SOPA can destroy my chance of knowing more about Asperger's.

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If SOPA is passed this site won't exist. Even though I'm diagnosed, I don't know EVERY SINGLE symptom of Asperger's. I learned a lot more besides the basic stuff on here. Of course, if this site is gone, I wouldn't really know which parts of me are Asperger's, which are my ADD, which are learning disabilties, or which are something else. I wouldn't be able to learn more about myself, I guess. There are so many things wrong with SOPA it's not even funny.

If SOPA goes through, and this site is gone, then I can say goodbye to a community where for the first time in my life I feel normal.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

OK, time to take off the tinfoil hats. The sites at risk of being ruined by SOPA aren't small sites like WP, or large sites like Slashdot -- what's at risk is the existence of sites like Youtube that let you post and share content with minimal ceremony, and message forums of sites owned by large corporations that are secondary to the corporation's main site.

I'm certainly not speaking for Alex, but I can pretty much guess what he'd likely do if SOPA passed: nothing. Eventually, if he got harassed enough, he might move it to a server colocated in another country, and unless he decided to start running a warez site on the side, he wouldn't be bothered.

Likewise, large, popular sites like Slashdot would just get sold to foreign buyers, who'd move the servers overseas. They wouldn't do it from fear of getting blocked, they'd do it because big corporations are heinously risk-averse, and are too afraid of unknown risk to do anything besides divest it.

The big suckiness of SOPA (website-wise) would be the destruction of everything we love about sites like Youtube. It would basically turn them into sanitized mouthpieces for the entertainment industry like VEVO, and it would make it very hard to launch any kind of new site with user-generated content that's bigger than a single individual who doesn't really care all that much about money could handle by himself. Remember, large corporations are completely allergic to Business Risk and Uncertainty, and will pre-emptively amputate their feet to avoid the risk of stubbing their toes.

So... SOPA and PIPA suck, but even if they passed, WrongPlanet isn't going away. Alex would probably have a few weeks of sucky frustration and stress, and possibly have a few meltdowns, but sites like WP wouldn't vanish. They'd just leave the country. The nice thing about electronic immigration is that you can host your server in Belarus or Grand Cayman, and administer it from the comfort of California or Florida.

Actually if someone posted a link to infringing material or in some way violated copyright in a forum(WP included). And a complaint found its way to DOJ door, then yes WP or w/e forum could be blocked. Even if the forum servers are located outside the US, it will be blocked for all US ip's. Unless you're running a proxy from elsewhere you won't be looking at that forum. SOPA & PIPA are very nasty laws that employ the same technology as the Great Firewall of China.

You know there is other outlets were you chould learn about Aspergers beside the internet. You chould read nonfiction books or read memoirs about people on the spectrum. Or go join your local autism society chapter and to Go to their functions.

Look, I'm not saying it would be good for them to pass. But let's get real here. The risk is not that a site like WP could be effectively blocked through technical means. Move WP to ipv6, and there are 2^64 potential IP addresses to try playing whack-a-mole against. Come June 1, IPv6 is a reality, and attempting to block his tunneled IPv4 address would block hundreds or thousands of other sites as well. Blocking sites like Youtube is easy, because the content-delivery infrastructure you need to deliver terrabytes of data every second isn't exactly easy to reprovision. They're high-value targets with limited mobility.

Let's look at the infamous Great Firewall of China for a moment. Every single day, millions of people in China waltz around it, and their government can't do a damn thing to physically stop them. What keeps most Chinese users from tunneling around it is either lack of technical expertise, or *fear* of *potential* prosecution. What stops China's government from actual prosecution is the logistics of trying to prosecute tens of millions of people for a crime committed daily by a huge chunk of the population, and the political reality that the families of elected officials themselves would be caught too. What stops foreigners from wantonly doing it is the risk of deportation (and losing their relatively high-paying jobs) if they get caught. As a barrier, the GFoC is more like a row of traffic cones with signs warning about the alleged attack badger guarding it.

Going over seas, or getting around firewalls - so much easier if they don't pass the damn thing.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

My own view is that if the vile acts are passed then we will need to be much more careful on WP. I think that the mods will have do a lot more work.

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Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !

Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.