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A Free Internet, If You Can Keep It
Kethinov writes "My Congresswoman, Zoe Lofgren, a prominent opponent of the infamous Stop Online Piracy Act, has introduced two bills to the U.S. House of Representatives designed to protect the free and open internet, expand the protections of the Fourth Amendment to digital communications, and protect against the introduction of any further SOPA-like bills. Since these are issues Slashdotters care deeply about, I wanted to open up the bills for discussion on Slashdot. The bills are: ECPA 2.0 and the Global Free Internet Act. Is my Congresswoman doing a good job? Is there room for improvement in the language of the bills? If you're as excited by her work as I am, please reach out to your representatives as well and ask them to work with Rep. Lofgren. It will take a big coalition to beat the pro-RIAA/MPAA establishment politics on internet regulation."
As a euroboy I can only urge you Americans to support politicans like this. Your political system seems bent and broken to me but this is a glimmer of hope at least. Keep fighting for your freedoms, they seem to dictate the direction the rest of us get herded.
Go Lofgren!
This is exciting that a member of Congress is doing this, I will reach out to my local representatives and ask them to support this.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." This applies to personal emails and other effects but it is not license to take others intellectual property and do with as you like. We need to defend intellectual property as well as our own privacy.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
It would be great if I could get my congressmen to do something like this, or even support something like this, but they are so far up the ass of their corporate masters they can brush the CEO's teeth without him ever opening his mouth.
I got here through a series of tubes
My spelling gives it away, probably... I am a Brit living outside the US. But Congresswoman Lofgren's approach is one that would go a long way to winning my vote, if I was living in San Jose and was eligible to vote.
If you are in her Congressional District and you agree with her stance, I would suggest sending her a message of support (let her know that she is doing a Good Thing... she is not a mind-reader, and positive feedback is always welcomed).
If you are not in her Congressional District, I would suggest sending your Congress-person a request to get behind her proposal, and also sending her a letter to say that you support her stance, and you have asked your Congress-person to do the same.
This seems like a throw-away bill. There is no chance it will make it to the president's desk before congress closes for the year and all bills have to start over.
In our Orwellian nation, I regard with suspicion any legislation claiming to preserve 'freedom.' Too often, names like "Global Free Internet Act" end up being cover for precisely the opposite.
Perhaps I am not being fair here (and I don't have the time to read the impenetrable language of the bills), bit long experience has taught me to be this way.
Don't make the Mafia (one "a") look bigger than they are! The last time I checked, the whole global music industry made less in revenue than a single broke German construction company (Holzwinkel) made profit.
And the by far biggest part of that was iTunes.
It's not much different with the other media distribution and artist extortion industries.
They just have a giant overblown ego. (Judging from what I've seen with EMI, SonyBMG, and Warner, my only guess would be massive cocaine abuse.)
And they project that ego over everything, much like a Steve Jobs reality distortion field, so that politicians think the Mafia has some actual relevance.
But 1. who says we can't blow up things just as much, and 2. their bubble only works if you believe in it. Otherwise it bursts quicker than a soap bubble in a nail bomb explosion.
So please don't spread their reality distortions. (Including the one about imaginary property.) Because by doing so, like a Streisand Effect, you're helping your own enemy.
Thanks.
A) No it does not, according to the SCOTUS.
B) Thanks for self-identifying as a member of the MAFIAA. In case you haven't noticed, you're not welcome here.
I hate to say it, but I'm suspicious. Is Wyden on board with this?
This applies to personal emails and other effects but it is not license to take others intellectual property and do with as you like. We need to defend intellectual property as well as our own privacy.
What about the need to defend Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny? Those are just as real as "intellectual property."
When you a webform to ask your senators to support a bill and it errors out...
SOPA's the one that only affects USians right?
Then I don't care bout this story.
By the time they get done watering this down and then loading it with pork and hidden agendas, this bill will be worthless, if not dangerous.
I took a look at both bills. I'm not optimistic.
I would need to dig more into the ECPA 2.0 bill, but there are, at a minimum, some technical problems with the bill's language. The purpose seems to be to abolish GPS tracking, but the language is weasel-y, and it needs to clarify some points such as interaction with state laws.
The Global Free Internet Act appears to do nothing useful. It would create a task force ripe for regulatory capture, and it would probably result in less accountability than having groups continue to lobby Congress. Also, some of the factual statements about the Internet are incorrect, especially when making assumptions about the Internet's "original purpose."
I'm not saying that we couldn't have quality legislation in these areas, but the proposed bills are lacking.
It would be nice to have someone with a degree of credibility look at this legislation and report on how useful it really is. That's exactly the sort of thing that the EFF should be doing. Have they reviewed it?
No....the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to personal email and that is one of the major points of ECPA 2.0. Right now, if your personal email is not in an "electronic communications system for one hundred and eighty days or less," it is receiving virtually no privacy protections at all. Even if it hasn't been 180 days yet, that communication could still be handed over by your service provider. How many governmental requests did Google/Gmail receive this past year....?
The Senator is right (from TFA): "the defeat of SOPA should be more than cause for pride — it must also prompt action to secure the future of the Internet." But this is also about securing us NOW.
Won't happen. Snowballs chance in hell odds.
How many ex-riaa/mpaa and other hollywood lobbyist type people did obama put into positions when he got elected the first time? Couple dozen... (theres a nice infographic floating around that lists them all and where they came from and where they went)
Until you fix THAT... Going to be damm hard to have any common sense or good laws when it comes to anything related to the internet, media, or communications.
It's part of the reason why crap like SOPA keeps comming back. Whatever its name is this week. I expect SOPA will make yet another return around xmas and try to get slipped in and passed while we're not looking.
You're correct it doesn't.
I should have said the 4th A *SHOULD* apply to email and posts hosted elsewhere.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
MAFIAA? Me. Because I believe that what I create is my own?
I think big media is stupid and has created a ton of problems for itself because it doesn't change it's business model and because it backing these stupid laws (SOPA, ACTA).
I'm a big supporter of eff.org. I don't use Facebook because of privacy issues. But all this doesn't mean that you can take someone else's property.
When the last Harry Potter book came out - do you think it would have been legitimate for you to copy the book, print it and sell it and keep all the profit for yourself?
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
I've been thinking for a little while that it would be interesting to apply the wiki concept of communal editing to legislative proposals. This might be a good opportunity to start, since so many slashdotters will interested. Someone could set up a project and allow anyone to edit the Congresswoman's bill. Then when there is some kind of consensus, it can be submitted to her so she can pursue it further. Any volunteers?
Slashdot is not a game, Slashdot is not a game. Crap, I just lost points.
Actually, isn't Santa Claus trademarked by Coca Cola?
Doesn't help when you're in Feinstein's District. Her and Boxer were both Pro-SOPA (and other similiar legislation) and neither seem to reply or take into account comments made via their websites (My dad has sent letters to both until he was blue in the face. Still votes for 'em though.)
People need to start taking the 'long term' view, and vote third party, not because they'll get them into office, but so that in 4-6 years (whatever the term limits are for the position in question) they'll be able to have funding for their NEXT campaign and hopefully challenge the party duopoly in a meaningful way. If you're voting FOR someone because of party lines and not actually the issues that are important to you, you're going to get what you deserve.
That is all.
My state's congress creatures are so pro-corporate and police state as to make Eugene McCarthy now look like a centrist.
On pg. 23 or BILLS-112hr6529.ih.pdf, the congress critter says this:
SEC. 2. WARRANT REQUIRED FOR CONTENTS OF COMMUNICATIONS.
(a) COMPELLED DISCLOSURE OF COMMUNICATION
CONTENTS.—
(1) IN GENERAL.—Section 2703 of title 18,
United States Code, is amended—
(A) in subsection (a)—
(i) by striking ‘‘INELECTRONIC STORAGE’’ in the subsection header;
(ii) by inserting ‘‘or remote computing service’’ in the first sentence after ‘‘electronic communication service’’;
I would really prefer if they used a proper repo and we could just look at the diff.
http://www.bartleby.com/73/1593.html
ATTRIBUTION: The response is attributed to BENJAMIN FRANKLIN - at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation - in the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland's delegates to the Convention.
McHenry's notes were first published in The American Historical Review, vol. 11, 1906, and the anecdote on p. 618 reads: "A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it." When McHenry's notes were included in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, ed. Max Farrand, vol. 3, appendix A, p. 85 (1911, reprinted 1934), a footnote stated that the date this anecdote was written is uncertain.
Lofgren represents Northern California with the tech and Internet companies. They have a monied interest in an open Internet, naturally you'd think that their paid congresscritter fights for that. This bill falls right into that. However, back in 2002 she introduced a bill that would invalidate EULAs. That would seriously anger this core constituency. It really seems that she's looking out for us.
Well, at least in this one respect (she still promotes institutional racism, unequal protection under the law, and flat-out doesn't believe in three of the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights).
This applies to personal emails and other effects but it is not license to take others intellectual property and do with as you like.
What the hell are you talking about, and how is it relevant to the story?
We need to defend intellectual property as well as our own privacy.
And judging from your comment, you propose to do that by... invading people's privacy for 'safety'? But no, I don't really want the government to waste my tax dollars going after people who copy files.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Words that are arranged are not owned. Rather, you are given a limited monopoly on the reproduction of those words, for a limited time. This monopoly is society's way of saying "Thank you" for having contributed to society, and is the way by which incentive is given to enrich society.
You are not given absolute control, nor is the control you are granted to last forever.
No. I'm not defending the idiotic decisions by German courts, nor am I defending SOPA, ACTA or other ridiculous bills.
Unfortunately there are people who think that intellectual property is nonsense; that there should be no copyright laws. The post on the 4th A was written too quickly. It should have said that the 4th A *SHOULD* apply to papers and effects such as emails. I'm a big privacy fan and am appalled by the direction our society is going. For example that Facebook owns the content written there in. Facebook should have no more say about the posts than does the manufacturer of my laptop have in what I'm writing right now.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Because I believe that what I create is my own?
You can't own ideas the way you do physical items; that's why we have copyright, trademark and patent laws which are separate from property laws.
do you think it would have been legitimate for you to copy the book, print it and sell it and keep all the profit for yourself?
Off topic; there's no profit in sharing bit streams across the net.
It will all be a moot point once the Chinese and Arab censorship pushers take over the Internet via the U.N.
"Greetings! As you can probably tell, this is not an automatic form letter. It probably has no resemblance to any other letters you have received, though I hope you have received none in opposition to what I am writing. As such, please do not respond to this unless it will be with a personally crafted, one of a kind, letter. Anything else would be a waste of tax-payer monies, and your time. (Senator Kohl seems to be the best example, well, more his staff, of actually reading these requests for non-generic response) Anyway, down to the point: I request, and urge your full support of HR6529, and HR6530, both of which are designed to support an open and free internet. I feel the founders of this country would be in support of such measures, in order to maintain open commerce among the citizenry, as well as free speech, and to maintain a degree of privacy which, though not explicitly laid forth in the constitution, an open and free society must have for unimpaired function. I recognize that perhaps these may not be a particularly hot topic with your constituents, tho it is with me. I also recognize that these bills may run counter to the recent course set-forth by big business and brought up in congress, but might I remind you that you are in office to serve me and other citizens who do not have the lavish funds required to otherwise buy legislation (such as the famed SOPA/PIPA). Your support of these measures may require you to reach across the aisle and work with your political opponents, tho it seems time that such actions be taken up for risk of permanently harming this nation. Regards, (my name here)"
Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength...
Just take everything a bill is named for and reverse it and you get it's true goals.
SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) wouldnt have stopped Piracy but proliferated it.
Any time a a politician brings a think of the children arguement what they really are thinking about it corporate interests, etc...
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
There is no such thing as "intellectual property". There is copyright, patent, and trademark law. These were created for various policy reasons most of which no longer exist or were never valid in the first place.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I agree completely about being given temporary control. The US constitution states: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" There are too many people who think that copyright protection is wrong. I'm defending the concept of individual property rights. I'm not defending the actions of big media, nor am I defending the idiotic actions of law makers.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Here I thought copyright, patent and trademark law existed to protect intellectual property. Now -- I am NOT defending all the stupidity and abuses done in the name of intellectual property. I am however defending the idea that what people create is theirs and cannot be copied at whim by others. Can you pass someone else's work as your own (plagiarism) and not expect to get called on it? No. Because that music, movie, book was created by someone else. It is not yours.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
I am however defending the idea that what people create is theirs
The data stored on my hard drive is certainly not yours or anyone else's; it's mine.
cannot be copied at whim by others.
It can be and will continue to be no matter how much you whine about it.
Can you pass someone else's work as your own (plagiarism) and not expect to get called on it?
Passing off "someone else's work" as your own is different than merely sharing data with other people.
It is not yours.
It is if it's in my possession/on my hard drive. Honestly, pro-IP people are the most anti-private property goons I've ever met.