The US is currently busy copying China’s internet censorship policies, but before this bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA, can be pushed through, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing to debate the act. Sadly, the hearing was – quite obviously – rigged. It was set up so that Big Content and Congress could label Google and other opponents to the law as “the pirates”. In fact, Google was the only party opposing SOPA.
I honestly don’t know what to do with all this SOPA nonsense. It’s so utterly clear just how bad this act is, it’s so utterly clear how totalitarian and dangerous it is, it’s so utterly clear just how grossly free speech and freedom in general are being curbed by this act, that it just baffles me that people who call themselves “Americans” could even support such a monstrosity.
The number of law professors, scholars, civil rights groups, and other organisations who oppose SOPA is so incredibly long, it boggles the mind it is still getting pushed through. Several large technology companies banded together today to publish a full-page advertisement against SOPA in The New York Times, and combined with the list of supporters/detractors for the act, it’s interesting to see just who does – and doesn’t support this bill.
Microsoft is a proponent of limiting free speech on the internet, and thus, supports this act. Apple is not on the list of supporters, but the company’s close ties to Disney make it pretty clear where Apple’s allegiances lie. Disney, of course, is most likely the biggest proponent of laws like this, which is incredibly ironic – Disney is built, for almost 100%, on stories appropriated from the public domain. Disney would not have existed – or at least not in its current size – if the current copyright system was in place 100 years ago.
At this point, I just don’t know what to do about this anymore. It would seem that the slippery slope of IP protection smart people have been warning about for years and years now is no longer just a slope – it’s now a free-fall wherein the rights of the people are discarded left and right.
What should worry our US readers the most is the testimony today of the US Register of Copyrights, Maria Pallante. She stated – with a straight face – that without SOPA, the US copyright system would fall apart. Worse yet, she stated that SOPA doesn’t go far enough – harsher methods are needed.
Sad. If there ever was anything that symbolises the moral bankruptcy of US politics and government, it’s SOPA.
Yet another reason why the stuff you put in the cloud is not yours anymore. And if you aren’t american and use internet lockers, make sure that you’re not using an American company.
I can already imagine when the RIAA start combing people’s cloud storage.
MPAA architecturing Internet protocols? God forbid. They’ll build a torture machine.
Edited 2011-11-17 00:10 UTC
How fitting that the word “sopa” in Swedish means something like “useless person”. It derives from the word “sopor”, meaning garbage.
Just saying…
If anyone wants to read countless articles about SOPA, techdirt had something like 20 of them between yesterday and today… I think I’m just about all SOPA’d out, but it’s an important topic.
I really don’t give a flying f**k about some parasite’s ability to profit off the work of a dead author, musician, programmer, or filmmaker. I would dance a jig in the streets if Microsoft’s business model went up in smoke. The history of copyright over the past century in this country is a tale of the government bending the public, and the public domain, further and further over the table. If the registrar of copyright thinks the house of cards she’s in charge of is about to fail, that can only be a good thing.
https://launchpad.net/i2p
Interesting. How does this differ from Tor?
it isn’t completely compromised.
How is Tor compromised?
I’ve only recently stumbled upon Tor (I’ve known things like this exist in theory but never really investigated them until now), so this is all new and interesting to me right now
https://tails.boum.org/news/version_0.9/
https://tails.boum.org/about/index.en.html
“amnesiac, noun:
forgetfulness; loss of long-term memory.
incognito, adjective & adverb:
(of a person) having one’s true identity concealed.
Tails is a live system: a complete operating-system designed to be used from a CD or a USB stick independently of the computer’s original operating system. It is Free Software and based on Debian GNU/Linux.”
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=incognito
“The (Amnesic) Incognito Live System is a Debian-based live CD/USB with the goal of providing complete Internet anonymity for the user. The product ships with several Internet applications, including web browser, IRC client, mail client and instant messenger, all pre-configured with security in mind and with all traffic anonymised. To achieve this, Incognito uses the Tor network to make Internet traffic very hard to trace.”
WARNINGS:
https://tails.boum.org/doc/warning/index.en.html
“Even though we’re doing our best to offer you good tools to protect your privacy while using a computer, there is no magic or perfect solution to such a complex problem. Understanding well the limits of such tools is a crucial step in, first, deciding whether Tails is the right tool for you, and second, helping you making a good use of it.”
Edited 2011-11-18 01:02 UTC
While Tor is mainly geared towards providing anonymous access to the Internet (“outproxying”), I2P is almost exclusively its own network within the Internet.
People need to get over this concept of America as that shining beacon of hope and democracy for the whole world. Perhaps at one time it was true, but it hasn’t been that way for a few decades. And these days, America is becoming a world leader at stripping away human rights, even forcing other countries to pass laws that restrict freedom. The DMCA and software patents were abominations that were made in the USA, and forced onto other countries. And now SOPA.
It will be a sad day when the Internet in China is more open than it is in the USA. And that day is approaching rapidly.
Edited 2011-11-17 02:12 UTC
er… USA citizens are probably within the few who still believe (or want to believe) that… most others already see it as it truly is.
Those who built america hoping to create a the land of the free succeeded.
But they’re dead now.
Now we’re left with politicians who think “building a country” is defined as studying in a perfectly safe classroom until their millionaire parents tell them that they can stop, so they can sit at a desk and look at the world as a big bag of statistics.
No, it’s not. The US has a strong and well established checks and balance system that provide for the rights of individuals to express themselves, bitch about their government and elected officials, and even arm themselves with automatic weapons so they can depose ‘the man’ if he gets out of hand.
China has none of those things.
SOPA is very bad but let’s not turn this into an ignorant America bash.
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You must not live in California…
China only censors what they believe is “illegal” – which is precisely what SOPA will do. There will be no due process given here. All the same websites that are used for free speech and potentially organizing of protests could be conveniently shut down due to “copyright infringement” *allegations*… with pretty much no proof required, and no judicial process to actually prove that they’re guilty.
Do you really want the U.S. government having that sort of “off-switch” control over the communications networks that are being established?
As a U.S. citizen, this scares the shit out of me.
A) Russia also has those checks and balances, but there is this thing called self-censorship that basically kills a lot of rights. US is going fast down the road of self-censorship.
B) Arming themselves is a very useless thing these days. A team of trained soldiers will easily take out a town full of armed civilians. There is just no substitute for training that soldiers get these days. Come back, when towns are allowed to have their own military. The provision was written over 200 years ago with the 18th century world in mind.
uh…. explain egypt? They had billions of dollars in US training/forces provided, didn’t stop them from rolling the government.
Weak governments fall. And weak governments tend to fall without support of the military.
US indoctrination is still exceptionally strong. I would even rate it at the level of North Korea. It’s just the objects of indoctrination are different. But both system imply high level of conservatism. And US is an exceptionally conservative country overall.
Yes, what I am saying is that the liberals in US would totally destroy US as it is. If liberals take charge, that is. Not that it implies that it’s a bad thing for US. Maybe it’s time to reinvent itself.
The military in Egypt changed sides. It choose the popular side, but it was the military that took control of Egypt not the people. In fact there are now new trouble in Egypt because it appears the military is not giving up its new powers as quickly as promised.
Libya is a different story, but a story with a military heavily crippled by external forces.
Edited 2011-11-21 23:18 UTC
I think you are correct with this, but it sounds a bit like.
“They are taking away our freedoms.”
“Who care? Our country is great because we can bitch about it.”
I think you can get a gun in both the US and China, but I doubt it will get you very far.
I’m, frankly, getting a little tired of this constant battle between extremists who argue that no copyrights should exist — and those who believe that copyrights should be enforced with jackboots to the head. I don’t buy the BS that it has to be one way or the other. We already have laws in place which criminalize the distribution of illegal child porn, dissemination of hate speech, etc. ISPs and content sites aren’t liable for said distribution unless they knowingly participate in it; or whether they should have reasonably known about it. That seems like a reasonable standard for enforcing copyright law, too. I don’t buy the BS from Google that they can abide by some laws and not others. Clearly, the conversation on this issue is just starting, and neither side should be given a free pass to ignore it — or try to shove ridiculous restrictions down our throats.
Wait, I’m sorry – when was the last time a law was passed that *removed* any notion of copyright?
Last I checked, copyright law has only been increased more over the years. Much of what copyright law was designed to do has long since eroded to a monopoly on creative works by corporations who cannot die.
Copyright law was never put in place to give people “ownership” over creativity forever – quite the opposite in fact! It was put in place to assure that nobody could retain that monopoly for too long, while at the same time encouraging people to release their works into the world with a brief period of protection where they could retain some control over their contribution to culture. When copyright terms started getting extended, that was when the “middle ground” that you refer to was lost.
And when was the last time that copyrights were actually ENFORCED on the Internet? It’s a rarity. Attempts to rein in copyright violations wrt MPAA/RIAA have been nearly universally reviled by proponents of Internet freedoms.
Again, see above. Laws which can’t be enforced are useless laws.
Copyright DOESN’T last forever.
First of all, there are reasonable exceptions to copyright law (fair use, right of first sale, etc) which provide a way to socialize copyrighted content without eliminating copyright protections. Secondly, copyrights don’t need to expire within YOUR LIFETIME in order for them to be generally useful to human civilization. There are tons of works (Shakespeare, Dickens, Chaucer, etc) which are now in the public domain which fall into that category. It’s somewhat dubious to suggest that, because these protections don’t expire within your lifetime, that they are not useful or valuable to our society.
Wait, you mean the same organizations that have destroyed the notion of copyright? I wonder why people might be a little upset about that.
See, you simply can’t enforce a law that a majority of people disagree with… it just doesn’t work.
There are already plenty of tools that copyright infringement can be fought on the internet – but that’s still not enough for certain industry groups. The reason it’s not enough is because there is a HUGE number of people who simply disregard the law and believe it is wrong.
Oh, I see you just agreed with my point above.
When Mickey Mouse finally falls out of copyright – we’ll have this discussion again.
Ah right – all those things that “Big Content” pretends don’t exist any more.
Fair Use? Considering the number of lawsuits against remix and/or sampling… the number of lawsuits brought about for simply LINKING to content… the obvious attempts to destroy First Sale for digital content, I’m afraid I simply don’t believe you any more. I’m pretty certain I’m not alone here.
Bullshit – the only reason those are still in the public domain is because they were already in the public domain when copyright extensions started to be passed. There are plenty of situations recently where greedy copyright trolls have attempted to reclaim copyright on public domain works – and this is a suggestion that there’s something wrong with the system.
Just because from your viewpoint, nothing is wrong, doesn’t mean that nothing is wrong.
This is pure hyperbole.
Perhaps you could enlighten us how you polled a majority of people on this issue.
BS. We can talk when PirateBay comes down.
I’m sure that you can find a HUGE number of people who believe that it’s wrong to charge for bread. Or gasoline. So what. Of course people want a free ride.
Fair use is highly dependent on the NATURE of the use. Not simply on the fact that you want to post some shit on YouTube that you lifted and remixed/sampled, and aren’t charging anybody for.
These lawsuits are primarily targeting organizations whose primary business model is promoting the distribution of infringing content.
Why do you feel the need to complain about a right to first sale that is a clear precedent in “Timothy S. Vernor v. Autodesk Inc”? Do you simply like flogging dead horses?
Again, copyright isn’t meant to serve YOUR TIMELINE. It’s supposed to provide benefits to society over the long haul, and it does that. We’re never going to agree on this, and I don’t see any point in arguing further.
Gosh, I sure hope that doesn’t happen – I actually have several legal torrents hosted there… I would then have to adapt and find another “rogue site” to host them on (since pretty much all torrent trackers and search engines are going to fall into that category if SOPA is passed).
Figures you would expect that I’d be the one that has to adapt with *my* legally-distributed content, in favor of the bigger guys who have all the money.
Serious question, dude: How many torrents among the ones indexed by PirateBay are “legal” versus “illegal”? I’d say it’s probably a very, very, very small number of legal torrents versus illegal. Sure, there are legitimate uses, but I think that a reasonable person would conclude that the purpose of PirateBay is primarily to disseminate illegal content. The name says it all.
Now, of course, I’m not naive enough to believe that knocking out a few rogue websites is enough to make the problem of copyright infringement go away. It will simply go underground. But it can make it expensive or difficult or risky enough for the average person that he or she will consider just going legit and paying a few bucks for a collection of songs or a movie or an ebook.
But (going out on a limb here), I’m guessing that it wouldn’t matter to you how much or how little anyone charges for content, right? You wouldn’t pay for it.
You’re right, I canceled my Netflix account because well… the content decreased while the prices increased.
And I only pay for non-DRM indie games that are “pay what you want” model (I have purchased every Humble Indie Bundle for example – for more than the average price that others were willing to pay).
I probably own more legitimate video game consoles and games than most people… (4 NES, 3 genesis, 2 SNES, 4 N64, 5 PS1, 5 PS2, 4 XBOX original, 3 Dreamcast, 3 Gamecube, 5 NDS, 4 gameboy, and a bunch more I’m probably forgetting offhand)
I only listen to free indie music (nerdcore mostly) – and I only watch what is either free on services like Crackle.com, Hulu, or DirecTV.
However, I don’t directly support the industries that I absolutely abhor – I don’t buy music CDs – I don’t buy DVDs, and I certainly don’t purchase music from iTunes. I guess I’m a pirate.
Care to bash me some more?
Edited 2011-11-18 05:54 UTC
I’m not bashing you. I’m just making an observation that there are a lot of people out there who, if given a choice between paying for something and getting it for free, they’ll choose the latter; even if it means doing something that is fundamentally unethical.
There are all kinds of justifications for not paying for digital technology…
1. The distributor is “greedy”, ripping off the original artist, etc.
2. It’s too difficult to redistribute/reuse due to DRM
3. There’s a marginal cost of duplication that does not justify the price.
4. The distributor has an outmoded business model; aka, if they gave me an alternate way to get the content, I’d pay (yeah, rrrrrrright).
5. I would never actually pay for the content under normal circumstances, so the distributor hasn’t lost anything.
etc
I don’t see you using the typical excuses. So, I applaud you. You simply avoid the digital content that doesn’t match your needs. But there are plenty of people who cross the ethical border into infringement because of the reasons listed above and, I’m sorry, I think they’re full of shit. They want something for nothing. Excuses are just excuses.
They wouldn’t just walk into a grocery store, grab a few items, and walk out without paying. And why not? Because it’s illegal? Because they have a higher probability of getting arrested? I think that, for most people, the ethnical boundary is really set by what they can technically get away with, not about where the boundary should be.
I would not go into any discussions about copyright enforcement until companies artificially restrict media distribution over the internet by geographies. I can buy a CD and get it mailed to my home, but I can’t get an MP3?
Copyright has to be enforced, but not until most people get reasonable access, not artificial geographical limitation. Baseless in most cases, in fact.
Entertainment shouldn’t be inconvenient, but media companies go out of their way to make getting access as inconvenient as possible. In addition they never treat their customers as a customer should be treated.
Protest votes can be placed at
http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_internet/?fp
The only logical thing to do is to retroactively re-establish copyrights for the folk stories and charge US companies for their blatant abuse of European culture! I mean these pirates have blatantly stolen out cultural values and are using them as their own! We must put a stop to that outright robbery. Every single American now owes the old world for the following:
Illegal reproduction of pumpkin decorations
Illegal reproduction of copyrighted witches costumes
Illegal reproduction of pirate costumes
Illegal reproduction of copyrighted decorations for pine trees
Blatant misuse of Christmas(SM) and Yule(SM)
Illegal reproduction of the copyrighted material in the form of the nativity scene(Enjoying them at your local mall, is as much a violation of copyright as actual heinous act of illegal reproduction)
Illegal use of Christmas carols
the list is non-exclusive and only reflects theft that has been blatantly executed during Halloween(SM) and in preparation for Christmas(SM)
/s
Well, it was a while ago and I don’t remember well, but I’m pretty sure that the French or German equivalent of the RIAA once asked heavy fines from a middle school teacher because she made the children sing a copyrighted song for Christmas…
The irony of Microsoft’s support for SOPA is that they are the single biggest benefactors of online piracy in the software industry. If it’s weren’t for online piracy, their desktop dominance wouldn’t be as high. Thus secondary markets would slide for them.
PS: Why would International Association of Firefighters be supporting it? Are sexually suggestive firemen calendars being pirated?
Edited 2011-11-17 11:20 UTC
MS and Apple are evil. That is why I don’t buy any of their shit and I really don’t understand people who support them with their money then complaining about how fucked up they are. That is just utterly stupid PERIOD
For those interested, SOPA hearing video webcast is now available on-line here:
http://judiciary.edgeboss.net/wmedia/judiciary/full/full11162011.wv…
See http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/hear_11162011.html
Edited 2011-11-17 21:12 UTC
The US and China have completely different views on censorship, and completely different policy. To suggest the US is trying to copy China in this regard only shows how little you know on the subject and how little you know about the US legal system.
Such is the internets…