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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.
I, for one, welcome all my proud RFC-abiding fellow netizens.
Ezekiel 23:20
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.
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?
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.
Sure, then all they need to do is find a friendly judge that will rubber-stamp these types of requests. I'm sure there are plenty of federal judges who have bought the **AA's propaganda enough to agree to shut down any website they're asked to in the name of protecting copyright.
A court order should not be enough to shut down someone's free speech rights. If they want to shut down a website they should have to actually bring charges against the website owner, and have the site shut down only following an actual conviction.
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
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?
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!
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
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.
I imagine it'll be used in a similar way to DMCA requests are now as a means to silence criticisms. Imagine, just as a hypothetical example, the Church of Scientology seeking court orders to shut down sites that expose the very strange teachings of their higher level texts. Or a software company trying to surpress news of a security breach by shutting down any sites publishing it, on the grounds that the exploit requires the modification of copyrighted code, or a celebrity trying to stop the distribution of some embarassing video that escaped from a private party or a members-only invited speech. All things that the DMCA has been used for in the past - but this new measure is somewhat more effective, because if the recieving end doesn't comply you can just have their server unplugged or site blocked rather than having to spend weeks on civil action that would more likely than not just lead to the undesired embarassment being further publicised.
The talking pieces of shit in Washington seem to think they control the Internet.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
after all, wouldn't it only take 1 shot from a copyrighted movie?
No. It only applies to a site already subject to civil forfeiture (which means a bunch of things have been proven about it already) or that is "primarily designed, has no demonstrable, commercially significant purpose or use other than, or is marketed by its operator, or by a person acting in concert with the operator, to offer—" either copyrighted works "in complete or substantially complete form" "without the authorization of the copyright owner or otherwise by operation of law [which includes fair use]" or counterfeit goods, and the activity "when taken together" is "central to the activity of the Internet site or sites accessed through a specific domain name."
So no, 1 shot from a copyrighted movie wouldn't do it.
Of course, the law will not apply to them, just like the labor laws, civil rights laws . . .
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.
"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!
There cannot be multiple root zones. That just is not feasible. But the US only controls the gTLDs and one ccTLD. The other TLDs are owned by their respective countries. The US cannot have them removed from the root without causing a major incident, the result of which would include the Internet Society appointing some other organization as IANA (and thus killing ICANN and US control of the DNS).
Explanation: ICANN exists solely to be a policy creating shell around the IANA. Legally the Internet Society (ISOC) is the only company in the world with any reasonable claim to being able to appoint an IANA. The organizations the ISOC consists of (IETF, IESG, IAB, RFC-EDITOR) had agreed to allow ICANN to have the role of IANA, but they could revoke that agreement.
If an RFC is published naming a new international entity as the IANA there is little reason to suspect the companies running the root servers would not use the root zone published by the new IANA, as long as they got similar say in policy making as they had with ICANN.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
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.
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
"The sites still has to have a primary purpose of infringing on copyright." All those examples I made above have actually happened. The DMCA's takedown system is intended for sites which have the primary purpose of infringing on copyright, but that doesn't mean those were the *only* sites it ended up used against. For example, the Church of Scientology used a DMCA takedown notice to remove a video on youtube of Cruise giving a speech at one of their private functions, and have used DMCA notices to close down sites posting their texts for criticism. Not only can they use the DMCA to silence critics: They have. In the video case, it backfired.
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.