Wide World of Women

For anyone who caps here, you should be aware of those two acronyms. Two bills before Congress, known as the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House. These two bills would hold any site liable for hosting links, knowingly or unknowingly, that would lead to pirated content. This includes the major search engines of Yahoo, Google, Bing, etc.



http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162- ... d-to-know/


Q: How could this affect the WWoW?
A: Since we only post links to snipets of movie clips here, that could fall under this proposed legislation if taken to the extreme. The extreme being that Hollywood would consider anything posted from a movie to be "intellectual property theft".

Q: Would this include clips from the various TV channels no matter the genre (News, Shopping, etc.)?
A: Since the proposed law has been written so broadly, it could fall within this concept of "intellectual property theft".

Q: What about caps? They aren't really pirated material are they?
A: Again, the proposed law is very broad. Caps from a famous hot scene from a movie or show could be considered "intellectual property theft" since the person looking at that cap would have no further incentive to go buy a DVD or see the scene on any of the "Hollywood Sanctioned" sites (Hulu, NetFlix, etc.).

As you can see from this quick Q&A that I could think through off the top of my head, the proposed legislation has potential HUGE ramifications for how WWoW could operate. We are a small group running this place. If we were to be hit with a suit, then I would be forced to pull the plug on WWoW since we don't have the finances to fight the huge lawyer budgets that Hollywood or the DOJ has.

What can you do? Send a letter or e-mail to both your US Representative and US Senator that you oppose the this legislation in its current form since it will put the onus of determining whether a link could lead to "intellectual property theft" onto each and every website and blog big and small. Also, if Hollywood is really interested in stopping "intellectual property theft", they should voluntarily pay extra money to the government to fund this effort. Right now the legislation contains no provision for how this enforcement action would be paid for in this time of budget reduction. Let Hollywood pay for this. Not us! The best example of this policy at work is that pharmaceutical companies pay large amounts of money when they submit a drug to be approved to the FDA. This allows the FDA to have enough resources on hand to review the new drug application within a 12 month time frame. This same argument should be applied to Hollywood in this case. You want the DOJ to be more aggressive against "intellectual property theft", then make them pay for that resource!

We will be on this internet for 9 years this coming February 17th. Not ONCE have I or any Mod or Admin have ever received a complaint of copyright infringement for any clip that was linked here and hosted on RapidShare, MediaFire, MegaUplaod (RIP), etc.! We will see our 9th anniversary but under a dark cloud. Our 10th? Not too sure yet.

Yes this is a political post kind of post that would break our own rules but necessary one so I can educate all of you. If I don't then we could lose all of the hard work not only the Admins and Mods do keeping this place humming but all of the cappers who provide the content to keep you coming back each and every day. There are several of you who have been with us since day 1 and there are several of you who have been with us for 1 day (spammers not included).

I'd like to personally thank all of you for being a part of WWoW thus far and I hope there are still several more years to come.

Rocky

well said Rocky.

Stupid legislation- I have already contacted the offices of my rep. and two senators.

I understand what they are attempting to do, but they are using a nuclear weapon to kill a mosquito.
Overly broad provisions would basically nullify many of our First Amendment protections.

The PIPA legislation is the one thing that I am most concerned about, for many other reasons--not just in here.

MegaUpload was closed without SOPA & PIPA legislation on the books

It's going to be interesting to see what happens the next 6 months -- Govt could really take over the internet and close a ton of sites which will only embolden Anonymous to attack them daily

Getting unaltered things and putting them on the internet should not be illegal
Getting things and changing them or saying they are your work is most certainly illegal

These govt. officials need to focus on the 2nd part and leave the first part alone

Im against censorship of any kind and I hope they don't succeed in taking these rights away. What we do here is not illegal.

The sad fact is that the government ALWAYS overreacts -- give an inch they'll take a mile. When you hear about people advocating LESS GOVERNMENT and LIMITED GOVERNMENT this is a good example of what they're talking about ..... a good idea (stopping the pirating of movies), filtered through government staffers and law writers and administrators, results in things like SOPA and PIPA proposals which can be used to target 'other concerns for the good of the government'.

Government is good for printing money and fighting wars --- everything else it screws up.

VOTE MELVIN 2012!

I might sound too optimistic, but I don't think this will affect us. If any legislation is passed, chances are it would focus on the biggest sites like piratebay, youtube, or megaupload. Places that get huge amounts of traffic(megaupload apparently #13 biggest site on the net) and actually involve full scenes/movies etc costing huge amounts of money. WWOW isn't costing the TV business or Hollywood anything(if this is all about money).

deleted absurd drunk post So embarrassed!

Hold off on that thought --
In their debate last night just hours after MU was shut down, the 4 Republicans basically stated that they don't fully support
the SOPA terms as a threat to freedom of speech....

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57362 ... rotect-ip/

http://mashable.com/2012/01/19/sopa-threat-freedom/

drunk post delete. I wish i could do this for my actions!

SOPA is over now

That doesn't mean anything - Megaupload closed by govt

Yep and before I could finish my year subscription too.

I am not sure it's going to be that easy, or likely in the foreseeable future, on any kind of scale. MU put itself at risk and paid the ultimate price, in part because it had gotten careless or greedy, by relying on some US-based servers. (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2012/01 ... tment.html)

All that MU traffic is already migrating to other file-sharers, both existing and yet to be created. Many of them are based in countries and regions (e.g., Sweden, Netherlands, Russia, former Eastern Europe), where they are out of reach of the US & Co., both legally and logistically.

Also, as fast and convenient as direct file sharing is, there are still thriving p2p (eMule, etc.), torrents and Usenet communities. The genie has been out of the bottle for too long...

Yeah, I think that probably could be true but then all they'll do is sue or subpoena the actual carriers and either try to put them out of business or get their customer base and sue them. Sort of a fear tactic. Noone will want to fight them.

The MU issue and PIPA, SOPA have collided. I wonder what's next? (This may belong in MU alert thread?)

Department of Justice site hacked after Megaupload shutdown, Anonymous claims credit
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ ... story.html

PIPA, SOPA put on hold in wake of protests
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162- ... -protests/

I suspect that SOPA and PIPA are just being put on the back burner until they (congress) can tack it on to some larger bill when no one is looking. Or they are going to wait until the election is over and then pass it in a lame duck session. There is too much big $$ from the entertainment industry that want this and too many people in DC that want it also to control the internet.
And we can not depend upon the mainstream media to report on SOPA and PIPA coming back. All of the networks and news channels are owned by entertainment giants that want this legislation.

That is so true. Shame.