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USTR Publishes Rogue Sites List

Posted by timothy on from the for-all-your-dungeon-crawling-needs dept.

bs0d3 writes "The U.S. Government has classified some of the largest websites on the Internet as examples of sites which sustain global piracy. The list released by the United States Trade Representative draws exclusively on input from rightsholders. It includes popular torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, file-hosting service Megaupload, and Russia's leading social network VKontakte. VKontakte says that company's copyright problems are in the past after a deal was made with the USTR. Also, for the first time in many years, China's leading search engine Baidu has been removed from the list. However, China's widely used online consumer and business-oriented online shopping service Taobao remains listed. The full report can be viewed here. It has no legal implications whatsoever, but may be referred to by policy makers regarding future legislation (e.g. SOPA)."

8 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. Not All Rightsholders by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm a rightsholder too. For example, I hold the rights to this post. But I wasn't included.

    I think it's more correct to say that they drew input exclusively from large media cartel members, not from rightsholders in general.

    If they had asked me, for example, I would have listed riaa.org and mpaa.org as rogue sites that sustain global piracy. I don't need evidence. I'm a rightsholder!

    1. Re:Not All Rightsholders by OutSourcingIsTreason · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well of course you're right. The RIAA and MPAA lobbied for copyright term extension legislation which allowed them to pirate billions of dollars worth of what should rightfully be public domain music and movies.

      --
      "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
  2. ThePirateBay and Baidu...? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And not Google? or Bing?

    filetype:torrent $SEARCH_TERM

    Another biased & agenda laden publication from The United Corporations of America.

  3. Thanks by MCROnline · · Score: 5, Funny

    Thanks for naming all the popular sites I never knew about, keep up the good work, I tip my hat to the USTR :D By the way, if you close these sites, any chance you could do another report so I don't have to go to the fuss of looking for infringing content?

  4. U.S. Trade Representative by Trepidity · · Score: 5, Informative

    In case you're wondering, the current person filling the post is Ron Kirk, appointed by Obama in 2009. Though it doesn't seem that USTR policy differs much under Republican versus Democratic administrations; sadly this one isn't a partisan issue because both parties are generally on the wrong side.

    --
    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    1. Re:U.S. Trade Representative by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ...because both parties are generally on the take.

      FTFY.

  5. Re:And? by Carnildo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you're trying to find pirated movies or software, it's got a nice list of sites you can go to.

    --
    "They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
  6. Re:And? by Jawnn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Does anyone in the real world care about this list? Unless you're after government contracts I can't really see how business is likely to be affected by your inclusion on it.

    Damned right they do! As TFA predicts, clueless policy makers will soon be citing it as "the official list of pirate sites...", if they are not already. "After all, teh list is on teh interwebs, so it must be true. Think of the children..." The same braid dead rationale behind SOPA is already in play here. Just because it does not (yet) carry the force of law, it's effect is very real.