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Law Professors vs the PROTECT IP Act
Freddybear writes "Along with 90 (and still counting) other Internet law and IP law professors, David Post of the Volokh Conspiracy law blog has drafted and signed a letter in opposition to Senator Leahy's 'PROTECT IP Act.' Quoting: 'The Act would allow the government to break the Internet addressing system. It requires Internet service providers, and operators of Internet name servers, to refuse to recognize Internet domains that a court considers "dedicated to infringing activities." But rather than wait until a Web site is actually judged infringing before imposing the equivalent of an Internet death penalty, the Act would allow courts to order any Internet service provider to stop recognizing the site even on a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction issued the same day the complaint is filed. Courts could issue such an order even if the owner of that domain name was never given notice that a case against it had been filed at all.'"
LOL, is this the "American Freedom" I heard so much about as a youth growing up in Hungary during the Cold War?
The law will provide great incentive to develop new technologies to work around it.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
blocking websites vs killing people. That comparison is a little over the top.
How fast does an owner of a warehouse get a notice of a police raid with court order targeting one of the clients of the warehouse?
Real Internet for those of us who know what we're doing.
Censored internet for the proles.
And we can lord it over them.
Good times to be had by all.
--
BMO
I suspect the US is on a long term slide to being an internet 3rd world country.
The rest of the world will learn to simply route around the damage zone known as the USA. Bad US laws seem like a long term giveaway to aspirants like China and the BRIC.
The PROTECT IP act is a freebie given to Big Content because it is too expensive for them to police the use of their own content. Regardless of what anyone thinks about Copyright, this is a clear example of leveraging government to enforce artificial restrictions on the use of content in favor of the companies that seek to monetize said content.
We have laws already in place for companies to lodge complaints with websites when their content is being used without license. But the content companies complain that it is too hard for them to find unlicensed use of their content. The solution via this act is to take down content on **possible** unlicensed use by the government and by other companies on a simple complaint.
IF the PROTECT IP provided heavy penalties for false or inflated complaints, then okay. But it doesn't.
IF the PROTECT IP provided for possible criminal charges should it be used to violate free speech as opposed to taking down infringing content, then okay. But it doesn't.
IF the PROTECT IP provided fees and taxes on Big Content to cover the public expense of implementing the act, then okay. But it doesn't.
ANY Government granted system of monopolies granted out to privileged parties, where such monopolies do not and in fact cannot exist without Government intervention, this is socialism. It is bad enough that we have copyrights that last over a hundred years, and that we cannot upload birthday videos because a song written in the 1800's is (most would say falsely) under copyright. That we have extend copyright terms without compensation to the public.
But why should the public pick up the bill to enforce copyright?
Make Big Content to pay for it, and make Big Content liable for misuse of it, and throw anyone in jail if they use it to inhibit free speech, then okay.
But that won't fly. Because this is about making money, and Big Content can't make money if they are at risk, or have to pay for the enforcement of their own (supposed) rights.
This is just the latest example of what happens when you invest the kind of power that we have in government. Those levers will be used to attain the ends of whoever brings the most money to the table to coopt the people controlling it.
Democrats are married to Hollywood. Anyone really surprised that they would try for a law which would let Hollywood to punish people as soon as they are accused of "piracy"?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I know that U.S. Senator John Cornyn doesn't read Slashdot, but hey! it is interesting...
Nation: 90 percent oppose.
Texas: 98 oppose.
https://www.popvox.com/bills/us/112/s968/report#nation
ORGS ENDORSING
Graphic Artists Guild
Independent Film & Television Alliance
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)
ORGS OPPOSING
American Association of Law Libraries
American Library Association
Association of Research Libraries
Center for Democracy and Technology
Demand Progress
Don't Censor the Net!
Fractured Atlas
Public Knowledge
Reporters Without Borders
https://www.popvox.com/bills/us/112/s968/report#nation
You can have all the letters you want. You can roll sick kids in wheel chairs in to give speeches. If you didn't pay for the law, you don't get it's benefits. That's the way our new corporatist free enterprise system works.
What do you expect for free?
If you want a law, you hire a lobbyist. They will give you a quote, just like getting your driveway seal coated. You pay. You get what you want.
Who do you think your congressmen and senators are working for anyway? You? Not likely.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Just use host files, no need to be at the mercy of these tightwads and DNS. It was a bad idea to begin with.
In the end, the only thing this law will accomplish is to drive internet business out of the country.
Do you hear yourself?
No. No, it won't. This law will do absolutely nothing of the sort, and you damned well know that.
I believe there is a section of the US constitution that prohibits punishing people without a trial. I realize that's a depreciated api but it's still worth noting that prior versions of us gov allowed such functions.
http://english.falundafamuseum.org/b5/05/02/20/1304.html
http://falunhr.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=1495
One of the most obvious targets of this kind of "copyright protection", applied to political speech, is Wikileaks. In many cases, the document owners did not consent for those documents to be published, so under the strictest interpretations of copyright law, without the political exceptions applied, they've already had their contribution funds siezed indefinitely by the relevant credit agencies. This would be just another spike in their destruction, much to the pleasure of corporate or government organizations whose secrets are exposed there.
I wonder if any of the actually fact checked noise on the Internet gets the attention of those who look for the noise they most like to hear?
Someone please run against Leahy. We really need to get that screwball douchebag out of office. He's really bad for the Net.
This is a wedge in the door, the biggest so far, to allow the government to control the internet. This bill effectively allows government to close down any website they like almost on whim long before they get around to bringing the case to core, if ever. It is a continuance of precedent from the civil forfeiture laws in drug and other cases. Property is held to be guilty until proved innocent and is seized or shut down without any sort of due process.
Don't just snigger sadly in year beer on this one. Fight for all you are worth as if your relatively free internet life depended on it.
The government keeps pushing for more controls. Others push back.
When the battle has been won and most of the government's wishes are lying in the dust both sides will be happy. Those who resist the changes will be happy because most of what was being pushed for will have been abandoned. The government will also be happy because what they wanted will have been achieved, quietly, amidst all the fuss, in full sight but while the opposition's attention was elsewhere.
Don't be fooled by the headlines. Look at the facts.
Time to make our own p2p DNS system. Government wants to interfere? No problem, we can make sure DNS stays in the hands of "we the people".
I'm surprised to see Al Franken on the sponsors list ( http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s112-968 ). He appears to champion net neutrality, and I would think fighting this kind of thing would be on the same agenda.
World wide it is the same. Citizens meaning well try to stay out of active political issues.. They keep their heads low, or worse they don't read history, they don't recognize government acts as important to themselves, so they end up victims.
The Bankers, TRADERS and their bigger than "the nations they control " SENMACE on the ground soldiers already have control of most of the national and regional governments of most of the nations of the world. Like a virus, they impose copyright and patent monopoly to take charge of your life and mine. Citizens, meaning well and trying to stay below the radar, let SENMACE giants trespass on and over their freedoms, because the Traders and Bankers and the SENMACE soldiers work through the governments they control, to extract "protection payments" in the form of monopoly law [copyright and patent] instead of collecting their "protection payments" in Capone fashion, at mussel end of a gun..
Legislation of this "monopoly type" affects everyone worldwide, because it becomes international law. Everyone's cause in freedom is at stake and in jeopardy when "trespass against freedom " becomes law. "New born" or "old age", grant of monopoly, affects prices, goods availability, jobs, job security, salaries, entrepreneurial competition and local economy independence.
In the EU the SENMACE are forcing uniform copyright and patent monopoly laws to make cheaper and easier lobbying efforts to "crush and munch" citizens freedoms by positioning SENMACE dominance in the political, financial and knowledge sphere to tighten the belt against would be competition and actual freedom.
Recognize this freedom quenching encroachment for what it is: worldwide, far reaching, and devastating.