[aguy130]

You may or may not heard of this, but there is a vote happening on a bill for censoring the internet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_IP_Act

It is apparently currently being voted on. If it passes, things gawn suck. =/

[Aelcalan]

The text of the House version.

Because the above is long and tedious legalese, even to me:
BoingBoing's coverage.
The EFF.
And americancensorship.org

[Bonejunky]

Why did it say "Americans should all die"?

[Prodigy9]

What was that article even about? I didn't have time to actually read it, as I was too busy reading a personal appeal from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

[fritterdonut]

Thank god I live in Kanada.

[Aelcalan]

So, for those who can't be bothered to read even the short articles, a
tl;dr
Muricalandia has legislation in the House and Senate that would enable the government to censor teh interwebs in the name of stopping piracy. Includes both foreign and domestic sites, though the spin is that it's against foreign pirates.

[fritterdonut]

The equivalent to China's great firewall... except instead of blocking potentially dissident content, it is aimed at ANY site that has user made content that contains something copyrighted.

This includes:
Game guides
Youtube Let's Play videos
Machinima
Videos and sites containing copyrighted music (aka pretty much ALL music)
And obviously almost all torrent sites (Pirate Bay, Isohunt, etc...)

You want to make a Let's Play video for that game you just bought? Well if it would cost more than $2500 to license the game (It most definitely would for all but the smallest indy games), you could be looking at a 5 year jail term for copyright infringement. This is far reaching, all the way down to seeding torrents.

This could be do-or-die for the US users of Youtube, The Pirate Bay, and the like.

[Prodigy9]

The equivalent to China's great firewall... except instead of blocking potentially dissident content, it is aimed at ANY site that has user made content that contains something copyrighted.

This includes:
Game guides
Youtube Let's Play videos
Machinima
Videos and sites containing copyrighted music (aka pretty much ALL music)
And obviously almost all torrent sites (Pirate Bay, Isohunt, etc...)

You want to make a Let's Play video for that game you just bought? Well if it would cost more than $2500 to license the game (It most definitely would for all but the smallest indy games), you could be looking at a 5 year jail term for copyright infringement. This is far reaching, all the way down to seeding torrents.

This could be do-or-die for the US users of Youtube, The Pirate Bay, and the like.

Ah, I've heard of this. I can see why they would want to shut down pirating/torrenting sites. And game guides can of course include a lot of copyrighted content, so I guess I can see why that's included, thought that's perhaps a bit obsessive. But would it really include Let's Play videos and Machinima? I thought those were protected as "Fair Use" derivatives of copyrighted material?

[starspeed]

I'm not even kidding, if this happens, I predict people will freak out about lack of freedom, the government will have serious problems on their hands, and possibly in some areas, lawless acts as a "protest" against this. Basically, it would be BAD.

[ramien123]

Anon will cyber attack the s*** out of the US Gov. if this passes.