New Legislation Would Crack Down On Online Piracy

GovTechGuy writes "Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee unveiled new legislation to combat online piracy on Monday that gives the Department of Justice more power to shut down websites trafficking in pirated movies, films or counterfeit goods. The new bill would give the government the authority to shut down the sites with a court order; the site owner would have to petition the court to have it lifted. The judge would have final say over whether a site should be shut down or not. Business groups including the US Chamber of Commerce hailed the legislation as a huge step forward."

Comments

Bye Bye EBAY

[vlm]

shut down websites trafficking in ... counterfeit goods

Bye Bye EBAY, and good riddance

Re:Bye Bye EBAY

[Anonymous Coward]

The government isnt going to shut down sites backed by the almighty $$$

But your movie blog is gone the first time you give a bad review.

Your political forum is shut down the first time some kid quotes 1984.

Etc, etc..

Re:Bye Bye EBAY

[EdIII]

Yes.......... but how?

When a website is "taken down" on a U.S based server that does not mean it is dead. Far from it. What happened was the hosting company shut it down due the court order. There are some hosting companies that will refuse based on principles.

Now let's say that the site owner is risking contempt of court if they move the website out of the U.S jurisdiction. Maybe they will get the site started up under somebody else? Sell all the corporate assets to a foreign company for $1.

I guess what I am getting at, is that shutting down a website has not been incredibly effective when the principles involved and hosting is not inside the U.S. Just how long will it take before the Justice Department can get a court order to interfere with the DNS records of allegedly infringing websites?

Manipulation and control over the DNS is what is ultimately required to do anything effective. This law will just drive all the businesses outside of the U.S, just like the DMCA has driven a lot of businesses outside as well.

It will be DNS too, since the Great Firewall of Freedom will be more expensive then the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined and even less effective.

Talk about a wonderful day for hosting providers huh?

Re:Bye Bye EBAY

[Anonymous Coward]

Different AC here...

Are you saying you can't envision a scenario where a law is used as carte blanche for censoring speech, shutting down competitors, and generally being a nuisance?

Become familiar with DMCA takedown notices, for starters.

Re:Bye Bye EBAY

[TooMuchToDo]

I own a small hosting company. We have operations in the US, Europe, and Asia. Each operation is owned by a seperate corporate entity. Chance favors the prepared.

Governmental Takeover?

[Sonny Yatsen]

Ever notice the same people who call Net Neutrality a government takeover of the internet are usually pretty quiet whenever somebody in Congress proposes a law that'd allow them to block or shut websites down?

Re:Governmental Takeover?

[jewishbaconzombies]

Just plant child porn. He'll be sharing a cell quicker than you can say "club fed".

Re:Governmental Takeover?

[causality]

Cool, so I can break into your website and deface it?

That's what securing your systems is for. The toughest possible law in the USA against unauthorized entry/access won't stop someone outside your jurisdiction doing this as the Internet is a global network. You take resonable steps to secure your systems or you're an irresponsible admin, it really is that simple. For better or for worse, no law is going to change that.

Start a smear campaign against you claiming you are an ex Nazi who likes having sex with dead relatives?

Supposing the person is within jurisdiction, existing libel laws would already cover this. The medium (newspaper, TV, Web site) should be irrelevant. If they are out of your jurisdiction, what were you going to do about that anyway?

Break into your online bank account and steal your money?

That's fraud and/or theft. The medium should be irrelevant.

Admit it, you want at least some government regulation of the Internet.

No discrimination on the basis of destination or origin sounds good to me. For the reactionary types out there who like to knee-jerk, traffic shaping that prioritizes traffic type such as VOIP does not need to consider the destination or origin.

Unless, I don't know, maybe you want a lawless old west where groups like Anonymous can wreak havoc unmolested by evil government types.

I like that better than excessive government control. I'm not going to say that such things are perfectly fine. They aren't. They just aren't as bad as the immense distrust the federal government has soundly earned.

Incidentally, if you refer to an attack Anonymous made against a certain "church" then it couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of people. While I don't agree with the methods used, some groups seem to think they're untouchable and an occasional reminder that they aren't isn't a completely bad thing.

Re:Governmental Takeover?

[causality]

I think that the big problem is that, in democracies of any sort, the mob makes the laws. Force of law is a very big stick to be wielding when so many disagree with the policies being enforced. In other words, people who champion the "law" nowadays are often just applauding their mob.

In this case, it's the "mob" that doesn't want these new laws. They were not the result of popular public pressure. It's a small minority of powerful special interests that have a lot of political clout. This is neither democracy nor a functioning representative republic.

While most people who call themselves libertarians are just selfish asshats, they do have a good point that we can't regulate everything. If something isn't covered by a basic law such as "don't steal", we have to look more closely to decide whether it's something we should be regulating, or something we should allow to self-regulate.

The idea of libertarian (small 'l') thought is simplicity itself. Consenting adults should be free to do whatever they please with their property and their own body and should be free to believe whatever they want. They should be able to exercise those freedoms whether or not someone else doesn't like it; anyone who doesn't like their actions is free to provide a counter-example in the form of how they deal with their own body, property, and beliefs.

The selfish asshats are the ones who would use the force of law to tell you what you may not do with your own body or your own property. They typically do this out of some kind of Puritannical desire to enforce their morality on others. The people who want to be left alone by them so long as they don't violate anyone else's freedoms are not selfish in the slightest. They are reasonable.

This is so easy to understand that I must conclude the numerous attempts to portray libertarian thought as some kind of anarcho-capitalism are simple demagoguery conducted by people who either have an agenda or have been propagandized by those who do. You do need a government to enforce notions like private property and civil rights and I know of no libertarian who would argue otherwise.

And even if we decide that it would be nice to regulate that thing, we also need to ask if it's feasible, cost-effective, or paid for in a fair manner. When it comes to almost anything, and the perfect example here is copyright, if people aren't generally ashamed to be caught doing something, there's no way a law is going to be effective without huge costs both in money and unintended consequences.

Copyright has become out of control. If it returned to a 12-year term after which time the work became public domain, it would regain respectability. It would then fulfill its intended purpose of granting a temporary monopoly to creators in exchange for an enriched public domain.

Think about it; the original 12-year term was during a time when the printing press and paper was the most technologically advanced means of distribution. We can now distribute many more works in far less time yet copyright lasts much longer. People don't respect copyright today for the simple reason that it is not respectable. It is no wonder they feel no shame for violating it. This is also easy to understand unless you subscribe to such a strict "law-and-order" mentality that you have abandoned all concept of understanding human nature and wish to replace that understanding with harsher threats of penalty.

Checks and Balances are soooo 1900's

[RingDev]

What's wrong with getting a court order?

Every time we drop court orders out of the mix, we wind up with abusive crap (see FBI and National Security Letters).

Just suck it up, deal with the paper work, and live in a nation governed by three equal branches of government that each work to ensure the other branches are not overstepping their bounds.

-Rrick

Re:Checks and Balances are soooo 1900's

[nebaz]

The Justice department would still have to get a court order, as they do now. The issue is that they could do so for a civil infraction, as opposed to a criminal infraction. Why the government is involved at all in civil justice is beyond me? Isn't that the job of the plaintiff?

Re:Checks and Balances are soooo 1900's

[Anonymous Coward]

"What's wrong with getting a court order?"

When the person requesting it is a government official acting on behalf of a 3rd party's interest when really it should be between the 1st and 3rd parties, not the government. Basically this is just another way that the **AA and member companies are going to foot taxpayers with the bill for propping up their outdated and inflexible business models. If their business model can't survive change, it should die. Isn't that the entire fucking point of capitalism? Compete or die.

No kidding

[Hatta]

Leahy said in a statement. "Protecting intellectual property is not uniquely a Democratic or Republican priority -- it is a bipartisan priority."

In other words, if you believe in Copyright reform, you have no choices at the polls.

Re:No kidding

[h4rr4r]

Of course, both US parties are Corporatist. Any differences are just to make it look like you have a choice.

One step forward, two steps back

[Anonymous Coward]

Business groups including the US Chamber of Commerce hailed the legislation as a huge step forward.

Yeah, a step forward for keeping their business models from dying off, thus preventing them from having to actually work to come up with new ones.

Meanwhile, this COULD be used to stamp out any site the US Government or the MAFIAA dislike. WikiLeaks? "Piracy." BAM, blocked. YouTube? "Piracy." BAM, blocked.

A step forward for government protectionism of failing business models, two steps back for free speech on the Internet.

What ever happened to...

[Darkness404]

The new bill would give the government the authority to shut down the sites with a court order; the site owner would have to petition the court to have it lifted

What ever happened to being innocent before guilty? In a free society, courts have to prove -you- guilty, not you have to prove your innocence.

Isn't it time that we realized that property is not property unless it is limited and move on?

Another law makes the US less competitive

[mkawick]

The DCMA notoriously was touted as solving the online piracy problem. The cold reality is that almost ten thousand small companies have shuttered their doors in the last almost 15 years. New startups are forced to prove that they are not infringing and while waiting they must cease all development. This can take months and cost upwards of 100K meaning that most tech startups must simply shutter their doors. Microsoft alone has filed DCMA takedown notices almost 500 times and is successful at shuttering the company nearly every time.

Now, media sites can be shut down for being "copyright infringing" with very little evidence to the contrary. A small company cannot fight the likes of MS, IBM, Apple, Sun, or the host of other awful DCMA bastards and now they'll need to worry about Bartlesman, Dreamworks, Pixar, and the like. This simply makes it impossible to start a new media company because all that the media conglomerates have to do is claim that someone is stealing and without your company being informed, you can be shut down. The DCMA shuts down software and this new rule will shutdown new media.

The DCMA is one of the main reasons that more and more companies are successfully competing in software development overseas and why more and more software is coming from Russia, China, Norway, and so on. It is becoming impossible to create a new software startup. And now in the land of unintended consequences, we just shipped all of our movie, music, and game production overseas.

There have been no new Googles for over a decade and we wonder where all of the jobs are going.

Re:Another law makes the US less competitive

[ScrewMaster]

There have been no new Googles for over a decade and we wonder where all of the jobs are going.

Every empire throughout history (whether military or economic) has eventually failed. It's inevitable. Now, sometimes another empire with more on the ball rolls over them. That happens. In most cases, though, it's because they shot themselves in the foot. In other words, their own governments failed to perform their duties under the law, became corrupt, sold out their own citizens and caused the entire house of cards to collapse. Fact is, Uncle Sam's feet are stumps at this point. Yeah, it will suck to be an American when the lights finally go out, but that's the way it's going. I'm trying to decide if I should get out before it's too late. Where to, that's the question. I want good food and fast broadband. Cool smartphones would be a plus.

See, this is why the media cartels are so evil. It's not just because they want to protect their movies and music ... it's that they're willing to throw the entire country, all of us in fact, to the wolves, under the train, under the bus, into the fire, in order to get what they want. Worse, it's the naked corruption and malfeasance in office (if not outright treason) of Federal officials that is allowing to happen.

I hate them all.

Re:Another law makes the US less competitive

[mkawick]

Try these... some are companies, some are blogs... but you get the idea

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/02/microsoft-cryptome/
http://blogcritics.org/politics/article/first-amendment-under-attack-feds-shut/
http://boingboing.net/2010/07/23/dmca.html
http://vigilant.tv/article/3328/blackboxvotingorg-shut-down-under-dmca-for-linking
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2007/09/intellectual-property-laws-abused-in-quest-to-shutdown-lowes-sucks-com.ars

There are hundreds... I simply googled: "companies shut down by DMCA"

This one is plain weird:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/_improper_use_of_copyright.php

You don't understand a thing.

[www.sorehands.com]

The MPAA, RIAA, and DMA have bought laws.

Don't you think that they have a right to expect a fair value for the legislators that they buy?

What good is buying a congressperson if you can't get the laws you want written the way you want?

Re:You don't understand a thing.

[siddesu]

Your question is rhetorical, but let me bite.

This is happening because enforcing civil law on behalf of the Hungry Artists is a costly and difficult exercise in the US.

Especially so since you have evil commies like our resident slashdotter lawyer, who is destroying business value by promoting socialist ideas like fair use, copyright limits and the like on his blog.

Dumping the enforcement on the government has benefits for all involved.

It is good for the companies -- they get to save some extra buck on prosecution and enforcement, and face significantly lower legal risks while protecting their valuable business model (which benefits the shareholders, and our great capitalist society).

It is good for the government -- with little cooperation from the interested parties, they get a nice tool for shooting things on the web they don't like.

It is good for the consumer -- for access to unapproved, and potentially dangerous and unlawful content is restricted.

Finally, since this will obviously help combat child porn and drug abuse, it is good for the future of this great nation. Why don't you think of the children?

No matter how I look at it, this is a beneficial measure for everyone except the few Communist slashdotters who abuse the internet to steal from our creative industry.

Color me surprised...

[JaredOfEuropa]

... that they actually mention piracy as the reason to implement this. Here in the Netherlands, similar legislation is being prepared, which by the way will require no court order whatsoever to have a site shut down, the public prosecutor can decide on a whim. The reason? You guessed it, "saving the children", or shutting down kiddie porn sites. As the minister stated: "Not to worry, but this is just for kiddie porn. Oh, and for other illegal stuff (like online piracy). Oh, and that includes hate speech too. Probably certain elements of a particular party we don't like much as well. But we'll exercise proper care" No checks, balances or even limits placed on this awesome power given to the prosecutors office... already famous for exercising proper care in sending a 10-man police force to do a nighttime raid on the home of an apparently extremely dangerous cartoonist making "hate-instigating" (i.e. subversive) cartoons. Or allowing cities to do door-to-door searches of homes looking for indoor weed plantations... but sending along municipal guys to check you're not claiming unemployment benefits while living it large, or having a dog without paying the tax. Oh and these are proper searches: fail to be home when they drop by a few times, and they will take a crowbar to your door.

Do not ever give in to pleas to relax controls to make life for the prosecutor a little easier "to catch more criminals". It's never about criminals nor child-molesters. We let them do it here, and allowed the government to thoroughly politicise the prosecutors' office, then took away the judiciary branch' power to check and balance. The result is not pretty... All these so called inconvenient controls exist for a reason.

Resistance is futile?

[Steeltoe]

All the more reason to move over to I2P, or other general darknets, which can provide application-agnostic anonymous networking with end-to-end encryption. Why wait for the inevitable when we can build a secure internet on top of the old one?

With I2P, there are no central DNS servers and, the ISP / IP-address of a specific service is ideally not knowable, neither are the ISP / IP-addresses of visitors to e.g. a political website. I2P being p2p, no authority has the power to shut down a site, prevent visitors using services in the I2P "darkcloud" or even snoop on the network activities (without using leaking honeypots, assimilating keys somehow or perform (D)DOS attacks). I2P uses random ports, so it's not as simple to block as blocking a portrange either. Being based on p2p coupled with encrypted tunnels, I2P resists most common attacks, even by formidable adversaries such as governments. You can run any website, any type of application, over I2P, however care must of course be taken to eliminate "identity leaks" in the application layer, even though the network-layer takes care of most anonymity, encryption and p2p.

So if you are to host "objectionable" content, whatever that may mean across the globe, I'd suggest taking a peek at I2P, as the "normal" internuts seems to be screwed in the short/mid-term. Heck, we should probably start using I2P for any and all purposes, so that I2P content is "legitimate" and equally protected from being censored and snooped upon in the first place.

I2P main site as a start. It's java and open source, so easily cross-platform and performs well (for a Java app anyway):
http://www.i2p2.de/

Wikilleaks

[ktetch-pirate]

If you look closely at the bill, it's actually usefull to shutdown sites that contain classified documents too, such as ooh Wikileaks... That, I think, is the real target. http://ktetch.blogspot.com/2010/09/us-senators-in-big-copyrights-pocket.html

No Electronic Theft Act (1997)

[westlake]

The issue is that they could do so for a civil infraction, as opposed to a criminal infraction.

Copyright infringement can be prosecuted as a federal felony charge.

The United States No Electronic Theft Act (NET Act), a federal law passed in 1997, provides for criminal prosecution of individuals who engage in copyright infringement, even when there is no monetary profit or commercial benefit from the infringement. Maximum penalties can be five years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines. The NET Act also raised statutory damages by 50%.
In addition, it added a threshold for criminal liability where the infringer neither obtained nor expected to obtain anything of value for the infringement. In response to the NET Act, the US Sentencing Commission stiffened sanctions for intellectual property theft offenses. NET Act

The federal government has the constitutional right to criminally prosecute violations of federally granted property rights.

Prosecuting economic crimes with an interstate or international dimension is primarily a federal responsibility.

In a service-based economy, the entertainment industry generates a lot of jobs and a lot of domestic and export dollars. Many of those jobs and many of those dollars going directly into the pockets of the American geek - and not to the Russian or the Swede in Pirate Bay.

Two Individuals Sentenced to Prison for Conspiring to Traffic in Counterfeit Slot Machines and Computer Programs [casino gambling software] [August 20]

Thibodaux Man Pleads Guilty To Violation Of Digital Millennium Copyright Act [XBox 360 mods and pirated games] [maximum exposure, 5 years and $500,000, sentencing in 2011] [August 11]

Manhattan Federal Court Orders Seizures Of Seven Websites For Criminal Copyright Infringement In Connection With Distribution Of Pirated Movies Over The Internet [June 30]

Texas Man Admits Involvement In Software Piracy Conspiracy [Warez] [August 10]