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Law Professors On SOPA and PIPA: Don't Break the Internet
An anonymous reader writes "Law professors Mark Lemley, David S. Levine, and David G. Post have just published a piece on the PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act. In Don't Break the Internet, they argue that the two bills — intended to counter online copyright and trademark infringement — 'share an underlying approach and an enforcement philosophy that pose grave constitutional problems and that could have potentially disastrous consequences for the stability and security of the Internet's addressing system, for the principle of interconnectivity that has helped drive the Internet's extraordinary growth, and for free expression.' They write, 'These bills, and the enforcement philosophy that underlies them, represent a dramatic retreat from this country's tradition of leadership in supporting the free exchange of information and ideas on the Internet. At a time when many foreign governments have dramatically stepped up their efforts to censor Internet communications, these bills would incorporate into U.S. law a principle more closely associated with those repressive regimes: a right to insist on the removal of content from the global Internet, regardless of where it may have originated or be located, in service of the exigencies of domestic law.'"
When is the public going to actually get the opinion from a Network expert and not people that deal with law?
US Congress proposes bill that violates Constitution. News at 11.
Libertarians (and truly conservative conservatives, not just the "gays are bad, m'kay" kind) have been warning this was the inevitable end of the gradual expansion of US government that has been happening over the last 60-odd years. And look! It's happening. Already happened actually (in the form of the TSA). Of course, both parties are on the gravy train now. Except Ron Paul and Ron Wyden and a handful of others. And I doubt they can stop it.
The end of any government that continually expands in power (and money) and never grows smaller is tyranny and repression, and it always has been. Thousands of years of history back this up. Only way to stop it in the US is cut it's funding and authority. And I mean cut: as in, halve it over 5 years. More would be ideal. And of course restore the state rights back to the states. Never happen of course. If you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go think about where I want to live instead in 5-10 years.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
As we all should be living to 150+ years soon(tm) I think they should just raise the copyright length in America from 120 years to a completely reasonable 500 years.
There's a rival proposal in the House called the Online Protection & ENforcement of Digital Trade Act, or OPEN, which claims to be better than SOPA/PIPA but does similar things in a different way. I suspect it's better to do nothing at all than approve any of these bills, even OPEN, but it's hard to say because OPEN doesn't get as much coverage. It would be nice if OPEN were included in the discussion in the future.
I am heartened by the overwhelming list of experts and public figures who have come out against these bills. However I can't help but feel that the Senators and Representatives who are debating it will never know. Slashdot's catalog of evidence against SOPA and PROTECTIP may as well be invisible to them. These people are trying to regulate something like the Internet but could never be found in a place where real experts have these discussions. How frustrating.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
From the viewpoint of the people proposing and supporting the law, if it breaks the Internet, too bad.
In their view, nothing is more important than the principle of them controlling their copyrights. If it takes the destruction of the Internet, so be it.
I imagine if buggy whip manufacturers would have had a better lobby 100+ years ago, they would have lobbied for laws that would have forced motorists to always keep a buggy whip in their car.
Well ladies and gentlemen, record, film, game, and software companies do have better lobbyist. And they're not afraid to use them.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The proponents of these bills consider the breaking of the 'Net a feature, not a bug. They won't be happy until it's been reduce to nothing more than pay-per-view TV v2.0.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
The incumbent politicians do not want extraordinary growth and free expression. If your argument starts with that position, you have already lost them.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Or does it really seem like our country is going straight down the toilet at an accelerating rate? I mean I know I've only been alive for so long and I've only been paying attention to this stuff for a shorter period of time, but the events that occurred over the course of the last decade (and especially the last few years) combined with the policies that have been set up over the last 30 years or so is really starting to make me think we're in serious trouble. I mean real. serious. trouble.
Am I way off? Has our country been in a situation like this before where all the powers-that-be seem to be working together for their benefit, at the expense of everyone else's freedoms, liberties, and way of life?
Please tell me I'm wrong...
giggity
You really don't need to know much about the details of TCP/IP, or DNS, to understand these proposed laws.
The idea of these laws is to circumvent the standard law enforcement process.
The whole point is to break the Internet! The mainstream media hates the Internet, because people can be more than just passive consumers of entertainment and products. SOPA and PIPA are just one more step in a long chain of attacks on the philosophy that underlies the very architecture of the Internet.
For the past few years, the RIAA and MPAA have been working hard to undermine and destroy peer-to-peer networking on the Internet, because it does not fit into the distribution model they are comfortable with. In the view of the mainstream media, the corporations and the politicians that support them, people are supposed to pay for things, and they are not supposed to assist in the distribution chain unless they are being paid to do so. The idea that computing resources or communication resources can be shared is antithetical to the old media barons, because they want to be the center of the universal. To them, distribution costs are paid for by copyright holders, who recoup those costs by selling copies of entertainment in its various forms.
What they want, in other words, is the Cable TV system. They like the way that cable works -- a relatively small number of head ends that distribute the entertainment, which can easily be policed for violations. Set-top boxes are designed to prevent users from stepping outside the bounds of what the copyright holders demand. Restrictions on distribution can be negotiated with a small number of entities that control the entire network.
They want to break the Internet, so that they can rebuild it. They want a star architecture for the network. They want to routers that block access to "rogue websites." DRM was pioneered by Cable TV and its cousin, satellite (see: HBO). They want the same thing to happen on the Internet, which means they need to recreate the entire network to better suit that purpose.
Palm trees and 8
They want the same thing they already have with the cable TV system: a neat little topology where consumers are just endpoints that passively receive entertainment (for a fee), and the powerful network operators and media executives get to decide what people are allowed to see.
Palm trees and 8
Like other unconstitutional laws, if either of these pass they'll simply be challenged immediately in Federal courts.
If anyone like RIAA wants to be dicks about it, it'll go to the Supreme Court and be defeated there.
The political system is being closed. Read Naomi Wolfe, watch her on Youtube. Read Glen Greenwald at Salon.
The consequences of this law are fully intended by all parties.
There is no other important issue in the next election, as there will be no other meaningful elections if this process isn't stopped.
The only candidate who supports the Constitution and its guarantees of Civil Liberties is Ron Paul. If he isn't elected, there is a gulag in our futures.
1) It's unfortunately looking very likely these will pass.
2) Death warrant or not, you have to follow the law
3) If it passes, the article points out some good legal challenges that will likely cause the act to be struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Wow, you're go-to example of government invasiveness is the TSA. Not warrentless wiretapping. Not powers of indefinite military detention. Not the criminal prosecution of journalists. Nope.
I'm always shocked when I meet a person who believes dangerous government authority is a low-paid government employee sneaking a peak at your caboose when you fly on a commercial airlines.
The one that allows the US military to indefinitely detain anyone, even American citizens arrested on American soil, until some nebulous 'end of conflict'. The one McCain sponsored.
Liberty.
No, just the border routers on all routes in and out of the US. This isn't new technology - China has been using exactly the same for years. A combination of DNS filtering with IP blocking.
As one of the people who don't live in the USA, who gets annoyed from time to time with the USA hegemony in technology, I'm quite pleased to see the US destroy its tech lead through _amazingly_ stupid law. Awesome! If the rest of us wanted to make the US a place that nobody can afford to start an internet-based business, this law would be pretty good way.
Keep up the good work guys.
Let me introduce you to the file: /etc/hosts
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Why hasn't an Occupy style movement been started over this? If it was coordinated better they could get their message out clearer with a lot of Media coverage.
How long until the rest of the world says FU USA and starts working on ways to remove their dependence on USA for the functioning of the internet?
Ryans Tutorials - A collection of technology tutorials.
The real problem, as I see it, is the "accusation = guilt" and extra-judicial enforcement methods of these laws. It just floors me that our congressmen, sworn to uphold the constitution, thinks that laws where all you have to do is file some paperwork and "poof" the website gets blocked without having to present compelling-enough evidence to a judge under penalty of perjury (and with oppposing counsel's arguments) for him or her to issue an injunction to block the DNS entry. It shows they have absolutely no respect for the Constitution or even knows what "rule of law" means.
4) The SCOTUS makes blatantly unconstitutional decisions all the time. They're every bit as corrupt as Congress, if not more so.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Which is the goal of the corporate oligarchy that passes for government these days. Frankly, most of the world's corporation-governments would be happiest if the internet was a restricted, monitored, toll-road. Of course, the flaw in this plan is the million geek army. Telling millions of technically savvy engineers what to do with their toys is very unlikely to be successful in the long run. It just means that the open source pirate internets arrive faster.
Not that this matters to a congresscritter. They just take their fee for passing the stupid law and move on down the road to retirement and the little secret Swiss bank accounts set up for them by the RIAA and friends as a reward.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
SOPA is about control. The web is the one area that the powers that be do not fully control, this legislation provides the mechanism to accomplish that, in much the same way that the true intention of the PATRIOT act was to strip away other rights in the name of security.
Wake up people.
...the Supreme Court is the recognized final authority on what is constitutional and what isn't.
Sort of. In theory they're also the final authority over whether 5+3=9 since if you get sued and there is a disagreement over the math of the settlement they're the last appeal you get. However, it seems a bit silly to say that their ruling in itself makes a mathematical statement true or untrue. They're the judges of constitutionality, but the fact of constitutionality is what it is regardless of what any individual believes.
Also - they're just have one of many roles in the system of checks and balances. I'd say that the executive branch has more power in reality to determine whether something is constitutional, since they're the ones with the guns. They can choose to not uphold a constitutional law, or just quietly break a constitutional one.
Ultimately the whole system only works if everybody is aligned on the basic principles of democracy and liberty. If you have that then the rest is just process. If you don't have that, then the process really is just about how people get oppressed.
"Copyright and computers aren't compatible", I said. "the only way for them to co-exist is for them to break all the computers", I said.
"Pish-tosh," said the naysayers. "You just want free stuff."
"No, really," said I, "I can prove it with math."
"Poppycock." said the naysayers. "What about the needs of the artists? Don't they deserve to be paid for all their hard work?"
"If the artists want to ensure that they get paid for something that can exist on a computer, I helpfully suggest they get paid before doing the work. Y'know, like all really successful creators already do," I helpfully suggested, citing advance payments in the music, movie, and book publishing industries, every single dollar of which already, ultimately, comes from the consumers of said products.
"Otherwise, I suppose they can depend on donations borne of gratitude, which, if you think about it, is really just payment to produce the next work anyway. Either way, though, a copy of a file on a computer is effectively valueless, so selling copies of files on computers is a broken business model. Mark my words, if they try to make this broken business model work, it will have to be by outlawing functioning computers."
"Stuff and nonsense," opined the naysayers. "I shall heed no more of your scurrolous lies. Away with you!"
And so, here we are, about to join China and Iran in the glorious future of online freedom. Naysayers, kindly go fuck yourselves in the eye. I can provide an excellent array of online sources for Yoga instruction and melon-ballers if this proves too difficult for you.