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[Bohandas]

I hope Hollywood gets flattened by an earthquake...

I'm not even being facetious either. If I were to turn on the TV right now and see a breaking news report about just that, in all honesty I'd probably open a bottle of champagne.

[Zrk2]

I've got some 8 year old apple cider. It's either vinegar or super-hard at this point.

[Loud Whispers]

Being an awesome Brit, I question this, will this affect me at all?
And yes, I love the internet.

[UltraValican]

the entertainment industry is lobbying for it

i pray it returns to its joke status

God damn entertainment industry. Curse them all to hell. They're an outdated relic of a dead age.

I hope that all of this this blows up in their face, and makes people realize that they can get things that are just as good or better, legitimately, from people who willingly distribute their work cheaply or for free and don't waste all their money on things like marketing campaigns featuring rave "reviews" from nonexistent or bribed critics or recording everything on ye olde photographic filmstock.

The next time you feel tempted to go out to a movie, buy a CD, or sign up for your cable company's premium package, or buy a new videogame for your console go to one of these websites instead:

-snip-

I'm fairly sure that the the people lobbying(Worst idea in the history of humanity) for this are from The Movie/Music industry, internet censorship HURTS THE WHOLE videogame industry not just PC games.

[Frelock]

Personally, I'm interested in why the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers are supporting it(source).  I mean, it's not like you can pirate pharmaceuticals or manufactured goods, so what interest do they have in this legislation?  And electricians?  Seriously, what makes them so up in arms about piracy and willing support censorship of the internet?

[Duuvian]

Who gets to decide what 'limited use' other than infringement means?

I mean, are there precedents for this or does it give them the opportunity to say, for example, that talking about video games are of 'limited use' to the public?

If that is the case, the 'other than infringement' part is able to be used, perhaps after the first time someone posts a link to something that would infringe. This means theoretically you could hire a firm to go around spamming pirate links on websites you want to be shut down; if it's as vague as it seems.

Finally: It would also make unauthorized web streaming of copyrighted content a felony with a possible penalty up to five years in prison.

Five years in prison?! Also, by 'web-streaming', is it me or is that worded strangely in a way that could be interpreted as 'streaming' either way? Thus possibly opening the door to 5 year prison terms for viewing such a 'stream.'


Campaign Contributions

This is a list of the top 10 industries giving campaign contributions to Lamar Smith in 2009-2010, the most recent fundraising cycle for which we have campaign contribution data.*
Industry   Individual   PAC   Total
TV/Movies/Music   $16,650   $49,000   $65,650
Retired   $59,225   $0   $59,225
Accountants   $2,000   $36,500   $38,500
Lawyers/Law Firms   $25,750   $12,500   $38,250
Employer Listed/Category Unknown   $35,400   $0   $35,400
Pharmaceuticals/Health Products   $1,000   $30,500   $31,500
Insurance   $11,850   $18,500   $30,350
Health Professionals   $20,550   $8,750   $29,300
Oil & Gas   $12,700   $16,400   $29,100
Commercial Banks   $7,650   $20,500   $28,150

Also, this guy proposed this as well a few years back: http://www.opencongress.org/wiki/Orphan_works_legislation

Basically at first it sounds like a decent law, until you realize that in some cases it would allow the major music producers to pirate music from people who post their music on the internet! (probably for use as a sample, you can do all kinds of things to make music sound different much easier than it is to actually make different music)

Finally, while they might have done what they was a reasonable search to try to determine someone's real name, who gets to say what's reasonable or not? A judge? I probably can't afford that even if that were the case.

From above link:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Copyright law in the U.S.
Copyright law in the United States is essentially based on a “form of protection” provided to “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. These laws include a doctrine of “fair use,” which was established via the courts and specifies four factors for determining whether a use is fair: 1) the purpose and character of the use, 2) the nature of the copyrighted material, 3) the amount of the work used in proportion to the entire work and 4) the effect of the use on the value of the copyrighted work. [1] [1]

Works which are considered to be in the “public domain” indicate that no person can claim ownership rights or retain proprietary interests over a particular work. [1]

As stated above, orphan works are copyrighted works whose owners cannot be identified. Because many archivists, libraries, film restorers, artists, scholars, educators, publishers, and others simply disregard works unless they are definitively in the public domain, orphan works are often not made available to the public due to uncertainty over their copyright status (despite the fact that no one is claiming ownership of them). [1]

Movement to address problems with orphan works
Beginning in the late 1990s, interested parties and organizations representing copyright owners and users pushed for copyright reform that would address the problems of orphan works. This pressure eventually led to a challenge of the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (H.R. 1621) which extended “protection from life of the author plus fifty years to life of the author plus seventy years.” The measure, signed into law by President Clinton, included “provisions applied to works under copyright on the date of its implementation...An exception permits libraries, archives, and non-profit educational institutions to treat copyrighted works in their last twenty years of protection as if they were in the public domain for non-commercial purposes.” [1] The challenge was defeated in 2003 when the Supreme Court upheld the Bono copyright law as constitutional by a vote of 7-2 in Eldred v. Ashcroft. [1]

Here is something to send to opencongress if you have an account:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

One thing I should add is that any form of control over the internet is extremely unpopular with people who use the internet. Feel free to copy and paste the following link into your browser to see a discussion.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=96564.0

In addition, while this law mentions penalties quite specifically; however the description of the crime itself is quite vague. 'Streaming' could be interpreted as not only uploads (meaning being the one person to place for instance a copywrited video for others to view online) but also downloads (meaning you are one of many people simply viewing the video)

This means that it would be extremely easy to post what are called 'blind links' (http: links disguised as something else, aka blue text links) and direct a large amount of internet traffic to infringing sites; possibly after causing the site to infringe by your own actions or through an (overseas?) third party.

In this way an interested party could not only give the justification required to remove a website they do not agree with, but ALSO by choosing their target location for the blind link, they theoretically could send (part of) that locations 'audience' or userbase to prison for five years as felons. They could also do this without being tracked by IP address as far as I'm aware, by using a program called The onion Relay. If you don't like that, blame the military as the IP system loophole was and is for their security.

Also, the wording on this section is worrying: "The DoJ or the copyright owner would be able to commence a legal action against any site they deem to have "only limited purpose or use other than infringement," and the DoJ would be allowed to demand that search engines, social networking sites and domain name services block access to the targeted site."

Not only does it give a copyright owner the right to force expensive legal fees upon any site that users could infringe on if that site has 'limited purpose', but also limited purpose is not clearly defined. If a website is made for talking about video games, and a user infringes upon it, does only being created to talk about video games define 'limited purpose?' Does a political forum have only 'limited purpose?" In addition it would allow the DoJ to cherry pick which sites with infringers would be punished or not.

Finally, I leave you with a final irony. The Congressman who supports this bill also supports loosening laws that have a side effect of allowing large entertainment corporations to pirate music from individual copywrite holders that it 'cannot determine the identities of after a reasonable search.' http://www.opencongress.org/wiki/Orphan_works_legislation

Internet identities being what they are and having become necessary to protect oneself from those who collect information, they shouldn't be able to find out a person's identity after a reasonable search, which wasn't clearly defined.

From that message board forums above:

Campaign Contributions

This is a list of the top 10 industries giving campaign contributions to Lamar Smith in 2009-2010, the most recent fundraising cycle for which we have campaign contribution data.*
Industry   Individual   PAC   Total
TV/Movies/Music   $16,650   $49,000   $65,650
Retired   $59,225   $0   $59,225
Accountants   $2,000   $36,500   $38,500
Lawyers/Law Firms   $25,750   $12,500   $38,250
Employer Listed/Category Unknown   $35,400   $0   $35,400
Pharmaceuticals/Health Products   $1,000   $30,500   $31,500
Insurance   $11,850   $18,500   $30,350
Health Professionals   $20,550   $8,750   $29,300
Oil & Gas   $12,700   $16,400   $29,100
Commercial Banks   $7,650   $20,500   $28,150

Also, this guy proposed this as well a few years back: http://www.opencongress.org/wiki/Orphan_works_legislation

Basically at first it sounds like a decent law, until you realize that in some cases it would allow the major music producers to pirate music from people who post their music on the internet! (probably for use as a sample, you can do all kinds of things to make music sound different much easier than it is to actually make different music)

Finally, while they might have done what they was a reasonable search to try to determine someone's real name, who gets to say what's reasonable or not? A judge? I probably can't afford that even if that were the case.

From above link:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Copyright law in the U.S.
Copyright law in the United States is essentially based on a “form of protection” provided to “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. These laws include a doctrine of “fair use,” which was established via the courts and specifies four factors for determining whether a use is fair: 1) the purpose and character of the use, 2) the nature of the copyrighted material, 3) the amount of the work used in proportion to the entire work and 4) the effect of the use on the value of the copyrighted work. [1] [1]

Works which are considered to be in the “public domain” indicate that no person can claim ownership rights or retain proprietary interests over a particular work. [1]

As stated above, orphan works are copyrighted works whose owners cannot be identified. Because many archivists, libraries, film restorers, artists, scholars, educators, publishers, and others simply disregard works unless they are definitively in the public domain, orphan works are often not made available to the public due to uncertainty over their copyright status (despite the fact that no one is claiming ownership of them). [1]

Movement to address problems with orphan works
Beginning in the late 1990s, interested parties and organizations representing copyright owners and users pushed for copyright reform that would address the problems of orphan works. This pressure eventually led to a challenge of the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (H.R. 1621) which extended “protection from life of the author plus fifty years to life of the author plus seventy years.” The measure, signed into law by President Clinton, included “provisions applied to works under copyright on the date of its implementation...An exception permits libraries, archives, and non-profit educational institutions to treat copyrighted works in their last twenty years of protection as if they were in the public domain for non-commercial purposes.” [1] The challenge was defeated in 2003 when the Supreme Court upheld the Bono copyright law as constitutional by a vote of 7-2 in Eldred v. Ashcroft. [1]

Also I should add that if the proposed law is a lax through possible interpretation as it appears to be through my powers of basic English, that depending on the state of the copywrite on the video that a Rick-Roll might result in a five year prison sentence for the magnificent bastard (if he gets caught) and his bedazzled victims.

[Bohandas]

You know I just realized something. Any ability of congress to actually put this law into effect if passed is indicative of a defect in the system; not the legal system mind you, but of the internet. If congress can order sites taken down, and the sites actually go down, then that is a security vulnerability; no different then if the sites were taken down by a random hacker; and needs to be treated as such. The internet is an international institution and as such is above the law of any single nation, no matter how arrogant. Instead of petitioning the US congress not to pass this law, the internet must be secured from governmental attack and we should also. petition the governments of OTHER nations to treat any such attack as an act of war.

[UltraValican]

You know I just realized something. Any ability of congress to actually put this law into effect if passed is indicative of a defect in the system; not the legal system mind you, but of the internet. If congress can order sites taken down, and the sites actually go down, then that is a security vulnerability; no different then if the sites were taken down by a random hacker; and needs to be treated as such. The internet is an international institution and as such is above the law of any single nation, no matter how arrogant. Instead of petitioning the US congress not to pass this law, the internet must be secured from governmental attack and we should also. petition the governments of OTHER nations to treat any such attack as an act of war.

I'm assuming your not American.

[Bohandas]

You know I just realized something. Any ability of congress to actually put this law into effect if passed is indicative of a defect in the system; not the legal system mind you, but of the internet. If congress can order sites taken down, and the sites actually go down, then that is a security vulnerability; no different then if the sites were taken down by a random hacker; and needs to be treated as such. The internet is an international institution and as such is above the law of any single nation, no matter how arrogant. Instead of petitioning the US congress not to pass this law, the internet must be secured from governmental attack and we should also. petition the governments of OTHER nations to treat any such attack as an act of war.

I'm assuming your not American.

No, I'm American. But that doesn't mean that congress represents me. I can never  vote FOR the people I most strongly want in office because I need to use my vote AGAINST the worse of the major party candidates. I'm more loyal to the internet community than to any nation anyway.

Intellectual Property law itself is flagrantly illegal under the first amendment of the United States constitution anyway, but congress feels free to ignore this fact because the supreme court is just as corrupt as they are.

[Frelock]

Intellectual Property law itself is flagrantly illegal under the first amendment of the United States constitution anyway, but congress feels free to ignore this fact because the supreme court is just as corrupt as they are.

Umm, you do realize that Article I section 8 of the US constitution states that congress has the power:

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

So yea, copyright and intellectual property is one of the few things the constitution explicitly allows congress to do.  Not saying that your idea about the internet being an international institution isn't interesting or valid, but as far as copyright goes, the government does have the constitutional right and the obligation to protect the rights of artists.  However, I also don't believe that censorship is the right way to go about doing that.

[Bohandas]

Intellectual Property law itself is flagrantly illegal under the first amendment of the United States constitution anyway, but congress feels free to ignore this fact because the supreme court is just as corrupt as they are.

Umm, you do realize that Article I section 8 of the US constitution states that congress has the power:

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

So yea, copyright and intellectual property is one of the few things the constitution explicitly allows congress to do.  Not saying that your idea about the internet being an international institution isn't interesting or valid, but as far as copyright goes, the government does have the constitutional right and the obligation to protect the rights of artists.  However, I also don't believe that censorship is the right way to go about doing that.

The amendments supercede the articles. That's the point of amendments. (I will grant that my previous statement may have been unwarrantedly extreme, however. Perhaps "technically illegal" or even merely "arguably illegal" or "constitutionally unenforcable" would be a better phrasing than "flagrantly illegal" (actually, "constitutionally unenforcable" sounds good, it speaks of the insurmountably massive amounts of extenuating loopholes and murky wording it would take for congress to make such a law or the courts to enforce one without tacitly ignoring the First Amendment))

[Heron TSG]

Unfortunately for your logic, Bohandas, the sites will not go down. Americans will simply be unable to access them. No other countries would likely be affected, unless they go through an American proxy.

Which sucks, because I hope the international community give congress shit about this.

[Hitty40]

I'm just waiting for the day terrorists attack Congress for doing stupid shit like this.


FUCK YOU, CONGRESS. FUCK YOU.

[Jerick]

Unfortunately for your logic, Bohandas, the sites will not go down. Americans will simply be unable to access them. No other countries would likely be affected, unless they go through an American proxy.

Actualy this bill cuts off a site from all potential American revenue.
The American people have a significant pressence online and the majority of ads I've seen have been placed by American companies.
If cutting off most of a site's income while inflicting expensive legal fees on it doesn't take a site down there's not much that will.

Which sucks, because I hope the international community give congress shit about this.

Thankfully they are.
But saddly not enough in my opinion.

[Bohandas]

Unfortunately for your logic, Bohandas, the sites will not go down. Americans will simply be unable to access them. No other countries would likely be affected, unless they go through an American proxy.

Which sucks, because I hope the international community give congress shit about this.

Ok. Then theoretically I would be able to access them by going through a foreign proxy. How would I do that?