Draft Alternative To SOPA Released

angry tapir writes "Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, and Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican, have released a draft version of the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) Act and posted a copy at KeeptheWebOpen.com. The act is intended to be an alternative to the Stop Online Piracy Act."

Comments

TL;DR

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll find out how I should feel about it in a few comments

Re:TL;DR

[cheekyjohnson]

What, you expect me to read the article/bill!? Now that's just asking for too much. It's difficult enough to read the title!

Re:TL;DR

[Darrell-Issa]

Don't feel bad, I didn't read it either.

Re:TL;DR

[L4t3r4lu5]

You should feel exactly the same; It's the same document, just with a less threatening name. Don't you know how these things work?!

Re:TL;DR

[wiedzmin]

I for one found this article useful. Until now I was convinced that SOPA stood for "Stop Online Privacy Act"... who knew.

Re:TL;DR

[Svartormr]

Don't feel bad, I didn't read it either.

House or Senate?

Don't want

[Dyinobal]

I don't want an alternative, to SOPA, or ProtectIP. I don't want any new legislation and regulations and useless laws to keep an outmoded business model alive.

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

+1

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want a bill that goes off the concept of being extreme, then "compromise" on a "reasonable" bill. Our existing copyright, patent, and other IP laws have worked well for centuries before the DMCA and other rubbish.

What worked for the framers of the Constitution should work for us now. End of story.

Re:Don't want

[The Raven]

While I personally disagree with most of the changes to IP that have happened over the past couple decades, this is a shortsighted view. The constitution is good, but imperfect; we cannot hold it as some holy document, unchanging, the word of our holy fathers who art in heaven, blah blah.

Most people, when they say 'Damnit, we should stop adding to the constitution!' really mean 'Damn, our government is huge and unwieldy, and I think it should be a lot smaller.' They just use 'follow the constitution' as a rallying cry to head toward what they really want (typically tighter fiscal policy and less government intrusion... ie, libertarianism). Please don't be 'most people'. The framers of the Constitution of the United States were unable to appreciate all the changes that progress has brought us, and there will be many changes that existing laws, even ones properly based on a constitutionally sound underpinning, do not handle well.

'Follow the Constition' is not the end of the story; it was the beginning.

Re:Don't want

[Fned]

Our existing copyright, patent, and other IP laws have worked well for centuries before the DMCA and other rubbish.

What worked for the framers of the Constitution should work for us now. End of story.

To be fair, there's been a fundamental change in information technology of a sort never before seen in all of history since then.

The old laws aren't good enough anymore. Copyright, in particular, is in need of a serious overhaul.

What the authors of SOPA don't get, though, is that no law can make things go back to the way they were, unless that law breaks all the computers. New laws will have to accept the inarguable truth that, for many mediums, copies aren't worth anything anymore, that some other measure of worth is needed in order to encourage creative business models.

Re:Don't want

[Runaway1956]

Then, I hope that you've been writing to the White House, as well as the house and senate. I have been, for years now. Both George Bush and Barack Obama have heard from me, repeatedly on the subject of internet freedom. All of my representatives, as well as a number of representatives that aren't my own.

This, and all similar acts, treaties, regulations, or whatever name it might go by, need to be shot down. I'm steaming over ACTA - a piece of shit born in secrecy, and jammed up all our orifices, despite any and all objections.

Re:Don't want

[zoloto]

they wrap it in a friendly name and it'll pass *cough*patriotact*cough*

Re:Don't want

[icebraining]

Without the DMCA there wouldn't be the Safe Harbor provisions that keep service providers from getting sued. Are you sure you want it abolished?

Re:Don't want

[Runaway1956]

"have worked well for centuries before the DMCA and other rubbish."

The beginnings of the current crisis predates the DMCA by about - ohhhh - 30 years, I'd say. Things started going out of kilter when the copyright laws started to be extended. And, let's blame Walt Disney and his company for much of that. In fact, I'll go further back, and say that things started to become unbalanced around 1950.

Since you point to the DMCA specifically, I would say that things started to accelerate downhill around the time that Microsoft stated that "This software is licensed, not sold." Without googling, it seems that at one point in time, one could actually "buy" a copy of MS Windows. Then with the next update to Windows, you could no longer "buy" it, you could only rent it, so long as you agreed to that stupid EULA, and understood that Microsoft owns everything on your PC - if not the physical PC itself.

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

For some of us, "follow the US Constitution" means exactly that what it says. It doesn't mean it can't change. It means, "The US Constitution is the supreme law of the land and we cannot in good conscience call ourselves a country of the rule of law if we can't even make token efforts to follow the supreme law of the land."

I firmly believe that the people that worked so hard to craft such an amazing document realized that it was supposed to be a living document. They realized that times were always changing and the Constitution needed to change with it. That's why they proposed and adopted (and used 3 times for a total of 12 amendments during Thomas Jefferson's lifetime) Article V. Using that little tidbit they saw fit to include, we can make whatever changes we want so long as each state has the same number of Senators.

To tout the idea that the framers were unable to appreciate what the world would be like today is to truly underestimate the likes of Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison and their peers. While they may not have seen the likes of personal computers or the Internet or movies, they certainly saw the need to adapt and change. And here's a hint: the tool they envisioned to adapt and change was not the Supreme Court deciding that the meaning and intention of words written more than 200 years ago has somehow changed over time.

While I'm not answering the meat of your post, you started to drift in the "living document" direction near the end.

note: Not the same AC as above.

Re:Don't want

[wanzeo]

I have met scores of Music Business majors at my university. That's a four year bachelors degree which will run you around 50k. Thats a huge investment to make in an "outmoded business model".

Now I completely agree with your point, but it is important to keep in mind how powerful the lobbying of an entire industry on the verge of losing their careers can be. It's analogous to the entire health insurance industry drying up if a public option were introduced (And as we saw, it was defeated). So I guess what I'm saying is that if we don't have the robust safety nets in place to handle whole industries becoming obsolete, then we are going to constantly be fighting a bitter fight in congress as they each try to legislate themselves back into business. It's completely predictable, and frankly, understandable human behavior.

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

The authors of SOPA do very much get that. This is why their law is a first step towards breaking all the computers.

Re:Don't want

[Grishnakh]

was not the Supreme Court deciding that the meaning and intention of words written more than 200 years ago has somehow changed over time.

The problem here is that someone has to interpret those words, and the SCOTUS seems to have inherited that duty. Otherwise, who's going to interpret them? The words don't stand on their own; no English writing does. All natural language is open to interpretation, especially as different circumstances arise that this language is supposed to apply to.

But otherwise, I agree the Constitution should be followed, and honestly I don't know why anyone wouldn't agree to that. If your government doesn't even follow its own most fundamental laws, then the whole thing is a farce. If the law is bad somehow, that's why you have Amendments, though you do need to build a lot of consensus to pass an Amendment.

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they haven't heard from you. The person paid to glaze over the thousands of letters they get every day has heard from you and thrown your envelopes into the pile with all the other opinions that're the same as yours.

Not that you're wrong to voice your concern and/or opinion, but that's just how it is. The prez and reps are too "busy" to read/see the same thing day after endless day, so they're just going to get someone else to do that aspect of their job and then report back to them at the end of the week for decent pay.

Re:Don't want

[AK Marc]

The Constitution allows for changes. If you want a change, code it into the Constitution, like the various proposals to band gay marriage, since the Constitution under the "full faith and credit" clause already explicitly indicates that if one and only one state has gay marriage, then all states do.

Re:Don't want

[Grishnakh]

The old laws aren't good enough anymore. Copyright, in particular, is in need of a serious overhaul.

Wrong. The old laws were much better than the new laws, when it comes to copyright. We need to dump all the new copyright laws, and go back to the copyright laws we had back in 1800, where works were only protected for 17 years before passing into the public domain. This infinite copyright term we have now is BS and totally flies in the face of why copyright exists in the first place (it's supposed to be a compromise between creators and society allowing creators a limited time to profit off their work before society gets completely free and unrestricted access to it).

Re:Don't want

[AK Marc]

Without the DMCA, there'd be no need for the safe harbor provisions. So yes, I *do* want it abolished (as well as abolishing the idea that "contrbutory" infringement exists, and statutory damages). Let them sue everyone for everything, and make them prove in open court what their actual damages are.

Re:Don't want

[Grishnakh]

Musicians have had careers for long, long, long before recorded music was invented: it's called "playing live". In fact, that's how a lot of musicians these days still make most of their money, because the profits from their studio records go straight to the record company, so the only way they make any real money is by touring. The business model for musicians hasn't changed that much since the Middle Ages.

Re:Don't want

[0123456]

The problem here is that someone has to interpret those words, and the SCOTUS seems to have inherited that duty.

Why? The US Constitution is one of the simplest substantial legal documents in the world. There are very few words which might require interpretation, and those are the very words which have been used to drastically increase the power of government. In this case, the copyright clause not specifying a duration but only saying 'a limited time'.

In other cases, the words are very clear, e.g. "shall make no law", and it's taken centuries of lawyering to turn that into "shall make no law except when we feel like it."

Otherwise, who's going to interpret them?

Juries don't need a gang of lawyers to tell them what the Constitution means, they can simply acquit if they feel the law is unconstitutional or immoral.

Re:Don't want

[wanzeo]

It's true, and I try to catch the artists I like (that still tour) whenever they come around. But I'm not talking about musicians, I'm taking about Music Business majors. They don't perform. Their entire career path depends on fitting in somewhere between the artist and the listener. And there are a lot more of them than you would imagine.

Re:Don't want

[Grishnakh]

Not a problem. I'm sure they can get a job doing something more useful to society, such as cleaning toilets.

Our society needs music business majors about as much as it needs buggy whip manufacturers.

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

Then, I hope that you've been writing to the White House, as well as the house and senate. I have been, for years now. Both George Bush and Barack Obama have heard from me, repeatedly on the subject of internet freedom. All of my representatives, as well as a number of representatives that aren't my own.

This, and all similar acts, treaties, regulations, or whatever name it might go by, need to be shot down. I'm steaming over ACTA - a piece of shit born in secrecy, and jammed up all our orifices, despite any and all objections.

Step 1: Complain to politicians
Step 2: Complain about politicians
Step 3: ....
Step 4: Profit!!!

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

The constitution is good, but imperfect; we cannot hold it as some holy document, unchanging, the word of our holy fathers who art in heaven, blah blah.

There's a difference between unchanging, living and get-up-and-dance. Right now it seems to be doing the tango.

(typically tighter fiscal policy and less government intrusion... ie, conservatism).

Don't confuse (as many on /. do) conservatism with the country-club/neo-conservative Republican Establishment in Washington.

After all, if they were real conservatives, why would they need to rename themselves neo-conservatives?

Re:Don't want

[Requiem18th]

What he means is that things have changed such that rulings from 1800 are not *necessarily* good for today. The fact that the rulings of 1700 ARE better than what we have today is not so much because the Statute of Anne was perfect as much as because the Mickey Mouse Protection Act is insane.

To wit, authors of 1709 were turning a profit on books with only 14 years of protection. This at a time when few people could read, distribution was expensive, printing was expensive and "piracy" (in the form of book sharing) was running rampant.

And enforcement only implicated regulating publishing companies.

Nowadays companies claim to need 120 years of protection, at a time when consumption is widespread, copying and international distribution is practically free and even more convenient than asking a friend to lend you a copy.

Granted, P2P file sharing is more disruptive than book lending, but enforcement against that requires to essentially attach a police man to every device, watching anything that the citizens do, with all the implications to civil liberties that such implicates.

1800 laws certainly aren't good for these days, it's just that today's laws are even worse.

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's like getting an MBA but focused on the music industry. A degree that's supposed to let you right into those jobs where the consumer hands up some money to the artist and you take a little slice for yourself for no reason.

The tears I'll shed for your friends wouldn't fill a thimble.

Re:Don't want

[wanzeo]

Yes but that won't happen quietly. The OWS movement is a perfect example of people who, according to the free market, should be cleaning toilets. But they don't see it that way. Likewise, the music business is becoming just as obsolete, except that they don't resist by camping out downtown, they resist by pushing legislation like SOPA and its' new alternative hard to the point of passing. This is dangerous, and requires us to have more than a indifferent attitude towards their plight.

In my opinion, most people who major in business do so because they don't really know what they want to do, and their family, school, and society tells them it is a viable option. Until the government stops giving loans to business majors, the problem belongs to all of us.

Re:Don't want

[Ihmhi]

Agreed. Jefferson alone contributed so much to our country. We really should have build a statue for the guy. Like, a big one. Maybe the size of a mountain.

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

The US Constitution is one of the simplest substantial legal documents in the world. There are very few words

You were doing perfectly right up to there. The Constitution demands interpretation precisely because it's so sparse. Broad principles need to be applied to highly specific circumstances for the law to be of any use. That requires interpretation.

Additionally, it's worth noting that many people who claim they're against interpretation are, when pressed, really just opposed to particular interpretations. We may safely assume you'd interpret the Constitution differently than how the various justices have done so over the last 208 years, but interpretation is inescapable.

Additionally, the more precisely and lengthy a legal document, the more it is wedded to the specific, precise, circumstances it was written to address. That will leave a lot less room for interpretation, but will require much, much, more frequent revisions of the letter of the law.

Re:Don't want

[Ihmhi]

It's analogous to the entire health insurance industry drying up if a public option were introduced (And as we saw, it was defeated).

How would the entire health insurance industry dry up?

Oh wait, the health insurance industry. I thought you meant the people who actually handle the important stuff, like doctors and nurses.

Let them die. The good employees can work for our equivalent of the NHS when we (hopefully) get it. A few of the companies can cater to the rich and powerful of the world who "want something better".

I can't think of any time where it has been good to protect a dying industry. If it can't learn to adapt then it shouldn't survive.

Re:Don't want

[bell.colin]

These "Bills" do not amend/modify the constitution, they circumvent it.

Amending the constitution is fine, but there is right way to do it (constitutional convention,voting, state ratification, etc...), and there is the wrong way (adding legislation by re-defining common terms and trying to work around it because you know there is no way you can successfully modify it when you don't have the votes or issuing executive orders).

Re:Don't want

[SydShamino]

And here's a hint: the tool they envisioned to adapt and change was not the Supreme Court deciding that the meaning and intention of words written more than 200 years ago has somehow changed over time.

200 years? More like 16 years. Thomas Jefferson, the person whom you appear to hold in such high regard (by your mention of him twice in your post) disagreed with the result of the very first case of judicial review. He thought the Supreme Court was already interpreting the words of the Constitution incorrectly.

At that point, while most all of the framers of the Constitution were still alive, they could have chosen to create and pass an amendment to stop the Supreme Court from continuing to decide the meaning and intention of words written 16 years prior. They didn't. So while no one expected the Supreme Court to take on the job it did, no one (not even those founders you idolize) tried to stop them.

Re:Don't want

[Archangel Michael]

Well, in California, they did pass a State Constitutional Amendment to say Marriage is between one man, and one woman, but that wasn't good enough for those wanting Marriage between two people, as being between one man and one woman is "too arbitrary". Well, hell, I think marriage limit between two people is "arbitrary", I'd love marriage to include men, women and all sorts of furry (an non-furry) farm animals in any quantity. Hell, even farm animals might be too arbitrary.

Anyway the point being, even if you pass a Constitutional Amendment, there are people who will oppose it and try to usurp it, restrict it, limit it, ignore it ... and sometimes with violent intentions. And just remember, even if the Constitution allows for something, doesn't mean it is a good thing.

Which is why we should always be mindful of what the Constitution says, and make sure we act accordingly, or change it to suit the new reality. Otherwise, we are simply a country of arbitrary feelings that change with the wind.

Re:Don't want

[Archangel Michael]

You want to fix Insurance/medical industry ?

Simple fix ... ONE PRICE

Meaning that everyone pays the exact same price for every procedure, office visit, operation, surgery and band-aid. Not Medicare pays $50, but the guy paying cash pays $1500.

Re:Don't want

[ATMAvatar]

With our current system, that's about as likely to happen as printer companies suddenly developing a standard, interchangeable ink cartridge.

Re:Don't want

[russotto]

I don't want a bill that goes off the concept of being extreme, then "compromise" on a "reasonable" bill.

I'm willing to compromise, but here's my starting position:

Title 17 of the United States Code is hereby repealed. All rights and privileges formerly granted under this code are null and void. The United States hereby withdraws from the Berne Convention, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, and the World Intellectual Property Organization. Any currently living executive or lawyer who is now or ever has worked for the RIAA or the MPAA or their foreign counterparts is declared outlaw, and the United States will pay a $50,000 bounty for their capture dead or alive.

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The old laws were much better than the new laws, when it comes to copyright. We need to dump all the new copyright laws, and go back to the copyright laws we had back in 1800, where works were only protected for 17 years before passing into the public domain.

Most copyrighted works make most of their profits within the first few years after release.

Most infringing copies are also made within the first few years after a work's release.

I agree that the endless copyright term extensions are crazy, and that in a few cases for works that have truly stood the test of time they cause real problems, but the whole copyright term extension argument is mostly a red herring.

Re:Don't want

[Grishnakh]

How's it a red herring. The previous poster said "the old laws aren't good enough anymore"; I was just pointing out that the real "old laws" (i.e. the copyright laws that this country started out with a little over 2 centuries ago) seem good enough to me, it's all the new laws (i.e. laws passed in the 20th Century) that suck. And I was slightly mistaken about the copyright term, it was 14 years, not 17. Which is even better AFAIC.

Personally, if I was dictator for a day, here's how I'd revamp the copyright system: for registering your work, you get 5 years of protection for free (retroactive to when you created it). For more than that, you have to pay a fee for every 5-year extension. The first extension will be fairly cheap, maybe $1000. But it goes way up after that: $10k, $100k, $1m, $10m, etc. for each extension. This way, in our "digital age", copyrighted works will become public domain quickly, but still give a 5-year window to make some money on them. If you're still making money on something after 5 years, $1k will be a cheap investment for a 5-year extension. If your work is "Avatar" or similar, you can probably afford a bunch of extensions before deciding the geometrically increasing fees have gotten too high, giving you 2 or 3 decades of protection. And all these fees can be used to pay into the Treasury so we can keep taxes low (after we drastically cut the budget by massively shrinking the DoD and DEA budgets).

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we'd have a lot less problem with interpretation if the interpretation didn't tend to be list of exceptions and general watering down. For example the right to bear arms and Freedom of speech and expression. These are clear as can be but people who want to regulate guns make a deliberate effort to water that down despite knowing damn well that the rebellious government overthrowing freedom fighters fully intended that the people were entitled to own and bear literally everything that is allowed to the military so they could overthrow the government. The same with freedom of speech. Traffic laws, licenses, and other minor city ordinances were never intended to trump the highest law of the land. More importantly than that these were intended for these purposes, they clearly state this and any interpretation to the contrary is just the justices attempting to legislate what seems reasonable to them rather than the law.

Re:Don't want

[SuricouRaven]

That would be back when the rifle was not yet widely available. It's clearly ridiculous to let people keep their own nuclear weapons and long-range bombers ready to fly now - weapons have advanced, and one person can weild far greater destructive power than was the case at the time. A line must be drawn, but it isn't clear where.

Re:Don't want

[SuricouRaven]

The constitution could be seen as saying that - which is why the republicans passed DOMA, a law which explicitly says that if one state has gay marriage then the others are free to ignore it and the federal government is specifically prohibited from recognising not just gay marriage but anything substantially similar to marriage. In theory a constutitional clause overrules a law, but in practice it's very difficult and costs millions in legel fees to even bring a challenge.

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

Our existing copyright, patent, and other IP laws have worked well for centuries before the DMCA and other rubbish.

What worked for the framers of the Constitution should work for us now. End of story.

To be fair, there's been a fundamental change in information technology of a sort never before seen in all of history since then.

The old laws aren't good enough anymore. Copyright, in particular, is in need of a serious overhaul.

If one accepts copyright, yes, the advent of computers and wide-scale networking makes a need for new copyright law clear. But how sure are you the breakage is new, and not latent injustice merely rendered visible by IT?

Look at the history of copyright law -- it started with the London publishing industry lobbying for a law to reduce competition and increase profits, granting a publisher of any book perpetual control over it -- but exhibiting a level of backbone unheard of in modern American politics, Parliament cut it to a limited term, vested the newly-created rights (slightly less indefensibly) in the author rather than the publisher, and changed the justification from codification of a pre-existing "natural right" (like personal property) to a pragmatic deal -- stripping everyone else of their right to copy books they own, in exchange for the incentive (and the supposed increase it brings) to write new books.

(They didn't take the reduction lying down, and fought to have the perpetual natural right of creators to control their work (including to sell that control to a publisher) recognized in court, where it failed miserably, and in public opinion, where it was eventually rather successful, and is largely to blame for the series of extensions in US copyright law through the 20th century.)

Note that books are the oldest digital media, with lossless copying (so often attributed as one of the reason copyright law for "analog" data such as photographs and audio is not suitable for digitized versions of these, or fundamentally digital (e.g. computer code) works) -- note also that this law (Statute of Anne) was not created when copying books was hard (it seems so in our perspective, but it used to require literate slaves, or a dedicated workforce such as a monastery), but when it had just become much easier, thanks to the movable-type press (eliminating the other argument, that copying digital data, if not strictly free, is so much cheaper than other forms of reproduction as to make existing law unsuited.) In fact, it was exactly the same kind of reaction to prop up an old business facing threats from new technology as the DMCA and successors have been.

Then other content-distributing industries (concerning e.g. pictures, sound recordings, and printed-word other than books) piled on, as their wares became feasible to reproduce, demanding they be permitted to share in this scheme to profit from the new copying tech while preventing others from doing so. And when has a legislative body been able to ignore well-connected businessmen asking a mere reasonable extrapolation of existing law? With each step, we infringed a little more on the property rights of everyone (their natural right to, say, arrange their own silver nitrate on their own celluloid as they see fit), but nobody cared, since only a handful of nerds have a photography setup in their basement anyway. THAT is the key difference, the reason why the moral bankruptcy of copyright is finally exposed -- because since the cassette recorder, "ordinary" people have become financially able to have the same new copying tech as the content distribution industry, and they finally begin to feel the longstanding infringement on their rights.

Industry-promoted laws, for the industries' (and never for the actual creators') profits, right down the line -- how can anyone not on an industry payroll support this except "it's always been that way"? Don't cry for the modern content-distribution industrie

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

it is important to keep in mind how powerful the lobbying of an entire industry on the verge of losing their careers can be.

Thank you for this pithy, succinct example of modern Western civilization's decadence. How far we've fallen in the past 100 years of "progress": if the beginning of the 20th century were like today, then the automobile would never have become popular due to entrenched buggy whip industry lobbyists "protecting the interests of their clients" by getting laws passed to stymie machinery produced on an assembly line.

Just imagine what the railroad industry would have done to the burgeoning road & air freight industries. I mean, they've *invested* in the old way of doing things, so it's completely understandable for them to resort to whatever scummy protectionist laws they can buy, right?

The moral fiber (or whatever the fuck you wish to call it) is gone from our society. This entrenched protectionism and the moral lassitude that gave rise to it must be reversed or our civilization will face decadence, decline, and eventual collapse.

Having a welfare state won't help, either. Do you believe that those recent music business grads, with their 50k worth of student debt, are the ones buying these protectionist laws? No, it's the megacorps that are crushing innovation. Somehow, I don't believe that having 99+ weeks of unemployment available for the "victims" of structural unemployment is going to factor even an iota in the decisions of the corporate execs. It's just patently irrelevant.

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

A little devil's advocate...

One could argue that it would be best to have those under the control of the people to begin with. The most efficient way would be to say that they are not used without congress's approval or as defense on our own land only if absolutely necessary (which goes to where to draw a different line of what is too heavy to use at home, or what would call for it to be used at home). "Absolutely necessary" would be defined as to ward of direct attackers who are attacking our own land (Pearl Harbor). Of course, congress is bought these days, so that won't solve much, but you could open up the ability to raise the validity of congress's approval in court each time that they approve anything.
 

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

Granted, P2P file sharing is more disruptive than book lending, but enforcement against that requires to essentially attach a police man to every device, watching anything that the citizens do, with all the implications to civil liberties that such implicates.

I disagree that P2P is more disruptive than book lending, but that is a personal belief I don't have any data to back that, and won't argue, however the enforcement part is interesting...

Because attaching a policeman (be it virtual) to every device is the only way to actually enforce a status-quo with the historical growth in profits for publishers. (Don't fool anyone, this have nothing to do with artists/writers, they are workers like you and me, and considered as such) this is what they want. A virtual policeman build into any device, and outlawing of any device without such an entity, and make it a criminal act to even consider how to circumvent this system.

The DMCA was one step on the way, it criminalizes sharing the knowledge of how to circumvent it, even linking to that knowledge have been found to be criminal.

Reading the new rules only shows that this is the road decided on. It can't be made in one go, the good old frog and boiling water thing. So it comes in steps.

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

How's it a red herring.

Because for practical purposes, the old laws and the new laws are little different in that respect. If almost everything of interest to either side happens in, say, the first five years, then it doesn't really matter whether the copyright term technically extends to 14 years or 140. And if you look at profits for rightsholders or the stuff that's being swapped illegally on-line, it's pretty clear that most of the interesting stuff does happen within a short space of time for the kinds of works that are big money to Big Media and of widespread interest to infringers. Beyond that, you're into copyright as protection for the little guy, at which point the practical issues may get more complicated but the consequences of both copyright and infringement on it become less far-reaching.

Re:Don't want

[AK Marc]

Good thing we have the ACLU to protect our Constitutional rights. They manage to raise the funds necessary for such legal battles and pick good test cases. Why is it that so many who claim they want to follow the Constitution do so only until it conflicts with their personal beliefs?

Re:Don't want

[AK Marc]

Marriage between a person and an animal being excluded is not "arbitrary." Marriage, in common law, is the merging of two legal entities into two halves of a single legal entity. How does that work when one of the entities has no rights to begin with? Will marriage raise dogs to the level of a human for rights? It would be "required" under marriage. And excluding poly isn't "arbitrary" either. It's a requirement for the common law marriages we use, though there's nothing preventing marriages between any two people regardless of gender or age (what, you claimed that pro-gay marriage people arguments support marrying dogs, so why not marrying 6 year olds as well?), so there's no barrier in "mariage" from stopping two men from getting married, so doing so is arbitrary.

Re:Don't want

[flonker]

One of the reasons that piracy is so rampant is that the social agreement regarding copyrighted works entering the public domain has been broken. Therefore people no longer feel the need to respect it.

Or so the argument goes. It seems valid to me.

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about two six-year-olds, but marriage between adults and children is not unprecedented. In fact, it's (historically) frequent enough that there are special conventions in marriage law for exactly that. One of them being, for example, that someone who has been legally married is automatically considered to have reached the age of majority and can therefore drink alcohol, drive, and sometimes even vote (not federally, though). This can, and has, even included preteens.

Although, you'll usually require the consent of the AG, and typically they will also require the consent of both sets of parents.

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I'm afraid I find that argument to be part of the whole red herring I described before. If people were copying stuff that was released 20 years ago and should probably have entered the public domain by now, that would be a strong argument. However, most people are copying the latest hit single, a leaked preview of the next big Hollywood blockbuster, or the new version of Office/Photoshop/$AAA_GAME, exactly none of which would be out of copyright for several years even under any historical system. That, also, is not respecting the social agreement. It's simply ripping off whoever did the work/invested the money to produce those products.

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

> I don't want any new legislation and regulations and useless
> laws to keep an outmoded business model alive.

Yet you'll happily download and watch the fruits of that business model.. Hypocrite.

Re:Don't want

[Thugthrasher]

Actually, I know a couple of music business majors. Sure, a lot of them go into recording, etc. But there are a lot of them that are involved in the booking of shows/festivals, setting up that kind of thing, getting advertising for those things, etc. Music Business majors are involved with the "live" process, as well as the other process. So, even without recordings, they'd still have a place.

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

Any currently living executive or lawyer who is now or ever has worked for the RIAA or the MPAA or their foreign counterparts is declared outlaw, and the United States will pay a $50,000 bounty for their capture dead or alive.

This would require amending the Constitution as well, because bills of attainder are not currently allowed. I'd support an amendment allowing this narrow exception :).

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

"How does that work when one of the entities has no rights to begin with?"

You mean marriages from some years ago where women had no right to vote, no right to run a business, no right to own a bank-account etc are all illegal?

Re:Don't want

[Alsee]

Well, in California, they did pass a State Constitutional Amendment to say Marriage is between one man, and one woman

Up until 1998 South Carolina's state Constitution had an equivalent clause prohibiting interracial marriage. Hell, even in 1998 38% of the state's voters voted to keep it in place. Bigotry dies slowly, fighting tooth and nail all the way.

The point is, it doesn't matter what California's or South Carolina's Constitution said on the subject. They were both null and void under the US Constitution.

Under Article IV, Section 1 of the United States Constitution, EVERY STATE is required to give full faith and credit to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state. And that includes marriages. It doesn't matter if your state has a two year waiting period to obtain a marriage license, you can fly to Nevada and get a quickie marriage in a cheezy Vegas chapel. Every state is required under the US constitution to give full faith and credit to that marriage. It doesn't matter if your state prohibits interracial marriages or gay marriages. You can fly to Iowa and have an interracial gay marriage, and it doesn't matter if one state constitution attempts to ban the marriage for being interracial and another state's constitution attempts to ban the marriage for being gay.

And regardless of the Full Faith and Credit clause of the constitution, any law or state constitutional ban on gay marriages or interracial marriages is null and void anyway under the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution. The law cannot examine the RACE of marriage applicants as a basis for discriminating between acceptable and unacceptable marriage applications. The law cannot examine the RELIGION of marriage applicants as a basis to discriminate between acceptable and unacceptable marriage applications. The law cannot examine the GENDER of marriage applicants as a basis to discriminate between acceptable and unacceptable marriage applications.

Any prohibition against gay marriages is null and void for the exact same reason any prohibition on interracial marriages is null and void, and the exact same reason any ban on mixed-religion marriages would be null and void.

The only way to stop gay marriages (or interracial marriages), would be with an amendment to the US Constitution.

Anywho, the battles will linger one but the war is already over. General public opinion on the issue is already split almost dead even, and it's increasing twice as fast as approval increased for interracial marriage. And most significantly, there is an overwhelming generational split. Exactly as happened with interracial marriage, opposition is concentrated among the older generation and particularly the senior citizens. Exactly as with interracial marriage, the younger half of the population is overwhelmingly accepting, viewing it as an issue of civil-rights vs bigotry.

The fact is, the war is over. The gay marriage opponents just don't know it yet. There is just plain no way to stand against a generational shift. Each and every day the younger generations just plain bury more and more of the senior generation, and their bigotry gets buried with them.

If you don't want to marry a black/white/asian/latino/homosexual/lesbian/christian/muslim/hindu/atheist/blond/brunette/redhead or whatever else, then fine. Don't marry anyone you don't want to marry. But it's no skin off your nose if some other consenting adult couple choose to get married. Live and let live.

-

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the constitution is more valid today than it ever was; only for the fact that there are constant abuses of power.

Sure there could be some additions and slight changes; The problem with that is, our politicians of today can't just introduce some wise changes, they like to tack on a million other things. We always end up with a thousand page bill.

The last couple of years they have been talking about repealing the 14th amendment and re-doing it. I have no doubt the replacement would be larger than the rest of our constitution combined, and it would be full of all sorts of trickery to allow congress and the feds to USERP state sovergenty, and the rights of the people.

No. the line is drawn. That will not be tolerated.

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

mod up! I love that!

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

The Constitution demands interpretation precisely because it's so sparse.

No, it really doesn't. If the constitution doesn't say something, then the federal government can fuck off. If the issue is important enough to warrant addressing at the federal level, there are better ways to do that than saying the constitution means something it does not.

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

I would argue that if you can't see a clear place to draw a line you shouldn't do the drawing.

The 2nd amendment is about citizen's militias. The express point is for defense in the event the federal government is unwilling or unable to defend some portion of the US. And the implied intent is to ensure that the federal government can't use the threat of force to coerce the citizenry.

So if a weapon is too dangerous to allow your citizens to use it in the defense of their nation, than it's clearly too dangerous for the government to use it to do the same.

To me it seems prety clear that the rule should be: anything the federal government can have I can have.
Then we let other laws, like the prohibition of murder, take care of how the weapons are used. since the right to maintain a figting force is not the right to go out and kill people or use force to steal.

Re:Don't want

[Hatta]

And what have your letters accomplished? You probably get a warm fuzzie from writing them. What else?

Re:Don't want

[Runaway1956]

See the first AC post in response to my post.

Someone sits around tabulating all the stuff sent to the politicians. That someone makes a report periodically, informing Congress Critter Muckraker that all of 17 people have written this week, protesting ACTA. Or, maybe he reports once a month, or maybe even once a day.

I'll bet if Congress was debating the removal of 'American Idol' from the airwaves, they would get about 30 million letters, and 60 million phone calls, along with 120 million emails within 24 hours. But, anything important, like ACTA only gets a couple dozen organizations like EFF involved, and maybe two or three thousand private citizens.

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason people pirate is because the cost of piracy is lower than the cost of purchasing.

people often rationalize their choice to pirate as something ideological, but really it's because they don't have any strong reason to not pirate. You're more likley to get people refusing to pirate because they want to support their favorite artist than you are to get them pirating because the disagree with (or even know anything about) copyright law.

Personally I do a little bit of both. My first choice is netflix streaming (because so long as I have my subscription the incremental cost for another viewing is 0). But if I can't find it there I'll check iTunes and either buy/rent it if I think the price is reasonable, or if I can't find it or decide i don't want it badly enough for the price, I go to Pirate Bay. If I can't fund it there than I usually conclude i don't want it enough to look anywhere else.

The alternate rout is if i want something really badly in which case I'll consider buying a physical copy instead of going through the digital path.

Now when I was a poor college student, or an unemployed graduate I pirated everything, except the very rare title that i wanted badly enough to buy. That's because I was much more sensitive to price and generally if i couldn't find it for free I didn't watch it.

Re:Don't want

[jmac_the_man]

Interestingly, Democrats passed that law. They had the Senate when it was passed, and President William Jefferson Clinton signed it.

Imagine that. BILL CLINTON wanting to defend marriage. Anyway, I know this goes against the groupthink here at Slashdot, but Democrats passed that law too.

Re:Don't want

[Hatta]

So in other words, nothing?

Re:Don't want

[Runaway1956]

Something, after all. SOPA was shot down, wasn't it?

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/11/explosion-opposition-internet-blacklist-bill

Re:Don't want

[Archangel Michael]

"Marriage, in common law, is the merging of two legal entities into two halves of a single legal entity."

This is historically wrong. Marriage has always been between men and women. I don't know a single culture that included homosexual "unions" as a norm. Additionally, there is more historical evidence for polygamy than anything resembling homosexual unions. Common law marriage was between a man and woman.

Further, the purposes of marriage laws were to protect FAMILY (mom, dad, kids) and the wife's widowhood. Since by definition, homosexuals cannot have children of their own, there is no compelling reason to allow for marriage between them. Now granted, homosexual couples can go for donors or adoption, but that brings up additional legal ramifications. There is no compelling reason why society should support homosexual unions the same way as for heterosexual unions.

Interestingly enough, most proponents of homosexual marriage are against polygamy or polyandry or other forms of "plural" marriages. Arbitrary indeed. I did notice that you simply went to the extreme example I provided, and bypassed this one.

But please, do not mistake what I'm saying as opposition to homosexuality, personally I don't care what two people do in the privacy of their own home. Further, I would suggest to you that Marriage is a sacred (religious) institution historically, and that government should have no business sanctioning or restricting marriage at all, but rather it should be left to sacred/religious organizations. Government should not favor or disfavor people based on marital status.

This means that if there is a legal framework for sacred (religious) marriage, that it should be done via a legal contract, each one being unique to the people involved. This would give homosexuals and plural marriage advocates all the legal protection they want AND need.

Re:Don't want

[SuricouRaven]

Sort of. DOMA had substantial support from both parties by the numbers, so it wouldn't matter who controled what at the time: It'd have passed either way. It was authored by a Republican though.(Bob Barr, R-Georgia).

I'm amused by the justification. It's authority comes from the aforementioned 'full faith and credit' clause, which reads:

"Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof."

DOMA's proponents argued that while the clause does require all states respect the public acts and records (ie, marriages) of other states, congress can determine the effect thereof... which includes the authority to tell the states to ignore the first part of the clause entirely. Clever lawyers.

Re:Don't want

[Catbeller]

The 9th Amendment was implemented precisely because they could not anticipate the future.

"The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

Rights exist even if not anticipated or enumerated by the original document. You can state that you have the right not to be scanned by a telepath, even if we don't have telepathy. Rights are not privileges, and you should not have to beg for them.

Re:Don't want

[Fned]

I disagree that P2P is more disruptive than book lending, but that is a personal belief I don't have any data to back that, and won't argue

I'll argue.

A copy of a book has access restriction built in -- if I have it, you do not, and if I give it to you, I do not have it -- and therefore it has inherent value. Ten copies of a book is worth ten times as much as one copy (assuming anyone else wants them).

A digital copy of a file CAN NOT have access restriction built in -- at least not if you want the posessor to be able to read it -- and therefore it has no inherent value. Ten copies of a .PDF file are worth exactly the same as one copy, or a billion copies; and that worth is determined entirely by whether you have access to a copy or not.

Book lending transfers access to data from one party to another. P2P grants access to data to any party. They are fundamentally different, and the latter completely breaks any publishing model based on selling individual copies.

Re:Don't want

[Hatta]

No, it has not. Not yet.

Re:Don't want

[Unequivocal]

I lived on several Polynesian islands and homosexuals there were totally unremarked upon. The gay men (I didn't meet any lesbians, as society there is pretty heavily stratified with men spending time with men, and I'm a man) had basically equal status with the other men, and no one seemed to care if you were screwing men or women at night. They also didn't have a formal marriage system like the Catholic priests who were on one island wanted, and in fact the priests finally got a whole bunch of couples to get married in the church, while I was there (some of the couples had been together for 40+ years). Of course only the hetero couples got married in this Western way, which maybe was the start of a segregating of gay couples in the culture. I haven't been back in a long time so maybe the priests are winning that one now, but I can say that I've personally witnessed cultures that don't give a crap about "marriage is just between one man and one woman."

And this doesn't even start on your notion of family: families in polynesia where I lived are very much more fluid than here. People pass kids around between *households* somewhat frequently based on whether someone has too many or too few kids to take care of, and there is no concept of "adopted" as a stigma -- children define their parents, whether blood or otherwise, as the ones who are feeding them. There is a word for "blood parent" but it's almost never used and is insignificant culturally/emotionally to the children I talked with.

Re:Don't want

[Archangel Michael]

I'm aware of Polynesian customs, including the value they placed on women. So much so, that if a family had all boys, One culture had it so the youngest would be turned into a "girl", and it ended up being "honored", interestingly enough, that "girl" was not an object of sexual desires nor necessarily a homosexual. However, if it was the case that he was "gay", it would indicate that homosexuality is more "cultural" than something one was born to be, something homosexuals have been fighting against their whole lives. Which is why most informed gay people don't bring up Polynesian Culture.

Additionally Many Polynesians also practiced Cannibalism, I wouldn't use (their) ancient traditions as proof that it is normal ;)

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

It is very clear where to draw the line. Go back and read the writings of the men who wrote the 2nd amendment. They made it abundantly clear that a free citizen is entitled to bear any firearm given to a standard infantry soldier. The idea was that the military nor the government could not therefore take away the freedom of the citizen by brute force.

Re:Don't want

[Alsee]

What the authors of SOPA don't get

First, note that copyright laws for the last several decades have literally been written by lawyers employed by copyright industry. Actual legislators rarely "author" anything more than small modifications.

is that no law can make things go back to the way they were, unless that law breaks all the computers

We are happy to have reached a reasonable compromise with you. We find your terms acceptable.

-

Re:Don't want

[Alsee]

Title 17 of the United States Code is hereby repealed. All rights and privileges formerly granted under this code are null and void. The United States hereby withdraws from the Berne Convention, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, and the World Intellectual Property Organization. Any currently living executive or lawyer who is now or ever has worked for the RIAA or the MPAA or their foreign counterparts is declared outlaw, and the United States will pay a $50,000 bounty for their capture dead or alive.

This would require amending the Constitution as well, because bills of attainder are not currently allowed. I'd support an amendment allowing this narrow exception :)

Your sarcasm aside, you're right. That was pretty bad. Unconstitutional. Destructive. Abhorrent even, to any sane sense of justice.

Everyone agrees the current situation is bad, and it's only getting worse the longer we fight with each other over it. There is an urgent need to solve the problem, and we all need to come together and pass a reasonable bi-partisan compromise immediately.

I'm happy to Release this Draft Alternative:
Title 17 of the United States Code is hereby repealed. All rights and privileges formerly granted under this code are null and void. The United States hereby withdraws from the Berne Convention, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, and the World Intellectual Property Organization.

I suggest we rush this out of committee tonight and attach it to the Federal Budget bill to be passed as an Emergency Vote, precluding any unproductive filibuster or amendment squabbles.

-

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be back when the rifle was not yet widely available.

Bad example. Have you forgotten that some (well off) people in colonial times owned their own cannons, and employed their personal artillery pieces in the revolution? They're a wee bit more powerful than rifles.

Now, I'm off to polish the howitzer. I leave it to the reader to decide what that actually means...

- T

Re:Don't want

[Unequivocal]

From an anthropological perspective, cannibalism is no worse than carpet bombing Cambodia, or dropping drone missiles into wedding parties right?

Nevertheless, the concept of "normal" is cultural, which was my point, and it sounds like you agree? And specifically, marriage as a concept is culturally defined, and not universally the same.

Re:Don't want

[AK Marc]

This is historically wrong. Marriage has always been between men and women.

I was leaving the bigotry out and just focusing on what it is, not which groups were allowed to participate. There's no "difference" between a man marrying a man and a woman, and when I was doing my vows, most vows were gender neutral such that the wording for all but the last 3 words would have worked great for two men or two women. Who it has always been between and who was explicitly excluded from marrying someone else is completely missing my point. Your specifics seem to indicate you got it, and refused to respond in kind.

Fuck you.

Interestingly enough, most proponents of homosexual marriage are against polygamy or polyandry or other forms of "plural" marriages. Arbitrary indeed. I did notice that you simply went to the extreme example I provided, and bypassed this one.

A man is eligible for marriage, under *everyone's* definition, as is a woman. A complaint about the other person being required to select someone from the other gender in no way requires the inclusion of animals as eligible marriage participants. If you complain about people picking your own examples to use against you, then you should stop using them for their "shock value" or whatever you are trying to prove with them. I demonstrated that your exclusivity rules are absurd, so you changed the bar. Too late. You stated a flaw in "their" argument, and I proved you wrong. I don't need to prove you wrong on everything. You are wrong on that, so you are wrong on the issue. And your "gays can't procreate anyway, so they don't need marriage" statements are silly, but no need for me to seriously address them because you proved them wrong yourself with adoption and fertilization options available. IT's almost like you know you are wrong, but are still opposed to the idea for no logical reason, just plain bigotry, and you invent reasons to help you feel less like a bigot.

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

The purpose of law is to protect the rich (property, capitalism) and reduce their costs. We have safety laws to reduce the costs of health-care, life insurance, pensions provided by the government.

How does your demand that all IP, the very foundation of modern commerce in the US, become public property, help the rich/government?

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, that's ridiculous. Even $25,000 each would massively impact the deficit.

AC

Re:Don't want

[Archangel Michael]

Do you realize that while normal is "cultural", without "normal" you have no culture?

Normal = expected behavior.

Re:Don't want

[Unequivocal]

Not to go totally academic here but that's a structuralist viewpoint, in my opinion. And structuralists are pretty cool - not a bad viewpoint at all. Personally, I really love the work of folks like Ian Hodder who has been looking at things from a (his term) post-processualist viewpoint (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Hodder). This implies that normal is often an artifact of analysis, not a feature of culture. There are whole books on this, so hard to summarize, but perceived cultural boundaries are most commonly actually gradations of different attributes of humanity, and historians and anthropologists often draw these arbitrary lines around clusters of these attributes and call it "normal" (aka "normal American"). That often isn't how the emic (internal to culture) folks view it at all..

Example, I feel generally more culturally connected to people from Vancouver than people from Maine, even though being a Californian, my country is often viewed as my cultural anchor from the etic (outsider) perspective.

I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying there are other ways to look at this, than "normal" being the definer or creator of culture.

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent insightful

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

The OPEN act?

Here's how that meeting went down:

Tom: "This bill will destroy the freedom of the internet within our borders."
Dick: "Name it the opposite."
Harry: "Yes, name it the OPEN act and it will psychologically balance out the negative feelings the masses will have when they think about it."
Tom: "Just like the PATRIOT act. Brilliant!"

n_t

Re:Don't want

[flonker]

I'm sorry, you misunderstood what I'm saying.

The social agreement has been broken in that copyrighted works no longer enter the public domain. Therefore, people no longer respect copyright on any works, because they see copyright itself as being unfair.

Expecting people to adhere to a non-existent social contract (only copying works that were released 20 years ago) is a red herring itself.

There are other causes behind the general lack of respect for copyright, but if 20 year old works entered the public domain, you would greatly reduce the amount of infringement. Many people who are unwilling to pay for modern works would use the older works instead, and the support base for infringement of modern works would drop. Netflix is a great example of this. Netflix has taken a huge chunk out of torrent's user-base. People replaced newer works with older works that are more convenient and more socially acceptable. The industry groups are doing their best to kill or Balkanize the movie streaming industry, which will drive people back to torrents of newer works.

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I think I probably do understand -- and agree with -- much of what you're saying.

I suppose my counterpoint is just that a lot of the younger generation -- digital natives, as my friends in marketing would describe them -- don't know what copyright means or understand that sharing some things on-line is illegal. Witness the numerous flagrant infringements on YouTube, accompanied by statements like "I don't own the rights to this, no copyright infringement intended". I think many of these kids aren't deliberately breaking the law and don't even realise they're doing anything wrong. No social contract exists with them, because no-one's ever told them what the deal is.

Re:Don't want

[Requiem18th]

I agree, I admitted that P2P was more disruptive than book sharing, and it is game changing, but it's not like preventing P2P would be the end of the distress of publishers. When people are relatively sure that content is going to stay around forever, they are more than happy to part with it.

The most obvious examples are second-hand shops. Books, videogames, and for that matter used cars are routinely sold and buyed again over and over. There are cafés in Japan where you can drop off your read manga and pick up something you haven't read yet.

This is legal, but of course media companies hate it.

I used to worship Nintendo as a child, I remember the point when Nintendo shamelessly linked used game shops with piracy was when it downed to me that they were just a corporation and would sink as low as necessary for a buck.

I think there was a line in the Steam TOS where it said that sharing my account was grounds for termination. Which I find ludicrous. If I play on weekends and my wife plays on weekdays why would we have to buy the same game twice?

Which is why I call bullshit on anyone defending copyrights on ethical or legal basis. This is an economics matter.

Music is more consumed more whimsically, we can't really plan when we will want to listen to some song but I'm fairly certain that no individual track is getting played simultaneously more than a hundred times globally. Meaning that there is a legal basis for a system that would allow people to share the same copy of a track provided that the track is not being simultaneously listened more times than it has been uploaded (allegedly from a legally acquired source).

Of course because it is on the computer the industry would make sure that such service never sees the day of light, but it is basically operating the same as a super efficient library.

If those guys hate it....

[Anonymous Coward]

...it must be a reasonable piece of bill, taking the GODMODE powers out of SOPA.

They got the acronym wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade = OPEDT, not OPEN.

So what are they really protecting and enforcing?

Re:They got the acronym wrong.

[Desler]

It's Open Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade. The bolded letters is how they get OPEN.

Re:They got the acronym wrong.

[masternerdguy]

Who bets that they started with OPEN and fit the name around it?

Re:They got the acronym wrong.

[Grishnakh]

Unfortunately, that's the way most laws are these days. Just look at the PATRIOT ACT. You think they came up with the name and the acronym just happened to be those two words?

50 years ago, they never did BS like this in lawmaking. Not saying there was no BS in lawmaking, but this acronym stuff is way over the top.

Re:They got the acronym wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

2100 years ago, they did, though. The SPQR fucking loved acronyms.

Re:They got the acronym wrong.

[cmdr_klarg]

Unfortunately, that's the way most laws are these days. Just look at the PATRIOT ACT. You think they came up with the name and the acronym just happened to be those two words?

50 years ago, they never did BS like this in lawmaking. Not saying there was no BS in lawmaking, but this acronym stuff is way over the top.

The name is actually the USA PATRIOT Act (what's better than a patriotic word? TWO of them!).

Re:They got the acronym wrong.

[Grishnakh]

Oh right, sorry about that. I knew there was a second word in there, I just got confused about the second one.

They make record profits yet aren't happy

[ZorinLynx]

Funny how the media industry has been raking in record profits, but they still feel they need this sort of legislation.

Search for clips from "The Simpsons" and other popular TV shows on Youtube. Notice you will find little to nothing. The DMCA works, and works well. There's no need for this crap.

Re:They make record profits yet aren't happy

[tepples]

The DMCA works, and works well.

Even when a time-sensitive parody, which is a legally protected fair use, gets taken down for the two weeks that it remains relevant?

Re:They make record profits yet aren't happy

[Omega Hacker]

I was generally of the position a few minutes ago that it's generally a bad idea to have the government step into the middle of what *should* be a private-to-private issue ("rights holder" vs "infringer"). However, in thinking about it I think there's actually a chance for the government to solve the problem that is the DMCA. Because the courts are all over the map in how the deal with these things, a DMCA takedown letter is basically a completely free shotgun approach that can be taken by an aggressive "rights holder", and as such they have things radically tilted their direction because it's not feasible or safe to fight bogus claims. However, if a single agency (with strong court oversight of course, assuming that's written in to OPEN somewhere but not looking forward to reading legistlatese that's comparable to patentese) has a set of rules they follow, and the shotgun approach used with the DMCA is forcibly redirected through it, there's a chance to reign in the probably millions of DMCA letters sent down to the 1000's that are legitimate. There's a (TBD) fee associated with filing a complaint, which should discourage the shogtun approach compared to DMCA takedowns, not sure if there are strong enough sanctions for filing invalid claims to deal with the RIAA and such who have deep enough pockets to shotgun entire lawsuits.

Re:They make record profits yet aren't happy

[icebraining]

Maybe the parody creator should've sent a counter notice before the two weeks were up?

Re:They make record profits yet aren't happy

[Nerdfest]

With imaginary property, teh government defines both "property holder" and "infringer". Private to private would be content protection measure vs. legal copying once it was broken.

Re:They make record profits yet aren't happy

[masternerdguy]

In all honesty, this. If you actually own the work send a counter notice. If you've uploaded someone else's work cut your losses.

Re:They make record profits yet aren't happy

[cheekyjohnson]

Why do they have to go to such lengths just to ensure that their videos don't get taken down seemingly at random? I'd say something is wrong.

Re:They make record profits yet aren't happy

[masternerdguy]

Ok, let me rephrase. If you make a 40 minute long video called and it consists of you making trick shots with your buddies and it gets taken down, just sue them.

Re:They make record profits yet aren't happy

[masternerdguy]

...called some-movie-title- and it consists....

Re:They make record profits yet aren't happy

[cheekyjohnson]

Yeah. That's a lot of effort to have to go through just because they send take down notices around seemingly at random. How about we just make it more difficult for them, the ones who are trying to inconvenience others, to take down the videos? It seems too easy right now (website operators are taking things down without question in fear of being sued if they don't), and there's too much of a chance for false alarms. That's what I think needs fixing.

Re:They make record profits yet aren't happy

[Anonymous Coward]

Sue them back!

Re:They make record profits yet aren't happy

[bzipitidoo]

What?! Innocent until proven guilty!

You shouldn't have to send a counter notice, ever. That's one of the things that's so awful about the DMCA and related ilk. Takedown provisions circumvent due process in the eagerness to harass anyone accused of circumventing copyright. They are routinely abused to harass the innocent. They can be kept too busy defending themselves from accusation spam to do anything else like provide services to customers.

I didn't think OPEN was going to be any good. After skimming it, I know it's no good.

Re:They make record profits yet aren't happy

[joocemann]

Republicans that have nothing of value to defend would argue that their taxes are being squandered on a system they don't use.... Shot down....

Re:They make record profits yet aren't happy

[SuricouRaven]

I've been in this situation before. I made a parody video. One that fit the terms of fair use perfectly. Non-commercial, not possible to mistake for anything official. It used 48 seconds of a 25-minute episode (a clip, set to very inapproprate music drawing attention to some campy visuals). Clearly parody. I put it on youtube, and some time later the copyright holder sent in the DMCA notice to have it pulled.

Now, I *could* file a counterclaim. But if I do that, then I invite them to sue me. That would be a Japanese company suing a British citizen under American law - the legal fees would take all my savings before they could even decide where to hear the case. If it did go to court, the amount of time I'd have to take off to attend would likely cost me my job as well. I'd be ruined, and that's if I *win*. The law favors the rich, and I am not rich.

Particually annoying, someone else has uploaded the entire episode in question to Youtube, and others have used far more material than I did to make AMVs, none of which have been taken down. I believe I actually offended someone at Shopro by insulting the studio's work, so I wouldn't put it past them to sue out of pure spite given half a chance. It's also the second strike on youtube - one more and they close down my account and pull all my videos, most of which are just demonstrations of video filters I programmed. And I can't easily open another account, as it's tied into the google ID now.

Re:They make record profits yet aren't happy

[Anonymous Coward]

The leadership of the U.S. corporation is legally reguired to maximize shareholder wealth. As we have seen in the past, and this can be done using any means possible, including changing or creating laws to protect this activity. This will continue until the corporate shareholder value model is changed.

Re:They make record profits yet aren't happy

[identity0]

Were there tentacles involved? I mean in the clip, not the DMCA.

I am kinda curious what the series was and the company that sent the takedown, though.

Re:They make record profits yet aren't happy

[SuricouRaven]

Series: Pokemon. One of the mystery dungeon specials.
Company: Shopro. I believe the studio that produced it.

At the end of the episode the two main protagonists fly to their destiny on a ship that leaves a rainbow wake. The clip I made was that brief scene, with an audio change: At the moment the ship takes off on it's rainbow-powered drive, the music switches to 'It's OK to be Gay.' It's funnier than it sounds, as the music is a perfect fit for the extreme campyness of the visuals.

Re:They make record profits yet aren't happy

[tepples]

Suing them back can prove fruitful, as in Lenz v. Universal, but a lot of us can't afford a lawyer.

Issa Bad

[Doc Ruby]

Anything coming out of Darrell Issa I just don't trust. His business career was criminal, and his political career has been even worse.

But these congressmembers don't usually know anything about what's in legislation they support or oppose except what lobbyists tell them. Wyden usually seems to know what he's talking about. I don't know what's in it for Issa, but Republicans are so lockstep that getting one like Issa to support it is necessary if it's going to go anywhere in Congress. Especially when so many Democratic congressmembers are never going to protect actual rights to free speech/press when Hollywood's against it.

Re:Issa Bad

[Archangel Michael]

So, your assertion of being "criminal" is a vague allegation of arson, and no suspect for that allegation named? Do you hold the Democrats to the same standards of contempt for their criminality? I doubt it.

Re:Issa Bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow you linked to Wikipedia, the piece of shit website that ANYONE can edit at any time for any reason. You be da king of da geeks mon.

Re:Issa Bad

[joocemann]

Youre lucky that you probably won't be sued for libel in your bullshit guess at the truth about Issa. Get some facts. You sound like an idiot regurgitating foxnews lines.

Re:Issa Bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Issa Bad, Meesa Good!

- Jar-Jar Binks.

Re:Issa Bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Very bad.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/24/110124fa_fact_lizza

This story was very undersold. BTW, he's the "cop" in congress right now.

He also bought a bunch of cheap RE from a bank that he sought to "bail out". That's the most recent of his "alleged" behavior.

Re:Issa Bad

[ravenshrike]

Because Fox News is really going to do a hit piece on Issa. You'd be much more correct naming the Grey Bitch, aka the NY Times because lo and behold, they DID publish a hit piece on Issa

http://conservativenewsreports.blogspot.com/2011/08/darrell-issa-hit-piece-most-inaccurate.html

Re:Issa Bad

[Doc Ruby]

The facts in the article are linked in citations to the sources.

Learn to read (21st Century style).

Re:Issa Bad

[Doc Ruby]

It's a very specific allegation of arson. And then there's the allegation by the business associate that he ripped him off.

And then there's the criminal political career that you won't mention. You Republicans don't consider crimes by Republican politicians criminal.

Re:Issa Bad

[Doc Ruby]

It's not luck that protects me from bullshit charges like yours.

You sound like a Republican.

Re:Issa Bad

[Archangel Michael]

I'm not a (R). I'm (L).

I read the Wikipedia article. It wasn't specific allegation that Issa committed the Arson, just that it was Arson. And I'm not saying Issa is innocent, I don't know if he is or isn't. However I was asking about the "criminal" label being applied to someone not convicted of a crime. Do you consider Obama a criminal for the scam known as Solyndra? Or Senators profiting via IPOs while passing (or blocking) legislation that would affect their HUGE profits they made on those IPOs? Or Lying before congress and the American People? Or tax evasion on property that most Americans could never dream of owning by life long politicians? Or ...

Do you not trust them either? Or do they get a pass because they are (D) like you? My guess is that you don't like Issa because he is an (R) and you bring up the Arson to support it, while you ignore actual (often convicted) criminals that are (D) because you like them.

Re:Issa Bad

[Doc Ruby]

I certainly consider any congressmember insider trading on their privileged info to be criminals. Darrell Issa, for example, bought deeply discounted property from a bank he had the power to bail out or not. But the rest of them, and there are many regardless of party, are all criminals, too. Somehow, though, you read the Wikipedia article and missed the political crimes that were the subject of my post saying I don't trust the Issa bill this Slashdot story reports.

Solyndra was not a scam - it was a failed investment by the Federal government. Its fund has had far fewer failures, especially during this recession, than its private counterparts. It failed because Obama failed to stop China from dumping solar illegally. There do seem to have been some collusions between DoE and Solyndra, delaying its bad outlook until after the election, which do seem criminal. Those are misdemeanors, though, the kind that rise to felony only in their commonplace frequency. And I don't see Obama directly implicated, even though there are appointees who might be. If there's actual evidence of Obama actually doing something for personal gain rather than according to an established (and valid) industrial policy I'll believe it when I see it.

I don't really trust any of them. But Issa's career, especially his political career, gives me ample reason to distrust him and the products of his office. For example, the Solyndra that you miscall a scam, Issa has wasted ever more precious government time and money flogging in terms that are at least as applicable to his own promotion of Aptera which was a far less reliable investment than was Solyndra. Somehow you didn't notice that in the Wikipedia article, either.

Libertarians are Republicans who don't want to admit it. Corporate anarchy in the power vacuum vacated by legitimate government. Republicans are Libertarians who don't want to admit it. Corporate anarchists.

I am registered as no party. Parties are the problem, even fake ones like the Libertarian Party. They're political corruption clubs. There are, however, degrees, as in valuing any human activity. Republicans are the worst degree of distrustworthy politicians.

SOPA = shut up

[Anonymous Coward]

Coincidence... I think not!

  (Greek) = shut up
http://translate.google.com/#auto|en|%CF%83%CF%8E%CF%80%CE%B1%0A

Bait & Switch

[uutf]

Propose something terrible that'll never go through. If it succeeds LOL. If it fails, then propose something not quite as bad to try to get people to say "well, it's not as bad as what they proposed earlier.." Rinse and repeat until you get what you want - eventually you'll sneak one past the people fighting against it.

Re:Bait & Switch

[L4t3r4lu5]

It's not quite "bait and switch"; That's replacing an inferior product for what was originally advertised. E.g. you spot an advert for $10 carpet shampoo, the guy comes around, and hard-sells a $150 "extra super quality" service instead.

This is classic negotiation tactics; Ask for something outlandish, and go towards the middle-ground from there. "If you want a puppy, ask for a horse." The problem is that we're really, really shit at negotiating the other way.

Overton

[woodsbury]

This springs to mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

Do something everyone hates, then "compromise" with something slightly more attractive so that people think they're getting a good deal.

Re:Overton

[Anonymous Coward]

It's actually a well established method of persuation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique

Bait and switch!

[theexaptation]

Oh this tactic again.

Declare something misguided and extreme, see if anyone notices, if so compromise to something slightly less deplorable.

How about D none of the above?

I am sick of our government being purchased with campaign *cough*bribes*cough* contributions.

Re:Bait and switch!

[Anonymous Freak]

Ron Wyden is known for defending consumer freedoms. If he's one of the people involved, it's not bait-and-switch.

Re:Bait and switch!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sick of our government being purchased with campaign *cough*contributions*cough* bribes.

FTFY -- A rose by any other name....

Re:Bait and switch!

[CrimsonAvenger]

Hm, this bill seems, on the face of it, to require foreign websites to obey US law or be shutdown/blocked/whatever they can get away with.

Check the fine print on "infringing websites", and what they can do to not be infringing....

Not sure how that defends consumer freedoms.

Re:Bait and switch!

[rwa2]

I'm not terribly worried... the internet has always been somewhat just beyond the reach of the law. IMHO the only thing laws like this will do is increase the technical sophistication with which the internet can function beyond the reach of the law. If it gets more people to set up encryption / anonymization services / distributed mesh networks / decentralized DNS / etc. to circumvent attempts at enforcement, then it will be a better internet for the effort.

People have always wanted to get rich for the minimum amount of work. Having a piece of paper that says every else has to pay them money for doing something completely arbitrary is the easiest way these days, especially when you can also convince everyone else to pay for enforcement. With digital distribution, these days are behind us, and are only going to get further behind us as we get into various forms of widget replicator machines.

Bravo for putting up a good fight for sitting back and collecting royalties on an empire of past contributions, with no promise of future contribution or worse yet stifling the contribution of others. Now bow out as the curtains close on that act.

Re:Bait and switch!

[Anonymous Coward]

:P

Re:Bait and switch!

[ShiftyOne]

The internet was always somewhere just beyond the reach of the law because laws always focused on taking down the illegal program or site through technical means. The most recent set of laws focuses less on technology, and more on financial backing, which has proven much more effective at censoring any program or website. You can get around DNS blocking, but you can't get around a site not having any way whatsoever to collect revenue. Ensuring no revenue will cripple websites in a way that none of your technological solutions can prevent.

Re:Bait and switch!

[SuricouRaven]

For that, you need help from the pirates. They've had a lot of experience at getting large amounts of data distributed on a budget of zero. That's why they invented P2P file sharing, and then improved it through several generations.

Re:Bait and switch!

[Zeromous]

I agree, the Internet is designed to perceive infringement laws as damage and will simply route around it (and develop any technological sophistication required, along the way). It matters not, that this is done by human actors and isn't completely autonomous, but the Internet is our first crack at building non-biological organisms- it may not be perfect but I have faith in the creators. :)

Doublespeak

[organgtool]

Typical use of doublespeak. The first version of the proposed legislation was so abominable that the Business Software Alliance couldn't even get behind it, so now they're re-introducing the law with a name that will be harder for people to oppose. If this version doesn't go through, expect another version of the same legislation under the guise of going after kiddie porn. You politicians are so damn predictable.

Re:Doublespeak

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, clueless much??? Senator Ron Wyden is one of the FEW in congress trying to fight AGAINST SOPA, you fuckwit!

Non-Legalspeak Version

[Ben_R_R]

Section by section explanation of the legal speak: http://www.keepthewebopen.com/assets/pdfs/open-act.pdf

On the Plus Side

[CrimsonAvenger]

This bill at least allows (even if it doesn't go so far as to require) that a free be charged to whomever makes the Copyright complaint, to pay for the investigation.

If the fee is set high enough, a lot of the shotgunning we see from the RIAA/MPAA types might be cut back significantly.

On the other hand, if it's set too high, small Copyright holders might find themselves unable to defend their own Copyrights....

Still No Good

[Bob9113]

Sec 337A.(a)(7)(C)(i) (top of the third page of the PDF):

[an Internet site is not infringing]:

if the Internet site has a practice of expeditiously removing, or disabling access to, material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity after notification by the owner of the copyright or trademark alleged to be infringed or its authorized representative;

This still says that a claim is as good as a conviction in terms of requiring the removal of information, and that failure to comply with such claims is enough to cut off the air supply of the company.

We just had a story posted earlier today of a company that was closed down for an entire year without having done anything wrong except being falsely accused. We cannot simply shut down any company that the copyright cabal says we should, especially when they have proven time and again that their dragnets have a total disregard for accuracy.

Sorry Mr. Wyden, I love your work in general, but this is still far outside the realm of due process. I know; failing to support this may mean SOPA gets passed instead -- but the "less wrong" swindle has been pulled on us by these guys too many times for me to buy it anymore. I'm not going to support a law that proposes to shut down slightly fewer innocent businesses.

Re:Still No Good

[Thugthrasher]

I wouldn't mind that, on one condition. I'd say, sure, someone gives a takedown notice, the site needs to take it down. However, the site only has to keep it down a set amount of time (a week? a month? I don't know what an appropriate time would be), unless the company giving the takedown notice goes through some process to verify that it is actually infringing. Preferably go through a third-party group that handles all of these. Put the burden on the rights holder to do that. And once a video, etc. has been taken down once, if it goes back up, the "rights holder" can't issue another takedown on that particular video, etc. again unless they go through the court system. This strikes a balance in that it gives the rights holders a method to immediately get actual infringing content taken away, but also puts the burden of proof on them to keep it down, so unless they want to go through that process and it is an actual infringement case, the best they can do is make the content go away for a short time.

Misreading headline...

[wyoung76]

Is it just me, or did anyone else misread the headline as "_Daft_ Alternative To SOPA Released"?

You want a free market? Let's have a free market.

[mykos]

Laws are keeping the price of artificial property artificially high. Every other industry has their prices set by what the market will bear. The artificial property industry gets to set their prices wherever they want and have their non-sales bolstered by lawsuits and extortion.

This bill is a step in the wrong direction, albeit a smaller one.

keep the web open?

[Gravis Zero]

how is making restrictions keeping the web open?

Copyright is Bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it is in direct contradiction to freedom of speech. Because I am not allowed to repeat what another has said. If this enforcement trend keeps going. I like punctuation.

Re:Copyright is Bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Copyright is flawed in many ways, but not at all in the way you're describing. There's nothing about copyright that says you can't repeat what another has said.

Re:Copyright is Bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it does, brother-sucking donkey-blowing goatse-dwarfing asshole.

I said that ^, it's a creative work, so you can't say it -- except as provided under "fair use", which the various content-distribution industries are trying to eliminate.

I find it ironic

[Ice Station Zebra]

when "let's shrink the size of government" republicans propose more and bigger government.

Re:I find it ironic

[SuricouRaven]

They only propose to shrink the parts they disapprove of. That's how politics works.

When the two weeks begin

[tepples]

The two weeks begin after the service provider receives the counter-notice.

Rather than just arguing here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not make an account on the site and your concerns to the statements (and maybe an alternative to the legalese) that seem offending. They're at least giving us the ability to critique the draft on an article-by-article and definition-by-definition basis.

Re:Rather than just arguing here...

[bky1701]

Because the whole thing has no business existing. Because the correct direction in copyright matters is abolition, not expanding it even one inch in ways that might serve to censor.

Greta and good!

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazing post and million thanks to sharing such a great website.You all politicians are so predictable.Love this post alot and million thanks.Please keep on posting great content!The internet has always been somewhat beyond the reach of law.I really enjoyed read and learnt it alot from here.Will visit back again this webpage.God bless you
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Revision Control

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it be great if laws were written using high quality, open, revision control?

The good folks at http://www.keepthewebopen.com have asked for our collaboration in helping them to write better legal code.

Fork at will!

Putting a stack of Band-Aids on a gunshot wound

[HellYeahAutomaton]

The two prevalent views in these replies fall into the a) Constitution should cover it all b) Constitution is outdated. I get that.

However, the scope of these laws are getting more and more specific and represent the same kind of tyranny (Intolerable Acts/Coercive Acts) that the
  Colonists were trying to get away from. The laws however crafted, if *necessary*, need to be short and sweet. If the power granted by a new law cannot fit into one or two paragraphs these laws should be thrown out, and the representatives should go back to the drawing board.

It isn't broke, so lets fix it!

[dei3oe]

Why do we need an alternative?

You look only on 1.1 sides of the coin

[Mathinker]

I agree with you that in terms of economic benefit to the creator, there is no practically no advantage from the currently long term (although I'd guess that 5-10 years is a bit short for some things, like movie rights).

You totally ignore the fact that on the other side of the coin, there is much more involved than people being punished for infringement. Because of the long term of copyright, creators are unable to reuse/adapt/transform/etc... material, which otherwise would have been in the public domain, to facilitate the creation of new works. This is especially important in the current era where this (technology-aided) kind of adaptation has become widespread in many fields of art (e.g., sampling / re-mix in music).

Ask for the Sun, settle for the Moon.

[Catbeller]

Ask for the Sun, settle for the Moon. Which is what they wanted anyway. But sometimes they even get the Sun, so why not try for it?

We are suckers. There is no "compromise" with this law.