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Internet Blacklist Back In Congress
Adrian Lopez writes "A bill giving the government the power to shut down Web sites that host materials that infringe copyright is making its way quietly through the lame-duck session of Congress, raising the ire of free-speech groups and prompting a group of academics to lobby against the effort. The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) was introduced in Congress this fall by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT). It would grant the federal government the power to block access to any Web domain that is found to host copyrighted material without permission."
... I produce the sound of loud laughter aimed at any blacklisting effort ever made.
Too big to fail.
Fucking Repugs... oh, wait, that's a D.
Obama isn't going to veto this if it passes. Just so you know.
the freemen with the most money make the rules. yet, there are still a lot of ayn randists who would still attempt selling free market/capitalist bullshit to us :
money is power. if you allow any individual or group to gain more money than others, you practically give the power in their hands. no amount of 'equality' legislation in the political arena, can offset this economic power; the one with the gold makes the rule.
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"Grandpa, you broke my [facebook|youtube|blogspot|twitter|etc]!"
Don't those folks ever care about the children?
Check your premises.
Got a site you want to shut down? Just a) post some copyrighted material there, and b) complain. Problem solved.
With the huge backlog of important legislation requiring immediate attention in an already gridlocked congress, it's sad this is even being considered. I guess the financial incentives to its backers are just too large. Set the controls for the heart of the sun, we are doomed.
You gotta help out your Hollywood Friends before you lose the majority.
You're as bad as the Republicans (i.e. shills for megacorps).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Gawdlmighty damn, if only once, just once they would make even a token attempt to do something useful. sighhhhhhhhh. Congress is a welfare program for people who can't hold down real jobs.
This would be annoying but would it really matter in the long run anyway? How hard would it be to use a proxy. The companies pushing this draconian copyright crap need to move on. On the other hand worrying about them changing their ways is probably just as fruitless as their efforts to stem the tide of change. :)
check out the Mp3 Garbler I built!
I just have to post copyrighted material in the user comments section to get an entire website taken down! Mauhahahahahahahaahahahaha! Say goodbye to slashdot, cnn.com and foxnews.com!
I've been saying for a long time that the day will come very soon when typing in thepiratebay.org or other torrent site will only get you a "This site has been blocked for illegal material" message. the only question was whether it would happen by government mandate or voluntary ISP decision.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
its still at the hands of united states. this, actually could cause them to totally lose it though. it was high time.
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That's all we need, is more lists for the government to maintain. They do a bang up job already with no-fly.
Not that it matters anymore, but I just wrote both of my senators explaining to them how this will be used as a club to quash free speech. Shame they both get so much money from Disney.
There is a war going on for your mind.
I hope they realize there is no real way to distinguish a google torrent search from a pirate bay torrent search.
On the other hand, actual hosting- might be trickier- just Youtube then.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
As soon as they pass legislation like this, people will just move to using proxy servers. Proxy servers lists change hourly. And I do not expect this to survive a challenge in court -- it is a restriction of trade and commerce, and it will only be a matter of time before they shut down the wrong site, cost them millions, and are forced to pay restitution.
So let's be clear -- this isn't about piracy. It's about killing free speech. Because no sooner will they pass this, than they'll add a rider saying they can shut down sites which host "terrorist" material as well... and then Greenpeace, PETA, and a lot of other political undesireables will find themselves on the list.
GO AMERICA!
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
so wait, HOW exactly are they filtering?
Domain name - I'll change my domain, and out of blacklist/their retardedness
IP address - ISP's are going to get hurt here, unable to use one of their ip addresses (or for shared hosting ?....maybe?) just buy a new one
IP address blocks - ISPs and legal sites going to be hit hard.
on another note, I'd like to say how stupid "COICA" sounds. that is all.
property would take the place of money. instead of cash donations, there would be property donations. get some logic.
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While it's often said that a Lame Duck congress can't get much done, it is the perfect time for them to pass unpopular legislation that powerful lobbies want passed. It's one of the few times congress can get away with it while having very few political repercussions.
I'm a libertarian (small, weak government), not an anarchist (no government), but just stop and think: If there was no government and no congress, then there would be no COICA. And no COICA would mean no way for the Corporations from stealing our stuff. We could pirate books, songs, shows without limit.
instead, your rulers would be the corporations. with their private 'security' divisions.
what you speak of, is basically feudalism. that very environment gave rise to feudalism in early middle ages.
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the democrats in america, arent even close to s in the word socialism. they are more capitalist than the right wingers in europe or other places of the world. your political spectrum is WAY too skewed to right, so that even the socialist there, is capitalist.
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Islamic morality says that porn is evil.
American morality says that sharing the ideas of others is evil.
Hi there.
Do I have permission to use the text of your post for my own purposes in any way which is not intentionally slanderous? Wait, cancel that - what if we nationally publicized the Creative Commons abbreviations?
Meanwhile, how do we actually prove the original source of anything? Anything created by a corp will be copyrighted by a corp and anything created anywhere else will be stolen by a corp and faux-copyrighted to them with them daring you looking at the fangs of Harding in Legal.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
It's the damn voters. It's the voters who keep sending these sacks of shit back to DC.
The very fact that you can "spend your way into a seat" is an indictment of the voters and not the money. It means that most of them are so shallow and stupid that they act like a kitten caught between competing shiny things.
The only thing that'll fix our system is to find a way to disenfranchise such people.
So is this blacklisting to be done without a proper copyright infringement trial? If so, I'm not sure how it would be legal. If it is to be done via a proper copyright trial and a party is found guilty, I'd think we don't need a special blacklist law. Or I'm completely missing the point. Of course, when it comes to things made by Congresscritters, there doesn't necessarily have to be any logic or reason applied. Sigh.
COICA? What, no backronym? This really is a Lame Duck Congress...
Will this bill even be able to do what it's actually set out to do? So they block DNS resolution to evilp2psite.net, so long as I can still obtain that IP address through a secondary channel, they haven't exactly stopped anything, just inconvenienced people.
pray tell me ?
...
EVERYthing in a capitalist society, hinges on money. that includes the potential of getting elected. you need to have enough financial power to be able to even get your voice heard, if you are a candidate. going from town to town with train, doesnt cut it anymore. you need to buy ads, appear in mass media, get your name and opinions heard, to be even considered a candidate. you cant just be a candidate by registering as a candidate in the elections.
and, even financial power doesnt cut it anymore. no mass media outlet will let you on, and speak in their channels, even accept and run your ads, if your views do not support theirs. even more, your interests coincide with theirs. so, basically not even financial power is enough ; you need to be friendly with established hierarchy - no, you actually need to be THEIR puppet candidate, so that you can actually make your voice heard.
and what the average citizen can do ? the only candidates they can see, are the ones, well, they can actually see and hear.
the capitalist system, and its resultant established elite hierarchy, doesnt let anybody but their own puppets to be seen.
and naturally, these share the votes.
im not even going to go into constant brainwashing and 'opinion shaping' that can be affected, by using the power of big established media conglomerates. there is a whole network, sitting on top at #1, by spewing outright lies and hatred, despite they dont legally call themselves 'news' in courts anymore. (while defending against libel).
so in an environment like this, what do you expect citizens to do
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That is a relatively good political philosophy, though. It's a huge step up from the mainstream political philosophy of "I'm with the government and I want to hurt someone." I'll take childish over evil any fucking day.
You know what is childish? Thinking that the mainstream political philosophy is "I'm with the government and I want to hurt someone."
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Too many times have major news outlets such as the NYT hosted images from Wikimedia without giving proper attribution. I cite Cartman V. Family Guy to point out that if you can create exception for one website, you can create an exception for another, and another, and another.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
A friend of mine, who understands about computers comes to my place on saturday evening, he brings a large box , like a big floppy disk , and i copys movies, musics and games it to my computer , i ussually pay him a few beers after that :)
"I am with the Government and I want to control everything and I don't give a shit if it hurts someone."
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
FTA...
Support
Motion Picture Association of America
US Chamber of Commerce
Screen Actors Guild
Viacom
International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States
As a bona-fide leftist, I was disgusted to see B.O. lift all kinds of left-sounding rhetoric during the 08 campaign. That the whole new kiddie/web2.0 set was pretty much totally fooled, even more despicable. His justice dept has continued Bush's legal battles (pro-"Patriot Act" et al..).. which has met deafening silence in the megaconglomerate (stands to gain) MSM.... his basic econ has been the wet dreams of Larry Summers and Geithner etc.. then note how the MSM eagerly promoted the billionaire-backed faux populism known as "Tea Party".. while continuing the blanket censorship of the Greens and all leftists, which has happened since Greens came to the US but has picked up steam as Dems' lies get more daring and desparate (note how they have moved in on the word "green" all over the place as an overall psy-op.) So just realize, there are real alternatives. (I've voted left of Dems since Dukakis flopped (horrified that Bush was running, knowing his fascist past. (see the front pg of yesterdays NYT re Nazis!)) Matt Gonzales was always a favorite of mine, since he won more votes but was cheated in the count by the Gavin Newsom machine.. (they just HAD to keep gpUS.org from running a major city apparently.) .. though voting for a black WOMAN-- McKinney running as Green, should've became a popular idea if it weren't for the stranglehold the MSM has.
Please folks,expand your liberty radar beyond just the digital specialization.. For starters, try the top of todays Alternet for the latest from Kucinich's econ policy guy, Prof. Hudson:
http://www.alternet.org/economy/148857/obama's_greatest_betrayal%3A_the_coming_sell-out_to_the_super_rich_and_what_it_means_for_the_rest_of_us/
--
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
eschew crap, proprietary jive such as Adobe Flash and "Warcraft"! Eschew war, for that matter.
I get the sense whenever there are stories like this that many here point the finger generally at "all politicians" as being at fault. But behind the scenes I detect some head scratching going on; like, "how could my Democratic majority, lame duck session, congress do something like this?" What's the confusion? Your team is full of rats who want to take away your liberties and silence you!
I assert that you can't complain as much about the tea party now because they cut a big hole in the gut of the Republican Party in order to make real change happen. You can complain all you want about their politics, but they booted some real RINO turds out of office a couple weeks ago and that deserves some respect... And you need to do the same with your Democratic party: prepare to boot out the big money fat cats in your party and replace them with legitimate reps in the next election cycle!
I sympathize with you a little. I know they're your people, and you favor them because you love to root for your "side". But many of your actual team MEMBERS are just the worst! And, until you stop voting for them and propping them up and buying into their propaganda, so are you!
Guess they will be blocking Google and Youtube
This makes me wonder if the US military hold copyright to all of their internal files.
If so, Wikileaks is doomed as an internet entity if this passes through all the sanity filters.
you may not know about it. but, its my hobby. ranging from 9800 BC to the first ever place of worship of mankind (and subsequent domestication of wheat) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe to the events in recent political history, i have spent a lot of time reading in my spare time.
i would advise you to do the same.
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Go here to sign the petition against it. They also deliver a message to your state representative.
Who believes that? Government is there to stop people who believe that. The ones who want to get rid of government do not want government interfering with their ability to dominate and control others. Government is just a group of people, banding together to protect their interest. Some people do not want anyone protecting the weak, because they feel the weak are their rightful prey.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Your argument comes accross as a high school debate team. You make fallacy after fallacy and completely neglect to address your own short commings in the argument. I don't expect you to learn anything from this discussion because you obviously want someone from some central government to tell you exactly how to live your life and there is nothing that will change your opinion. That's great, but don't expect even a single other person to agree with you unless you are paying them to.
This makes me laugh. Why not, instead of targetting copyright infringement sites, target, or at least INCLUDE in the Bill, malicious sites? I'm far more concerned about the integrity of the internet and the safety of its users. Unfortunately it seems that, in the US at least, businesses have far more power over the government than the people the government is supposed to be representing.
In a typical election, 40% of the vote goes one way, 40% goes the other. It's almost always unthinking party loyalty. There is no hope for most of those people. I know Democrats, for example, who vote Democrat despite the fact that Barack Obama, Reid and Pelosi have literally almost nothing in common with their views. It's all because "they're a Democrat/Republican family."
The points you raise are hardly insightful. Those problems have existed in literally every system of government from feudal monarchies, to Communism, to whatever-it-is-we-have-today. The establishment always plays hardball, no matter what form the establishment takes.
One of the interesting things our founders realized, like the Romans and others before them, is that a limited government with minorly democratic features is the closest thing to an ideal. If you look past the issue of slavery in the South, the US was the freest it ever was when it was the least democratic. The reason for that is simple: people in democratic states tolerate 5x more shit than those in nominally or outright undemocratic states in most cases because they don't have the pretense of "choosing their tyranny." Therefore, the government has to actually be judged on what it does, not the process by which it gets there (after which it gets a free pass because a temporary majority agreed with it).
Then how come a significant proportion of the support for libertarian movements is from the lower, weaker classes?
You're right that government is a group of people banding together to protect their interest, but mistaken as to who therefore needs to be protected from whom. A great deal of the Constitution is designed to prevent the tyranny of the majority-- that is, domination and control by means of the government. There's always a tug of war, because there are always people under the thumb of other individuals or corporations, who want more government to get out from under this...and there also are always people under the thumb of a dominating government, who want less government for exactly the same reason. Given that government is the biggest, most durable, most powerful entity that can dominate and control, and the hardest to remove once it has established that control, I'd say we should always treat skeptically the request for more of it.
And you might note, too, that your claim as to the useful role of government-- to protect people from one another-- is exactly the primary role libertarians believe the government should have. What they don't agree with is that it should go much beyond this, into what might be termed as "messing around in" the lives of people, or exerting control itself.
Of course, there are plenty of people who think as you say, who want to get what they can get and ride all over everyone else to get it, and they want government control reduced to allow them to do what they want. Except we can't forget those same people are quite ready to use government for the very purpose of giving themselves those advantages when they can get away with it. Both government reduction and government intervention are often covers for people's power plays. I think we'd be wise to understand why so many people truly view government as one of the powers they need protection from, and also need to be wise enough to recognize when an argument couched in libertarian appeals is really just a gambit for being allowed to do things that go altogether against libertarian ideals (run over other people's rights)
Then how come a significant proportion of the support for libertarian movements is from the lower, weaker classes?
A significant portion of "near zero" is "near zero".
After all, I am strangely colored.
I don't mean "members of the Libertarian Party," I mean people who are generally in favor of the libertarian notions of limited government, which are what are under discussion here. Whose support base is not near zero at all, it is close to half the country.
I've been keeping an eye on this bill for over a month now. Here is where it currently stands.
The bill has been referred to committee. For those not familiar with the process of a bill entering into law in the US, this is the second step (the first being the introduction of the bill). In this case it is the Senate Judiciary Committee to be precise. At this point, the only Senators who have any say about the bill are the members of the committee.
It is scheduled for consideration by the committee on 11/18/2010.
The committee's job is to discuss the bill, make modifications to it, and decide it it should be put before the entire senate for discussion and a vote.
Ideally, a bill such as this could be killed in committee, that is the committee does not agree to move it on the entire Senate. In this case that is unlikely to happen. All but 4 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee http://judiciary.senate.gov/about/members.cfm are co-sponsors http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-3804 of this bill. And the chairman of the committee is also the sponsor of the bill.
No matter what they do, it will never work. You can't fix a social "problem" with technology. It's just another step up in the arms race that is copyright protection - The only people who are going to be hurt by this are the people like grandma who think that "proxy" means some type of skin disease. This sort of thing is just going to piss someone off, and cause them to actually make the p2p "dns" cloud the parent described.
In the end, the pirates will win, because every time a measure like this is put in place, someone will come up with a way to bypass it. The real question becomes how much damage will the MAFIAA and their paid for politicians cause before this all ends?
Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.
I think you are significantly overestimating popular support for "libertarian ideals".
How many of your Libertarians voted for GWB the second time, in direct contradiction to their supposed libertarian ideals?
http://www.pdfernhout.net/burdened-by-bags-of-sand.html
"This ironic story is about trying to talk the USA out of collective suicide stemming from scarcity fears and misunderstandings when the USA and the world otherwise has so much potential for abundance."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
about stories like this one is that both US political parties are more-than-willing whores to the Content Lords. The Tastycrats because they agree with them on other social issues and the Fingerlicans because they love them for the soulless, multinational corporations they really are.
I want to see the central government exercise few powers, while the States hold most of the power, similar to how the modern EU operates.
eu has much more federal regulation and control over members than u.s. had at any point in time. to the extent of regulatory boards doing so much regulation that, they had made an april fools' joke at one year, publishing a regulation regulating the standards of the thickness of upper and lower chicken eggs.
the standards europe is living, is due to that regulation.
im appalled that, even eu, which is TOTALLY the opposite of what the right wing nutjobs in united states want, is being used to propagate the 'no government' bullshit. either ignorance, or outright lying.
False. A limited government is one that does not exercise any powers except those granted to it by the Constitution. That style of government worked just fine from 1776 to 1900 (approximately). There were a few excursions where the US Congress overstepped its bounds, such as the Sedition Act and the Fugitive Slave Act, but for the most part it worked.
constitution, 1776, 1900. the self indulgement of you americans is really sickening. its as if nothing happened outside your country, its as if there was no other experiments that were done and succeeded, you are taking your own history and trying to apply lessons from that to entire planet.
and you dont even know your own history. nothing worked fine from 1776 until 1900. until 1800, your country was a colonization ground, rushing to colonize lands in its west, totally isolated from the world. and, trade and business wasnt as big as it was now. regulation and government was not needed at all. after all people moved, and settled on distant lands if they wanted to, in land rushes. if you didnt like the situation in an area, you would migrate. it was as simple as that.
come 1850, things changed. colonization matured, it didnt become easy to just go to a distant land with a gun, make a log cabin, plow a piece of land and then live there. business grew big, companies and corporations became big, and by 1880, almost all america risked being owned by 4 people, and everyone had to live by THEIR rules. it was the failure of the free market bullshit - something devised for 1700s standards and world, in which businesses were 'whitteley&co' level, 5-10 people enterprises, and had only power to do stuff in their locale. it was the time of globe spanning corporations bigger than countries.
if it wasnt for 'big government' that manifested itself in the form of theodore roosevelt, you americans would be probably owned by at most 2, or even 1 person in 100 years' time, living however those 1-2 people wanted you to live, for their own benefit. and no, no competition happened. no other corporation came and undid them. there was no 'choice'. ALL the choice, competition you have there today have come with the antitrust regulations and laws. even they were offset a lot, by invention of proxy corporations, big holdings, and conglomerates that span 100s of companies and brands.
yet you come and STILL advocate the same bullshit that brought your country to that point.
moreover, you say that, eu is operating like united states in 1800s. despite the fact that, before ussr had disintegrated, the ussr external affairs had to retort that, they were trying to effect a socialist revolution in europe for that long, but, european union has basically done it themselves, from the inside, and it was a curious situation.
sorry, but you dont know shit. at least dont make that stupid retort saying 'eu is like u.s. in 1700s' anywhere else, like a moron.
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just start with history.
roman republic history would be good. then, go with roman empire history. at the point roman empire crumbles, and migrations happen, you will see the advent of feudalism. that is the critical part in history, since it has all the parallels to this current era, with all these private property issues and whatnot. you will see that, some of what's happening today, is identical to how roman empire turned into serfdom from free citizenship, through the very mechanics of free market. (much, much more free than today's).
read extensively on advent of feudalism, and move to medieval british history, from 1066 to 1400. you will see that maybe a third of the laws, customs, methods, offices, and whatnot we have in western world today, were created in the medieval feudal britain. including the modern form of ownership of property, evolving over the farmland rights.
at that point you will have a pretty good picture of what the hell is happening on this planet, since last 500 years, and what probably will happen in future. unless, some things change radically.
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Patrick Leahy and the rest of Congress are a bunch of sewer rats, so this legislation should be called CLOACA (Congress Likes Obstructing Anything it Can Attack).
The Net-Chinese registrar in Taiwan has accepted a service contract to register over 1,000 software piracy sites. It is just this sort of widespread abuse for which legislation like this is needed.
For the last 5 days alone, see the pirate sites listed at http://rss.uribl.com/nic/NET_CHINESE_CO_LTD_.html
For over 1,000 examples in October/November check http://spamtrackers.eu/wiki/index.php/Net-Chinese
If the US can't ensure compliance at home, how can anyone expect to convince the Taiwanese piracy sponsors?