Save Tom's, Stop SOPA

martel80 · Dec 30, 2011

What do they hope to achieve?
The companies will move their servers and HQs to another country to evade the US law and people will just switch to a non-US DNS server.

tanjo · Dec 30, 2011

SOPA = Shoot first, ask... nah, no more questions. We'll just bury you like the rest.

geok1ng · Dec 30, 2011

tom's hardware is entering a golden age. SBM, best Xs for the money, reviews and articles are getting better and better. I have been reading Anadyech and TH for the last 10 years and to me TH has finally step above the competing site as the primary source of information on PC hardware .

The fact that TH is also assuming a political stand against the US polititians only makes me even more proud of being a prt of teh comunnity; keep up the good work.

stylosa · Dec 30, 2011

This article is great. I had this overwhelming urge to read this out to inform our US viewers just what SOPA means and what action they can take to oppose it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAom-dg1_Vw

Awesome article guys, keep up the fantastic work.

abhishekshukla1989 · Dec 30, 2011

I think it's time for an INTERNET SPRING.

SessouXFX · Dec 30, 2011

Saddest part is, if it manages to get pass the House of Reps, it will undoubtedly be signed into law, because of the Incompetence currently in the White House, who thinks himself the greatest President we've ever seen (ughh, my stomach did a flop....). So without question, it must be killed in the House, IMMEDIATELY.

deadlynightshade · Dec 30, 2011

I have a question: If this SOPA -bullshit is of such orwellian nature, then why doesn't Facebook, Google, Youtube, Twitter, Reddit and Tom's Hardware move their entire corporations to another country? If there is something those dumb power-hungry politicians would understand then it's the loss of megacorporations.

superfula · Dec 30, 2011

[citation][nom]deadlynightshade[/nom]I have a question: If this SOPA -bullshit is of such orwellian nature, then why doesn't Facebook, Google, Youtube, Twitter, Reddit and Tom's Hardware move their entire corporations to another country? If there is something those dumb power-hungry politicians would understand then it's the loss of megacorporations.[/citation]

I'm not sure if Toms is blatantly lying or if they just haven't done their due diligence.

SOPA DOES NOT affect sites hosted in the US, nor does it affect any foreign sites with a .net, .com, or .org domain name. Those are all governed by the DMCA. So it won't affect Toms, Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter. This information is very easily accessible, so Toms has no proof to back up their claim.
http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/22/2648219/stop-online-piracy-act-sopa-what-is-it
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.3261:

While the intention is good (a bill like this is needed), the changes being proposed to the DNS system as well as the possible impact it will have on up-and-coming bill processors are too steep.

SessouXFX · Dec 30, 2011

[citation][nom]superfula[/nom]I'm not sure if Toms is blatantly lying or if they just haven't done their due diligence.SOPA DOES NOT affect sites hosted in the US, nor does it affect any foreign sites with a .net, .com, or .org domain name. Those are all governed by the DMCA. So it won't affect Toms, Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter. This information is very easily accessible, so Toms has no proof to back up their claim.http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/22 [...] what-is-ithttp://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.3261:While the intention is good (a bill like this is needed), the changes being proposed to the DNS system as well as the possible impact it will have on up-and-coming bill processors are too steep.[/citation]

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/272580/20111225/sopa-bill-2012-things-know-controversial-legislation.htm

SOPA is pure EPIC fail. Make no mistake, there's more under the Mu-Mu these clowns in Congress won't tell you about with this Bill, that we all need to know right here and right now. If you're from a certain country, you shouldn't have to be forced to MOVE to another country just to conduct business, regardless of what it may be. Is Piracy an issue, you bet. Nobody doubts that. But nothing in that damn bill suggests it would stop Piracy. In fact, it would more than likely encourage more of the same, and with that comes more hacking activity. Remember that these are the same people that couldn't even contain Julian Assange. And currently, their hands are full with Anonymous, who just recently exposed the supplier of Military and Police equipment. You think they have nothing to do with that 'Dopey Private' that stole secured info at the Pentagon?

Everything that has occured in the last few years was done for control of the net. It's always been about control and nothing less. The Internet is the enemy of the Privileged in this country, and truth told, they don't care a single bit about party affiliations. That's the focus of the New World Order.

nebun · Dec 30, 2011

ok....???WTF HAPPENED TO MY COMMENTS???....how did they dissaper?....so much for saving TOM's

Guest · Dec 30, 2011

And - SOPA seem to be a scam anyways:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUKFy1yBolo

juanc · Dec 30, 2011

[citation][nom]millerm84[/nom]Really so casual gaming from facebook and the millions it makes wasn't innovative, the fact that small budgets and big ideas can come to life on youtube to produce real TV shows isn't progress, twitter isn't redefining how we receive news updates, and google well gee that company hasn't produced anything but search results right? All of these sites and the companies behind them have created massive markets for software, media, and other products making the billions of dollars and employing thousands of people. I'm glad to see you oppose SOPA as you seem to fail at understanding the big picture.[/citation]

That's money making. Not progress nor innovation. You'll see, in the future, when you realize that being on facebook doesn't feed your child.

torque79 · Dec 30, 2011

I'm in Canada so I can't help directly but I will put this on my facebook to get more people informed and hopefully spread the word to some more Americans that way to do their part.

kentlowt · Dec 30, 2011

[citation][nom]AnonymousNow[/nom]"To conform to these new restrictions would mean that Tom’s Hardware would have to switch to a review/approval process for any and all new posts to our forums and articles. Our community team would have to approve every single news comment, every new thread, and every new response before it went live and filter them for potentially infringing material. "One goal is that it stunts online debate of all issues, including political issues. When you have a government as corrupted as ours, this is a big benefit. Corrupt incumbents want to stay in business, and they are all corrupt. Through their corruption, in fact, the average person in Congress has doubled their wealth in relation to the rest of the American population merely over the last 20 years. This demonstrates, in and of itself, profound corruption at a time where recent census data now shows 1/2 of Americans are poor of close to it.[/citation]

Don't forget it's the same people giving you this information that are doing this. The information they let out is done for political purposes as well. You can't believe any of it. Believe what you see with your eyes.

dark_lord69 · Dec 30, 2011

Just wanted to let Tom's employees know that I have done my part in helping keep the internet free of these terrible changes.

sissysue · Dec 30, 2011

[citation][nom]cngledad[/nom]Is the US progressing backwards?[/citation]
No, the Fascists are in charge, both parties. Wait I hear a knock at my door, their are two spooks (FEDS) out their to take me to re-education camp, Sieg Heil to the new Amerika.

jpishgar · Dec 30, 2011

superfula :

Some of the servers that host Tom's Hardware are based in Paris, France. Like many sites, certain sections of the site are hosted in different places, depending on programming or developmental needs. The marginal definition as outlined in the SOPA language of "foreign" does not preclude consideration of .com, .org, or .net domains if not exclusively and entirely hosted within the U.S. DMCA is very much the law of the land at current, and we happily cooperate with DMCA requests when we receive them (even if unfounded, we/I personally action them), but SOPA has no provisions for alerting or notifying the accused party of the infringing material. That's the worst part, really. It isn't that the process is convoluted and ponderous to implement, it's that the essential burden of proof of guilt is shifted to a burden of innocence in light of potential ignorance of a claim.

SOPA is a bad, bad idea. Subjecting the DNS to a set of arbitrary conditions for legality and letting non-technical bureaucrats and corporatist digital rights management sycophants stipulate the eligibility for the exchange of information and the very infrastructure on which it operates is folly, and an incredibly slippery slope.

To give you some background, I'm setting up a contingency plan for if SOPA is implemented as it currently stands. It involves quarantining the entirety of the forum in its whole until each thread can be individually reviewed for infringing material. It involves adding an additional 120 moderators as portions of the community come back online - to scale to more than 400. It involves changing the forum post process to place anything submitted in an approval queue for review by those moderators before it is permitted to go live. This is assuming our legal team would approve a process for permitting discussion wherein liabilities would exist that could potentially terminate our presence in the U.S. through volunteer moderator action or inaction. It isn't a pretty scenario, and it looks even more bleak for sites like YouTube, Reddit and Facebook.

katfishgr · Dec 30, 2011

[citation][nom]rch92788[/nom]Computer-illiterate congressman and senators should not be voting on something they don't understand. This bill has gotten so far because of the brainwashing done by the big media publishing companies to persuade our government officials to vote on crap like this. They'll do anything for the benefit of themselves, even if it completely destroys innovation and grinds new web development to a halt.[/citation]

government has been voting on things they don't understand for a LONG time.

lp231 · Dec 31, 2011

Looks like SOPA is getting many hits as a week or so ago, when you type SOPA in Google, you get
SOPA soups. I like SOPA soup, but not this stupid bill.
Great, now I'm hungry after looking at these SOPAs
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=sopa+soup&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=438l1307l0l1708l5l4l0l0l0l0l378l989l2-1.2l3l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&biw=1366&bih=629&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=MEn-TtrSLKTd0QGY6ZXGCg#um=1&hl=en&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=sopa+&pbx=1&oq=sopa+&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=3125l3563l0l4730l4l3l0l0l0l2l208l572l0.2.1l3l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=42fd8c102cc11656&biw=1366&bih=629

poxenium · Dec 31, 2011

"Pirates are bad, so these laws must be good."
I'm sure this is what most politicians think ...

GNCD · Dec 31, 2011

i don't live in the US, but this SOPA thing is stupid. how the hell does it stop piracy? it's more like censoring. why are they doing this? do they want to control the net?

sam buddy · Jan 1, 2012

I'm not a U.S. citizen, but I'm heart and soul with you on this one. All censorship and anti-freedom laws that make it in the U.S.A., end up being adopted by governments in the rest of the world, eventually.
So, GO Tom's and GO to all of you guys here. All I can do is promise to do the same when such laws come knocking on my countrys door.
Be vigilant...

Dark Lord of Tech · Jan 1, 2012

SOPA is a complete joke!

soundping · Jan 1, 2012

Hollywood money goes a long way.

superfula · Jan 2, 2012

[citation][nom]jpishgar[/nom]Some of the servers that host Tom's Hardware are based in Paris, France. Like many sites, certain sections of the site are hosted in different places, depending on programming or developmental needs. The marginal definition as outlined in the SOPA language of "foreign" does not preclude consideration of .com, .org, or .net domains if not exclusively and entirely hosted within the U.S. [/quote]

Actually it does differentiate between domestic and foreign domain names
(3) DOMESTIC DOMAIN NAME- The term `domestic domain name' means a domain name that is registered or assigned by a domain name registrar, domain name registry, or other domain name registration authority, that is located within a judicial district of the United States.

(6) FOREIGN DOMAIN NAME- The term `foreign domain name' means a domain name that is not a domestic domain name.

The bill specifically says FOREIGN DOMAIN NAME, which does not include .com, .net, .org, etc. Those are DOMESTIC DOMAIN NAMES. It's quite clear in the definitions section.

DMCA is very much the law of the land at current, and we happily cooperate with DMCA requests when we receive them (even if unfounded, we/I personally action them), but SOPA has no provisions for alerting or notifying the accused party of the infringing material.

It actually does. While not ideal, it's there.

To give you some background, I'm setting up a contingency plan for if SOPA is implemented as it currently stands. It involves quarantining the entirety of the forum in its whole until each thread can be individually reviewed for infringing material. It involves adding an additional 120 moderators as portions of the community come back online - to scale to more than 400. It involves changing the forum post process to place anything submitted in an approval queue for review by those moderators before it is permitted to go live.

And it's all for naught as SOPA states domestic domain names are not affected, ONLY foreign domain names.

It isn't a pretty scenario, and it looks even more bleak for sites like YouTube, Reddit and Facebook.

It won't affect them either.

Save Tom's, Stop SOPA

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