FirstRowSports Seized: What Was The Point of "Stop SOPA" Campaign?

No, that was not what “Stop SOPA” was about. Maybe some people thought it was but it wasn’t.

The government has always had the right to take down sites that hosted illegal and copyrighted products, they just had to go through a defined and extensive set of steps to get it done. What SOPA would’ve done, it would’ve given the government free reign to take down (or make it impossible to find) any site immeadiately and without warning for anything that a company deemed “copyright infringement”. For example, if the NFL decided that you didn’t have authorization to produce written descriptions of the game, they could shut down BGN. Or if someone posted something that was copyrighted in the fanpost section or fanshot section, they could shut the site down as well. And it would’ve given the government power to shut down sites and isolate sites that they deemed “offensive”. The potential for abuse was through the roof.

There are rules on the internet, and while convenient, sites like firstrowsports are illegal.

It goes beyond that, though. Those sites were illegal and they had the right to take them down, as much as we all wish they wouldn’t… But SOPA would give the government to cut down on “enabling” sites too. Basically if you were doing anything to “support” illegal downloads, they could force restrictions on you too.

This could have affects on blogs like SBNation by making them solely responsible for material here. If I decide to link to an illegal streaming site and you don’t take it down, SBN/BGN get screwed.

It also gives them the power to shut down new sites that might encourage illegal file sharing, such as social networking sites. Also you can ay goodbye to any highlight videos on youtube or anything that features a song that’s owned by a major record label.

IMO, the worst offense is that they would be essentially censoring the internet and blocking our ability to get to sites that they don’t like. That puts us in the same territory as China, North Korea, Iran, etc.

This is a never ending battle, one dies another spawns…

Mostly what Anthro and Djack said. Fighting SOPA wasn’t fighting for piracy, it was fighting for freedom of expression and the existence of user created content.

Give us a solution. What about streaming a game for 5 bucks or so, from nfl.com. I would gladly

To be honest, there is no doubt that these sites were flat out stealing content and profiting off it. Anyone who has watched a game on FirstRowSports has dealt with the constant annoying popups…</blockquote

Adblock works wonders.

And the site is very practical. Simply put, when it comes to college sports I get more games than I do with both the basic cable package here and the additional subscription channels. It’s also very nice during football because when one o clock hits we get a Lions game on Fox and a Browns game on CBS and if you want anything else you’re hosed. So besides actually getting a worthwhile game being able to switch between games works when there’s more exciting games or because of fantasy football implications.

Fixed.

To be honest, there is no doubt that these sites were flat out stealing content and profiting off it. Anyone who has watched a game on FirstRowSports has dealt with the constant annoying popups…

Adblock works wonders.

And the site is very practical. Simply put, when it comes to college sports I get more games than I do with both the basic cable package here and the additional subscription channels. It’s also very nice during football because when one o clock hits we get a Lions game on Fox and a Browns game on CBS and if you want anything else you’re hosed. So besides actually getting a worthwhile game being able to switch between games works when there’s more exciting games or because of fantasy football implications.

I LOL’d last night when the government was going to go after thepiratebay.org so they changed their name to thepiratebay.se so our government can’t touch it. This is the situation that SOPA would really effect. If sopa was in affect they could block access to any website they wanted instead of having to try and take it down. Were going to see a lot of pirate and illegal streaming sites moving away from .com, .org. and .net.

Last year they shut down Channelsurfing.net and atdhe.net.

Both sites are back up under a slightly different name.

Plus, if I remember correctly, they already shutdown firstrowsports when it was a different name, and like 2 weeks later it popped back up again. Seems like all they are really doing is wasting their time.

Was the site down for a few hours?

but since the inception of a few controlling the masses(basically civilization) things like religion, gladiator games, and now TV are used to control the mob(masses). Keep the mob entertained and busy and pull the strings from behind the scenes. Censorship, yellow journalism….etc have evolved and mutated into many different but similar beasts. Welcome to reality.

On a happy note, happiness comes from within. So ignorance is bliss. Move on there’s nothing to see here:)

I thought it was odd that this discussion was brought up and then the whole sbnation goes down for a few hours.

Isn’t that what everyone was worried about with these SOPA and PIPA bills? So that all turned out to be much ado about nothing in the end right? The idea was to stop something from becoming law that is already actually law?

No, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act already exists and has for many years.

SOPA and PIPA were more terrible.

- payment partners of a website could be required to stop processing payments to a website suspected of infringement even if the website was never held liable in a US Court. Hollywood could strange any website from making any money just be accusing them and then drawing out the court process for years and years.

- the justice department could make sites disappear without any due process

- uses of the DMCA like this one taking down frontrowsports.tv and megaupload shows that the government already has the power to take down infringing websites and prosecute pirates. SOPA and PIPA are unneccessary for their stated goals. Instead, their purpose would have been to strong-arm tools for the RIAA and Hollywood to chill the internet which they view as the enemy of their business: people going to movie theaters and buying CDs at a record store. They don’t like the idea that people can be entertained watching YouTube videos for free instead of paying $12 to see Jack and Jill or that they can download the song they want for $1.00 on iTunes instead of paying $17 for the CD.

- it wouldn’t stop piracy. As we see today, even with all the laws and all the kings horses and men we still have firstrowsports.eu up and thepiratebay.org running at full steam. It would take about 5 seconds after the bill was passed for any pirate website to find the next loophole, they probably already have. It’s the legit websites like SBNation, Youtube, Twitter, etc. that would be sweating bullets and censoring content like crazy to prevent liability.

that is probably for the best, but it bums me out.

Right church, wrong pew (as they say). The Cable companies are one of the biggest scams going! WIth the technology they have today, why cant a channel like ESPN, ESPN2, NFLN, etc run multiple games at once where you select the game you want to watch on that channel at that time? Why, because people will pay to have it instead of demanding it from a company we pay $100+/mo to! As a person who works two jobs, and a child on the way, I (and my wife) rarely watch tv. But when we do, we watch only a about 10 channels. So why does the cable company FORCE me to get the FOOD NETWORK, or LIFETIME, or USA, or whatever channels I will never watch. Because they can. BULLSHIT!! The cable companies and sattelite companies are the ones that should be regulated. The government does nothing about that though do they!

If the NFL wants to take down sites that illegally stream their content that’s fine. But if they really want to combat the problem of online piracy, they should be worrying about the cause, not the symptoms of it. The cause is the lack of choice that they’ve given NFL fans. The symptom is these illegal streaming sites. Make the NFL ticket available to all, give us a legal online option… and it will help stop streaming sites like this. It won’t get rid of them… but it will help and will do so in a fan friendly way.