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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."
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.
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make install -not war
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?
Ron Wyden is known for defending consumer freedoms. If he's one of the people involved, it's not bait-and-switch.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Section by section explanation of the legal speak: http://www.keepthewebopen.com/assets/pdfs/open-act.pdf
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.
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