Slashdot Mirror
House Panel Moving Forward With SOPA
itwbennett writes "The House Judiciary Committee has scheduled a debate and vote on the Stop Online Piracy Act for later this week. Representative Lamar Smith, the committee chairman and main sponsor of the bill, will offer an amendment that is meant to address some concerns with the bill. Smith's proposed amendment would clarify that the bill applies only to foreign websites, not U.S. sites, accused of aiding copyright infringement."
That.
"We will only censor foreign websites, we promise!" does not make the proposal any better. Their are no nationality of a website on the Internet, a website is a part of the Internet, no matter where it is hosted.
You can only complain if you've tried to make your voice heard:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/fight-blacklist-toolkit-anti-sopa-activists
I changed the boiler plate text in the email to say the following, which I believe has more of a punch:
_____________________
I am a constituent and I urge you to reject the Internet Blacklist Bills (PROTECT IP Act in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House).
In addition to the danger these bills pose to Internet security, free speech online, and innovation, I am deeply concerned by the risk that these unprecedented assaults on foreign entities will be interpreted as a provocation of war, particularly by leaders who are already hostile towards US policies, such as Putin of Russia. This will be heavily compounded as this inevitably leads to harming sites that many will view as innocent victims of this highly subjective process and clearly biased intent towards increasing corporate profits in Hollywood.
This bill will also re-enforce the image that congress is purchased and own by corporate interests.
Lastly, due to the sweeping level of censorship, this bill will popularize methods of overcoming censorship to the US, technology that is usually reserved for hardship regimes. This will certainly make it difficult for the intelligence community to find real crimes, as their chatter becomes increasingly co-mingled with mainstream on-line anti-censorship technology.
The Internet Blacklist Legislation is dangerous and short-sighted, and I urge you to join Senator Wyden and other members of Congress, such as Representatives Lofgren, Eshoo and Issa, in opposing it.
_________________
Open Standards Portal
How long before the majority of the Slashdot crowd ... stops supporting liberals
You fail. Lamar Smith, the sponsor of this bill is a conservative. The truth is that both liberal and conservative congressional members routinely support draconian copyright laws that give huge amounts of power to large corporations. Snap out of the "small government" brainwashing and realize that the real fight is between those who want to give unlimited power to corporations, who make up almost the entirety of the Republican party plus a good amount of the Democratic party, and those who support protecting consumers from predatory behavior.
You just have to look at what has already happened without SOPA - abuse of DCMA for the purpose of censorship by private corporations, takedowns of legitimate websites taking a year for the owners to get them back, presumption of guilt with no recourse to defend oneself, subversion of DNS etc. Roll your eyes as much as you want, but there is real reasons behind what you refer to as FUD.
I have two words for you: Scope Creep.
Once the government has access to something, they kind of try and stretch that authority to fill other perceived needs. Sounds like a slippery slope argument to me, but unfortunately, history seems to have vetted this one.
Who said anything about a judge? That's one of the major problems with this bill. It lets rights holders cut off funding to any site accused of copyright infringement without having to go through the courts. That's exactly what Hollywood wants to avoid. The legal system is actually starting to get wise to the sheer idiocy of their anti-piracy legal cases, so they're going around it.
I like to think of online DRM as something akin to a college -- you pay for lessons until you learn something.
Full page ad in The Wall Street Journal for the passage of PROTECT IP and SOPA to "protect American jobs" signed by
ABC, AFTRA - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, AFM - American Federation of Musicians, AAP - American Association of Publishers, ASCAP, BMG Chrysalis, BMI, CBS Corporation, Cengage Learning, DGA - Directors guild of America, Disney Publishing Worldwide, EMI Music Publishing, ESPN, Graphic Artists Guild, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers LLC, Hyperion, IATSE - International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States its Territories and Canada International Brotherhood of Teamsters (WTF), Kaufman Astoria Studios, Macmillan, Major League Baseball, Marvel Entertainment LLC, Mcgraw-Hill Education, MPA - The Association of Magazine Media, NFL - National Football League, National Music Publishers' Association, NBCUniversal, News Corporation, New York Production Alliance, New York State AFL-CIO, Pearson Education, Penguin Group (USA) Inc., The Perseus Books Group, Producers Guild of America East, Random House, Reed Elsevier, SAG - Screen Actors Guild, Scholastic, Inc., Silvercup Studios, Simon & Schuster, Inc., Sony Music Entertainment, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Time Warner Inc., United States Tennis Association, Universal Music Group, Universal Music Publishing Group, Viacom, Warner Music Group, W.W. Norton & Company, Wolters Kluwer.