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First it was not for US citizens, then it was to be changed to exclude US citizens, then .....
All you have now is a signing statement about values to protect you from indefinite detention :)
As for US law enforcement and the inter tubes, recall the 84,000 "a domain" website efforts:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110220/17533013176/ice-finally-admits-it-totally-screwed-up-next-time-perhaps-itll-try-due-process.shtml
Ignore the pre committee PR and follow the bills :) Even the 2 page ones like S. 1698 the Enemy Expatriation Act

They may be actually waking up, or maybe someone showed them the article on Techdirt that seems to indicate a flaw in the plan. The author of the Techdirt article believes that since SOPA/PIPA are targeted at foreign sites and the registrars for .com and org are US companies, SOPA/PIPA are actually not applicable. It may be that the desired "amendment" is to try and patch this loophole.

> People shoplift. Does this mean that we should abolish our current system of commerce?
1. Apples and Oranges. You are comparing with the act of physical removing an object preventing another person from using that resource, vs the act of copying something that allows BOTH people to enjoy the use of that resource.
2. Economy/Commerce is nethanderal thinking -- literally buying into the false belief that "There is Never Enough." Its time to end archaic thinking.

> and unlike the other forms of intellectual property
1. Intellectual Property, is neither intellectual, nor property
See:
If Intellectual Property Is Neither Intellectual, Nor Property, What Is It?
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080306/003240458.shtml
and
Against Intellectual Monopoly
http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm

2. The fact that is is illegal to share a number is insane. The fact that a number can be used to _represent_ audio, video, text, etc. created by someone who doesn't want others to share that number is irrelevant. The basis of civilization is FOUNDED upon the fact that people SHARE.

3. Those who charge for "I.P." are doing it out of greed. It is time the human race grows up, and realizes there is more to life then money -- more then just getting, but giving.

And they only loan the artists a bunch of money and won't give them a cent until it is paid back. link

Use the second link.

The original source of this message is the column on Techdirt named It is time to stop pretending to endorse the copyright monopoly. The ITWorld reporter (the first link in the story) muddles the message to some degree, and also introduces heavy bias into the story (see the headers over the comments section, for instance).

The original message is that yes, the copyright monopoly (or four/five monopolies) are ridiculous, but we should stop pretending to support them all while criticizing the draconian laws that are de facto needed to sustain them. IT World muddles this to that we should stop "following" the copyright monopoly laws. That is a different message (which I might have said too, but not in this particular article).

Romney has come out and slammed SOPA today, while many professionals have said Obama will sign it because of the vast money he gets from Hollywood. Romney gets my thumbs up because while there is no perfect candidate, being in favor of SOPA is an automatic disqualification. The fact that Obama has come out in the past and said he will veto bills, but hasn't had the guts to same the same about SOPA/PIPA reflects poorly on his knowledge of the situation. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120108/00322817330/did-mitt-romney-just-come-out-against-sopapipa.shtml http://merrimack.patch.com/articles/video-mitt-romney-slams-sopa

I'm not surprised by the strange names on the list considering that some companies didn't even know they were listed as SOPA supporters

Good memory, I'd forgotten about Bloomberg's Double Standard On Mixing Games With Work.

As someone stated in an above comment:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110508/16543114199/belgian-appeals-court-says-google-must-pay-up-linking-to-newspaper-websites.shtml

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110718/16394915157/belgian-newspapers-give-permission-to-google-to-return-them-to-search-results.shtml

As someone stated in an above comment:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110508/16543114199/belgian-appeals-court-says-google-must-pay-up-linking-to-newspaper-websites.shtml

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110718/16394915157/belgian-newspapers-give-permission-to-google-to-return-them-to-search-results.shtml

Are you thinking of the case where a newspaper sued Google and demanded they remove links to them from all their pages? http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110508/16543114199/belgian-appeals-court-says-google-must-pay-up-linking-to-newspaper-websites.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110718/16394915157/belgian-newspapers-give-permission-to-google-to-return-them-to-search-results.shtml

Are you thinking of the case where a newspaper sued Google and demanded they remove links to them from all their pages? http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110508/16543114199/belgian-appeals-court-says-google-must-pay-up-linking-to-newspaper-websites.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110718/16394915157/belgian-newspapers-give-permission-to-google-to-return-them-to-search-results.shtml

similar to what already happened in Belgium with a newspaper: Belgian Appeals Court Says Google Must Pay Up For Linking To Newspaper Websites

a few months later: Belgian Newspapers 'Give Permission' To Google To Return Them To Search Results

similar to what already happened in Belgium with a newspaper: Belgian Appeals Court Says Google Must Pay Up For Linking To Newspaper Websites

a few months later: Belgian Newspapers 'Give Permission' To Google To Return Them To Search Results

I grew up with musicians

Which is funny. You must have known some pretty shitty musicians. I know several who are not big label, but they're making a medium income living doing local concerts and getting a couple albums out with smaller labels and even on iTunes. Some have had to switch bands a few times, due to break-ups or people moving away.

Thanks to MafiAA Accounting - something that they deal with even on the lower level labels - musicians generally MAKE MORE MONEY these days by touring and doing concerts than they ever do off of their albums. Ask Great Big Sea about how they make money for instance: "“We’ve always been focused more on the live show than anything else,” he said. “Certainly, with the record industry the way it is, the live show has become so important to a band’s career. It used to be part of it, now it’s practically all of it. It’s the only way you can make money, pay the bills. ".

Live performances ARE how musicians make the money these days, and you are full of shit saying otherwise.

Also, I've never heard of organised motorcycle tours

What do you call Sturgis?

A target for a copyright troll?

You forgot the IP! You can be omni-efficient and omni-organized and still fail if you haven't paid the omnipresent patent trolls. Looks as if the process of ascertaining a level of hunger and giving an allotment of bread and wine to cure the affliction may soon be patentable, as well.
  WWJD?

They have such a backlog of patents that the USPO basically has decided that it is up to the courts to decide if a patent is valid or not. I cannot find the exact article that states this, but I did find this one in a past /. article. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100819/12015210689.shtml

See:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111220/03135817138/myth-that-sopapipa-only-impact-foreign-sites.shtml

As posted by somebody else already, those law firms apparently think it's sad too; http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111223/09051617180/law-firms-removing-their-name-sopa-supporters-list-sopa-support-crumbling.shtml

There been some shrinking of the "Judiciary Committee’s list of SOPA supporters", perhaps due to cold water? Compare this list (439 entries, dec 21) with the 'official' list (142 entries, dec 23).

Beyond the law firms that have complained, I can't help but note that Electronic Arts aren't in the PDF.

Also, every time some actor tweets anti-SOPA sentiment, make sure to point out to them that the Screen Actors Guild are official SOPA supporters according to the judiciary.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111223/09051617180/law-firms-removing-their-name-sopa-supporters-list-sopa-support-crumbling.shtml

BearShare, Limewire, Kazaa, and even Usenet.

They even use companies like MediaDefender to disrupt P2P networks.

Cheezburger network CEO Ben Huh may pull over 1000 domains from GoDaddy in protest of GoDaddy's support for SOPA. Gizmodo has a list of companies supporting SOPA. Jeff Epstein has instructions for bulk transfers away from GoDaddy.

Adam Savage has also warned that SOPA could destroy the internet as we know it. Reddit concurs that SOPA could destroy them.

Two congressional staffers, Allison Halataei and Lauren Pastarnack, who helped write SOPA/PIPA become entertainment industry lobbyists

Here's the smartphone lawsuit graph. Qualcomm and Broadcomm fought each other just as hard a few years back (and also ended up with an injunction against importing phones), but it didn't make as much noise in the press. I think because Apple news is good for selling newspapers, the fight has taken places a bit more publicly. The good thing is that the larger media has started to take notice of the evils of patents.

The former is completely unverifiable. It came second-hand via a developer. Here's a source. There are many like it. http://lists.ozlabs.org/pipermail/cbe-oss-dev/2010-February/007202.html

As for the rootkits:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20051108/0117239.shtml

They have a history of mistreating paying customers. I imagine the freebies (all very old games, of course) for the PSN outage were just a business decision that wound up in the customers' favor. Their other business decisions ended up in their favor, to the detriment of (some) of their customers.

They have this guy, too:
Chris Dodd, Ex-Senator, Named MPAA Chairman
at $1.3 million/year.

Stretching the truth to pass SOPA:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111214/04100017081/chris-dodd-resorting-to-outright-lying-desperate-attempt-to-get-sopa-passed.shtml

More:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/05/24/christopher-dodd-as-mpaa-chairman-can-he-save-hollywood.html

If the government intended to improve public transit it would abolish the government established Taxi Cab monopolies that it creates.

Government established taxi cab monopoly abolition would increase safety. Workers who specialize in driving will do a better job, and they will drive more safely (since they get more driving experience), than individuals that only generalize in driving as a part of their life. Taxi cab companies have incentive to avoid hiring and to get rid of reckless drivers that speed or drive recklessly (ie: ones that get tickets for doing such). Taxi cab drivers don't want to get fired (and they don't want a police giving them a ticket, which could also cost them their license or a temporary suspension of it and hence their jobs), they want to stay employable (don't want traffic tickets going on your record, looks bad when trying to get hired), and so they will make more of an effort to drive safely. If an individual who's not in the transportation business gets a ticket, it's not that big of a deal, because he doesn't have to answer to his boss about it since his boss probably doesn't care. If an individual loses his license or gets it temporarily suspended, he can find public or other transportation (pay a friend to give him a ride). If a taxi cab driver does so, that's his job. He wants to drive safely.

Drunk driving would also be less of a problem. More people who plan to get drunk will take a taxi to the places where they plan to drink and back home (since taxi cabs will be far more ubiquitous and cheaper, as they are in other countries without such monopolies) and so a sober person will be driving. This makes things safer not only for the drunks, but for the sober people on the road who would otherwise be endangered by the drunks. Don't let politicians grandstand about "I want to reduce drunk driving fatalities". It's a lie that gives them an excuse to grandstand for political points. If they really wanted to reduce these things, they would abolish the taxi cab monopolies that they create. The only thing they truly care about is the plutocracy that they create, not about the safety and welfare of their citizens or the environment.

I noticed that in Chili, where no such monopolies exist, a lot of people don't drive when compared to here. They take taxi cabs everywhere. Far fewer people own cars and families own far fewer cars. People frequently take taxi cabs to work, to the grocery store, to visit friends and relatives, and across much longer distances. It's cheaper. The people who picked us up at the airport even took a taxicab to the airport and we took a taxicab back to their place.

More on that here

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110408/12250213829/study-shows-better-data-apps-improve-public-transit-usage-so-why-do-so-many-transit-authorites-block-useful-apps.shtml#c15

methinks you forgot the reality of your statement: they rely on having linux on them (which, no, just having custom firmware will not fix because the removal of otherOS also means it's not legal to flash custom firmware), but also because they rely on PS3's having linux on them for hardware replacement.

From the air force on this exact issue, and why you, sir are the one who is not at all bright:

"We will have to continue to use the systems we already have in hand," the lab told Ars, but "this will make it difficult to replace systems that break or fail. The refurbished PS3s also have the problem that when they come back from Sony, they have the firmware (gameOS) and it will not allow Other OS, which seems wrong. We are aware of class-action lawsuits against Sony for taking away this option on systems that use to have it."

Well, at least we can sleep safely tonight knowing that it wasn't our government directly that was responsible for the censorship right? I mean we all know they are pawns of our mighty corporations as they are bought and paid for many times over - hell they apparently get ALL their advice from them as well...

As we noted in our post, the government relied on an executive at the RIAA to claim that the works it used as evidence to seize the domain were infringing -- despite the fact that the RIAA was in no position to know if the rightsholders had authorized the music sent to the site (and, in one case, despite the fact that the musician was not affiliated with the RIAA).

Personally, I think we are simply F'd!! But what do I know? /sigh

an US judge just ruled that having a .com doesn't necessarily mean it's under US jurisdiction:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111206/11351416992/facebook-fails-its-argument-that-faceporn-is-under-us-jurisdiction-using-com.shtml

Facebook argued in its filings that Faceporn targets a United States audience by using a ".com" address, and by virtue of the fact that Faceporn is an interactive website with 250 users in California and 1000 users in the United States. The court says that these allegations alone are not sufficient to satisfy the standard for personal jurisdiction.

it's called censorship

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111208/08225217010/breaking-news-feds-falsely-censor-popular-blog-over-year-deny-all-due-process-hide-all-details.shtml

The reality of the 21st century is that *everyone* can be a journalist, whether you consider them one or not. You can define it any way you want, but anyone can be a part of the press: reporting, feedback, facilitating, etc. Good/factual/relevant journalist? That's up to one's own interpretation.

So what you call it, isn't really relevant. The laws haven't been updated to respect this, but with technology it's held true for quite some time.

Well stated, Citizen Journalist!

The reality of the 21st century is that *everyone* can be a journalist, whether you consider them one or not. You can define it any way you want, but anyone can be a part of the press: reporting, feedback, facilitating, etc. Good/factual/relevant journalist? That's up to one's own interpretation.

So what you call it, isn't really relevant. The laws haven't been updated to respect this, but with technology it's held true for quite some time.

Well stated, Citizen Journalist!

The reality of the 21st century is that *everyone* can be a journalist, whether you consider them one or not. You can define it any way you want, but anyone can be a part of the press: reporting, feedback, facilitating, etc. Good/factual/relevant journalist? That's up to one's own interpretation.

So what you call it, isn't really relevant. The laws haven't been updated to respect this, but with technology it's held true for quite some time.

The reality of the 21st century is that *everyone* can be a journalist, whether you consider them one or not. You can define it any way you want, but anyone can be a part of the press: reporting, feedback, facilitating, etc. Good/factual/relevant journalist? That's up to one's own interpretation.

So what you call it, isn't really relevant. The laws haven't been updated to respect this, but with technology it's held true for quite some time.

I have always believed that there would be no form of creation if there were no longer to be respect for upholding and respect for copyright and author’s rights.

--Sarkozy

Building on top of DNSSEC leaves you maximally as secure as DNSSEC itself. The IETF document you reference in your paper, "Threat Analysis of the Domain Name System", lists among several weaknesses:

Like DNS itself, DNSSEC's trust model is almost totally hierarchical. While DNSSEC does allow resolvers to have special additional knowledge of public keys beyond those for the root, in the general case the root key is the one that matters. Thus any compromise in any of the zones between the root and a particular target name can damage DNSSEC's ability to protect the integrity of data owned by that target name. This is not a change, since insecure DNS has the same model.

In any SSL+DNSSEC paradigm you are trusting:

• the root (ICANN)
• the TLDs (e.g. Verisign)
• the registratrs

Which is very concerning, is it not?

What about ICANN's not-legally-authorized seizure of domains? What about Verisign's domain slamming or DNS hijacking (breaking NXDOMAIN) or their own domain seizures? What about how registrars are often as sketchy as CAs and not as vetted?

Please can we move away from DNSSEC or any other overly centralized and rigid (i.e. choiceless) system as a foundation for our security?

> Oh, bullshit. No one "drives" those people to pilfer, they *want* to pilfer and find ways.

What "people"? I was addressing a specific person in that post, and explicitly stated how he was an example of my thesis. I was not aspiring to try to explain all the possible reasons why people would want to disregard copyright law --- just him. His reason, in the scenario I gave, had nothing to do with "pilfering" (at least as I would understand your use of that term).

You, on the other hand, claim to understand why everyone "pilfers" --- whatever that exactly means in your eyes. How interesting. Have you always had this super-power?

Do you always think that disregard for copyright law is automatically associated with "pilfering"? It seems it isn't necessarily, or at least with large-scale "pilfering" (the linked study shows that many Americans think it is OK to share copyrighted works on a small scale with family or friends, but many less engage in larger-scale infringement).

> People rip off content because they want to rip off content.

Pray tell, what would you call the kind of disregard of copyright law I actually proposed in my post? Is that also "pilfering" or "ripping off"?

And as for your opinion about the content cartels having totally lost their marketing power versus small independents --- I rather think you're being naive.

Unfortunately EU law doesn't seem to actually mean very much. France has been going around and banning people from the internet. That's actually kind of behind what the US does.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111004/13463316198/france-continues-mass-processing-infringement-accusations-60-people-get-third-strike-notice-650000-get-first-strike.shtml

Pfizer are part of this because Canada and 20 other smaller countries' IP block comes under the SOPA regulation. They can simply close down the legal online Pharmacists in Canada causing untold damage to the poor in the US.

Ron Paul Comes Out Against SOPA; Joins Other Elected Officials Saying No To The Great Firewall Of America

It's good to know that some people in government are unhappy with this. I didn't know Paul's stance on internet issues before, but now I know that he's against crap like this.

Microsoft exposed as a thuggish patent troll, who woulda thunkit?

Well if you pondered the fact that Nathan Myhrvold cut his teeth at Microsoft (was former CTO), and that Microsoft is the heir to IBM's empire (which is funded in no small part through massive patents), then this is really logical.

Techdirt has a great article about this: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111110/10135116708/glimpse-future-under-sopa-warner-bros-admits-it-filed-many-false-takedown-notices.shtml

It makes some interesting parallels to SOPA and E-Parasites bills and why the laws shouldn't be passed.

EMI has been the only label trying to shake some sense into the RIAA, read for example here, tried to convince the RIAA that suing music fans MAYBE isn't such a great idea.

Universal, on the other hand, have been the FUCKING TROLL DOUCHEBAGS of the industry!

Here:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111019/17424316421/louisiana-makes-it-illegal-to-use-cash-secondhand-sales.shtml

While I agree w/ the idea of taxing large transactions (esp. when money crosses a national border), I think the implementation needs to be carefully worded and reviewed and to have a lengthy virtual test phase (where transactions over a reasonably long period of time are evaluated as to how much the tax would have been on same, who would have been affected, and what effect the tax would have had on whether or no the transaction would have occurred).

In particular, the definition of large transaction has to be such that it will move upward w/ inflation.

William

GP is right though: The fact that there were drawings should have tipped them off that maybe their analysis was incomplete, rather than drawing the unwarranted conclusion of "Well, they must have just made them up".

This is the scientific equivalent of those idiots that drive off of cliffs because of what their GPS tells them rather than what they see with their own two eyes.

Last week Time Warner announced third-quarter profits of $822 million. If the little people working on Warner films (i.e. those who aren't stars or executives) aren't being paid enough, and are "suffering", it isn't because of copyright infringement. And that's before you take into account the wonder of Hollywood accounting. The little person is likely to be screwed whatever happens, if their employer is bringing in $3bn a year and doesn't have a conscience.

Except studies have shown that for red light cameras some localities will shorten the yellow light timing to increase the number of tickets issued. So it's not quite as paranoid as it could be.

see? you racist, small-dicked paranoid conservatives think alike! imagine that!

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110518/17015914326/what-4th-amendment-indiana-sheriff-says-random-warrantless-house-to-house-searches-are-okay.shtml

btw, i'm totally buying your purchase history from visa so i can anticipate where to find you in public again. p.s. a car almost hit you last time you looked over your shoulder, be careful there, bud! look both ways first, and then behind you! geez, you're no use to me dead...