SOPA/PIPA Blackout

[Dan Gurden]

So, my gist is a tad narrow... A Toddler in the household and stupid amount of time at work means that I have missed some of the chatter and grown-up telly.

I get that this seems a woefully poorly thought out anti-piracy and seems to be applicable to the whole of the internet (ie also non USA based sites too), what would that mean round here seems to me that as a liscenced product of an established product something like Trek and LOTR could be at risk.

Can anyone clue me in in layman's terms?

[Cut]

I'd second that.

[Cpt. Lundgren]

I moved the thread over to the General Chat. While being mainly a political topic, as it is a proposed law for the US, it can potentially affect sites like TrekRPGNet. So what it is about can be held here, but opinions about it belongs in the lounge.

In short, as I understand it, if a site has material or links to material that infringes on someones Intellectual property (IP); the site can be "banned". When this happens, DNS providers, search engines, and other sites, has to remove their links to that site or being considered an infringing site themselves.

With the current system, an IP holder has to contact the site owner and tell them that they are infringing, and the site does not comply, they can take legal actions against the owners of that site.

As I understand it, under the proposed law, if a site (like this) has missed that there is a link somewhere that infringe someones IP, and it is reported; the site will become blacked out without warning. The law is based on that the site has to be proactive in making sure that there is nothing that even leads to infringing material.

Now, I can be completely wrong in my interpretation. But here are the Wikipedia links about the two laws.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_IP_Act

Oh, and a little side note: "sopa" happens to be the swedish word for garbage