What Can Bring Together Opposites On The Traditional Political Spectrum? A Fear Of Censorship Due To PROTECT IP
from the speaking-out dept
If you follow the political world these days, you'd think that there was nothing out there that a "bleeding-heart liberal" and a "Tea Party conservative" might agree on. But it appears that the hugely problematic PROTECT IP Act is bringing together such diverse interests. David Segal and Patrick Ruffini -- who probably don't agree on very much at all politically -- teamed up to write an editorial about the problems of PROTECT IP, for OregonLive. The editorial notes the massive unintended consequences likely to come from the bill, and highlights how this is an issue outside of any standard political spectrum. This isn't an issue about political viewpoints. It's an issue about fundamental values and the belief that censorship is wrong.
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Filed Under: censorship, conservatives, liberals, protect ip
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> the bill will become law, the internet will
> buckle badly, if not break completely
I agree with you up to a point. Yes, the legislators have been bought and paid for and will pass it anyway, even if every single one of their constituents asks them not to, and yes, it will be signed into law.
However, that's where I think it stops. Even now, rights groups across the political spectrum, along with business alliances of every kind are all preparing legal challenges to PROTECT IP so that the lawsuits will be ready to file immediately in the event PROTECT IP becomes law. Before the ink in Obama's signature is dry on the paper, dozens of challenges will be filed in courts in every circuit, resulting in at least one judge issuing injunctive relief against enforcement of PROTECT IP until the suits can be consolidated and the far-reaching constitutional issues adjudicated.
This has happened before. When Congress passed the Communications Decency Act in 1996, it was in effect less than three hours after Clinton signed it, before it was challenged and enforcement suspended by the federal courts, pending litigation. The CDA was later overturned unanimously by the Supreme Court as an unconstitutional violation of the 1st Amendment in Reno v. ACLU.
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oh please
Teatards!
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Pirate Mike is so funny. He actually believes people buy the bullshit he slings. That's known as mental illness.
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Troll harder.
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Your illness is so deep rooted in your brain that you fail to see what even the ones that proposed the Protect IP Act saw: that there MAY BE unintended consequences. But the supporters say the Govt will be a good guy and not ever distort the act once it comes to law. Ah, the BART.
We should make home raiding and seizures completely free and remove the need of judicial orders since it'll address drug dealing. Collateral damage is collateral.
Shut up troll. Go away.
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By that logic, we should stop the sale of guns, because there could be unintended consequences of the sale, as an example. For that matter, putting up an extra stop sign on a street might have unintended consequences for other streets, so let's just not bother.
It's a FUD statement, nothing more.
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Exactly.
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Stop selling guns and ppl who want to kill will use knives. But you'll surely feed an illegal black market and prevent ppl who practice shooting as a sport from having their fun.
As for the stop sign yes, an extra stop sign can turn traffic into hell if badly placed. Point is, anything done may have unintended consequences that should be weighted.
Which takes us to my previous comment. A system or a law that can be abused by the power to censor and control WILL BE USED for those ends. Sooner or later as the US has shown us by putting their Constitution to shame with the unintended consequences of the Patriot Act.
Please, shut up and leave.
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You can never predict all possible unintended consequences, but you can mitigate or avoid many by properly analyzing the intended action before you make it. That includes getting input from other sources and seriously considering them.
What doesn't work is only listening to people whose opinions agree with your own and dismissing those who disagree. Which is what's happening here, apparently. Several very smart and very high-profile people have weighed in with carefully considered and explained analyses and they've all fallen on deaf ears.
Though to be honest I assume that those lawmakers ignoring the opposing viewpoints are actually quite aware of the negative consequences and either don't care (because they're being paid not to) or are counting on it (because they're interested in unfettered power).
Simply claiming it's FUD is just another way of dismissing the arguments unconsidered. It likely either puts you in the "willfully ignorant" camp or in the "I'm paid not to care" camp. Unless you're in the "too stupid to understand" camp.
Life is full of unintended consequences. Writing vague laws with power of censorship built in is a lighting rod for negative consequences, intended or not.
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So I have to say FUD is your BS.
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Since it is a exclusion tool it will be used to exclude people and companies, just like the majority of the DMCA's is target against competitors.
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Perhaps you are completely unaware of some of the blogs and forums that have been seized by the US gov't, despite tons of non-infringing protected speech.
Or, perhaps you are unaware of the industry created list of sites they decided were "dedicated to piracy" that included the Internet Archive, 50 Cent's personal website, Vimeo and the Vibe.
Or, perhaps, you are unfamiliar with the history of copyright law and innovation, in which every new innovation is declared to have "no meaningful purpose other than the promotion of infringement." That includes the player piano, the radio, cable TV, the photocopier, the VCR, the DVR, the mp3 player and YouTube.
If you can't see how a broadly defined law like this will be abused, you're really not paying attention.
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My question is basically directed to standing, and from his post it is not at all clear what arguments he would raise to demonstrate that the standing requirement is satisfied.
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What part of "inalienable rights" do you not understand?
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2. All those sites participated in infringement. But we already know that's ok with you.
3. Hyperbolic lies and FUD that are just Mike trying his usual strategy of changing the subject.
You've failed miserably again, Pirate Mike.
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I don't scream "no, no, no." I point to the actual text of the ruling, which says (and I'll quote for those in denial), which states (pretty clearly -- though you have to read it) that it only applies to "nonexpressive activity." Are you claiming that blog posts and forums are nonexpressive activity? Or did you not actually read the decision?
2. All those sites participated in infringement. But we already know that's ok with you.
Bullshit. First, in at least one case, all of the files the government used to show infringement were sent by authorized parties. Second, define "participated." The problem is that you seem to think that if someone in a forum points to an infringing link, the site itself participated. It did not. The user may have. But under your definition of "participated" Google would be shut down.
3. Hyperbolic lies and FUD that are just Mike trying his usual strategy of changing the subject.
Notice how our ignorant friend here did not actually contradict any of the points. That's because he can't. My statements were accurate. Each of those technologies and services was first accused of being dedicated to piracy. But our friend thinks we'd be in a better world without them.
You've failed miserably again, Pirate Mike.
And, once again, I've never "pirated" anything, so I wish you'd stop engaging in defamation.
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It may try to but it will fail - and do a lot of collateral damage in the process.
Please wake up and enter the real world.
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Until you look at the alternative!
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You got to be a troll.
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The AC above, puppet of the media and the Govt, seems to support it without second thought.
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It's like the whole "First they came for..." quote. Nobody cares about the rise in power by the federal government because their toes aren't being stepped on right now. They ignore that that same rise in power allows them to step on their toes later. They ignore that people like them are having their toes stepped on right now.
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Without a single unified IP system is like every company inside a country that sells phones had the ability to issue their own phone numbers and only their own phones would know who was who, that means you loose access to other people who are in other companies networks, this is more or less what PROTECT IP would do.
It breaks the confidence of other countries in that system and they start trying their own solutions, eventually everyone will restart using the same system again but the US will never again hold any power over it.
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Without a single unified IP system is like every company inside a country that sells phones had the ability to issue their own phone numbers and only their own phones would know who was who, that means you loose access to other people who are in other companies networks, this is more or less what PROTECT IP would do.
It breaks the confidence of other countries in that system and they start trying their own solutions, eventually everyone will restart using the same system again but the US will never again hold any power over it.
So from the sound of it, I'd only be typing in 10 digit numbers in the event that I want to access a site that's been de-listed. I don't see why countries would necessarily start issuing duplicate IP addresses. Why would they do that? Simply to facilitate a site that has been blocked? It sounds like it might break the internet for those who wish to continue to visit sites tat were targeted for enforcement, but I'm not hearing how it will effect an average user.
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Try remembering that then.
IPv4 is dead, we are in a transitional phase to IPv6.
http://test-ipv6.com/ipv6day.html
Also try to convince the Chinese government that the USA have good reason to seize the domains of Chinese business because they break American law and see what it will happen, you think the Europeans will allow that too?
Only stupid countries would accept that.
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What will happen is that unofficial DNS systems will sprout up to be used in place of the official ones, as the official ones will no longer be reliable as more and more websites get blacklisted (and it won't be just a few pirate websites, it will be a wide variety, both with legal content and not.)
This will cause the DNS system to fragment, making domain names themselves less useful because you won't know where to look to resolve them.
It's like if there were a phone book covering all of your city, but then it started omitting phone numbers. Other phone books sprout up to cover the missing information. Before long, you won't know which phone book to look in when you want to find a phone number.
The fun fact is that this bill won't stop or even slow down infringment sites at all, it will only harm legal ones. Infringement sites will just have their own DNS system, or distribute the IP addresses of their servers directly and bypass DNS completely.
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http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2011/08/26/protect_ip_threatens_the_future_of_dns _security
in which Paul Vixie rather elegantly explains the issue. That article also references a whitepaper on the subject which is mandatory reading for anyone wishing to discuss the technical details.
(Who is Paul Vixie? One of the guys that *built* the Internet and, incidentally, wrote a piece of software that every single person reading this uses every time they're online. He understands the technical issues involved at a level that most people don't even realize exists.)
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No, it's much much worse than that. It's not just "big content providers" who could target any website on a whim, it's fricken anyone! Any pissed off reader, any nutcase with time on his hands, any government, any competitor to your business, anyone!
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/s
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There's this principle called a "standing to sue". That basically means I have to have some skin in the game in order to initiate a civil suit. So it's not any "nutcase with time on his hands". Moreover, litigation is expensive. It would take a pretty rich nutcase to bring a case before a judge and convincing that judge that the website was dedicated to infringing activities and had no other significant commercial purpose. Perhaps you can lay out the scenario you envisioned when you claimed that "Any pissed off reader... any nutcase... any government... anyone" can bring an action.
As for a competitor, unless that competitor was also a copyright holder I don't see how Netflix files an action against Hulu Plus. Maybe a more thorough examination of that would be in order as well.
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Looking at how others laws where used(Looking at you DMCA) it is clear to anyone with half a brain what will happen.
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Tell that to Righthaven!
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Sen. Lamar Alexander [R, TN]
Added May 25, 2011
Sen. Kelly Ayotte [R, NH]
Added June 27, 2011
Sen. Michael Bennet [D, CO]
Added July 25, 2011
Sen. Richard Blumenthal [D, CT]
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Sen. Roy Blunt [R, MO]
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Sen. John Boozman [R, AR]
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Sen. Benjamin Cardin [D, MD]
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Sen. Thad Cochran [R, MS]
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Sen. Chris Coons [D, DE]
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Sen. Bob Corker [R, TN]
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Sen. Richard Durbin [D, IL]
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Sen. Dianne Feinstein [D, CA]
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Sen. Al Franken [D, MN]
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Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand [D, NY]
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Sen. Lindsey Graham [R, SC]
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Sen. Charles Grassley [R, IA]
Added May 12, 2011
Sen. Kay Hagan [D, NC]
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Sen. Orrin Hatch [R, UT]
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Sen. Amy Klobuchar [D, MN]
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Sen. Herbert Kohl [D, WI]
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Sen. Joseph Lieberman [I, CT]
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Sen. John McCain [R, AZ]
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Sen. Jerry Moran [R, KS]
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Wthdrawn June 27, 2011
Sen. Marco Rubio [R, FL]
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Sen. Charles Schumer [D, NY]
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Sen. Jeanne Shaheen [D, NH]
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Sen. Tom Udall [D, NM]
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Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse [D, RI]
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A government douchebag is government douchebag, regardless of the color of his tie.
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| :-D
{Cherleader Mode: OFF}
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Obama, Bush, & Clinton are practically brothers.
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