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DNS Provision Pulled From SOPA
New submitter crvtec sends this excerpt from CNet:
"Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), one of the biggest backers of the Stop Online Piracy Act, today said he plans to remove the Domain Name System blocking provision. 'After consultation with industry groups across the country,' Smith said in a statement released by his office, 'I feel we should remove (DNS) blocking from the Stop Online Piracy Act so that the [U.S. House Judiciary] Committee can further examine the issues surrounding this provision.'"
He said he'd postpone it until further research had been done... In other words, pass the bill now and then shove it down our throats later.
Just a little better but what about the IP-blocking part or deep packet inspection?
See subject.
so now that we've lost the 7th amendment there going for the 1st...great...
... why should we listen to him?
We'll slip this back into some other bill later on when you sheeple are not paying attention.
Bad laws never go away forever in america. They just keep comming back until they stick.
The bill should contain a provision for a national holiday any time anyone performs a public cracking of Sony's network.
(1) Expect A;
(2) Ask for something else A+B+C, where B and C are even more insane-sounding things and C is pratically unworkable;
(3) Make concessions to get people onside by suggesting that you're prepared to renegotiate on C;
(4) Wait for objections to be made to much of B and a near complete elimination of C;
(5) End up with all of A and a few scraps from B and C.
Notice this pattern in every jurisdiction with every proposed law. Always tackle the principles, which will be in A - you'll probably find that you want to eliminate the bill entirely. (That's at the second reading at the latest, if you're looking at the UK Parliament. Beyond that it's too late unless the increasingly castrated Lords throw up a fuss.)
that this would come out just days after Comcast Announced that they've implemented DNSSEC which is not compatable with the DNS blocking provision of SOPA.
Behind-door meetings with corporate sponsors who brought this bill to his table and deciding what to give up to pass the rest of it.
... it was actually done by ron paul, and we know on slashdot that good can come only from ron paul. anything that does not come form lord ron paul is automatically bad.
What I like about the law system, especially in america, is that if you pay to get the law on your side after the facts, you are a dirty criminal, but if you pay to get the law on your side before the facts, and thus push a law down everybody throat, you are a campaign sponsor.
First it was not for US citizens, then it was to be changed to exclude US citizens, then ..... :) :) Even the 2 page ones like S. 1698 the Enemy Expatriation Act
All you have now is a signing statement about values to protect you from indefinite detention
As for US law enforcement and the inter tubes, recall the 84,000 "a domain" website efforts:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110220/17533013176/ice-finally-admits-it-totally-screwed-up-next-time-perhaps-itll-try-due-process.shtml
Ignore the pre committee PR and follow the bills
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
that the government will be run by the public employee unions. Just like it is in California.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Dropping the DNS provisions is meaningless if the "cut off funding" provisions remain.
A law like this can only be pushed through by making it Draconian at first, then filtering a little bit when protest comes in, to end up with a still draconian version with most people feeling that the stinger was removed from the law. It's a simple means of wagging the dog, and it works most of the time.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
The stuff that is still in the bill is still completely unacceptable. It still gives the MAFIAA the power to shut down the revenue of a company based merely on accusations, and removes any liability for payment processors or advertising programs for refusing to do business with a company based exclusively on a hit list written by the MAFIAA.
Between the MAFIAA shutting down the MegaUpload song and Warner's admission in court that checking whether they actually own some copyright is too much trouble, they cannot be trusted with that kind of authority.
Moreover, we have already given them law after law after law for more than a decade. They keep saying, "We need this to stop copyright infringement, even though it is going to be costly, intrusive, and strain the bounds of civil liberties." And it keeps not working, and they keep abusing what we do grant them, and they keep asking for more.
We have given them more than we have given any other industry except maybe the investment banks, and they are still telling us they need more.
It does not make sense for us to keep going to more and more extreme lengths to protect this business model. Either it works in the Internet age, or they need to come up with some ideas for funding their production that does not rely entirely on heavy-handed interference in the marketplace. Centralized enforcement is a blunt and expensive weapon. If this particular government-granted monopoly is no longer a cost efficient means to channel revenue into science and the useful arts, we need to try some new approaches instead of just plugging holes in the failing levee.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Given that the DNS provisions were seriously flawed, so much that they're simultaneously ineffective and would break many things on the internet, what other serious flaws are in the bill? If something that major "slipped past" all the sponsors and people promoting the bill, I have no faith that the rest of it is any better. Until the whole thing has been thoroughly reviewed for technical feasibility and constitutionality, the whole bill needs to be put on indefinite hold.
Anything that bypasses or takes shortcuts on due process is absolutely unacceptable. And, there must be severe civil penalties and recourse, and possibly criminal penalties for false allegations.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Nice to see that our lawmakers are happy to modify a extremely ludicrous law and exchange it for a very ludicrous one.
The bill was drawn up by lobbyists. Congress don't know, and don't want to know what the bill is about. All a matter of who pays for the campaign contributions.
When I quote the first post from last night's thread on PIPA:
Fuck you. We still don't want it.
Notice how the Republicans are fine with Big Government, as long it is to the benefit of corporate interests.
Everybody knows that democrats can do no wrong when it comes to civil rights. Only republicans are bad.
As are many "geeks", I'm very glad to see this. And i appreciate the way he's redirecting the issue to preventing US residents from being courted by those who sell stolen material and counterfeit goods, while working within the laws of foreign nations to pursue the guilty under their own nation's laws.
It's all I could ask for. Thank you, sir.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Just pull the plug on SOPA and nobody gets hurt.
This means you too, EA.
I've given you tens of thousands of dollars over the decades, but my checkbook and credit card is shut if you don't back down.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Notice how the Democrats have the exact same problem?
No shit. A third of them aren't even alive anymore anyway. They simply exist as a hologram. Anyone see Nancy Pelosi lately? Don't tell me someone can naturally be that ugly! Oh no - it's just our computer hardware and software can't project a good looking person just yet. So if you were wondering why there were do many old, ugly people in congress, here's why!
Republicans want government out of the board room, but don't care if they are in your bedroom.
Democrats want the same things republicans want, but they don't care about your bedroom as much.
Smith is up for re-election in this cycle, and if the SOPA-hating world united as one against him being re-elected, it would start to send the type of message that Congress needs to hear every day.
If I had found out about his support of SOPA before the cutoff to get my name on the primary ballot, I would have run against him myself.
The sheeple are asleep beneath blankets of bureaucracy. It is considered normal to not understand tax forms, medical insurance paperwork, and so forth. The bureaucracy is growing to meet the growing needs of the bureaucracy. No amount of smart can keep up!
Seriously Suggest: Take a big red crayon, X the form, and write, "I have above average intelligence and cannot understand this, nor sign it in good faith. Send me a simpler form, please."
If the politicians who vote for SOPA also admitted when they were baffled, admitted the red tape is overwhelming and they cannot in good conscience vote on something so complicated...
Assuming that governments all over the world will try to dominate the open and free internet, what technical solutions exist today (or can we develop) to prevent this governmental censorship. Are there open DNS servers where I can point my resolv.conf at, that aren't under the control of my ISP and/or my government?
Oh, and BTW, FU Lamar Smith.
Captcha: Paranoia -- no shit.
Wait, who cares that it's gone! He used the offending image, right?
Pull his site!
Oh wait - so if a Govt site "just pulls the image" it's okay, but when Joe Small does it we pull his entire site?
How did you let him past that double standard?!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The Democrats have plenty of their own problems, but they're not the ones always yelling about small government while voting up laws that make the government bigger and more intrusive.
I thought that was most of it. What is left now?
Piracy was already illegal... how does the law change without the DNS issue?
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
NOPE NOPE NOPE! Still don't want it.
Actually, that's a perfect example of how it should be done. A copyright owner notifies the infringer of a violation. The infringer says, "Sorry, my bad, I didn't know. I'll address that immediately." The infringing material is removed. Both parties go on their merry way.
Because infringement is very easy to do unintentionally, as Representative Smith found out, I feel there needs to be a safe-harbor course of action. If infringement is removed within (picks a number from thin air) seven days, then the infringement should be presumed to be unintentional and not liable for any damages. Furthermore, there should be a process where an alleged infringer can say to an accuser, "No, you've got it all wrong. I have a right to use this because of [insert reason here]." The matter would be settled either inside or outside of courts, using well-established procedures from Civil Law, but the matter would eventually be settled.
Anyway, that's my fantasy world. It's happy there. I only wish it could actually happen.
This is a boring sig
Nope, they just vote up laws that make the government bigger and more intrusive without yelling about small government at all. That's much better.
Disclaimer: IANAL. This post is, however, legal advice, and creates an attorney-client relationship.
At least it's honest.
The Tea Party was all about being "Taxed Enough Already", and they were out there actively protesting for the rights of billionaires to keep their tax cuts. It was an astro-turf movement, and that's why you don't see it anymore. The wealthy people bankrolling got their tax breaks, and moved on. The reason I pointed out what I did, is because the Republican party is the one that says they're for "smaller government", and yet they've had plenty of chances to prove it over the decades, and they don't deliver at all.
An even better solution, which would eliminate most of these kinds of problems before they even start, would be to go back to the old Copyright standard of a few years ago (and for centuries before that): for most things you have to first DECLARE a copyright before you can enforce it.
It is this new "automatic" copyright for almost all works that has caused most of the mischief. The old way worked just fine for many generations. But less than one generation into this scheme, and it has caused all kinds of very serious problems for society.
http://texansforlamarsmith.com/robots.txt No archiving my site!!! If I change my mind, I don't want those pesky archives to be able to call me on it. Wow, this guy is a sleeze.
What's up with this box everyone has to think inside of or outside of? Why does there have to be a box?
I'd like to know where you found this information, so I can point it out to others. For now, I can just see that the article says
"I feel we should remove DNS-blocking from the Stop Online Piracy Act so that the [U.S. House Judiciary] Committee can further examine the issues surrounding this provision."
Examining the issues doesn't mean the removed provision is being postponed. I don't agree with the rest of the bill, but I don't see your statement being validated by the information provided.
Lamar Smith's website was infringing something with a declared copyright - a Creative Commons-licensed photo that specified attribution and noncommercial use (not even a license fee!)
Because infringement is very easy to do unintentionally, as Representative Smith found out, I feel there needs to be a safe-harbor course of action. If infringement is removed within (picks a number from thin air) seven days, then the infringement should be presumed to be unintentional and not liable for any damages. Furthermore, there should be a process where an alleged infringer can say to an accuser, "No, you've got it all wrong. I have a right to use this because of [insert reason here]." The matter would be settled either inside or outside of courts, using well-established procedures from Civil Law, but the matter would eventually be settled.
The bone-jarringly stupid thing about this whole mess is, what you describe is more or less the way a DMCA takedown request works NOW - a copyright holder claims their work is being infringed and the site hosting the material pulls it pending review. If it's infringing (ie, if the infringing user can't explain why it isn't) it stays down and if it isn't it's reinstated.
That's the biggest problem with this whack-a-doodle bill - the measures in place to deal with copyright currently work perfectly well for everybody except gigantic corporations with too much copyrighted material to effectively police.
By "declare" did Jane Q. Public mean "register for $35 at copyright.gov"?
How did you let him past that double standard?!
Not to excuse it, but that's not the biggest double standard in the thing, I think the fact that GoDaddy helped write the bill and was conveniently exempted from the penalties their competitors would face under the bill. To me that sounds like a literal double standard with much bigger consequences.
While we wait for Wikimedia to do their committee thing it looks like about a dozen game companies and communities are going completely dark in sync with Reddit. I see a couple rumors that Google's having internal talks about how to get involved - but it's a very tricky thing. We like other websites, but many of us actually need Google. If enough small fry get involved it could become a big enough deal.
I forget... where were we on shutting down /. for the day?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
the measures in place to deal with copyright currently work perfectly well for everybody except gigantic corporations with too much copyrighted material to effectively police.
Or U.S. authors whose copyright has been infringed on a foreign site serving U.S. residents, such as TPB. The loss of the OCILLA safe harbor doesn't affect them because the sites are operated offshore. That's what SOPA and PROTECTIP were originally targeted at: making it more difficult for U.S. residents to access sites that would violate U.S. copyright if only they weren't offshore.
Forgot to mention a couple of the best ones. Minecraft and mojang will go dark (19M users). The entire family of icanhazcheezburger humor pic sites too, including FAIL Blog, Know Your Meme, Memebase and The Daily What (16M users). I do believe that the lack of lolcats will spur some serious action. Firefall company Red 5 Studios will also go dark. nVidia has come out strongly opposed to the legislation, but hasn't announced any action yet. This is really starting to roll, and blackout day is still 5 days away.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Wrong ! Shutting down /. its like shutting down a newspaper because a bad law.
We need a FULL page of the newspaper explaining the problem!
-no sig today-
An even better solution, which would eliminate most of these kinds of problems before they even start, would be to go back to the old Copyright standard of a few years ago (and for centuries before that): for most things you have to first DECLARE a copyright before you can enforce it.
It is this new "automatic" copyright for almost all works that has caused most of the mischief. The old way worked just fine for many generations. But less than one generation into this scheme, and it has caused all kinds of very serious problems for society.
What are you talking about? Remember the multi-million dollar damages the RIAA and MPAA were getting? Those are statutory damages, you only get them by having a registered copyright.
I.e. RIAA/MPAA copyrights ARE registered, I fail to see what you think you are fixing.
The real problem here is that the copyright holders want to play carpet-bombing wack-a-mole with casual infringers; in the olden days, casual infringement wasn't important, only bootlegs (selling copies) were a major issue. Prosecuting large numbers of people for infringing $20 worth of music isn't worthwhile so they started up a legalized protection racket with ridiculous legal damages and a $3000 "settlement" offer to make the problem go away.
Yes, I understand. I was referring to MOST such problems, not this one specifically.
The sites going "dark" will replace their content with the necessary educational literature.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
No, just a claim.
According to the old rules, which were in effect for a very long time (and pretty much everybody seemed to think worked just great), you had to CLAIM a copyright in order to enforce it. In other words, one of those notices that looked typically like "Copyright © MyCompany 2011". (I don't know if the circled "C" will come through properly on Slashdot.)
If you hadn't claimed the copyright up front, you could not enforce it. Which was fine with most people because they didn't want to bother with copyrighting everything in sight anyway.
Copyright registration is not a "copyright". You own the copyright anyway. That's why it's called a "right". Registration is nothing more than "official" evidence that you own the copyright on a work. It is neither proof per se (because it's possible you could have registered something from someone else), or any kind of stamp of Government approval or anything. In the same way that legally, a signed piece of paper is not a "contract". An agreement of any kind that is otherwise legal is a contract. The piece of paper is just evidence of that agreement. Copyright registration works pretty much the same way.
There were exceptions, for situations like photographers and artists who sold original works for profit. They did not have to carry a copyright notice in order for the copyright to be enforced.
Domain registrar and shareware repository Tucows will be going dark in opposition of SOPA on the 18th.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Notice and Takedown is stupid though - ideally the US should have gone with the more sane Notice and Notice system, whereby the ISP simply passes on the notice to the site owner, and they can choose to either act on it immediately (Takedown) or send a counter-notice - rather than being required to take down the content until the site owner can make that decision.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Ok so the next step is to remove SOPA from SOPA. On the way! Then there NEEDS to be a Witchhunt of anyone and everyone involved in its inception.
It's worse than that. They want to strip you of your rights to due process and freedom of speech as a preventive measure to protect their IP. That's not OK. A big Seattle TV station, KING 5 supports SOPA. They have comments, so you can let them know how you feel about this here.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Oh wait - so if a Govt site "just pulls the image" it's okay, but when Joe Small does it we pull his entire site? Yes,and send Joe S to prison for five years plus fine him 100k.
That's not a typical Democrat platform. Though Clinton actually DID reduce the deficit.
The court weighs in or it isn't law. If anyone can censor speech, without legal permission, the web is gonna turn Chinese and shit...
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
someone missed the sarcasm
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
> A copyright owner notifies the infringer of a violation. The infringer says, "Sorry, my
> bad, I didn't know. I'll address that immediately." The infringing material is removed.
> Both parties go on their merry way.
Except... one of the parties has been able to make money off the copyright of the other party without permission.
Look at it from the copyright holder's perspective. The Internet is a big place and unlike trademarks the holder is not required to actively protect a copyright to retain its validity. So, someone could be improperly profiting from use of copyright materials for quite some time until discovered and "notified of infringement". And then the cycle repeats when the infringer moves to another piece of copyright material.
Another thread this week gave the example of thatguywiththeglasses.com as a site that would be affected by SOPA. Well, yes, pretty much all his content is derived from copyright material. Why should he be able to profit on a repeating basis from other people's copyright? Go out there and create something NEW.
This is very simple to deal with; if it happens one time or two times to the same person then you assume that it was a simple mistake. The movement of earnings is small. If it happens a few more times, you insist on that person taking active measures and putting documented procedures in place for handling copyrights. If it happens after that time, you investigate the documentation and if it doesn't show the right procedures being followed then you start to give that person big fines.
These are very standard things that work everywhere. If copyright requires us to change all our legal systems to be much more draconian as it's advocates seem to think it does, then copyright is dangerous and should be reduced or got rid of.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Because:
1. He is funny. If you make copyright that absolute, you deprive people of his works entirely - in which case copyright isn't fulfilling its intended purpose of promoting the creation of new works.
2. When you specialise in reviews, it is rather difficult not to use someone elses work.
3. Because almost every original piece ever created is actually based in some part upon what went before. Even Disney, the great copyright empire and symbol of creativity to many, built its business around animated adaptations of classic stories. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, etc.
the site hosting the material pulls it pending review. If it's infringing (ie, if the infringing user can't explain why it isn't) it stays down and if it isn't it's reinstated.
Which is plainly wrong (but still unmeasurably better than SOPA), since this way you are forcing the defendant to prove his innocence.
The world's justice works "innocent until proven guilty"? Yeah, right....
-- no sig today
> Which makes me wonder -- why doesn;t the opposition do this?
You mean move the Overton window? I guess I could push for an IP tax or something, but it doesn't make much sense when I'd already prefer to abolish IP entirely. Then again, I'm not sure that Congress would have any problem taxing people for things they don't own, so what do I know.....
- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
But for instance the Berne Convention says, that every creative work is protected, until the author declares it free to use for others. Works well also - you just can't leech someone else's work, if you want a background image, either do one yourself or go around shopping. Just download it somewhere without asking is like just plucking someone else's apples without asking.
You still need to register to collect monetary damage awards in civil trial. However, you don't have to register, I think, to press a criminal charge, so the weirdness continues.
And your point is?
We know what the current standard is. My poing -- which you did not address at all -- was that the new standard does not work in the U.S. At the very least, it is easily provable that it works nowhere near as well as our old system did.
So the hell with your Berne Convention. If it is not an improvement, (and it most definitely, and provably, is not), then who gives a shit? We don't need it.
Beware that this is a typical politicians strategy: Put out ridiculous, overblown ideas and wait for the shitstorm, then reduce it to still outrageous but less overblown - support for the resistance against it usually drops with every move you make towards a "compromise", until you can push something through that is often close to what you really wanted to achieve.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I should add (just gratis, you can thank me later) that this whole issue has to do with a balance of freedoms, or rights, if you prefer.
Your right to make a profit may NOT, under any circumstances, curtail what I honestly say. This is a large part of the "fair use" exemption that has so often come up in recent years.
Further, at least in this country, before you may order the compliance of other parties you must first demonstrate that you have standing to do so; quite the opposite of "copyright lawsuits" that have happened here so far. The DMCA contains provisions that will WITHOUT ANY DOUBT fail to pass Constitution muster, if and when those laws are challenged in court. It just happened yet.
It just HASN'T happened yet.
I understand that perspective. The trouble is the rights of a few people to run a business selling licenses for creative works simply does not trump the rights of them and EVERYONE else to basic things due process, and freedom of speech.
If the only way to police the Internet leaves online publishers (which includes anyone operating a site) with no recourse to defend themselves against improper claims prior to action being taken against them, there is a chilling effect. Its not an acceptable trade off. Frankly IP based business are just going to have to learn to live with a certain amount of crime, and come up with better solution technical and possibly legal to deal with it. Draconian clubs are not the answer though.
Think about this for an analogy. Shop keepers deal with breakins and vandalism all the time. Now I think everyone agrees that the media industry figures which put their losses at $250B ( http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/01/12/how-much-do-music-and-movie-piracy-really-hurt-the-u-s-economy/ ) the article further states that is like $800 for every man, woman and child in this nation. Clearly that is not reasonable. So the actual harm must be less, perhaps no so different from what the shop keepers experience. Now we could eliminate much of that physical property crime. All we would need to is impose a curfew and during the hours you are permitted out of your home have a guard on the corner of ever commercial district street demand your papers and you state your business for being there. The thing is nobody wants to live in that society. We don't want or need the Internet to work like that either.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Yeah, remember people, using public domain works without paying to your choosen master^W corportation is stealing. There is no public domain. If you communicate any kind of idea, or even expressions without conveying any kind of information, pay your toll.
Rethinking email
What is equivalent to /. only publishing articles about SOPA on that day.
Maybe /. should do that.
Rethinking email
Nope, they just vote up laws that make the government bigger and more intrusive without yelling about small government at all. That's much better.
Obama is proposing, again, to consolidate multiple agencies.
http://www.mercurynews.com/nation-world/ci_19739447
After consultation with industry groups across the country
Industry groups. People are still practically powerless. Lucky that the tech megacorp's interests align with the common man's on this.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Prove it. There in lies the problem. Prove you own it and prove it isn't fair use ie. innocent until proven guilty. Rather than my work disappears from the web until I prove you don't own it or that it was fair use ie guilty until proven innocent.
So false charge after false charge, every month or so and your web site is dead, buried by legal fees and no income. You don't think for a second that this is exactly what the corporate psychopath companies planned in the first place when they got lobbyists to write that foul and corrupt piece of legislation.
Big money versus the little guy and your finished, they will kill one blog after another, until they are all that is left (and then they will reform the mass media cartel, and not pick on protected companies or subjects and share common lies and deceits), that is their insane plan.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I mean, for Pete's sake: Using a custom HOSTS file alone can do that much (Additionally, it also avoids any DNS request logs too by bypassing calling out to a remote DNS server @ all/period...).
* Besides - There's more powerful methods to block out these allegedly "infringing" sites/servers!
(DNSBL's (DNS Block Lists) aren't going to be a solution that compares to them (just easier & less costly to implement, holding out a good chunk of the possible users BUT, not anyone that knows what they're doing)).
APK
P.S.=> I didn't read the article, but, it sounds like they're giving up on DNSBL filtering here... & yes, they ought to, as it's NOT terribly effective blocking simply because, again:
It's easily gotten around in custom HOSTS files usage alone, & moreso via things like TOR!
... apk
Fixing one of the bad parts of the bill is not good enough. We need both the Senate and House versions killed dead, and serious voter action against the supporters of the bill, even if they recant their position later. We want them to be in fear of their jobs if they even *think* of censoring free speech again. Otherwise this bullshit will just pop up again in the next session of Congress. The media giants will never stop wanting more, it's built into the DNA of what a corporation does to maximize profits, so they will always come back again. We have to treat them the way zombies get treated in the apocalypse movies they make.
It looks like the anti-SOPA efforts are having some effect, as the President has now come out against it. But he hasn't promised a veto yet.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Places like Google can put a message on their home search page, or on search results. Actually, I have already noticed their news aggregation page has a SOPA story most of the time in the past week or two. I don't know if they are giving the news algorithm a boost, or if the story is just that popular on it's own, but its there a lot
I agree with you that TPB does not directly infringe copyrights. However, it contributorily infringes copyrights by linking to unauthorized sources of copyrighted works and flagrantly disregarding requests to take down said links.
DHS and all its employees and "champions" in the US government must be erased from existance in order to save the peoples of Earth.
A necessity.
no, its like copying someone else's apple.
nobody's perfect
I don't think we could go back to non-automatic copyright. If I make a blog post and attach a few photos I took, would I need to register each photo and the text of the blog post with the US Copyright Office? What about if I make posts like that every day? How much additional paperwork would this add to blogging or any other online activity?
I think that the better solution would be to limit copyright terms to 14 years with an optional (paid) 14 year extension. Add in a method like Marillion states for notifying people of copyright infringement and the problem would be largely solved. In fact, we pretty much have a system like that with the DMCA. (One of the only good provisions in that.) If I post something online that you believe is copyrighted by you, you send a DMCA take down request. I can then take it down or reply with my reason why I think I'm allowed to keep it online. If you still disagree, you can take me to court to solve the matter. Is it abused at times? Definitely. Might it need some tweaking? Perhaps. But we don't need a whole new law (especially something like SOPA/PIPA) to solve the problem!
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I'll even give you the "best case" scenario, to agree with your point still more.
Let's say you don't even get any legal fees, you just get the ritual of checking your mail every Saturday morning (darn post offices not open past working-man's hours!) for This Week's DMCA letters.
You spend three hours every day fiddling with your code taking down and replacing the broken picture links because a big company is doing a slow seige by paying assistant paralegal Mr. X to send them to you every week. So then the company smiles innocently to the cameras and says they're "being reasonable" but the little site owner slowly becomes exhausted and gives up, and loses his visitors when he runs out of energy to keep updating anymore.
Part of my original comment that no one seems to have caught on to was that *lawmakers* need to be held to a higher standard. If *copyright infringement* is $150,000 per event per the **AA, then a *lawmaker* needs to be stuck with that level fine.
But then, yes, laws are only made for the little guys to follow.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
"Oh wait - so if a Govt site "just pulls the image" it's okay, but when Joe Small does it we pull his entire site? Yes,and send Joe S to prison for five years plus fine him 100k."
Exactly my point, you noticed what I was going after sir. Wasn't that delivered so smoothly we almost missed it?
Tangent Topic: Why were sex scandals enough to usually wreck a politician's career but they're small news in private life, yet copyright is what will wreck private life but they're small news for politicians? (Gotta luv parallel clause sentences! More wisdom in a pair of those than any other kind!)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The DMCA already provides this sort of action.
1. DMCA Complaint filed with service provider (ISP, webhost, youtube).
2. Offending content (image, song, etc) removed by ISP (or could be held liable).
3. (optional) Counter-claim filed, restores content.
4. (optional) Remaining details worked out in court.
And prior to the DMCA, your way is exactly how it worked, except the ISP didn't have to pull the content and the rights owner had more difficulty finding the individual who posted the content as the service provider was under no obligation to tell them without a court order. That abuse of the DMCA system is already rampant and congress wants to expand the power to include DNS blocking is madness.