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Internet Blacklist Legislation
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Post by
207044
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658641
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Post by
91278
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Post by
Adamsm
H.O.L.E.'s Blog is about that.
PROTECT IP is the Senate version of a bill currently before Congress designed ostensibly to protect American business from “rogue websites” that are devoted to the counterfeit and distribution of copyrighted materials. On its face, its not a bad idea. The internet, as with all new frontiers, continues to be a bit wild and wooly, and the best way to ensure that it endures is to to make certain that it is not obviously injurious to any particular (legitimate) party.
The wording of the bill is centered on sites that possess no other “significant value” besides copyright infringement. It requires a DoJ court order, tAttorney General notice to the site owner, (where possible) and when action is taken, it does not actually remove the offending site. This seems pretty good… until you look at what the bill demands in lieu of simply taking down an illegal website.
Instead of removal, PROTECT IP requires total electronic shunning. The bad site remains, but the rest of the internet must pretend as though it does not. While you would still be able to navigate directly to the site, all hyperlinks everywhere, all advertisements, and all search engine results which point to the site would be required to be eliminated. Apparently the Senate feels it is too difficult to control a few bad actors, and that it is easier to tell everyone else in the world what to do. Seen slightly differently, this bill represents the Senate throwing up their hands and admitting that they can’t control the few bad actors, and hopefully relying on the people they can control to simply ignore the problem.
Because that always works.
Opposition experts point out that the internet was created so that all domain servers worldwide would hold identical lists of domains, all of which constantly reference and update each other. Attempting to create an “american blacklist” of shunned sites would throw our servers out of synch with the rest of the world, with unpredictable results. (Potentially “breaking” the american internet.) Pro-bill experts say this is hogwash, no more true than all the Chicken Little alarmists who wailed about the dangers of default swapping. (Okay, they probably didn’t put it just like that… but they didn’t agree.)
The bill was introduced in May with eleven co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle. It is intended for passage before Christmas, although a previous version, COICA, was shot down last year.
Amusingly, there is already a Mozilla plugin designed to take users to shunned websites.
Post by
pezz
What do you think of it pretty much it allows censorship while technically it is designed for copyright laws. How long will it be used for that till hey lets ban website x so I get more hits today meaning more moeny. Or lets ban website x thats going to cause me to drop 5 points in the poll.
Its being voted on today and has a very legitimate chance of passing.
I love having moeny. Seriously though I only understood about half of what you said. Please try for more intelligibility in your posts.
Post by
91278
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Post by
pezz
But I can't even spell herpderp?
(We need to do a better job of not dragging inside jokes all around Off-Topic)
Post by
Rankkor
But I can't even spell intelligibilinilibility
xDDDD ohh man you're killing me xD ROFL
Post by
204878
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Post by
ElhonnaDS
The content of the original post aside (I'm done saying the same things over and over), I think that if this kind of legislation was used correctly, it would actually be a good way to protect intellectual property. I know a lot of people are used to being able to get free versions of movies, music, games, software, books, etc., but it's completely fair for the government to put in some kind of legislation to protect the creators of these things. Also, it sounds like people determined to access these sites will still just be able to type in the address and go there, and I can write down the name of a website on a forum without it being a hyperlink if I want to tell people about it. They just don't want people to be able to stumble on it, or for it to be advertised.
If I was selling stolen cars, after all, and I had paid local stores to put up signs "Stolen Car Sale this Way" and "Come in here and find out how buying a stolen car can save you thousands", the cops would definitely have something to say about the shop owners profiting by advertising my illegal activities. It's not a freedom of speech issue to prevent people from putting up signs that say "Get your crack on the corner of 12th and Main, and get a free crack pipe while supplies last"- it's preventing the endorsement and facilitation of criminal activity.
That being said, the bill would have to be worded very carefully, to make sure that it can only be used in cases where the site is actually selling/distributing intellectual property they have no legal right to, and that is the primary function of the website. But as long as it is, I can't imagine that there would be too much "censorship" going on (other than, you know, not letting people pass around someone else's work that they need to make a living on). As far as I know (and I don't actually go to the sites, so I really don't) most file sharing sites and bootleg movie/game sites don't blog politics or economic policy on the side. They profit from the sale of pirated property, or from ad revenue paid for by people knowing that the popularity of the bootleg site will get them exposure.
A lot of people who are now out of work, and upset about the downfall of the economy, took degrees that prepare you for fields like computer programming, graphic and industrial design, mass media, art and marketing, business management with focuses in fields like music, gaming, show business and software, etc. Don't you think it's kind of ironic that people will complain about companies not having enough jobs to go around for the fields they trained for, then complain that they can't get the end result of what those companies produce for free?
Post by
204878
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Post by
Squishalot
There are already is though. The DMCA, PRO-IP and ACTA.
What's being proposed is more like the The Great Firewall of America.
The main reason for this, as tax lawyers have demonstrated time and time again, is that specific legislation is very easily circumvented and abused. That's why, for example, Australia's tax legislation was over 6000 pages long until about two thirds of it was culled in a tax review about 5 years ago.
Post by
204878
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Post by
buzz3070
http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/16/technology/sopa/index.htm?source=cnn_bin
Turns out the big boys dont like this idea either.
Post by
MyTie
I'm for less government control on just about everything.
Post by
909566
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Post by
334295
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Post by
204878
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Post by
Jubilee
Don't think blacklisting the sight does any good though. Why not go after the sites and just remove them? And maybe try to take legal action against the hoster (though this is probably impossible in most cases to pinpoint and individual).
Torrentless peer-to-peer file sharing already exists. People just use torrents because they're simpler and more easily disseminated. Even if you squashed every single torrent site in the world, you will never get rid of peer-to-peer sharing.
Post by
Squishalot
But I take it in that example it didn't get simplified to "If you make one mistake in your tax returns you lose all your money (website taken down) and go to jail for 5 years (sentence for posting a link to copyrighted material)"?
Actually, we have a provision in our tax law that basically says "If you don't have a commercial reason for your structuring your affairs (as if saving tax wasn't a valid commercial reason -_-;;) then you can be fined and jailed for tax evasion."
Is that sufficiently equivalent?
Please explain how they would lose money if you torrent it now and still buy it when it's being sold for $40 like you planned.
Cashflow (really more applicable for those with subscriber player-based costs), not to mention the fact that the value of the game that you're playing today is $60 (for example), not $40, so really, you're screwing them out of an extra $20 by downloading it in advance.
The rough equivalent action in tangible goods would be breaking into a department store and stealing an air conditioner worth $600, then coming back and giving them $400 when it's on sale in a month's time. Tell me you don't have an issue with that?
a = b ~> a2 = ab ~> a2 - b2 = ab - b2 ~> (a - b)(a + b) = b(a - b) ~> a + b = b ~> b + b = b ~> 2b = b ~> 2 = 1
Error: #DIV/0!(##RESPBREAK##)8##DELIM##Squishalot##DELIM##
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