Do We Really Want To Hand Over Control Of The Internet To A Group That Sued A Dead Grandmother
from the just-saying dept
Via Julian Sanchez, we get the best-titled story we've seen yet concerning SOPA. Written by Kevin Fogarty at ITWorld, it reads:Best idea of 2011: Give control of Internet content to group that sued a dead grandmotherIt's a must read, highlighting the insanity of SOPA -- while also being pretty funny:
Supporters aren't willing to talk compromise, claim not clamping down on speech as well as piracy will "crush" artists and other creators of content, and appear, with good evidence, to be doing the bidding of SOPA's financial backers, who no interest in the public good and a bottomless reservoir of shameless self-interest they believe is more important than the liberties protected by the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments.Elsewhere, it describes, quite accurately, that this is about control and misplaced blame:
On the positive side, that's not even a third of the Bill of Rights, so accusations that SOPA supporters are willing to crush the Constitution to line their own pockets are clearly exaggerated by at least seven Rights.
The RIAA and the intent of SOPA itself stems from an irrational rage that the world has changed and unquestioned belief that the change is the fault of the industry's customers, who should be made to pay for the self-inflicted misfortunes of the record industry....We're seeing more and more widespread recognition of what a joke SOPA and PIPA are... but with it, we're hearing people believe that the bill is so crazy that there's no way it can pass. Unfortunately, nothing is further from the truth. Inside the beltway, where common sense goes to die, the thinking remains that these bills have a pretty easy path to becoming law. And that's what should scare you most of all.
So�how do you feel about giving the same people the power to command that agents of federal law enforcement agencies give up on drug runners, kidnappers, terrorists and spies in order to shut down web sites and confiscate domains for simply being accused of having offended members of a group willing to sue a dead grandmother and grill a 10-year-old girl to discover who from outside the house was spoofing her address in order to download a song 10-year-old girls don't listen to, at an hour they're not generally awake?
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Filed Under: copyright, dead grandmothers, pipa, protect ip, sopa
Companies: mpaa, riaa
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Defensive
I hope they made her estate pay up!
/sarc
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Re: Defensive
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Apparently now, according to Techdirt editorial cabal, that it's okay to commit a crime, as long as you are dead.
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Lies and FUD will be mercilessly mocked and snickered at...
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Prove it!
I Double-Dog Dare you!
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Re: The moron I'm replying to
In that case: *snicker* I wave my private parts in your general direction. Your father was a hamster and your mother smells of elderberries. *snicker* Now go away before I taunt you a second time.
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by getting every site they dont like shut down, either by accusations of infringement (whether true or not) without those sites being allowed 'due process' or by continuing to sue sites that are deemed legal but run out of money to pay for further litigation and therefore cant put the sites back up on the net. basically, an 'internet carte blanche', a win-win situation for the entertainment industries.
why dont all the big internet industries, ISPs, Search Engines, Security Firms etc join forces and lobby/protest together? united they stand, divided they fall.
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Are you seriously so addicted to content that the idea of having to pay for it turns you into a bozo?
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...and yet you people won't back up this regular claim with any discussion of the facts and why people are mistaken. I wonder why people don't take you seriously?
"Are you seriously so addicted to content that the idea of having to pay for it turns you into a bozo?"
Ah, that's why... one sentence featuring all the usual moronic fallacies... assuming that the only people concerned are those who consume the corporate content you worship, assuming that only "pirates" can be against SOPA, assuming that nobody who is anti-SOPA can be a paying customer *and* ad hominems top and bottom to complete the idiot sandwich!
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No, that's just some looney coporate masters who think anyone is willing to shell out 60 bucks to see a movie first. Sad.
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Dec 21st, 2011 @ 12:50pm
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Are you all Doctors now?
How do you know for a fact that this 'grandmother' was dead?
If the infringement happened while she was still alive then it makes legal sense to continue the case. If precedent is allowed to be established, simply because someone died, then how would that serve the public interest?
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Re: Are you all Doctors now?
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*I say alive only because, it was never proven that she was or was not alive, or that she was dead for that matter. For all we know she could have moved after receiving a foreclosure notice.
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Re: Re: Re: Are you all Doctors now?
"Come on and sue me! I will just drop dead and ruin your court case! That will sure show you!"
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The Recording Industry Association of America admitted that Walton was likely not the smittenedkitten it was after, blaming the mixup on the time it takes gather information on illicit file swappers.
"Our evidence gathering and our subsequent legal actions all were initiated weeks and even months ago," said RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy. "We will now, of course, obviously dismiss this case."
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Genius.
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Oh yeah, blue lips and nails and that sort of thing.
This all overlooks that SOPA supporters haven't come up with a new definition of "life" that will be one of the first things filtered out because the RIAA will have a copyright on so downloading the PDF would be considered piracy.
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Re: Re: Are you all Doctors now?
Until they start to rot...
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We must fight for our rights (to parttty)
We need to make it known that this abuse of the First Amendment will not stand, we will not sit by and just have "nerd rage", we need to strike fear somehow in to those who think that big media has all the rights (and I am a free market supporter).
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Re: We must fight for our rights (to parttty)
It's for their own good, after all. Lacking a natural predator to offset their present population explosion we're really looking at a total ecological collapse predicated by the invasive "lobbyist" species.
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Along with the MPAA, Disney, ect.) pushes for perpetual copyright extension to infinity (so that, in theory, my children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren can financially benefit from work they had nothing to do with, but that in reality most of that money will go to whatever company I am forced to assign my copyright to).
Spend massive amounts of money lobbying for laws that block as much real competition as they can manage.
Sue (along with MPAA and such) companies they can't get outlawed, hoping to keep them tied up in litigation long enough they go out of business anyways.
Buy into website they can't find ways to sue (try finding independent stuff on MySpace or eMusic anymore with all the major label crap plastered all over the front of the site, you have to go digging to the backs of these sites now to find it).
Pay radio stations under the table to pay exclusively their content (every couple of years at least one major label seem to get busted for Payola) - then turn around and work hard to impose high licensing rates (which would effectively get them exclusive music for free as their licensing schemes would just funnel their payola right back to them).
File mass lawsuits and send out bulk settlement offers (pretty much a form of extortion, considering how many of those lawsuits have proven to be bogus, any way you look at it). After all, you gotta pay for those campaign contributions, lawsuits, and payola schemes somehow.
Force musicians to relinquish their copyrights (again, little more than a form of extortion, given how effectively they have worked to roadblock all other avenues to success), and then sneak text into bills causing those same musicians to forfeit some of those copyrights altogether (and rewarding the person responsible with a $500K a year job) - even if the actions were later rescinded.
It's not so much that I stopped believing the argument that copyright infringement was theft, it was that the people making the argument was so dishonest, so much bigger criminals that their opinions/ideas became essentially meaningless.
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RIAA in the news...
After successfully raising the dead... The RIAA rest assured us; "they will be going after zombies next". The RIAA firmly explained; "NO one is above, or below "our" law."
#News at 11
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If this dangerous "Blacklist legislation" is passed by Congress, Agent Provocateurs to censor free speech will only need publish text at targeted Websites that constitute (copyright infringement). Websites that have large numbers of posted comments and information could not possibly investigate every posting to avoid being shutdown by the Justice Dept.
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Response to: Colin on Dec 21st, 2011 @ 2:03pm
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Re: Response to: Colin on Dec 21st, 2011 @ 2:03pm
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Either that or the telco crew there the day she died allegedly splicing the cable while they used every wifi in the area to clear out everything on the Pirate Bay.
Oh, and don't put too much faith in forensic hard drive analysis. There's lots of utilities around that will wipe hard drives clean. Almost all Linux distros come with at least one of them as part of the standard 'Nix suite of utilities and you can find stuff for Windows at legit downloads sites. If you want even more assurance of a clean wipe there are utilities on SourceForge that do just that. Technically it's not all that hard to do, it just takes a lot of time.
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Unless you are multiple people trying to make a point completely opposite of your stated point, ie. IP addresses are useless as personal identifiers, and are circumstantial evidence at best.
If so, kudos, man, kudos.
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They know how politics works, and is afraid to hamper is. (Term limits, one project per bill). Looks like business as usual in washington.
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Nice try Mike, but it's just another bullshit hit piece against SOPA, full of half truths and misleading OH MY GOD claims!
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"Once tried to sue a dead grandmother to extract what it felt was its rightful pound of flesh for files allegedly downloaded to a house in which the dead woman wouldn't even allow a computer to be installed."
Do follow a link now and then before spouting off.
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Walking around like regular people. They don't sue each other. They only sue what they want to sue. They don't know they're damn dirty thieves..."
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Inside the beltway, where common sense goes to die
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