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PROTECT-IP Makes Its Way To the Floors of Congress
New submitter trunicated writes "Everyone on Slashdot seems to know about PROTECT-IP Act — how it will push responsibility for the contents of the internet onto the search engines that index it, how it will give even more power to the *IAA industries, and, worst of all, how it will provide the U.S. government with a kill switch they can use at their discretion. However, this write up may provide you with a bit more information and help you explain the issues to those that won't be able to get around the poisoned DNS entries that this bill will allow."
How low can they go?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It was fun for a while. Too bad they've decided to kill it.
Complete control over everything is their goal.
I'm not young but I would not be surprised if, one day, my wife and I find ourselves living in a tent somewhere, eating what we can catch or forage.
Hebrews 11:8
Jeremiah 33:3
Nothing ever improves when corporations and the governments team up to screw the populace.
help you explain the issues to those that won't be able to get around the poisoned DNS entries that this bill will allow
When Pakistan screwed up, according to their own internal policies, and altered the routing (BGP) and effectively caused youtube.com to be /dev/null'd for a half a day, the rest of the world responded. They fixed the routes, and Pakistan lost a lot of credibility and respect from other IT people. Were Pakistan to continue affecting the rest of the world with its internal policies, the rest of the world would respond more and more stringently, to the point that Pakistan would not have access to such systems anymore.
This is no different. If the US decides to mess around with DNS in accordance with its own internal policies, the rest of the world will respond by taking that control away. Either through a EU sanctioned DNS infrastructure, or some sort of p2p infrastructure.
The alternative is the rest of the world dealing with clearly incorrect DNS entries and businesses having to deal with US control.
This problem does not need to be further explained, and the ones that do understand it, will work around it. This is a good thing. It will push DNS beyond US control, and might actually start a decentralized/fractured DNS system where those that care can resolve host names the way they see fit.
In short, this only provides more motivation to "solving" our problem of a monitored Internet. Create a secondary Internet on top of it that is not monitored and cannot be interfered with. Several projects in the works, and this only puts more fuel on the fire so to speak.
Please buy the media industries already. They have way too much power over your business in comparison to their economic weight.
It's now known as the E-PARASITE Act. Normally I wouldn't bother posting over something so trivial, but the new name is so poetically apt that I have to mention it.
Rob
Why would you want to shutup an idiot? The more they talk the better. (Para: Ben Franklin)
The ones idiots you want to shutup are the ones that claim to be on your side. (Me) If anybody is going to shutdown it will be the Democrat party. The fleabaggers are making them all look like equal fools.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
As I read about the poisoned DNS entries, I pause to edit /etc/hosts
The game.
They don't even have to do that. Just blame it all on the [other party], and point out how much more the [other party] is, and the public is sure to avoid voting for any third party, because it might mean the [wrong party] gets elected.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Does this even have much of a chance of passing? Considering how hard it's been lately to get IMPORTANT laws passed... do we even have to worry?
Our government can't seem to get much of anything done lately; how is this different?
I wrote to my senator (Mike Johanns, R-NE) to urge him to oppose the Hollywood Welfare Act [1] which helps a tiny (but vocal) cartel at the expense of everyone else. His office replied to say he agreed that it was crucial legislation to protect America's creative industries. So much for letter writing. :-/
In fairness, the last time I wrote him on a completely unrelated subject, he called me himself. I got home to an answering message: "Hi Kirk, this is Mike Johanns and I wanted to talk to you about your letter. Sorry I missed you! Give me a call back if you'd like." We never managed to meet up, but I respect that he personally went of out his way to address a constituent. I just hate that he's firmly on the wrong side (in my opinion) of this issue.
[1] I called it by its official name in my letter, but call it by its real name elsewhere.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
... Regan era internet regulations.
There's no such thing. Unless you're referring to the Acceptable Use Policies written by the government agencies universities that wholly owned the entire network.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
As much as I love ol' Ben, I'm having trouble finding a way to twist his quote to this situation.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Partisan politics are retarded, as are people that think that there is any real difference between the Republicans and Democrats. You're rooting for much the same team one way or another...
Your congressman/senators are your lawmakers (unless they have been bought). Write to them and tell them not to vote for it. People always overstate the power of the executive branch and seem to try to understate the power of congress. https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml
Too late, they're already bought. The technical term for this is 'campaign contributions'.
Even better. Somebody with more resources and experience than I should try to croudsource a bill to update the DCMA and Regan era internet regulations.
Until you can field a wad of cash greater than the *IAAs can, you can do all the crowdsourcing you want, it won't mean a thing. As has been noted several times over the last several years, 'If voting ever really changed anything, they'd make it illegal'.
The more paranoid among us of course will theorise that attempts like this are a way for the *IAAs are doing this to scrape every possible dime from the consumer to prevent any attempt by the public to outbuy their influence.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. ~P.J. O'Rourke
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomas Jefferson
Looks like Jefferson didn't get his wish.
Throw away everything you've ever been taught about copyright, neighboring rights, moral rights, etc.
Treat copyright the same as patents: allow exclusive rights for a limited time to earn back investments made. Art in the mainstream is and has been treated as products/merchandise, so we might as well let the legislative side reflect that fact and forget about that small world of a few publishers and creators, and a huge world of consumers. The public are still consumers but at the same time are creators and publishers, too. Inventors that spend years to develop their inventions get 20 years of protection, why shouldn't suffice for creators?
Can you imagine a world where every work (including "orphaned works") published before 1990 is Public Domain and free for everyone to use, modify and do whatever they please? This will break the power of the RIAA/MPAA. Right now there is no Public Domain, other than some very old literature. Every commercially released DVD-Audio, SACD, CD-Audio, 33rpm vinyl LP, 45rpm single, and even a significant fraction of old 78 rpm recordings are still kept behind the Copyright Wall which is what gives the *AA their power.
President Obama, Tear Down That Wall!
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
I tried that. The reply was rather discouraging. I'm attempting to figure out what to say in return, and whether it would have any effect.
Subject: RE: Your response from Senator Bill Nelson
From: Bill @billnelson.senate.gov
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2011 10:27:50 -0400
Dear [....]:
Thank you for contacting me regarding S. 968, the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property (PROTECT IP) Act of 2011. I am a cosponsor of this legislation. Introduced by Senator Leahy, this bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 26, 2011.
This legislation would authorize the Attorney General or an intellectual property right owner to take action against a registrant, owner, or operator of an Internet site dedicated to infringing activities. It also provides guidelines for preventative measures to be taken by operators of nonauthoritative domain name system servers, financial transaction providers, Internet advertising services, and information location tools, with respect to nondomestic or domestic domain names.
I appreciate the time you have taken to express your thoughts on this issue, and I will be sure to keep them in mind should the bill come to the full Senate for a vote. Please do not hesitate to contact me again in the future.
Sincerely,
Bill Nelson
P.S. From time to time, I compile electronic news briefs highlighting key issues and hot topics of particular importance to Floridians. If you'd like to receive these e-briefs, visit my Web site and sign up for them at http://billnelson.senate.gov/news/ebriefs.cfm
IANAL, but it seems to me the latest version of the bill gives this power only to the attorney general, and gives it only for "nondomestic" sites "dedicated" to infringing activities. Now I have no idea what the burden of proof is for "dedicated", but it seems like this is pretty squarely targeted at foreign video sharing sites that are outside of US laws. So they want to blackhole them.
I guess I'm not against that if the burden of proof is set high ( yes I know it probably won't be )
Maybe the MPAA should just start offering their own censored DNS service that if you use it, you get "movie points!"
*sigh* keep paddling upstream MPAA, maybe you'll get there someday and make us all go back to watching movies only in the theater.
To be fair, so far this bill has only been referred to the Judiciary Committee; it is not yet on the floor of the House of Representatives as a whole. The vast majority of bills die in committee, so let's hope this one does as well. You can track the progress of the bill at http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h112-3261.
All I said was that you don't want to shutup fools as they hurt their own cause. I said nothing about supporting any party. Just absolutely not supporting these idiots.
The fleabaggers are just the same ol same ol.
I ignored them when they were protesting the WTO, D convention, R convention etc etc etc.
The fact they have new publicists hasn't made them any smarter. The .99% are just the permanent protesting class. I have no doubt the D's would love for them to shut the fuck up as they are vote losers as sure as the KKK is.
The real action right now is the impending collapse of the euro anyhow. I think it's the only chance the dollar has (capital flight from the euro might give us enough time and/or suckers). To paraphrase the old punchline: 'The Dollar doesn't have to outrun the bear, just outrun the Euro.'
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'