Wiki Blackout?

I disagree. I think it will give them massive leverage for more royalties.

Huh? How?

When sites like Netflix or LoveFilm negotiate for the rights to download films, the film industry can "up the ante" using SOPA as a weapon. I can see them refusing rights to films even though the contract was signed previous to SOPA making it onto the statute books, it won't matter that the signing was previous, the site would get shut down while the legal niceties were sorted (expensively) in courts.
Such an outcome would flat kill such sites, and the fear of shutdown would force NetFlix or LoveFilm to surrender to higher royalties without a fight.

Remember, the whole viewing habits of the populace is moving from buying DVD to download.

How could they "use SOPA as a weapon"? You don't explain any mechanism that would make that make sense. And you imply that passing SOPA would invalidate contracts, which also makes no sense at all.

You might be interested to know that Netflix initially supported SOPA. This actually does make sense, because the elimination of sites to illegally view movies would drive customers to legit solutions like Netflix.

Then my little speculation is wrong, time will tell.

My thinking on that topic is along the lines of, they , ( meaning the big companies) in media and such have woke up to the the that this inter net deal has no 'one' doing the driving, There's no at the helm. yet there's millions of people , dollars , hits , sites , activities etc .. all day every day any day of the week ....
it has those huge media and entertainment and the government stumped about how to gain control , because everyone knows someone has to be in control otherwise its all a waste no 'one' is getting the loins share .JMHO

Entirely possible, or even probable in my opinion.

I know Jonnythan thinks I'm wrong (I might be), but I find that the actual reason behind big politics like SOPA, is rarely what is seen on the face of the legislation, so I'm after the story behind the story sort of thing' yours is also a likely scenario.

ty.

I don't think there a story behind the story . Think about it I personally have been on line since 1998 and i was about 10 years behind the times . so just a guess I'm saying the Internet is at least 20 years old by now. There has been a few 'gold rushes' where some got filthy rich almost overnite , we have gotten the hackers in hand if not under control . it's all found it's level and running along nicely .

The companies that are pushing DC for rule changes that will give them control they have benefited from having Internet access but now they want the loin share of profits . Like I said , they are jst waking up and smelling the coffee, only problem is that coffee is in a lot of some one eles mr. coffee's

if we can't keep pressure on those damn Dc politicians and drown out the jingle jangle of the election donaton I mean lobbiists . then I for one will seriousely consider tossing my 3 computers in the dump and finding a replacement hobby/ addiction

Maybe, I don't claim I know enough about the internet if that would work to avoid it. There were other domains listed, and it started getting complicated about what was or not a us directed site, like they were really trying to cover the whole internet.

Sadly I think the problem was the people that wrote the bills don't know enough about how the internet works to make a solution to a real problem.
Piracy/copyright violations is a problem, something should be done to stop it, it is illegal after all. In my opinion, no amount of justification makes it ok to essentially steal someone else's work. They need to go after people that are doing it, not punishing everyone.

Both bills in their current form seem to be tabled for now. I hope that the protest/ blackout proved a point that they way the bills were written was wrong, and not going to fix anything, but cause more problems. If people who write laws want to get some education and write something that was useful or work enforcing the laws we have now that would be great.

Hypocrisy at it's finest.

Preevious Lamar Smith campaign website ...it has since been changed, I wonder why?

A San Antonio lawmaker sponsoring online copyright infringement legislation found himself accused of hypocrisy when his campaign website apparently used a photo without permission and without credit.
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Questions-arise-over-photo-used-on-lawmaker-s-2655470.php

Maybe another reason?? (tinfoil hat advised)

"In December of 2011, just weeks before the takedown, Digital Music News reported on something new that the creators of #Megaupload were about to unroll. Something that would rock the music industry to its core. (https://goo.gl/A7wUZ)

I present to you... MegaBox. MegaBox was going to be an alternative music store that was entirely cloud-based and offered artists a better money-making opportunity than they would get with any record label.

"UMG knows that we are going to compete with them via our own music venture called Megabox.com, a site that will soon allow artists to sell their creations directly to consumers while allowing artists to keep 90 percent of earnings," MegaUpload founder Kim 'Dotcom' Schmitz told Torrentfreak

Not only did they plan on allowing artists to keep 90% of their earnings on songs that they sold, they wanted to pay them for songs they let users download for free.

"We have a solution called the Megakey that will allow artists to earn income from users who download music for free," Dotcom outlined. "Yes that's right, we will pay artists even for free downloads. The Megakey business model has been tested with over a million users and it works." "

https://plus.google.com/u/0/111314089359991626869/posts/HQJxDRiwAWq

okay my friends are talking about something called ACTA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prrcoYNvKTM

https://www.ibtimes.com/articles/286319/20120124/acta-treaty-2012-sopa.htm