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New Version of PROTECT IP Bill May Target Legal Sites
angry tapir writes "An upcoming version [PDF] of U.S. legislation designed to combat copyright infringement on the Web may include provisions that hold online services such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube legally responsible for infringing material posted by users, according to one group opposed to the bill. 'If Demand Progress is correct about the House version of PROTECT IP, the bill would overturn parts of the 13-year-old Digital Millennium Copyright Act that protect websites and ISPs from copyright lawsuits for the infringing activity of their users.'"
Let the RIAA and MPAA start suing Google and then we might see some real reform...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
This will be great for IP trolls who have been nickle and diming the general public with thousands of lawsuits. Now all they have to do is hit the big corps for a major payday
The tech companies such as Google will probably be against it, so they'll be at least some campaign cash to be had by voting Nay. Up until now, it had always been a matter of corporations with cash versus citizens without cash.
I am officially gone from
I thought most of the big copyright players had more or less agreed with the de facto settlement of a mixture of takedowns (for cases they particularly object to) and slapping ads on YouTube videos so they can profit via Google's revenue-sharing thing (for cases where they'll just take some cash compensation).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The time to complain is before the bill is introduced. Once the ball is rolling and it's been introduced and through committee and on the floor, it will be passed by every senate member who has been bought.
That is all of them.
Attacking the messenger does nothing.
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BMO
and use every tool in their arsenal to make filing a take down notice a matter of strict liability on accuracy with the legal damages calculated as the combined man hours needed to service the request times the number of requests plus treble damages if a "preponderance of evidence" shows that the notices were sent via an automated process.
Google and Facebook are, no doubt, going to send mountains of lawyers to stop this one.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Really, this article is interesting because we might see a real risk of corrupt stuff flying everywhere. So far the Copyright War has involved "third tier sites" that the public doesn't really care about. However, taking the theory in the summary as is, if we lost Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, would that in fact be enough to end "Web 2.0" and kick us over into some kind of Walled Garden Web 3.0?
The other possibility I see is a "differently-horrible" possibility of a site buying a "waiver" for insane amounts of money, so everyone's favorite top 100 companies are all there, but then it falls off a cliff because no one else can afford one.
This I. P. stuff really seems to be accelerating on the fastest track that the players think they can get away with short of just throwing the entire world in jail. It's also exposing a fatal flaw in the legislative process, because it only takes some ten bills to just get it all over with and introduce Big Brother and this bill is one of them.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The DMCA was almost entirely bought by the MAFIAA and so served their interests. The major exception was that the ISPs fought to have safe harbor included to protect their interests. Now the MAFIAA is going for round two, trying to eliminate the major part of the DMCA that didn't get written to their liking.
Next up: The triennial exemption rule. They're tired of fighting exemptions every three years, so this won't last long.
Notice nothing in this has a "for the people" ring to it.
While we might have hated the DMCA, the "Safe harbor" provision is something most of us can live with and the public can understand.
Instead of talking about free speech which is an abstraction that most people and politicians don't understand. We should talk about the fact that the so called Protect IP act will encourage frivolous lawsuits, send high paying american jobs overseas, and kill youtube, facebook and twitter and blogging while making trial lawyers rich and clogging up the court system.
They already pulled back Disney's copyrights when they were about to expire. They already tried to make recording artists' work a "work for hire" with the copyright going to the label. Before the labels lose this revenue they will try, and may succeed, in having another law passed that will extend the period.
So now, we take the one thing in the DMCA that is arguably good (when the rest of the DMCA is taken into context) and they want to gut that?
FC Closer
The argument takes on one of various semantical forms:
In the classical form, the arguer suggests that making a move in a particular direction starts something on a path down a "slippery slope". Having started down the metaphorical slope, it will continue to slide in the same direction (the arguer usually sees the direction as a negative direction, hence the "sliding downwards" metaphor).
Modern usage includes a logically valid form, in which a minor action causes a significant impact through a long chain of logical relationships. Note that establishing this chain of logical implication (or quantifying the relevant probabilities) makes this form logically valid. The slippery slope argument remains a fallacy if such a chain is not established.
so listen up nerd, because nobody should have to tell you this: other people are never referring to the fallacy, they are always referring to the metaphor that if you give in to temptation it can take you over. the one called classical form above. the metaphor doesn't claim that you will slide, as the fallacy does. it just says that staying on solid footing while making the choice in question is difficult because it's slippery (too easy to continue making bad decisions). smoking crack your first time doesn't mean you'll wind up sucking dick for it, but the addiction factor makes it a slippery slope. get it?
the fallacy was invented by a moron just like yourself simply for the purpose of derailing a conversation on points of minutiae and irrelevance (much like grammar nazis) instead of bothering to pay attention to the conversation. any ability you had to comprehend the conversation was eroded by your analysis paralysis.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT