SOPA / PIPA

[Love4Boobies]

Bringing such laws in affect adversely effects a big industry to favor a smaller one. (Internet/Entertainment)

Actually, I think it's the other way around.

SOPA won't affect piracy. It will have an adverse affect on sites with (and maybe even without) user-generated content. Especially because merely linking to an infringing site is considered grounds for a take-down.

Websites with user-generated content will need to find a way to supervise their content better. Given PIPA, there will be less stuff illegal content in the first place due to DRM. Anyway, I feel like people are making a huge deal out of nothing---how often do you think authors will complain about their work illegally being linked to from forums, etc.? Heck, even today they can take legal action against websites like RapidShare but they don't. Also, did you know that in most parts of the world, if you're 18 and your partner is 17, it's illegal to have sex with him/her? Everything will be fine, just wait and see...

The situation described by that paragraph specifies that the action taken must be in accordance with rule 65 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. I just digged it up---If issued without warning, the Attorney General must have (a) proof, and (b) is held responsible.

So it is possible. Given the precedent of ISPs, hosts, and other providers of taking things down without much reason, how strongly do you think the Attorney General will be held responsible?

I think they will because people having to suffer because of misjudgement will sue.

[Rusky]

Websites with user-generated content will need to find a way to supervise their content better.

This is not really a possibility. Youtube can only do what it does because of Google's massive server farms. Do you expect fan forums to check every post for infringing links before it becomes visible? Is that even logical?

Anyway, I feel like people are making a huge deal out of nothing---how often do you think authors will complain about their work illegally being linked to from forums, etc.? Heck, even today they can take legal action against websites like RapidShare but they don't.
...
I think they will [be held responsible] because people having to suffer because of misjudgement will sue.

That's completely wrong, and this is exactly my point. People (esp. big media corporations) do take legal action through the DMCA already. The difference is that the DMCA is not a giant hammer that takes down the whole site just for a single link, it is simply a request that the infringing content be removed. In addition, it gives the site owners safe harbor so that they are not responsible for someone else posting infringing content.

However, the DMCA is misused already. Helpful (to the giant corporations) ISPs and web hosts take down web sites when there really is no infringement, because they don't want to get involved in a legal battle. Notice this is already going on. Taking away safe harbor from site owners and massively increasing the power of copyright owners and the government is NOT going to help.

Even if SOPA were perfectly fair and balanced, impossible to abuse, and not just a tool for media corporations to preserve their business models, why on earth would it be a good idea for the government to have DNS blacklisting powers? They have already shown themselves to be untrustworthy a thousand times over with the PATRIOT Act and NDAA.

[Love4Boobies]

Websites with user-generated content will need to find a way to supervise their content better.

This is not really a possibility. Youtube can only do what it does because of Google's massive server farms. Do you expect fan forums to check every post for infringing links before it becomes visible? Is that even logical?

Sure, through moderators---they already check every post, even here.

Sorry, I'll read and respond to the rest later, I'm in a hurry to get to the new year's eve party. Happy new year to everyone!

[Rusky]

Why is it the moderator's responsibility to stop infringement? Why should the site owners be the ones penalized for what their users post? Why is that even practical? Are you aware of all the software patents that exist so you can avoid violating them?

The current system is far more sane than SOPA.

[Love4Boobies]

Why is it the moderator's responsibility to stop infringement? Why should the site owners be the ones penalized for what their users post?

Replace websites with newspapers and it will become evident.

[Rusky]

Replacing websites with newspapers is nonsensical. That's the attitude of the corporations behind SOPA- they want the internet to behave like media they've already figured out. That's silly, the internet is new and enables new ways of communicating that are very difficult or impossible to police with the same level of accuracy.

[NickJohnson]

How about the more technical aspects? I've heard that SOPA would make proper implementation of DNSSEC impossible, which is of course a bad thing; does anyone know the rationale behind this?

[gravaera]

L4B ftw \o/

I have never read the bill, and frankly don't care to do so anymore because I'm not a kid anymore, so now I can buy my movies/manga/anime etc, so I don't need to pirate stuff anymore.

See, the biggest problem with being this aggressive about content piracy is that the majority of offenders aren't really people who are trying to get things for free, but really children who just want to get to view the content at all. No money to go cinema/buy the DVD, buy the manga, or whatever, but they want to enjoy the show/movie/music still -- that will never go away. Teens will forever be the biggest portion of the "pirates".

As far as I know, the current state of laws for handling licensing and TOS violations for media/other content is quite adequate: if you identify a website which is distributing your content in a manner contrary to your licensing terms, you just file a lawsuit and get a court order to have the site take your content down. Seems pretty legit to me. Any tightening of the laws won't really make any difference unless you begin to cross diplomatic boundaries. The problem with US companies being unable to protect their content doesn't have anything to do with a lack of laws to protect the content -- copyright and licensing laws very clearly already cover most intellectual property and released works.

The problem is that the internet is a distributed storage network where US copyright laws and legislation may not apply in the place where the offending site is being hosted. So it's about lack of reach and not lack of facility for pursuit. SOPA doesn't do anything to solve that problem unless the US can get other countries to accept the SOPA in their own local legislation. Then, copyright holders could uniformly attack offenders regardless of locale. With or without the SOPA being signed off in the USA, the scoping and jurisdiction problem remains, and signing off the SOPA will just be a new layer of legal overhead and fancy terms with wide ambits that do nothing but criminalize more people for no good reason.

In other words, I'm saying that there is no need for the SOPA. If the US wants to "protect US innovation and copyrighted content" then they can sign treaties to have other countries accept their current legislation on content violations so as to allow for charges against non-US-hosted-websites to be gainfully pursued. Another set of US-local laws won't help US copyright holders at all.

And it's not hard for the US to push laws on other countries. Frankly, at least in the third world, acceptance of US/western laws is pretty much defaulted due to pressure for those countries to try to boost their standing in the UN's eyes. The caribbean, and other US-allied nations would willingly accept to help America fight piracy -- this new set of laws is uncalled for, really. In my own locale, I was pleasantly surprised to find that US copyright laws, licensing laws and everything are almost passed verbatim in our constitution due to some treaty or other signed with the US. I have all of my copyrights granted automatically, etc., much like US law. In most cases if the US wants its interests protected, it need only ask.

--Peace out,
gravaera

[turdus]

As I already answered via PM, we're not talking about giving up the freedom to use the Internet,

Yes, we're. You should read the act itself.

unless you consider providing illegal content a freedom.

No, I do not consider illegal content freedom.
SOPA would allow judges to order internet blockade, and therefore force you to give up the freedom to use the internet.
And the worst of all, you cannot prove you have *not* downloaded illegal content, if they say so. (Technically it's impossible to prove something that's not happened. In terms of networking: you would need all of your traffic dumped (from the beginning) and guarantee that no packets missing at a minimum to have chance. Good luck with that!)

[Love4Boobies]

SOPA would allow judges to order internet blockade, and therefore force you to give up the freedom to use the internet.

That's like saying that going to jail for manslaughter is taking people's freedom away. If everything is done according to the law, then no one will take anyone else's freedom away, just like people don't randomly go to jail.

And the worst of all, you cannot prove you have *not* downloaded illegal content, if they say so. (Technically it's impossible to prove something that's not happened. In terms of networking: you would need all of your traffic dumped (from the beginning) and guarantee that no packets missing at a minimum to have chance. Good luck with that!)

SOPA only concerns itself with unauthorized, copyrighted material made available from websites. Also, what you said made no sense---people are assumed innocent until proven guilty. I can't put you in jail for killing someone just because you don't have an alibi.

[Kevin]

I have never read the bill, and frankly don't care to do so anymore because I'm not a kid anymore, so now I can buy my movies/manga/anime etc, so I don't need to pirate stuff anymore.

But the whole discussion isn't even about piracy. If you argue this way, you're completely missing the point.

In the US it's piracy now, in Germany we had discussions about DNS blocking against child pornography, and I guess the third obvious thing would be terrorism. It doesn't really matter what reason you choose, what really matters is that you give government the power to block access to parts of the internet. It's called censorship. Now there are already countries doing this and of course at some point the list of blocked domains was leaked (can't remember exactly, it may have been Denmark). Surprisingly (or not) the list contained entries that didn't have anything to do with the official reason for blocking domains. And this was an example from a "good" country, not even talking about Russia, China, $dictatorship...

[Love4Boobies]

To help make my point, I added a small clarification to what you said---see if it still makes sense.

It doesn't really matter what reason you choose, what really matters is that you give government the power to block access to illegal parts of the internet. It's called censorship.

Of course it matters; it matters a great deal. A lot of people seem to bring up censorship but I'd like them to try to answer this: Censorship of what? Everyone is allowed to express just as freely as before, with the exception that they're not allowed to distribute copyrighted material, unless they are authorised to do so.

[CrypticalCode0]

Love4Boobies could you even make a list of items that have no copyright on them for even appearances are copyrighted of somethings.

EDIT:
Could you make a list of 20 things that are currently not under copyright.

[Love4Boobies]

As promised, here is my answer to the rest of the post made by Rusky yesterday:

Anyway, I feel like people are making a huge deal out of nothing---how often do you think authors will complain about their work illegally being linked to from forums, etc.? Heck, even today they can take legal action against websites like RapidShare but they don't.
...
I think they will [be held responsible] because people having to suffer because of misjudgement will sue.

That's completely wrong, and this is exactly my point. People (esp. big media corporations) do take legal action through the DMCA already. The difference is that the DMCA is not a giant hammer that takes down the whole site just for a single link, it is simply a request that the infringing content be removed. In addition, it gives the site owners safe harbor so that they are not responsible for someone else posting infringing content.

So your main complaint for SOPA is that it's too harsh? (Just so I know what we're talking about.)

However, the DMCA is misused already. Helpful (to the giant corporations) ISPs and web hosts take down web sites when there really is no infringement, because they don't want to get involved in a legal battle. Notice this is already going on. Taking away safe harbor from site owners and massively increasing the power of copyright owners and the government is NOT going to help.

Isn't DMCA strictly for DRM? Because circumventing DRM is not the only problem---we need to tackle a lot more than that.

Even if SOPA were perfectly fair and balanced, impossible to abuse, and not just a tool for media corporations to preserve their business models, why on earth would it be a good idea for the government to have DNS blacklisting powers? They have already shown themselves to be untrustworthy a thousand times over with the PATRIOT Act and NDAA.

Yep, I already noted that I think the DNS issue is ridiculous in my first post on this thread. There are some implementation problems that I hope will get fixed if SOPA is to be made official.

Love4Boobies could you even make a list of items that have no copyright on them for even appearances are copyrighted of somethings.

I don't understand. Could you rephrase that more intelligibly, please?

[Kevin]

To help make my point, I added a small clarification to what you said---see if it still makes sense.

It doesn't really matter what reason you choose, what really matters is that you give government the power to block access to illegal parts of the internet. It's called censorship.

No, it changes the sense and misses the point I was trying to make: You give the government the right to block illegal parts, but you give them the infrastructure and instruments to block anything. And they will use it. In the beginning probably even in good faith, but that doesn't make it any better. Once it has been started you can't stop it any more and at some point someone will abuse the power.

You may call me paranoid if I don't trust the government, but have a look at the constitution of the country of your choice where people are reasonably free. It is a document of mistrust against the government, and it is for a reason.

Everyone is allowed to express just as freely as before, with the exception that they're not allowed to distribute copyrighted material, unless they are authorised to do so.

They haven't been allowed to distribute copyrighted materials even before. The only additional thing is that you've just given government a way to make nasty persons invisible (which may happen to include copyright violators).