan is because as a creator I wouldn't want my work pirated. It would hurt me. But I'm still a consumer too and I see the danger of SOPA and don't want it passed. Even though I disagree with most people here I'm still with everyone in being against SOPA. I personally believe in a balance of power between creators and consumers. I'm willing to admit that the power is currently heavily favored toward the creators and wouldn't mind seeing copyright scaled back by a lot but I'm still not ready for it to go away completely nor do I think piracy is ethical.

I agree here. We should make the main issue the fact that MPAA and RIAA just want to do away with due process. So we have to ask ourselves, why are they doing that? It's because when these cases actually go to Court, they don't always win. In fact in a lot of the cases they lose.

This is why they've been trying to switch their strategy from fighting the "pirate sites" in Court, and instead just try to get Congress to pass a law that helps them bypass the courts completely and give them a kill-switch for all the sites they don't like. Their strategy with these bills has been "shoot first, and hopefully you don't ask any questions later and take us to Court".

So before anything, this is what we really need to focus on and fight against - them wanting to remove full due process. But once we do kill SOPA and PIPA for good, we really need to get Congress to kill the Pro IP Act (passed in 2008), which already allows ICE to take down .com, .org, .net sites without due process. In a way Pro IP is worse than SOPA and PIPA, because they already affect "US sites" rather than "foreign sites".

'What this is really about is the government and entertainment industry trying to grab the power to do the things they've already been doing without having to go do all that annoying stuff like gathering evidence, building a case, or holding a trial.'

Parts of SOPA/PIPA will make their lives easier, this is true, however it also grants new powers. Much recent fervor revolves around these new powers.

You also criticize the rhetoric of the community, but due so in reference to the Wall Street Journal. I have no doubt that they will be the last publication to adopt, support, or accept our rhetoric. Now that doesn't make the general criticism false.

The primary fallacy I see in your argument is instead that the terms like pro-piracy need be liabilities. There are pirate parties in several countries now, and historically powerful, emotionally salient terms can be used either as marks of shame or pride. Language is fickle like that.

Now I can say that there is a dangerous cancer in this country and it is a malignancy that has been growing for years, and now that we've found a way to hurt it, slow its growth, to bleed it out, it's releasing toxins. Piracy is the cure to the cancer on the creativity of America. I can say that the 1% of middlemen and lawyers that call themselves 'rightsholders' are afraid of people point out how bloated they are, and how Un-American it is to be bad at your job, inefficient, and dictatorial. They represent barriers to innovation, to freedom, and to the growth and prosperity of their nation. Some of us have decided the situation is so intolerable that we will advocate breaking unjust laws and causing direct, lasting, and public harm to this institution.

This is protest and the hope of change. It is only history that will determine who played whom.

I think the terms we're talking about really are liabilities. They're being used against us. The US is a completely different animal than other nations. Maybe we can get the public to think differently about piracy one day but considering the short amount of time we have to stop SOPA I think we need to prioritize and leave that fight for another day.

Discussions and movements surrounding copyright and piracy are definitely something we need to have but I think it's more important in the short term to stop SOPA and then leave these other movements for later. We can't change American's attitudes within a month or two. So let's prioritize and make it about the things I said earlier rather than focusing too much on the piracy and copyright. And yeah, the law does grant new powers too but you can't throw too much information at people all at once or they shut down on you. We have to break this up into small, manageable, relatable terms to get others on our side.

As it stands it just seems like we're preaching to the choir amongst ourselves. We all have slightly different opinions when it comes to some of the details but for the most part we all get it and we're against this. It's the everyday non-techies we need to reach.

I actually am in the minority here. I support copyright, I think it's valuable, and I'm also against piracy because of how I'd feel if someone pirated software I developed. But I'm still on your side when it comes to SOPA. I even feel that copyright goes way too far and wouldn't mind seeing the term shortened by a lot. But I do get this issue. There are a ton of people who share my opinion on copyright and piracy who think SOPA is actually a good thing. Their logic is that if piracy is bad then this law to stop it is good. We don't get the finer points, we don't know that there are laws in place that stop piracy already and that they're more than sufficient, and we generally think of pirates as the traditional back-alley, trench coat wearing bootlegger types. Those are the people you need to relate to. There's not enough time to change their mind on piracy so you have to frame it in a way they relate to. Make it personal. When I say we, I mean people who share my (minority here) opinion on copyright and piracy. I get the SOPA issue but others like me don't.

Hopefully I wasn't too confusing with all the pronouns I just abused.