Are SOPA Sponsors Violating SOPA Rules? Not So Fast, Says Ars Technica
TheNextCorner writes "Remember how the Stop Online Piracy Act would make streaming of copyrighted material a felony? Many of these lawmakers actually stream copyrighted videos on their websites." However, that's not the whole story. according to a followup at Ars Technica to the tweeted claims about streaming and SOPA. From which:
"The Electronic Frontier Foundation tweeted the post, and it was re-tweeted more than 100 times. So are the sponsors of SOPA hypocrites? We're not fans of SOPA, so we'd love to have this story check out. But we're also a news site, so we contacted James Grimmelmann, a copyright scholar at New York Law School, (and judging from his tweets, not a SOPA supporter) to get his expert opinion."
The core issue is how SOPA changes the liability structure to permit endless copyright troll lawsuits. It doesn't matter if your users are or aren't infringing if copyright holders can sue you endlessly regardless.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Go on america; keep on going, keep listening to the 1 % to try to get the rest of the world to do your bidding..
This is one of many steps that have been taken to make the USA look silly & this will only be one more step towards the downfall of the usa..
I used to be a big fan of the country; but i'm getting more & more convinced that the usa is nuts... & getting more & more so :)
in 10 years the usa will be disconnected from the internet.. at least; the free internet the rest of the world will enjoy.
No, it is a valid argument in this case. If they're arguing for more protection of their IP, then they have to explain why it is that they should get protection and other people shouldn't get protection. That sort of logical inconsistency is definitely fair game considering that the industry is trading on its "integrity" and harm being done to it to try to push SOPA through.
I have been so opposed to SOPA due to the shift in who has to scan and check.
The content companies got what they wanted with the DMCA.
They then found out it was to much of a problem for them to check.
Bad enough they did not know what others inside the same content holder were doing. (VIACOM v GOOGLE)
Now they want to shift the responsibility over to the internet operators, eliminate safe harbor.
In addition this gives the government even broader powers to shut down "infringing" internet sites, remove or change DNS.
Some of these are legal in the country that the sites operate in.
The US/Content companies are yet again trying impose there will on the rest of the world.
Now several prominent members of congress have come out against it.
This includes the former speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi.
Hopefully enough of them will realize this is bullshit and come to there senses.
I doubt it, but there is always hope.
Does anyone have a list of the tards that have come out in favor of the bill so far?
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
And while this is happening, media will be blowing up a big "fight" between Mitt and Obama, as if either of them would stop the rape on your (and the rest of the world's) basic human rights.
Expect Congress to exempt themselves from SOPA, just as they did with insider trading laws. In fact if they realize they could be charged for streaming those videos they may just exempt themselves from having to pay to use copy-written material for political uses at all. Certainly enough of them have been caught using material without the author's permission to make them think about it and this would solve that little issue.
According to the Fifth Amendment, no person (which includes corporations) can be deprived of "life, liberty, or property" without being convicted ina court of law.
Oh, wait, I forgot that the Constitution, which used to be the supreme law of the land and could only be superceded by a 2/3 majority vote by the states, is just a goddamn piece of paper.
As you were.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The lawyer says it's not a problem because the representatives are "unlikely to be willful infringers". They're public officials and everyone knows them. Therefore, no one is really going to take an infringement case against them seriously.
But what about the rest of us? What about some random kid posting the same sorts of videos to YouTube? Will there be anyone to say he's unlikely to be a willful infringer as well? Or will he just get sued straight away? Maybe he could hire an attorney, go to court, and spend months or years trying to prove he had a good-faith belief his actions weren't infringing. Or maybe he'll be scared into settling by some troll looking to extort money.
Bullshit. The observation that the speaker is being hypocritical is completely germane to the argument as the speaker in this case is trading on his position in order to advance his line of reasoning. Not all Ad Hominem Tu Quoque attacks constitute a logical fallacy and this would be one of those times. It is very much relevant to the process of debunking his argument to point out that there's an apparent logical inconsistency being presented. The speaker has the burden of proof in this case and would have to demonstrate that the apparent inconsistency isn't inconsistent.
Now, had the hypocrisy not involved such an important facet of the argument I would tend to agree, but as is it deeply undermines the view that they should be allowed to enforce as they see fit as they can't even agree upon a definition
I know of youtube's copyright enforcement. I recently had one of my own videos pulled at the request of Shopro. It was clear fair use - 48 seconds of a 20-minute episode, for parody purposes, noncommercially, with no possibility of confusing it for something they endorsed. But that doesn't matter - the only way that video can go back up is if I expose myself to legal action, which would mean a company in Japan suing someone in the UK using a law in the US... the lawyers would have my savings emptied three times over before they even decided where the case should be heard, and the amount of time I'd have to take off work to attend court would likely result in unemployment.
If SOPA had been in place when youtube was a small startup company, they'd have been blocked and killed. That would still happen to many startups. Today, though, youtube passes the bigness test - it won't be blocked. That would produce too much of an outrage.
Its not just Ubuntu friend, I've had the same problems with Windows XP and 7 with Dragon, Firefox, and Opera. I don't allow IE on my systems (you look at every patch Tuesday and more than half of it is IE) and I'm certainly not gonna compromise the security of systems i use to make money to sign a petition. As another pointed out the EFF and several other have made it as easy as fill in your info, one even has a FB login so you don't have to fill out anything if you already have a FB account.
To me this extra hoop jumping is just a way for them to laugh before they tear up your petition and throw it away, just look at the responses from the other petitions which was the most flowery "Fuck off you peasant you have no monies LOL!" troll I've ever seen. frankly I would have had more respect for the man if he simply would have wadded them up on camera and threw them away, because the thick bullshit he spewed was clearly designed to tell you "I don't give a FUCK what you think!" while not giving the other team a nice soundbyte, that's all.
So as my late grandma put it, who voted in every election from the roaring 20s only to quit in the late 80s and refused up to her death last year to participate anymore, "Why bother, they are only gonna ignore you anyway" and sadly grandma was right. Nothing will change until Goldman Sachs and their friends have dumped all their toxic debt on the fed, we are looking at triple what our current debt is and the fed cranks the presses so hard that bread is $30 a loaf and unemployment is at 45%+. Then we shall have what the rest of the world is having, our very own Arab spring. but until then you are just shouting in a closet while the rich rob and scam.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The authors of SOPA are not hypocrites. Hypocrisy connotes understanding of the issue and the representatives who allowed this piece of legislation to be crafted for them lack even the terminology to enter into meaningful conversation about issues such as DNS Security, Website Poisoning, and other salient factors affected by the law. To use Wolfgang Pauli's aphorism as a metaphor, this piece of legislation is so bad it's not only not right, it's "not even wrong".
Claiming that they are infringing unknowingly is a nice idea, except for the fact that these guys ARE SPONSORING THE VERY LAW WHICH THEY ARE BREAKING. To claim that they are breaking the law unknowingly is claiming that they don't understand the law they are passing. This is a far more frightening prospect.
Also, what sort of law includes ignorance as an excuse for breaking it?
or else!