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Today is American Censorship day
http://americancensorship.org/
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111115/09233216778/ron-paul-comes-out-against-sopa-joins-other-elected-officials-saying-no-to-great-firewall-america.shtml
by Free » Wed Nov 16, 2011 11:35 am
by miguel » Wed Nov 16, 2011 12:30 pm
by Free » Wed Nov 16, 2011 9:40 pm
miguel wrote:Asleep at the wheel as usual, I knew nothing about this.
Thanks for the post.
Here is another link describing the bill: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act
by Free » Wed Nov 16, 2011 9:55 pm
That Giant Sucking Sound You Hear Might be E-Parasite
By admin, on Nov 1, 2011
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and “Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation” Act or “E-Parasite” were introduced this week in the House Judiciary Committee. E-Parasite begins with this mission statement: “To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes.”
Unfortunately, nothing in this bill, and the associated SOPA, promotes prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation. Representative Zoe Lofgren's (CA-16) reaction to the bill was, "this would mean the end of the Internet as we know it."
NetCoalition, the Consumer Electronics Association and the Computer and Communications Industry Association identified some of the bigger flaws, including criminalization of average people and the creation of new costly legal vulnerabilities for websites and service providers.
The House SOPA – in theory, representing the interests of “the people” – went far beyond the Senate’s companion PIPA legislation. PIPA criminalized 10 instances of streaming copyrighted content; Bob Goodlatte, currently representing the 6th District of Virginia and a strong Patriot Act supporter, intends to put you in prison for doing it just once. SOPA/E-Parasite will target people for posting music in the background of videos, dancing to pop songs, or playing in cover bands, and it will criminalize "individuals and sites providing the streamed content."
That’s not all. Goodlatte's bill also targets cloud service providers, social networks and other new technologies that simply have the potential of being misused by customers. Sites like Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress, Flickr, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Ebay, Dropbox, Carbonite, and others that could "induce" infringement will be in legal and financial danger based on what their users post or transfer, potentially undermining the long-standing Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
Undermining the DMCA? Well, in Goodlatte’s own words, E-Parasite will correct weaknesses in the DMCA and “[he thinks] it is unrealistic to continue to rely on the DMCA notice-and-takedown provision.” Instead, the new legislation requires intensive “self-policing” by service providers and website owners, or else. As a result of this detailed and comprehensive requirement to know the copyright status of everything on your site at all times, simply receiving a notice and takedown request will predictably result in immediate takedowns of content, links, and advertising.
In effect a website can be – and many will be -- shut down simply on an accusation, without proof or legal oversight, of copyright infringement. Dealing with false or mistaken or simply wrong notices? Not Congress’s concern. That ought to be a real boon for dynamic information sharing, creativity, entrepreneurial growth, and innovation.
What does it all mean?
Gary Shapiro, President of the Consumer Electronics Association, said the legislation, “greatly expands the power and reach of the federal government to target lawful consumers and entrepreneurs on the Internet at the expense of preserving the freedom and dynamism that has made the Internet a great source of wealth, jobs and innovation for the last two decades.”
DemandProgress.org claims the bills will create an Internet blacklist, putting the United States on par with China and Saudi Arabia. Shapiro explains that after “a site is identified as infringing on copyright, the government would erase any and all links to the site, as well as instruct Internet providers like Comcast and Verizon to cease all access to the site.”
Techdirt writes that “The more you look at the details, the more you realize how this bill is an astounding wishlist of everything that the legacy entertainment gatekeepers have wanted in the law for decades and were unable to get.”
On the other hand, congressional co-sponsor Goodlatte flatly rejected the notion it imposes a new regulatory structure on the Internet and insisted, “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Let’s break it down.
Government laws that hamper freedom and kill productivity? Check.
Congress protecting legacy and rent-seeking industries who are unwilling to innovate in the face of rapidly changing technologies, consumer demands and interactions? Check.
Legislating a government-corporate wishlist to enhance government’s ability to extract massive amounts of data on citizens and businesses, and satisfy the uncompetitive corporations who donate heavily to their campaigns? Check.
Congressmen calling their citizen critics “wrong,” “posturing,” or “unrealistic.” Check.
There is good news. The outpouring of criticism and anger from so many who oppose this legislation is having an effect. There are not many congressional co-sponsors for SOPA/E-Parasite, and some are already running scared.
This legislation also gives those in liberty, art and technology communities a reason to talk about Constitutional concepts of innocent until proven guilty, and what it really means to be secure in your person, houses, papers and effects.
Lastly, I live in the 6th District of Virginia, a district with more than our fair share of constitutionalists, entrepreneurs, technology corridors and educational institutions. In the June 2012 primary, we’re planning a small revolution against Goodlatte’s prosperity-destroying, creativity-killing, entrepreneur-smashing, and innovation-obliterating corporate-state solutions. Join us!
by Bob Kuczewski » Wed Nov 16, 2011 9:58 pm
It would also do away with the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and make social websites like YouTube, Tumblr and Facebook, that host user content responsible for ensuring that their users do not post infringing material.
by Bob Kuczewski » Wed Nov 16, 2011 10:09 pm
Internet service providers would be required to modify their DNS look-up servers to return an empty response for these sites, making them virtually inaccessible, while search engines would need to filter results linking to such sites.
by Free » Wed Nov 16, 2011 10:18 pm
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.
by Bob Kuczewski » Wed Jul 07, 2021 9:06 am
by SamKellner » Tue Jul 13, 2021 3:46 pm
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