Slashdot Mirror
Senate Panel Approves Website Shut-Down Bill
itwbennett writes "The Senate Judiciary Committee has voted 19-0 in favor of a bill that would allow the Department of Justice to seek court orders to shut down websites offering materials believed to infringe copyright. 'Rogue websites are essentially digital stores selling illegal and sometimes dangerous products,' Senator Patrick Leahy, the main sponsor of the bill, said in a statement. 'If they existed in the physical world, the store would be shuttered immediately and the proprietors would be arrested. We cannot excuse the behavior because it happens online and the owners operate overseas. The Internet needs to be free — not lawless.' However, the internet will likely remain 'lawless' for a while longer, as there are only a few working days left in the congressional session and the bill is unlikely to pass through the House of Representatives in that short amount of time."
The majority of the population does NOT want to see this pass, yet it made it through the Senate with NO opposition?
I thought the government was for the people by the people. What a fucking joke.
Who PAYS for pirated material?
/b/tards get google, whitehouse.gov, or some other random website taken down with this? Sure sounds like it.
And what procedures are in place to make sure this isn't abused? Can
I, for one, welcome all my proud RFC-abiding fellow netizens.
Ezekiel 23:20
I vote to shut down this post.
The Senate Judiciary Committee has voted 19-0 in favor of a bill that would allow the Department of Justice to seek court orders to shut down websites offering materials believed to infringe copyright.
The DOJ needed a senate bill to allow them to "seek court orders"? Getting a court order is usually where the process for this sort of thing STARTS.
I can see the good intentions of the legislators, but I'm also worried about the execution and application that this may bring. Waiting for comments about the lawmakers being bought out and the end of the Internet as we know it.
Sig: I stole this sig.
Copyright insanity prevails
Time to move my server and registrar overseas.
At least this sets the precedent of requiring a court order to shut down a website, and not just the word of some bureaucratic or politician.
How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?
We cannot excuse the behavior because it happens online and the owners operate overseas.
Why not? You can excuse the behavior if it happens offline and the owners operate overseas.
Or are there American law enforcement officials going and raiding shops in China that are selling pirated copies of Windows?
And I don't think letting the DoJ decide who gets shut down or not is entirely fair. You know that Google/Youtube ends up hosting copyrighted material every now and then - and then they get notified and they end up taking it down (or taking out the audio track). So if I host a little site for me and a few role players - and one of them posts a bit of a DnD Manual - am I at risk of my website being cut off from Americans without notice? Or worse - taken down entirely somehow?
This won't be abused .. no way ..
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Dear U.S. Government,
Remember when the shit hit the fan over the U.S. Government's control over the root DNS servers a few years back?
Welcome to part 2.
Sincerely,
The Rest of the World
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Its very difficult to come up with an example of the legislative branch (or the judicial or the executive for that matter) doing a thorough, cogent job of dealing with technology and the law.
For the most part, their investors..er...campaign donors tell them what to believe and how to vote and that is as deep as it goes.
The sad thing is that over time, we'll end up with some legislators who get it, but by then, the current level of corruption will have been instiitutionalized and they will be so unacquainted with the Constitution and ethics and so beholden to the donations of their masters that it won't make much difference.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
Just like a digital store, except that nothing is being sold.
So like a digital free box, or giving away a used DVD, or
letting your neighbor come over and watch the ballgame on you TV.
when they get to the SneakerNet Shut-Down Bill? Thanks! Why aren't the New Tea Partiers stopping the insanity... wait, nevermind. Smells like more government, this MUST be those dang Demo-crats again, tarnations!!(!
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
Slashdotters, WRITE to your representatives and let them know this is not something that has universal support. That is, write a handwritten letter, so it can't be as easily ignored. Talk to your colleagues and let them know about this bill and what it will do.
For those of you who haven't been keeping up with this: this is a bill that will undoubtedly harm the Internet as a platform for free speech.
The least we can do is put up a fight.
So, does this mean that I can now accuse politicians that I don't like of hosting infringing materials on their website to get them shut down? I would have killed for that ability three weeks ago.....
Are the politicians currently in power sure they want to give us plebs that ability? =)
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
it also matters how MUCH each person cares about each issue....that is how they prioritize such things in electing a representative.
But in practice, it also matters that the television news organizations have a conflict of interest. On the one hand, they should present all issues and all candidates to the public, but on the other hand, they all share a corporate parent with a movie studio in the MPAA.
So what's this "or dangerous" bit? Ammunition? Websites promoting cults? Websites attacking cults? Websites selling material that promotes anything that senators don't like, like free thought, opposing political positions, naked bodies that they can't grope for themselves?
This ain't about piracy, people.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
Couldn't they at least have come up with a decent car metaphor, if they're going to mistake the map for the terrain anyway?
yes, we have no bananas
In the 15 seconds it took me to go to Kirsten Gillibrand's official website, I picked one random image and reversed searched it.
The image:
http://gillibrand.senate.gov/images/contact/office_nyc.jpg
It turns out that this is the person who took the photo:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dschwen
I'm assuming that we would have to contact him to see if Ms. Gillibrand is properly using the photo. It's no problem if this example (literally the first try out of very many potential infringements) is totally legit, as we I'm sure we will be able to find one image on one of the websites of these Senators that is infringed. The Senators themselves, of course, did not make these websites, and moreover do not know what they are voting on. My point is that this will, if completely passed and signed, undoubtedly be used for nefarious political purposes and the quelching of free speech in the near future.
"believed to" . . . whatever happened to "proved, beyond a reasonable doubt?" All "in Soviet Russia" jokes aside, this sounds like being able to "denounce" someone, and get them shipped off to the Gulag. If you can prove that a site it infringing on copyrights, fine shut them down. However, if the charge is, "I think that it might be possible that this could be potentially infringing on copyrights that might be possibly owned by someone" . . . no, thanks.
Is there something in US law about "due process?"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Does this apply to email hosts with webmail? Just think of all the people who infringe on my copyright material when they forward my email to other people.
I think with a little bit of ingenuity using this I can take down RIAA, MPAA ect.
Now I can shutdown Google, Bing, Yahoo, Youtube, Flickr, Facebook with just the content other people I know have made available that I own the copyright on.
THIS IS THE GREATEST THING EVAR!!!!!
With this BILL and just a 1000$ in legal expenses I think I can shut down the entire internet.
DIE YOU FASCIST COPYRIGHT STEALING SCUM
Hi, you've got a nice website there... you wouldn't want someone so start believeing that it infringes on copyrights, would you?
They may very well shut down a few U.S. sites, but it will be darned near impossible to shut down all the sites in third world countries.
Unlike the U.S. Senate, I have no idea what the solution is. I do think a lot of time and money could be spent trying to run this down and enforce it, only to have it move somewhere else.
It is amazing how often people rail against the lack of democracy in the modern world, and how few are willing to do anything about it.
"What can we, mere peons, do?" you might ask. Well, you can start by working on the one and only hope you have: open sourcing governance.
Love this part under Non-Domestic Domains, Required Actions... ... or other operator of a domain name system server shall take reasonable steps that will prevent a domain name from resolving to that domain name’s Internet protocol address;
(i) a service provider
So, we'll just refuse to resolve any domains that are outside the jurisdiction of the US, but that are deemed to offend the standards listed here? This, to me, sounds a bit like that whole filtering of information thing that Secretary Clinton said was a Bad Thing in China.
There's a 68.71% chance you're right.
Leahy seems to always be at the forefront of these draconian pro-IP laws. On non-copyright/patent/etc. related issues, he's actually fairly civil-libertarian, so it doesn't seem like he's one of those authoritarians for whom more government police power for its own sake, and copyright infringement is just a convenient excuse for introducing them (the way many Republicans are on "terrorism"). It seems he actually does want strong enforcement of copyright laws, and that that's his motivator, not an excuse. But he's Senator for Vermont, a place not exactly known for its large media industry. It would make more sense to me if he were from CA or FL or something.
Now that he's become one of the media industry's bet friends in Washington, he gets a bunch of media donations, which could explain his continued advocacy on the subject. But how did a Senator from VT end up in that position in the first place? Personal conviction? Opportunism?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
So other Internet stuff like FTP is still safe?
Aren't the majority of these types of websites outside of the US anyways? A lot of good this'll do to shut those down....idiots.
Which brings up an interesting point: How would a government org go about shutting down a rogue server? Lets pretend it is hosted in some remote country, so sending a CnD letter is probably ineffective. Blocking the DNS entries will just result in people putting up non-us filtered DNS servers, and you are playing whack a mole to try to find them and block them. You could put ip-filters on all the trunks going in and out of the country, but that's another game of whack a mole, since any proxy server outside the country can redirect.
I am not a networking expert, but even if you had the political will to do this, it seems to me it would be no more than an inconvenience for anyone determined enough.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
yeah you. the one who is reading this post. how much exactly did you pay in lobbying for your interests last year ? $100 mil ? $1 mil ? $50,000 ? $50 ? none ?
probably either none, or, something in between $50 and none. definitely not $100 mil.
those who want that, however, spent in between at least $100 mil and $1 mil. so, they are getting it.
such is the way with democracy in a capitalist country - you get what you want, as much as you pay for. if you dont have enough money to pay for what you want, you just dont get it -> its a simple rule of capitalism.
so, you have two choices :
a) If you arent rich enough to pay for it yourself, get together, and pay for it with others
b) Change the capitalist society that requires money for everything, including winning elections, justice and lawmaking
Read radical news here
There probably were folks who thought it was a bad bill, but voted for it anyway because it bought them leverage on (what they felt were) more important issues.
I'm a bit of a state house watcher, and I've heard politicians stand up and speak against bills five minutes before voting for them. Basically, if the chairman of the committee favors something and you don't, but it's going to pass anyway, you curry favor with the chairman by letting him submit the bill to the floor with 'unanimous approval', thereby increasing the chances of getting your own issue heard by the now appeased chairman in the future. In the end, you get the same result you would have if you opposed the thing, but the next time you need something, you're more likely to get it.
That or the HVAC might have been out. Our state legislature seems to decide completely on-the-fly that 'today is going to be the last day of session'. They typically suspend public hearings and pass 300 pieces of legislation that night. Why would you suspend public hearings and do 80% of your work on one coffee-fueled all-nighter? Well, the committee rooms don't have air conditioning, suits are really hot, and most of the legislature is a bit portly. Once the summer heat starts penetrating the marble walls, there's no stopping it until late October, so they 'go Nike' on democracy's ass and Just Do It.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
they wont shut down sites in third world countries.
.com or .org or whatever domain they can get ahold of, in usa. because, ICANN is in usa.
... also stupid, due to the above side effect. can you imagine russia, china, india, allowing usa to censor internet over icann at will ?
they are going to try shutting down the
this will practically kill usa control of internet domain names. entire world cannot tolerate one single country asserting its will upon all domain names in the world. this will be a side effect.
when the dust settles down, and there is or are other top level corporations handing out names, then they are going to block whatever site that is outside us, to u.s. public. in short, they will outright censor whatever they want from american citizens.
quite democratic eh
Read radical news here
Who PAYS for pirated material?
Anyone who has bought a copy of the film Song of the South on DVD-R at the flea market, sold by someone ignorant of copyright term extension acts who thinks U.S. copyright on works published under the Copyright Act of 1909 still lasts 56 years as it did when they were published.
Or anyone who bought a copy of the album All Things Must Pass by George Harrison. A court ruled that the song "My Sweet Lord", which appears on this album and accounted for the supermajority of this album's airplay, was an infringing copy of "He's So Fine" by Ronald Mack, which the Chiffons had popularized.
Al Franken, darling of the young liberal left, voted for internet censorship.
I'm sure this has already been posted, but you can sign a petition against the bill here: http://demandprogress.org/blacklist/
The talking pieces of shit in Washington seem to think they control the Internet.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Actually the PDF says "internet sites," not websites. This isn't about port 80.
Right off the top, they already have figured out that people will just move out of the US for the registration, and that the domains will still remain registered and the DNS requests will still resolve. You can't stop this, because worst case scenario, people will change roots, or switch to an altogether different naming system.
And that's where it gets crazy. "..action may be brought in the District of Columbia to prevent the importation into the
United States of goods and services.." Address blocking is the only way to do that.
They're going to have to get ISPs to check against blacklists before routing. They'll have to close down all out-of-the-country VPNs too.
Because of how fucked up that is, the bill appears to come with its own poison, too. It says that any party can petition to vacate the order, based on evidence that the interests of justice require it. Well, considering that the very first such order is going to be petitioned by every ISP in the country (since they won't want to pay the dollar and performance costs of blacklists), that in itself will be overwhelming evidence that the order really does need to be vacated. I can't imagine why they even added that part. It's ok for Congress to fuck everyone, but for them to say "you're fucked unless fucking everyone isn't justice" seems to neuter it. Of course a sudden change to blacklisting is injustice. Duh.
So what happens if there's a US Government page (like a Senator's page or something) that's violating copyright somehow, can we go and get a judge to get it shut down? Could be great to screw the people who vote for this over--
Given all the flap over the Obama presidential seal logo during the 2008 election, with this bill the Bush White House could have said that the logo infringed US Government copyright and had Obama's campaign website blocked.
What about a campaign that uses a song without permission--copyright infringement. My first goal, find a way to use this politically to silence people, then watch as all hell breaks lose.
Didn't I comment on this being the inevitable outcome for this bill last night? Pretty sure I did..
The reasons havent changed. Whining about it wont fix it either.
Right now our options are pretty limited:
1) We can, against all odds, accept lower wages in order to compete with material goods manufactured by slaves in China, to lessen our depedence upon intelletual properties in the world market. (HAH!)
2) Bite the bullet, accept that the US as we know it is basically over, and accept "also ran" status in the world marketplace, (implies that 1 will happen as a consequence) and offer "cheap" IP, with reasonable terms- (HAH!)
3) We can enforce draconian copyrights, pass every patent imaginable with rediculously long terms, and try to squeeze that teat for all it's worth to try to stay relevant in the world market. (DING! we have a winner!)
4) We can become highly insular, do EVERYTHING ourselves, totally ignore the world market, and operate as IP pirates openly (What we did when the nation was an infant, much to the chagrin of European publishers.) (Implies 1 and 2, and demotion to 2nd or even 3rd world conditions due to natural scarcities) [HAH!]
Since our congress critters suffer a crack-like addiction to money and power, option 3 is the only one they are even willing to consider. As such, measures like the DMCA, and now COIACA (whatever it's letters are) will ALWAYS pass. ALWAYS. Raise a fuss all you want. It WILL pass.
However, if one of the other options seems preferable to you, you can always invoke the power of the angry torch bearing mob--- Or, you can do the non-violent protest, Ghandi style-- But the ultimate result would still be the same; the US's gravy train would get derailed.
Would you please get on building your own DNS root infrastructure then? It would be wonderful if we had multiple, peer, root agencies each with control over their part of the root zone. That way if one, like say the US, goes rogue, there are others out there that can be used instead. However thus far we've seen nothing but whining and saying that the US should "give up control" of ICANN, which wouldn't matter since ICANN is in the US and thus defacto US controlled no matter what.
Sincerely,
A US citizen that would love to see the rest of the world get on building non-US reliant DNS.
Won't torrents just be relegated back into the realm of IRC? If the sites just get shut down, people will still find a way to get it, and it will probably be through IRC... Time to brush up on your bot messaging commands.
What's desperately needed is a law which allows citizens to shut down legislators -- or an entire government -- as easily, maybe even capriciously, as these legislators enact new laws. These legislators can -- and do -- enact new laws without even reading them or inquiring as to whether they are Constitutional or have side effects. These legislators face effectively NO important consequences from their actions. This needs to change and change dramatically. "Democracy", as currently practiced in the US, is a disaster approaching a dead end.
Of course, the law will not apply to them, just like the labor laws, civil rights laws . . .
Depressing, annoying and slightly disheartening, but I still will be contacting my supposed representative and badger him as much as possible. I am just a poor schmuck working in an asbestos mine, but I am pissed and I still vote.
This post is provided without warranty as to reliability, accuracy or otherwise or fitness for any particular purpose.
Very true. The War on (Some) Drugs is also clearly a lost cause ... which doesn't keep us from annually spending tens of billions of dollars on it and ruining millions of people's lives. This bill won't stop piracy, won't even slow it down to any appreciable degree; you know that, I know that, and anyone with more than half a brain who spends more than five minutes thinking about the issue knows that. It doesn't matter.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
WTF? These foreign sites are by definition not under the jurisdiction of US law. It's like the senate of Saudi Arabia passing a law declaring Californian porn sites illegal. Big fucking deal.
Those bastards can't agree on anything. They couldn't agree on funding medical aid for first responders at the twin towers on 9/11. They can't agree on ratifying New START. They'll be lucky if they manage to fund the government in their lame duck session. And THIS goes through unopposed? It seems like all they can pass is bad laws and pay raises for themselves.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This will never pass the house.
Who is going to pay for this technology to be put into the cars... They going to force me to buy it? Or worse use tax dollars and buy one so that all free market is taken out of the equation?
There just isn't a need for a perfect block.
yes there is if you want it to work.
Because information on the Internet is fast and free, if 1 person finds a way around your block 5 minutes after it is in place, 10 million people can know about it in under a day, and your little information embargo is a futile exercise. If you made the same comment about how 'security through obscurity works' in the context of OS security, you would be laughed off Slashdot. Why would general blocking of sites be any different?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I doubt that these senators have considered the possibly that being able to shut down an offending site (say Bing, Google, Hotmail, Yahoo, Youtube, ) wouldn't have significant collateral damage.
This is equivalent to shutting down an entire mall (which happens to include an office for the County Tax Assessor, small FBI field office, post office and police substation) on the account of one bad employee grossly (mis)representing the interests of the merchant renting space in said mall.
Bottom line:
Merely having such a kill switch is not a license use it indiscriminately and not face the consequences of its misuse.
(Notice that engineers are required to retain errors and omissions insurance for bad engineering decisions, but no legislator is required to retain insurance for passing of bad laws.)
The Roman Rule: The one who says it cannot be done shall not interrupt the one who is doing it.
Maybe, but then drugs are not as widely accepted within society and so most of the society will approve or just shrug that war off because they are not affected directly. Internet, on the other hand, is widely used and accepted, it is part of the mainstream. Taking it away, or not an insignificant part of it could make people understandably upset. I do not disagree with you. I just think that this war on net could make people care.
This post is provided without warranty as to reliability, accuracy or otherwise or fitness for any particular purpose.
Will they take down every website? Will they make hyper-linking illegal?
This is just fucking dumb.
If I attach a copyrighted image to a forum, that website can be shut down by court order?
Give me a fucking break.
These fucking assholes are the real criminals. The poor people stealing a few fucking movies hurts NO ONE.
Citizens Approve Senate Shutdown Amendment!
"The poor people stealing a few fucking movies hurts NO ONE."
Don't you mean "the people copying data hurt no one"? Stealing implies that they've deprived someone of something, which is not something that 'pirates' do.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
My website is about the Japanese language and culture, so if America ever goes to war against Japan again, would my website be censored? It would be terrible! Just because politicians can be children, it doesn't mean that us ADULTS can't get along with each other. Anywhoo~ knowing America, it will probably wordfilter 'color' to 'colour', 'honour' to 'honor' etc... on European websites lol!
"What's desperately needed is a law which allows citizens to shut down legislators -- or an entire government -- as easily, maybe even capriciously, as these legislators enact new laws."
What's desperately needed is the ability for the people to override government bills through majority vote.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
And if imaginary property existed in the physical world, it would actually be possible to steal it.
It's really amazing to me how many people on Slashdot lack even a minuscule awareness of how legislative politics works. I'm dumbfounded. But they can certainly act pissed off.
there's always the "kill switch". (j/k, in case any law enforcement types are watching)
though internet is low on the agenda from a human rights standpoint, it's certainly a litmus test of a government's real attitude to freedom.
it would actually be very good for a system to be in place where a government could be easily sacked by the people. representatives have too much power, and aren't really representin' the people they represent.
See page 9 "The Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator shall post such domain names on a publicly available Internet site"
So in other words the government will be providing us with a complete list of sites vetted by MPAA et al people looking for stuff can visit. Very thoughtful :)
"complete or substantially complete form, by any means, including by means of download, transmission, or otherwise, including the provision of a link or aggre-gated links to other sites or Internet resources for obtaining such copies for accessing such performance or displays"
I hope this does NOT mean the government site that hosts the list of domains to these sites would itself be subject to being blocked as it would seem to satisfy the above critera by providing such a list?
In all seriousness don't know how they expect to enforce this unless everyone operating a DNS server in the US agrees to block the governments list of foreign sites.
The only other option is for the US government to exert control over the worlds root servers which would have massive international political implications.
Pretend you lived in China and the US started blocking www.cheap.imitations.cn from the world. No country will sit idly by and allow another to circumvent the authority associated with their domains and especially country specific TLDs. This will mark the beginning of the end for a coherent network and endless international jurisdiction nightmares.
I wish people who don't know jack schitt about Internet architecture would not try and pass laws that are impossible to implement.
"A showing by the defending party in such action that it does not have the technical means to comply with this section shall serve as a complete defense to such action."
The above is going to get a lot of use...
The real problem is that sure, it can be argued that it makes sense from the point of view of taking down movie downloads, or whatever torrent of media is out there. But this will be used for constant shutdown of simple websites (text, images, macros) that grab things from other sites. Not that sites should steal content, but it's a bit heavy handed.
The summary forgot to identify Leahy as a Democrat.
I wrote about COICA on Techdirt, where I said:
The "root zone" is in fact only the root zone for the root-servers.net roots. You can, and people have, created alternate root servers. You can do it in your house if you like. You can make your own root zone, own TLDs, etc. Nobody but you will probably use them, but you can do it.
So what the EU could do is make an organization, call it EUCANN (pronounced you can) because it is relevant and funny. Have that organization organization maintain a root file and setup a bunch of root servers that get their info from it. Initially, just mirror the ICANN root file. Once the system is up and running and stable, get popular DNS programs like BIND and the MS DNS server to include your roots too. Shouldn't be hard, just that much more stable for them. Heck maybe they'll prefer those roots in the EU zone. Once your system is running and useful, then contact ICANN and say "Hey, how about we split the root responsibility. We'll be responsible for all EU countries, you for everything else." So the root file isn't really split, but if the EU updates EU zone info, ICANN mirrors that, if ICANN updates other info, EUCANN mirrors that.
Normally, this has little effect other than that EUCANN could decide if a given company should get control of a given TLD instead of ICANN. However in the event ICANN flips their lid and does shit they shouldn't, well then EUCANN doesn't have to go along with it. Say ICANN decides that France if full of dirty liberals and terrorists and simply gets rid of .fr. EUCANN can refuse to mirror that. People can then use the EUCANN roots and not the effectively damaged ICANN ones.
It would provide resilience against any one country being a dick about things.
It doesn't even say "infringing materials"... it says "believed to be infringing"... tell me that's not ripe for abuse!!
And what does copyright infringement have to do with "dangerous products"? (Think of the children!!)
Quick, to the 4chan.org/b...
Seriously, you know the troll sites like 4chan and encyclopedia dramatica are going to be at the top of that list.
So I could get a document service like scribd shut down just by uploading copyrighted content to it?
And this is what they spend that time on.
Yeah, fuck them all.
That's right. They are too busy sailing the seven seas in search of plunder.
Anyone really surprised,Next thing---Offer a differing opinion on banking problems, global sociology-economic reform, etc.....black SUV's roll up to your place, you become 'vaporware. Your wife doesn't remember you, and the dog peas on your prize Martin Logan speakers....Oh the humanity of it all.....
It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows
On a side note -- is it possible for anyone to open the mind anymore and truly think openly? To see the endless potentials. the possibilities as long as we remain steadfast in believing.... Nothing is impossible.....We only have many items we have yet to figure out how to do.....Tear open the fabric of fear! Crush the mantles of complacency, look to those things they said could not be done and find the Rosette stone showing the way yo make it happen. Piss in the faces of governments, regulator, and policy writers! Forge new pathways, write new thoughts no matter the extreme. Its time to shake science and governments at their very core by thinking's as we were born to, taught to, given talents to....In Short == Give em ideas that will make the early thoughts of an LHC seem like a simple lab experiment.....You all have the collective resources skills and talents....Now USE THEM!!!!
It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows
So, we can hope this bill is harmless and holds up in court for real copyright infringement cases (if it passes the house which I hope it doesn't), or we can assume lawyers will use this to basically shut down the internet, or at least the search part of it, I mean, Google is an information company, which provides a massive search for illegal files, I can see it in court now
Google Lawyer: "But your honor we do not target these rouge servers with illegal files, they are just massively linked and our engine lists them automatically"
DA: "No sir, I did a search for "warez" on Google.com and it said displaying 25 of 5,019,193,012 sites.. which proves they just provide illegal software"
Judge: Point taken, shut them down! Who's next!
This is so obvious it hurts..
I'm from the Government and I'm here to help.
This bill if passed only applies to american based dns records; and for non-american websites they have to goto all the isps to create the great american firewall. Long story short... everyone moves their dns records to non-american registrars and the hosted pages also. That includes every website who doesnt like the censorship. Net effect: American economy has a decent sized exodus of money(currently in USA) now leaving the country.
The majority of the population does NOT want to see this pass, yet it made it through the Senate with NO opposition?
It's post like these that make me wonder if people are really Americans posting. Because the Senate has a lot more than 19 people., this is just a committee. Now you can still wonder why there is no opposition in that small group, but I'm pretty sure not every Senator would vote for this when or if it comes up.
As the article summary states it will not even make it that fat thanks to the House - an unstated reason for that is the conservative (NOT Republican) wave that swept the elections. You can bet that had liberals maintained power it would pass the house and senate easily in a full vote.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As all us 'puter folk know any arbitary sequence of bytes can be viewed as expressing a number. e.g. using 4 bytes we can represent a signed integer between -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647. From this we can see that any sequence of bytes (no matter it's length) can be viewed as expressing a number.
As items of "digital media" are simply a sequence of bytes then, in common with all other sequences of bytes, they can be viewed as simply a number (albeit a very large number)
And let's face it the idea of trying to control the exchange of numbers is totally absurd ! Can you imagine somebody claiming that I couldn't give my friend the number 93 ?
Oh how the future will look back and laugh at this age :)
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
To be clear, the article states using domain-name registrars to shut down Domestic websites. The workings of the DNS are nicely described by this Wikipedia example;
As an example of the DNS resolving process, consider the role of a recursive DNS resolver attempting to lookup the address "en.wikipedia.org.". It begins with a list of addresses for the most authoritative nameservers it knows about – the root zone nameservers (indicated by the full stop or period), which contains nameserver information for all top-level domains of the Internet.
When querying one of the root nameservers it is possible that the root zone will not directly contain a record for "en.wikipedia.org.", in which case it will provide a referral to the authoritative nameservers for the "org." top level domain (TLD). The resolver is issued a referral to the authoritative nameservers for the "org." zone, which it will contact for more specific information. Again when querying one of the "org." nameservers, the resolver may be issue with another referral to the "wikipedia.org." zone, whereupon it will again query for "en.wikipedia.org.". Since (as of July 2010) "en.wikipedia.org." is a CNAME to "text.wikimedia.org." (which is in turn a CNAME to "text.esams.wikimedia.org."), and the "wikipedia.org." nameservers also happen to contain authoritative data for the "wikimedia.org." zone, the resolution of this particular query occurs entirely within the queried nameserver, and the resolver will receive the address record it requires with no further referrals.
If the last nameserver queried did not contain authoritative data for the target of the CNAME, it would have issued the resolver with yet another referral, this time to the "text.wikimedia.org." zone. However, since the resolver had previously determined the authoritative nameservers for the "org." zone, it would not need to begin the resolution process from scratch but instead start at the "org." zone, thus avoiding a query to the root nameservers again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_zone
So using the same logic, to block thepiratebay.org on the root name servers, all 13 root DNS servers (worldwide) would have to add an entry for thepiratebay.org and send it to a separate IP address. so the US government could mandate that the the .org authoritative nameserver blocks thepiratebay.org - however control of the top level domains is a useful thing for a country to have - and there is nothing stopping the generic authoritative namesevers from relocating out of the US. even if they did not do that - where is the authoritative nameserver for .se? if it is in Sweden (likely now- more likely if they are pressurised by a foreign government) they most will not fold to US pressure - and even if they did nothing to stop the pirate bay moving to another country.
Since hosting websites selling counterfeit/illegal goods hosted in the US would already most likely end up in a knock on the door from the police - I would imagine the better pirate websites, along with other sites such as wikileaks, are already hosted outside the US and are pretty much immune.
The next part is the court order to force ISPs to redirect traffic from non-US sites. what exactly will the court order require? if it requires ISPs to redirect traffic destined to the IP address of the site in question - what happens when the site changes it's IP address? is it to "whatever IP address is registered to the site" in which case who is responsible for tracking all the non US websites when they change their IP addresses? Is it to change the IP address the DNS resolves the name to? if so all foreign DNS services will need to be blocked from inside the united states, and all American DNS requests routed to a server that will comply. it all adds up to a half hearted attempt at a firewall that will be circumvented almost as soon as it is implemented
This sort of thing just goes to show the dista
I was talking about this bill with my sharp-kneed girlfriend yesterday. Yea, about that, here's the insightful/non-geek response I got from her via email. I hope she doesn't sue me for copyright infringement for posting this:
It is infuriating that the govt. wants to protect us from illegally obtaining copyrighted info on line, but offers no real protection against our own personal information being collected and used by business.
Can I copyright my personal information: name, address, phone, IP, screen names, contacts, list of sites I visits, and all the other info numerous companies collect about me through my computer? I think not. Our personal information is everywhere, including that being stored by the govt., but if we want to read a book or copy a file containing copyrighted content we are criminals.
Can't it just be considered a fair trade? Business collects info about me, I collect copyrighted info owned by businesses. It's all a bit of collateral damage that is worth enduring for the sake of being able to use the internet. If we have to just accept the fact that use of the internet means giving up our privacy, why can't business just have to accept that there will be leakage of some copyrighted info?
Such bullshit. This issue is so important to every American's freedoms now and for the shaping of our future, but what are Americans hearing about as a hot topic today? Caffeinated alcoholic beverages making kids who are drinking them illegally sick, and too much salt in the soup.
THE DUMBING DOWN OF AMERICA PROCEEDS AT BREAK-NECK SPEED!
Uhhh, that would be no-one
Which did you mean by "that"? If you meant that no one buys All Things Must Pass, then why does Amazon continue to list it?
donation to a private tracker isn't paying for downloads
The private trackers to which I refer grant early access to other torrents to people who donate.
(as not everything on the trackers is pirated)
I've seen plenty of private trackers whose published rules state: If it's not on NFOrce or grokMusiQ then forget it! What on such trackers that specialize in "genuine scene releases" isn't pirated?
and using some of your bandwidth isn't "paying".
The private trackers to which I refer grant early access to other torrents to people who seed more. So they "pay" in share ratio to be able to access these torrents, and United States copyright law appears to define "financial gain" to include such a method of payment.
So stop being pedantic.
I'll stop once the mainstream entertainment industry's lawyers stop.
Why don't these discussions ever address the problem the bill is hoping to fix? Is it really that hard to understand? People who make music, movies, etc want to be paid for their work, and not have it stolen. Isn't that reasonable?
but China seems to be ahead of us in this technology as well.
You are living in fantasy land my friend. This is 2010. The concept of justice and fairness have been removed from the system in favor of political expediency. If you have the cash, you get your way. Its just that simple. Wispy minded idealists no longer have a place in the new American dream. The courts are not about justice, just maintaining the corporate status quo and that is quid pro quo for those who don't understand Latin.
LOL. The constitution is just what Alito, Thomas, Kennedy, Alito and Roberts say it is, which is whatever the corporations want to hear. You obviously don't spend much time on the D.C. cocktail circuit do you?
Why not? Republicans are planning to shut down the entire government anyway. Why should the internet be immune? If the NSA is forced to turn out the lights, you can expect everyone else's will dim too.