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PROTECT IP Act Follows In COICA's Footsteps
Last fall, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), which was dubbed the "internet blacklist" by opponents worried about its broad provisions for allowing the removal of websites based on vague criteria. COICA stalled in Congress, but now Leahy has proposed a new, similar piece of legislation called the PROTECT IP Act (PDF).
"Like COICA, Protect IP expands the web of enforcement techniques by requiring advertising networks and financial transaction providers to cut ties to domains found to violate the law. But the new version now adds search engines and others to the list of providers who can be conscripted into complying with court orders. Protect IP would require 'information location tools' to 'take technically feasible and reasonable measures, as expeditiously as possible,' to remove or disable access to the site associated with a condemned domain, including blocking hypertext links to the site. ... Perhaps most worrisome of all, Protect IP adds a provision that allows copyright and trademark holders to sue the owner/operator of a domain directly. Again, the provision applies only to nondomestically-registered domains, but it allows the private party, like the government, to sue the domain name itself if the registrant does not have a US address. That's important because in all cases, once a suit is initiated, the plaintiff can ask the court to issue an injunction or restraining order effectively shutting the site down."
Because we know they need welfare to profit. They have to invent imaginary persons (corporations), and imaginary objects (intellectual property), both which defy the laws of physics in their favor but never in the favor of consumers.
Immoral corporations, they don't age, they don't die, but the powers that be expect us to accept them as persons.
Imaginary property, that is to be treated as physical objects when it's 1s and 0s, copying is equated with stealing, but the powers that be expect us to believe in it.
So in order for them to profit, we have to go schizophrenic and believe in imaginary shit which defies the laws of physics? The basis for their beliefs is unscientific at the foundation, and they don't care. They'll tell us that the earth is flat and make it true by court ruling, and then charge us to walk across the flat surface which they'll claim to own. But that doesn't change the fact that the earth is round, that they don't actually own it except on paper. They might hijack the government to protect their profits militarily, the government might believe that corporations are persons, the government might believe in their concept of intellectual property, and the government might invade privacy, abuse human rights and diminish civil rights to protect their profits, but it's all about the money right?
So get some money or suffer.
Just keep trying to push through the same law, eventually the other side will stop bothering to fight it and you'll get it to pass.
Palm trees and 8
Actually, in this case it's safe to say this is probably bipartisan. Anytime the question at hand involves oppressing ordinary people, particularly at the behest of corporations, both parties are generally happy to go along with that. Google and Yahoo may complain about the cost to comply, so I'd expect some sort of amendment to compensate whichever third party is having to make changes to get rid of the links, but other than that I wouldn't be surprised if this went right through without too much debate.
The reason it got stalled the last time was that a few Senate Republicans were basically holding up all Senate business until they got what they wanted on a few specific and completely unrelated issues.
I am officially gone from
With the duly noted sarcasm meter note, it is sad that NEITHER of the major political parties are one whit interested in this little thing known as the preservation of civil rights as much as they are about the seizing and holding of the political power of the purse for their own ends. If that meets kowtowing to corporate and monied interests, so be it.
What is more disturbing is the lack of public and news outlet reaction. Of course, most news outlets now being owned by extremely large corporate interests is in this case, no help at all...
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Corporate puppets. Sellouts. That's all I have to say.
"But he's a democrat."
Oh.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
>It seemed to work just fine from 1789 to circa 1900
Not for people like you and me.
Not for miners, not for railroad workers, not for anyone who had to work for a living. I suggest you read up on the Banana wars. I suggest reading about how people died while putting in rails as the robber barons of the age built their cottages 20 miles from me in Newport RI. The Breakers (Cornelius Vanderbilt - Rails and shipping) alone, if rebuilt from scratch, would require half a billion dollars of modern money. Living the life on the literal blood of the people who worked for him.
That's what laissez-faire gets you.
Yeah, it was so magical back then. You're not romanticizing /at all/.
--
BMO
And, jurisdiction.
If I go out into my backyard and do something that would be illegal in some random country ... that doesn't mean I've broken any of that country's laws. That means I've done something which would be illegal if I did it in there. But, I'm not in there, so they can go get stuffed. Nothing I did was on their soil, and wasn't under their jurisdiction.
If America is going to start violating the sovereignty of foreign countries by going in under cover of night and ... oh, crap, they've already done this.
Well, then I guess it's time for Iran to start sending in extraction teams to pull out any Americans who have insulted their great, glorious leader who happens to be totally insane, or draw pictures of certain people, or take the lord's name in vain or whatever myriad offenses they can dream up.
After all, if it's OK for the US, it should be OK for everyone else, right?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.