[JLV]

Source: http://www.huffingto..._n_1098255.html

Quote

WASHINGTON -- At a House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday, Democrats and Republicans joined together to voice support for legislation that would criminalize much of the activity that occupies the Internet. The bipartisan bill known as the Stop Online Piracy Act would establish major new powers for corporations intent on corralling copyrighted materials -- powers that would lead to big legal bills for start-ups and Silicon Valley giants alike.

SOPA's Senate counterpart, the PROTECT IP Act, was already voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee in September.

Both political parties -- flush with campaign contributions from Hollywood studios and trial lawyers -- are eager to pass the legislation. The Senate version, introduced in May, has broad support, but has been held up by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). Without Wyden's hold, the legislation looks certain to pass by a landslide. The House version, introduced last month, was written by House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and co-sponsored by ranking member John Conyers (D-Mich.).

"The theft of American intellectual property costs the American economy over $100 billion annually ... and thousands of American jobs," Smith declared at Wednesday's hearing.

"I am very pleased that this is a bipartisan bill, and I think that that's very important," Conyers added.

But generating all this enthusiasm is legislation that would shift the balance of power over the Internet.

Under current practice, copyright owners such as TV networks and Hollywood studios reach out to websites to request that pirated videos be taken down. Under the new regime, they could ask banks, Internet service providers and domain name registrars to stop doing business with websites that they believed were devoted to piracy. They could, for instance, go straight to YouTube's domain registration company and demand that the entire YouTube website be taken down. And if the registrar resisted, the copyright owners would have the legal ability to take the registrar to court.

That move might not be very threatening to major players, like YouTube, with expensive legal teams, but life on the Internet could be made very difficult for smaller companies and start-ups. For lawyers who litigate intellectual property issues, the bill is a godsend, guaranteeing a flood of work, no matter which party wins the case.

The bill would also alter the relationship between the government and the basic architecture of the Internet, allowing the Department of Justice, acting on behalf of aggrieved copyright holders, to perform domain name system filtering -- essentially, blocking entire websites in the name of preventing piracy.

Web experts contend this tinkering could threaten the very functionality of the Internet and make it difficult to implement key cybersecurity measures that have been in the works for years. In May, five web security experts published a 17-page analysis of the legislation's implications for online security, concluding, "The PROTECT IP Act would weaken this important effort to improve Internet security. It would enshrine and institutionalize the very network manipulation that [tech experts] must fight in order to prevent cyberattacks and other malevolent behavior on the global Internet, thereby exposing networks and users to increased security and privacy risks."

Since then, the House version of the legislation has grown still more aggressive. The Senate bill proposes to give copyright owners those new powers to sue over foreign websites only. It's the House bill that extends the draconian measures to domestic websites as well. It also sweeps in a separate bill, sponsored in the Senate by Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), to make it a felony to stream videos or mp3s of copyrighted films and songs.

A host of libertarians, Tea Party members, radical progressives, and mainstream conservatives have spoken out against the bills.

But good government advocates cannot win legislative battles against major corporations without their own corporate support. AOL Inc., eBay Inc., Facebook, Yahoo Inc. and Twitter all have opposed the bill. The single largest company attempting to stand in its way is Google -- because its business model depends entirely on an open Internet.

At Wednesday's hearing, Google was the only corporation to speak against the legislation on a panel stacked with representatives of Hollywood studios, pharmaceutical giants and intellectual property hawks from the Obama administration. Unfortunately, Google is one of the worst allies to have in Washington today, as it faces an antitrust investigation as well as government scrutiny for directing consumers to unregulated online pharmacies. Google paid a $500 million penalty in August to settle complaints involving illicit online pharmacies from the Department of Justice and the Food and Drug Administration.

Members of both parties piled on Wednesday, banging away at Google for the pharmacy scandal -- a public declaration that the company's lobbying might not help to moderate SOPA.

Censoring the internet (including non US). Thoughts?

[Silencer]

Tor. Let's all just start using the Tor Network.


More to the point; fuck the US of A and ALL politicians who buy into the anti-piracy crap put forward by the RIAA and associates. Piracy 'costs' the industry *nothing* like 100 billion, no matter how much you twist the figures, and moreover if you actually play it by the numbers piracy is a much smaller problem than they admit. The *second* someone who has pirated content also purchases it, it nullifies their participation in the act. And if their friends also do so, then the single act of piracy becomes a net POSITIVE effect on their sales figures.

The fact that some dickhead with an agenda decided to ignore this potential invalidates ALL their figures and so-called 'facts', until they actually run the numbers FOR REAL instead of as hypothetical exercises to make their point of view seem valid and have impact by throwing around ludicrously large dollar values.

What it comes down to is that you cannot police the internet. It costs 100 billion a year, does it? Do they have any idea the cost of pursuing and prosecuting over a hundred million people not including international pirates, let alone the effort in actually getting these people to pay up?!??!

It's the same as what happened here in NZ. Except we get three notices from our ISP when they get requested to send one from the company whose copyright we've allegedly infringed. Those notices cost the ISP's $25 to send out, each. That's $75 before we even get to the 'Tribunal' (where our citizens will have to prove their innocence - and good luck THAT ONE surviving for very long, a hundred complaints to the Human Rights Commission and our weak nation will roll over quite happily, thank you very much) and if the reported figure of 80% of NZ households engaging in piracy proves true, that's a cost of $60,000,000 to the ISPs for THREE INFRINGEMENTS per household. And believe me, they do *not* have that kind of money. RIANZ, our branch of the RIAA, is trying to find the money to pay the ISP's costs so that the ISPs will actually send the notices out. Because the companies who have had their copyright infringed upon CERTAINLY won't be covering THAT 'exorbitant' fee.

Oh, wait. I thought you said it was costing them 100 billion US a year? So why do the companies balk at paying a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of that in NZD to get the horrible, evil pirates prosecuted?

[JLV]

Why does the American government think they can censor the Internet of the entire world?

This bill seems to say that it will happen.

I'm confused as to how that could ever be.

This post has been edited by JLV: 30 November 2011 - 11:33 PM

[HoosierDaddy]

They aren't censoring the world. Rather, they are protecting American owned and American protected copyrights from being stolen or used without license and depriving their owners of their due earnings.

I get the logic behind it because frankly if you have a system based on copyrights you have to protect them, otherwise what's the point of the system in the first place? Yes, I agree we have an old set of laws clashing with a new frontier.

However, beyond simply abolishing intellectual property, I can find no solution to the nature of piracy, and simply abolishing it won't happen. Believing that will happen, for now, is as naive as the thought process that you can punish people into not pirating. You'll deter some people, but most you'll never reach and they know it.

Far more concerning to me is the attempt to remove sites wholesale for being possibly linked to piracy, because while they say "devoted" these sort of things have a way of chilling freedom where it isn't zealously guarded, and zealous protection is costly.

To me the freedom of the internet is more important than the monetary losses of the companies pushing this stuff, but politicians want campaign finance not internet petitions.

[worry]

The House is, of course, peopled with morons, con artists, and reprobates, so I have no particular faith that this wouldn't pass there. But I am dismayed that it has so much support in the Senate as well. This is what happens when you elect a legislative body that barely knows what the internet is, let alone how to use it. They are literally just not equipped to officiate over these concepts, but since when has that ever stopped them, I guess.

[Adjutant Stormy~]

Ultimately, it is a problem of enforcement.

There are people who believe that they can enforce online copyright. The ultimate problem is, it is too difficult to go after every infringer. So, the rationale, from the enforcement point of view, is to target enforcement at a level that has fewer parties. Ex. ISP letters, and now directly via hosts. It's a clever strategy, and their only real logical move.

It does, however, beggar belief that you can implicate the service that delivers SIGHT UNSEEN, rather than infringes on, content. Then the courier companies that transport child pornography (without, obviously, looking in the packages) are just as responsible for kiddie porn as the producers and the consumers.

[Morgoth]

Supposedly, the implementation of this bill would cause problems in several other security measures already implemented. Meaning, that the people who created the proposal had no clue what was already being done.

Furthermore, from what I understand the bill is worded broadly to the point where this forum could be sued simply from having a member posting a link to pirated content. If that is true (it sounds a little outlandish but you never know) then it goes way too far.

Still, I sympathize with the industry for much the same reason as HD mentioned above. Finding a way to regulate the Internet without infringing on privacy rights is incredibly difficult. Yet, and this is something that annoys me quite a bit, it baffles my mind that so many people seem to find it obvious that the rules that govern their behaviour in real life should not be applicable to their behaviour online. As technology progresses further and further there's not much in the way of separation at all and it's only natural that the net should be regulated much the same as any other aspect of your life.

[Primateus]

Wasn't there a consensus that indicated that piracy was actually good for business? I'm pretty sure there was, which would make this bill rather archaic and....GASP....bad for business!

[Morgoth]

Primateus, on 01 December 2011 - 11:20 AM, said:

Wasn't there a consensus that indicated that piracy was actually good for business? I'm pretty sure there was, which would make this bill rather archaic and....GASP....bad for business!

I would certainly like a source for that claim.

Ideally not from Torrentfreak.

[Obdigore]

Morgoth, on 01 December 2011 - 11:23 AM, said:

Primateus, on 01 December 2011 - 11:20 AM, said:

Wasn't there a consensus that indicated that piracy was actually good for business? I'm pretty sure there was, which would make this bill rather archaic and....GASP....bad for business!

I would certainly like a source for that claim.

Ideally not from Torrentfreak.

But torrentfreak is a nonbiased site. Ask Gem!

Nah, the bills language is so broad that youtube, facebook, and photobucket would all be blacklisted within hours.

[Silencer]

The problem, Morgy, is that to do that requires some kind of international unity on the standards being applied. Unless you're only going to prosecute content hosts, in which case the law in the country of origin is obviously applicable, how do you tackle the perpetrators of online crime? And with something like torrenting, you have to admit that for one person to get sent to prison, and another be fined $10, something is awry - a completely made up example, of course, but the point is that people will get different punishments for the same crime, committed at the same time in the same fashion and 'together', simply based on country of residence.

Moreover - copyright legislation *already* applies to pirated content. This new legislation involves the active policing - i.e. constant surveillance by, in NZ, non-police, private companies - of every person as they surf. That isn't "we think you might be a criminal, *obtain search warrant*, k, I'ma gonna look through your harddrive for illegal content", that's "I will be watching you 24/7 even if you're doing nothing wrong, no matter what nation you are in, waiting to pounce on you if you set a foot out of line, you filthy criminal!".

While I'm personally all for additional monitoring of people in public places - heck, if you're doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide - there is something wrong about making Team America: World Police in 'charge' of the internet. Plus, you have to consider that behind all this, is the troubling idea of corporations pushing government into making legislation purely for their own benefit - and they're doing it because they're too cheap to pursue already available legal channels for nothing more than a trickle of income on top of already excessive profit margins.

[Macros]

The problem is quite simple.
People need to stop thinking piracy isn't theft, I'm not sayign I do or don't participate but I don't try and claim bullshit moral high ground that my D/ling something free when it's copyrighted isn't stealing. it is, point and case.
and don't bring up the lending CD's bollocks either, if you loan your friend a CD then you no longer have it, so can't listen to it. <--- thats a fullstop

[worry]

I was with you right until the third paragraph, Silencer. "If you're doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide" is basically the unifying slogan of every police state that's ever existed.

[Morgoth]

@Silencer

Oh I agree with most of that. Mind you, receiving different punishments for the same crime is the consequence of having hundreds of legal systems around the globe. It's the same with every sort of crime, not just pirating . An international set of laws governing the internet would certainly not be bad, but it's also rather impossible to implement when China, the US and the EU have such radically different point of views. As such you pretty much have to accept that you'll be governed by the legal code of the country you live in.

If the ISP provider you use is located in the US it is only natural that you're subject to US law within your use of their services, no?

The big challenge, as you mentioned is to secure intellectual property online while at the same time protecting the users right to privacy. Surveillance on the internet could easily become a major threat to privacy and it's important to prevent that from going too far.

I don't have a solution to the problem of piracy. I simply wish to point out that I understand that there is a need to find one that does not include abolishing intellectual property.

This post has been edited by Morgoth: 01 December 2011 - 11:34 AM

[Primateus]

Morgoth, on 01 December 2011 - 11:23 AM, said:

Primateus, on 01 December 2011 - 11:20 AM, said:

Wasn't there a consensus that indicated that piracy was actually good for business? I'm pretty sure there was, which would make this bill rather archaic and....GASP....bad for business!

I would certainly like a source for that claim.

Ideally not from Torrentfreak.

I'm not making a "claim" as is...I'm more asking a question, but I'll go find it....TO THE GOOGLEMOBILE!!!

Oh, and don't worry, I've never even heard of torrentfreak.

[Morgoth]

Primateus, on 01 December 2011 - 11:34 AM, said:

Morgoth, on 01 December 2011 - 11:23 AM, said:

Primateus, on 01 December 2011 - 11:20 AM, said:

Wasn't there a consensus that indicated that piracy was actually good for business? I'm pretty sure there was, which would make this bill rather archaic and....GASP....bad for business!

I would certainly like a source for that claim.

Ideally not from Torrentfreak.

I'm not making a "claim" as is...I'm more asking a question, but I'll go find it....TO THE GOOGLEMOBILE!!!

Oh, and don't worry, I've never even heard of torrentfreak.

My apologies from being a little snarky. Back in the day these discussions would inevitably lead to a now departed member of the forum linking to Torrentfreak to validate her claim that piracy is all good. It got a little annoying as Torrentfreak is about as legitimate a source as Conservapedia.

[worry]

Macros, on 01 December 2011 - 11:31 AM, said:

The problem is quite simple.
People need to stop thinking piracy isn't theft, I'm not sayign I do or don't participate but I don't try and claim bullshit moral high ground that my D/ling something free when it's copyrighted isn't stealing. it is, point and case.
and don't bring up the lending CD's bollocks either, if you loan your friend a CD then you no longer have it, so can't listen to it. <--- thats a fullstop

Well, if you burned yourself some backup copies, perfectly legally, you certainly can listen to it while your friend is borrowing the original. You no longer have the physical product, but that's all. And If you downloaded it in the first place, legally, you still never had the physical product to begin with. Even downloading something illegally deprives nobody else of that product, including the content creator; it simply avoids the monetary transaction that perhaps ought to have gone with it. That's not a pro-piracy argument, but as a matter of fact, stealing a car or even a physical CD from Best Buy, and downloading that album for free, aren't particularly comparable acts. Illegal or no, they're simply two different things.

[Primateus]

Now, I HAVE heard about conservapedia, it makes for highly amusing reading.

Anyhoo, my first agenda is to find that lecture from that australian dude who said something about piracy being good because of the "word of mouth" principle and how advertising and product-placement negated the negative economic impact on the television networks for that very reason.

But now I can't remember his name or what the lecture was called...

Edit: Okay, I found this, but it seems to be more about counterfeiting hard products, so I'm not sure if it's applicable, anyhoo, here it is.

http://www.gao.gov/n...tems/d10423.pdf

This post has been edited by Primateus: 01 December 2011 - 11:52 AM

[Morgoth]

worrywort, on 01 December 2011 - 11:43 AM, said:

Macros, on 01 December 2011 - 11:31 AM, said:

The problem is quite simple.
People need to stop thinking piracy isn't theft, I'm not sayign I do or don't participate but I don't try and claim bullshit moral high ground that my D/ling something free when it's copyrighted isn't stealing. it is, point and case.
and don't bring up the lending CD's bollocks either, if you loan your friend a CD then you no longer have it, so can't listen to it. <--- thats a fullstop

Well, if you burned yourself some backup copies, perfectly legally, you certainly can listen to it while your friend is borrowing the original. You no longer have the physical product, but that's all. And If you downloaded it in the first place, legally, you still never had the physical product to begin with. Even downloading something illegally deprives nobody else of that product, including the content creator; it simply avoids the monetary transaction that perhaps ought to have gone with it. That's not a pro-piracy argument, but as a matter of fact, stealing a car or even a physical CD from Best Buy, and downloading that album for free, aren't particularly comparable acts. Illegal or no, they're simply two different things.

Only if you use a rather narrow definition of theft. Furthermore, a legal term means what the court have decided it means and from what I understand most courts have decided on piracy being theft.

[worry]

I didn't use any particular definition of theft, it wasn't an issue in my post. (Abrupt but not snark; I gotta go to bed).

This post has been edited by worrywort: 01 December 2011 - 11:58 AM