Glory Days;1058448 wrote:but the government rarely abuses them. even if this bill would pass, they'd be kept in check by people like you.
Lol. The government often abuses them, even if it isn't always malicious.
And you say they'd be kept in check by people like me in the same thread that you've put down people like me for being crazy since we speak out and get upset about things like this. So are we chicken little or people necessarily saying "hey, hold on a second that's not going to do what you think it's going to do"? Can't be both.
This bill is nothing but garbage. It does not address piracy concerns, doesn't change our current copyright laws which already make piracy illegal in most cases, and has the very real chance of stifling one of the few thriving industries we have.
It'd be like allowing a group opposed to illegal immigrants from Mexico to shoot any person they believed to be an illegal immigrant. It's a solution that wouldn't solve the problem and causes a ton more.
The problem with things like this is that by and large congress is made up of old people who mostly don't understand at all about how the internet actually functions and why. That's why you get shitty bills all the time because a company comes and says "these people are
stealing our product and killing our bottom line, look how many copies of x were illegally downloaded and they sell for $50 retail! That's $xxxxx!". Congressperson then thinks they're doing a great job making some bill like that when they don't realize things like, not every illegal download can be counted as a lost sale a la a stolen physical product (and probably the vast majority of them cannot) and also since they don't understand how and why the internet works they cannot foresee the problems inherent with the wording and policies of said legislation.
Which is why we have to throw a shit fit and make them realize the worst possible scenarios that could happen because of them. Luckily on this particular case we had the help of at least a few very large companies or institutions (Google, Reddit, Bungie, Wikipedia, etc, etc).