Good Debate On The Unintended Consequences Of 'Rogue Website Crackdown'
from the timely dept
I recently was able to attend an interesting Cato/Techfreedom/CEI debate on the unintended consequences of the rogue website crackdown. The specific focus (not surprisingly) was the debate over SOPA/PIPA, but thankfully some of the debate went further back, to discuss how the government and private actors were already using existing law to do questionable things to sites they declared "rogue." This became even more timely with the Megaupload takedown... which happened about the same time that this panel ended. It was especially nice to see some discussion over the problematic seizures around Dajaz1 and Rojadirecta, as well as the fact that Veoh went bankrupt defending a bogus copyright lawsuit under existing law. These are not "hypotheticals." These are real problems with today's law already. Many of the things people are worried about under SOPA are already possible. SOPA just took them to the next level. Anyway, the debate -- which includes Julian Sanchez, James Gatusso, Ryan Radia, Allan Friedman and Dan Kaminsky -- is well worth watching:Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: collateral damage, consequences, rogue websites
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
"On February 11, 2010, in an open letter published on his blog, company founder and former CEO, Dmitry Shapiro, indicated that "the distraction of the legal battles, and the challenges of the broader macro-economic climate have led to our Chapter 7 bankruptcy."
So did you just forget to mention the "broader macro-economic climate" or does that just not fit your personal agenda?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
They may have very well been able to overcome the broader macro-economic climate if it hadn't been for the legal battles. We'll never know for sure now, will we?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
For example, have the definition of "fair-use" expanded and the length of copyright reduced to 50 years. Furthermore, all copyright law from DMCA until now are repealed outright and re-written in a language that only effects content pirates and not the general public, and provided heavy penalties for misuse, such as two years federal prison for individuals and a fine equal to 1/2 of their income during the last financial year for corporations.
Hell, if SOPA itself was written to the criteria above, perhaps it would start being S.O.P.A. (Stop Online Priacy Act) rather than S.O.P.A. (Screw Over the People Act).
[ link to this | view in thread ]
from Merriam Webster
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rogue
rogue:
1: vagrant, tramp
2: a dishonest or worthless person : scoundrel
3: a mischievous person : scamp
4: a horse inclined to shirk or misbehave
5: an individual exhibiting a chance and usually inferior biological variation
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Defend our freedom to share (or why SOPA is a bad idea) by TEDtalksDirector on Jan 18, 2012
A granted monopoly excludes all small business from being able to provide services and goods which means less economic activity, which means less money, which means less jobs, which means less wealth creation, which means less experimentation, which means less path discoveries for business models.
People could laugh that a bakery not being able to offer printing sugar plates because of copyright is nothing, but the impact of hundreds of thousands of bakeries not being able to do it is no laughing matter, is not one bakery store stopping something or having to abandon something that could increase expending for them but thousands of bakeries not being able to improve consumers expending is an impact that everybody will feel but not realize it is happening.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
That is exactly what we are seeing happening right now in the music industry, they keep rising prices to make for people spending less and the more pricier it gets the more people stop spending and only a certain level income is now being catered for the rest below it are ignored and there is nobody experimenting with new business models because to do so is so costly and so the pace of business innovation is slowed down.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Crowdsource info on the impact of granted monopolies.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Unfortunately, no clear answer was provided by the latter regarding the technical challenges involved in scaling up filtering from its current, limited implementation.
Mr. Sanchez spoke with a firm voice, but his comments lost persuasive force when he began to ad lib and take poetic license with facts.
The other three seem to be nice fellows, but in my view they contributed nothing of substance to the panel discussion.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
DNSSEC would ask to America Authority: Is there a entry for this?
American Authority would answer: no, there is not.
DNSSEC would then ask another Authority: Is there an entry for this?
Another Authority would answer: Yes and here it is.
To stop that would include among other things accepting a high failure rate and be ok with that.
To introduce a system that says to other Authorities they should not process that entry and accept only theirs is opening up a backdoor that if compromised can be used by bad people too, anonymous proves every other week that you can't just hide it, it must be impervious there is no hiding on the internet either you are strong or you fail, I can just imagine what anonymous could do with a compromised DNS authority that can tell every other authority that they hold the one and unique proof of anything, it would be a field day re-routing every page from the RIAA and the MPAA to LoLCats, no DDoS required.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
Now, Vixie has commented on this, but his comment framed the issue as one of policy, and not technology.
Perhaps there really are technical problems associated with scale, but I have not heard any cogent explanation of why it is not insurmountable in some situations and is believed to be insurmountable in this...and this is where the technical discussions to date have been lacking.
Lswyers are constantly berated for talking in legalese, but many years within the engineering community has demonstrated to me that engineers fall prey to the very same thing, i.e., talking in technoese. Lawyers banter using latin. Engineers banter in greek. Perhaps each should try a truly radical approach...speak in easily understood english.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re:
But you don't care about that do you?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re:
Lying is bad don't do it in any circumstances.
Lying is bad for children and it is also bad for computers.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
10 years is an awful long time - I like Martin Luther's suggestion:
"Shouldn't one printer be able to show consideration to another out of Christian charity and wait for one or two months before reprinting the other's work? "
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Would that be the same "broader macro-economic climate" that the MPAA/RIAA regularly ignores when estimating piracy losses?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re:
It doesn't scale for the much the same reason that banning heroin didn't scale to banning alcohol in 20's America. It doesn't require a really technical explanation to understand that it is easy to ban a minority pursuit but not one in which just about everyone participates.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Problems yes... but
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Problems yes... but
I think we should enforce the laws against bribing politicians much more strongly than we do.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I think it is perhaps misleading to characterise the difference between what is happening now (with child pornography) and what is proposed as purely a difference of scale. There is more to it than that.
Realistically what the child porn blocks achieve is to shield the general population from that material. It does not, of itself, prevent those who have an interest in the material from obtaining it. They can use private networks, Tor, Freenet etc etc. Of course this does not prevent the police from attacking the problem because they can infiltrate those networks themselves. This is, of course, just old fashioned policing - and it is perfectly practicable provided they mostly target only those who are actually creating the objectionable material - who are relatively few in number.
So the technical block on child porn does not of itself prevent wroingdoing it simply removes it from the public gaze.
Exactly the same will happen if we attempt to block copyright infringement. It will be removed from the gaze of the content industry - but it will continue on private networks, Tor, Freenet etc. However the scale of the problem will prevent the police from using old fasahioned infiltration to stop it. Police numbers would need to rise from around 1 in 5000 to about 1 in 50 and we can't afford that many.
Another side effect will be to nullify law enforcement's ability to crack down on child porn and terrorism - because the network of encrypted material they will have to sieve through will be so much bigger.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re:
The problem with the SOPA approach is that it is like requiring the rest of the DNS system to rely on the broken server as if it were reliable and authoritative (in the technical meaning) -- which it is not.
This is the source of the trouble, and going this route leads to untold problems, and the breakdown of the DNS system as a whole.
[ link to this | view in thread ]