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Ask Slashdot: How To Inform a Non-Techie About Proposed Copyright Laws
First time accepted submitter skywiseguy writes "I know someone who continues to argue that the takedown of MegaUpload shows that the existing laws are not adequate and that we *need* SOPA/PIPA to protect the movie/music industries from offshore (non-US) piracy. I keep trying to inform him of the history the *AA's have brought to bear on the copyright laws and how these bills are something that will continue the abuse of copyright instead of ending piracy as they are claiming. He has no grasp on how DNS works, much less the internet in general. What can I do to show him how destructive these bills actually are, preferably with something that is as unbiased as possible?"
..and randomly "blacklist" Google, FB, Yahoo, YouTube, etc. on it with some notice of copyright infringement.
You don't need to explain copyright. You just need to use logic.
If existing laws are inadequate, the FBI would not have been able to take down MegaUpload. MegaUpload has been taken down, thus existing laws must be adequate. QED.
Easy.
Take their lunch.
Then steal their wallet.
And tell them it's because you THINK they pirated a movie or music CD and they "owe" you.
Smashing their laptop or other portable computing device is optional.
That's SOPA, ACTA, and a host of others in action: no due process.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
SOPA/PIPA were US legislation that were sold largely on their utility in fighting foreign-origin piracy by (among other things) requiring ISPs in the US to block access to foreign sites that were (accused of) providing pirated materials.
Your car is a TCP packets, the DNS is your gps, when one person in the town breaks a law the whole town is removed from the gps. Now anyone driving buy looking for a gas/hotel/restaurants will not find one in that town, even though the owners did not break the law their business are hurt, all because one person broke the law in the town.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
DNS is a lot like a phone book, which is something many people understand. If we blacklist someone from DNS it's like removing them from the phone book. Their phone number still works and anyone can call them. Removing an illicit phone number from the phone book will not prevent people from dialing the number. A phone number would still be passed around in forums, between friends, etc.
Regularly removing phone numbers from the phone book may create many alternative phone books which is likely to create a big headache for all users in figuring out which phone book they need to use to find a particular website and in figuring out which phone books contain legitimate information and which ones will give you the real phone number for your bank and which ones will give you fake books. This is particularly concerning because the legislation proposed doesn't apply due process to removing a phone number from the phone book, but instead allows for arbitrary removals.
SOPA/PIPA were US legislation and would have had only been able to be used to prosecute inside the United States.
Absolutely backwards.
SOPA, specifically -
" Rep. Goodlatte, "Intellectual property is one of America's chief job creators and competitive advantages in the global marketplace, yet American inventors, authors, and entrepreneurs have been forced to stand by and watch as their works are stolen by foreign infringers beyond the reach of current U.S. laws."
"They say it protects the intellectual-property market and corresponding industry, jobs and revenue, and is necessary to bolster enforcement of copyright laws, especially against foreign websites"
Claiming flaws in present laws that do not cover foreign owned and operated sites, and citing examples of "active promotion of rogue websites" by U.S. search engines, proponents say stronger enforcement tools are needed.
SOPA is designed to American citizens from accessing foreign sites that are deemed (implied) to be infringing.
Even with all of the useful suggestions posted here, you may not succeed.
Back in the day, when SCO started their ill fated lawsuit against IBM (but actually against Linux), I had a co worker who I discussed this with. He didn't know much about what was going on, but read the various industry rags and loudmouths, and thus believed that (his words) "SCO has a strong case".
Rewind about three years. I was talking to him about open source and Linux. His reaction about a free high quality OS always came back to "but how do they make their money?". After explaining about open source more, he finally understood it was not about money. I'll never forget his reaction. His words caused my jaw to drop to the floor: "They can't be allowed to do that!"
From that point on, we always were at odds over a lot of fundamental viewpoints. He tended to take the view that anything big business did that was profitable was therefore morally right. Yes, I kid you not.
My point? You may not be able to convince your non techie friend.
Oh, and when you say "unbiased" I think you might have meant "reasonable". There's nothing wrong with being biased because you have a particular viewpoint that you advocate.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
No need to get into that. Tell him/her that:
Facts:
1. Information flows freely between people. There is no way around that. It's been like that since humans were first able to communicate.
2. This didn't mean much back in the days since information was tied to physical media (books, tapes...), so it was essentially not free except what you could say/listen to, which was naturally limited by our brains.
3. Information is now infinite and fast and without borders (for all intents and purposes pertaining to copyrights)
4. You can encrypt and obfuscate communications with the help of computers, beyond the reach of anyone, including the law enforcement. Hence, with little overhead, nobody can tell what you transmit over the internet, except the guy at the other end with the key/password.
Conclusion:
0. Anyone can communicate freely with everyone else, MEANS:
1. Copyrights of information transferable by the internet are not enforceable anymore. Period. Unless you disconnect everyone from the internet.
2. Any law trying to prevent this will just harm lawful activities on the web by making it more and more cumbersome and risky to operate a legitimate website.
3. Piracy will not be reduced or stopped by anything else that global extinction of the internet. It is detectable for some part right now because people don't bother hiding themselves. This will change quickly and without pain from the pirates.
Ah... One last thing: It doesn't mean the end of music/films/books artists, but it surely means the end of movie/films/books distributors.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
I read a good analogy on another thread concerning megaupload...
Imagine you own a storage unit in a large complex. Now, a few other people are storing illegal contraband in their storage unit, but that's just a few out of hundreds, and most people are perfectly law-abiding. The police get wind that there's contraband in one of the units. They react by putting police tape up across the front of the entire storage unit complex, confiscate everything, legal and illegal alike, and torch it all...just to be sure they got all the contraband.
Another good one I heard: Imagine a full parking garage. One of the cars in the parking garage was used in the commission of a bank robbery. The cops don't want to be bothered trying to figure out which car it was specifically, so instead they impound the entire garage full of cars permanently and tell all the owners they have no recourse. They get the car they were after, but in the process infringe upon the rights of everyone else.
Both of those do a good job of explaining how law abiding citizens will be totally screwed by shit like SOPA/PIPA. At Megaupload, there were millions of legitimate users doing nothing wrong, but all their shit is taken, too, no trial, no recourse, no chance to ever get their totally legal content back, just because other people broke the law. If it were a physical structure, like the storage unit or garage in the above analogies, nobody would argue that the public would go apeshit, but because it's a web site and a bunch of 1's and 0's people don't conceptualize it like that, but that's what it is.
Don't forget to point out that SOPA andACTA are not about combatting piracy.
They are about decreasing the cost and risk for the copyright holders. Using this legislation they can issue orders without any oversight or liability, and without any costs to them.
Find an analogy to that (you peddle X, but want to put the cost of peddling X on the general public via a 3rd party (ISP))
THIS! This exactly!
The whole point of SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA, is that the corporations want to escape the last few shreds of oversight and responsibility they currently have to deal with under existing laws. These laws were NEVER about combatting piracy - they are entirely about making sure that the copyright industry companies don't have to worry about little things like actually telling the truth when they say they own the copyright for something and are shutting you down.
Under current laws, if you post a video of yourself doing something, like say, a college professor posting videos online of his lectures so that his students can view them, and the MPAA files a takedown notice claiming they own that video and the prof is a dirty stinking pirate for stealing it from them (even though it's a false accusation), the prof has (supposedly) the recourse that he can file a counter-notice, and have the videos restored, (note: this is an actual example from the real world - they really did this.) and then the MPAA would to take him to actual court to sue for damages (which they didn't, because they didn't have any evidence, and it was obvious that they didn't actually own the material) instead of just having him thrown in jail and his property seized without having to show any evidence that he actually did what they claim. Under the combination of SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA, the MPAA would not have had to go through any legal procedures, or have any evidence that the prof's lectures belonged to them (which they didn't), but instead would be allowed to just say "BAD! YOU ARE THIEF!", and automatically be correct under the law, because they said so, and thus be allowed to take his domain, and shut him down with no recourse, no right to a trial, and no way to do anything about it.
Considering how little responsibility the MPAA and RIAA have demonstrated when applying the current copyright laws, is it any wonder that people who are paying attention don't trust them to behave with laws that take away what little responsibility and oversight they currently have?
Even worse, these laws are so poorly put together that any nutjob with a grudge can do the same thing to anyone they don't like, and have anything that person has put online shut down (the whole website), with little to no proof that their claims are true. Did you accidentally mention that you like eating bacon on your website? Look out - when the crazy person who has decided that all bacon-loving people are actually aliens trying to hypnotize the human race into complacency, they can fulfill their personal mission of silencing your bacon-promoting alien agenda by falsely using SOPA/PIPA/ACTA to shut down your website. Before you even know it has happened, you're gone, and if you are very lucky, you might even find out why, some day.
...that entertainment is not "information,"...
you are simply wrong...at it's base level it is all information, and what and how it communicates is different to different observers. As a composer I listen to a lot of music as research, that is damn important information. Even if I am simply being entertained, I am only able to be entertained by being communicated to, it is all information, it is all data.