Slashdot Mirror
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?
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.
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
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
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.
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?
If you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go think about where I want to live instead in 5-10 years.
The only problem being that, if you follow the money, most first and second world countries are under the control of the same tyrannical forces. See the IMF, World Bank, and other related cretins. Do you really want to live in Iran or some third-world banana republic?
Unfortunately, this time the tyranny is a worldwide occupation. So you might as well just go all in and stand up on the side of freedom and liberty now, for tomorrow it will be too late.