SOPA and PIPA

[monkey0506]

Hopefully trying to keep this on-topic...

Under SOPA, if I were to upload a music video of, say The Foo Fighters, to YouTube, then not only myself, but YouTube could be held legally responsible. The entirety of YouTube could (and would) be marked as a piracy site, and would be inaccessible.

Under SOPA, if I posted song lyrics to my Facebook, then not only myself, but Facebook could be held legally responsible. Facebook could potentially face near-instantaneous shut down.

Under SOPA, projects like the Kings Quest remakes would open up sites like this one to being shut down for supporting piracy.

...is there anyone that doesn't see a problem here?

SOPA is not just written too broadly by accident. This legislation was intentionally written so that political parties can reenact the Salem Witch Trials, the McCarthy trials, and the like, all via the information superhighway. SOPA is a direct and blatant attack on our freedom of speech and press. I honestly doubt it's going to pass with all the petitions and the like that are going around. I'm glad that people are actually recognizing how dangerous this legislation truly is.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Yes, there is nothing well-meant with SOPA.  Please understand, for those of you who doubt the ulterior motives of some of America's senators, that some of them are either so utterly out of touch with the technical world or in the pockets of the very people lobbying for this to happen.  One such tool of the industry is Jay Rockefeller, who said of the internet, and I quote "Almost makes you ask the question wouldn't it have been better if we never invented the internet?" while addressing congress over the National Hazard that he and others like him see as the internet.

Make no mistake, this isn't purely a piracy issue.  Piracy is a part of it, but there are laws in place to catch and prosecute pirates already and we see cases of this in the news every day.  Piracy isn't the only issue here, it's also information control.

On one hand, America will completely lambaste China for any kind of internet censorship while on the other it is actively pursuing measures that are, in many ways, even more draconian than China's policies.  It's the old bait and switch tactic of pretending to be for one thing while actually being for another.  Fortunately, millions of Americans are awake to this trick and are protesting SOPA, PIPA, and other ugly bills offered up under the guise of protecting national security.  This isn't merely an America issue, either; if bills like this succeed here you may be sure to see similar ones heading before your parliaments, regional governments, and so on.  The damage these bills are capable of cannot be sufficiently undone because once government gets a sufficient handhold it will not easily let go.  

I happen to believe that protests and educational videos work, so if there are those of you who believe this will not affect you because you're not in America, I encourage you to wake up and take action while you can still type your thoughts and make your videos unfiltered.  

[Ponch]

http://sopastrike.com/

Black out your websites today. Spread the word!

Yes. Everyone should do this. I blacked out my site, which should help spread the word to practically dozens of people.

SOPA sucks. 

[monkey0506]

Everyone should be cool like me and black out your avatars for the day!

[WHAM]

Under SOPA, if I were to upload a music video of, say The Foo Fighters, to YouTube, then not only myself, but YouTube could be held legally responsible. The entirety of YouTube could (and would) be marked as a piracy site, and would be inaccessible.

Actually, from what I read, they can't. What they CAN do is "sue the offending site to REMOVE THE OFFENDING CONTENT". Thus, if the site in question cannot disprove the claim of infringement or will not obey, THEN the site can be taken down as it is clearly in violation of copyright law.

[Noctambulo]

I find it quite hard to believe you truly understand the patriot act. You are basically comparing the written works of a deranged, although ingenius, German / Austrian military and political leader to a law passed in the United States. I think the difference in both scope and purpose here is quite noticeable.

Yes, the difference is quite noticeable: This is NOT 1933... But besides that -with stuff like internet- is basically the same: The government uses a group  who is already stereotyped as "the enemy" and....

By the way: Do you have any idea what Guantanamo is or what happens there?

All I know of the Patriot act is what Wikipedia tells me.

What the??? ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME??

Please, tell me you are joking...

[Calin Leafshade]

I agree with ProgzMax.

I believe that might be one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

[RickJ]

Well heres a real world example of what SOPA will bring.  MegaUplaod Song
http://www.geek.com/articles/news/universal-illegitimately-yanks-megaupload-song-from-youtube-20111212/
http://gizmodo.com/5868298/megaupload-mega-sues-universal-over-mega-song-censorship

So imagine you finally release that way cool science fiction game you've been working on for the past ten years (Snake are you listening) and by some miracle it goes viral.  Some posts a review somewhere and says "it's the best Sci-fi game since SpaceQuest" -- Vivendi's (or whoever) bot rats you out and shazam your website, AGS website, and any others they can think of disappear into the bit bucket.  I wouldn't matter that your game didn't have anything to do with  spaceships, spacemen, space or janitors.    To get your website back you would have to hire a lawyer and file a lawsuit to get your site back.

@Wham:  You are wrong , they don't have to file a lawsuit to have a website taken down.  And in the US the burden of proof is on the plaintiff.  Under current law sites, such as youtube, aren't liable for user posted content provided that they have a mechanism in place to remove copyright infringing content when informed by the rights holder(s).  Rights holders can file lawsuits against anyone who otherwise violates their copyrights.

What you describe is what happens under current law.  

[monkey0506]

@Rick's @WHAM: Precisely. Under SOPA a website may become blacklisted just simply by receiving a report that copyrighted material exists on the site. It would be the site owner's responsibility to take the issue to court if they wanted to ever see their site again. SOPA is intentionally and maliciously worded so generically that there is no need for authentication or verification of these piracy reports before a site can become blacklisted. Under SOPA it is solely the webmaster's responsibility to fight against and defend his website from these attacks.

[Khris]

To me the SOPA response seems like people crying out "all guns should be banned because they can harm people", while ignoring any positive effects that might also be available (in case of guns: "You come into my house through the window in the middle of the night, I want to be able to defend myself until the police arrive!")

Oh my, please wake up, buddy. You've got it entirely backwards.
To quote:
As Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian explained, PIPA and SOPA are “the equivalent of being angry and trying to take action against Ford just because a Mustang was used in a bank robbery.”

The SOPA response is precisely not what you think, it's NOT painting everything with a broad brush, it's pointing out that that's exactly the bad thing about what SOPA tries to do.

[WHAM]

We'll have to wait and see what the SOPA and PIPA finally do when they are passed into law in the US. Perhaps I am wrong and what I see as overreaction was justified after all, but I still don't believe that we'll be seeing the "end of the internet" just because of SOPA and PIPA.

Call me an overtly positive thinker, but I want to believe these laws will be used to their greatest extent to damage the true pirate networks and will bring us closer to an internet where copyright laws are obeyed more closely, without going overboard with this. We also need to keep in mind how much these websites are generating traffic = ad & other revenue = tax income. Should the SOPA be misused and internet brought down, the legislators will eventually have to realize that the laws need to be fine-tuned and fixed.

[Sslaxx]

Never mind.

[RickJ]

More news here:
http://www.groklaw.net
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120118113455360

[miguel]

Can I ask something out of my ignorance?
Do journalists and the press have special rights on the US?
Because I believe such laws (SOPA(means soup in Portuguese) and PIPA (means barrel to store wine)) can relate to it.
Let me explain:
In Portugal,
A journal can reproduce contents that are copyrighted, they cannot reproduce the full 100 pages of a book but can review it, debate on it, have experts talk about it, and ultimately have a profit from the piece(s) printed about that same book. If the article(s) are good enough you sometimes feel that you know the content of the book and eventually end up not buying it!
Now, they are making a profit from contents, names and work that are all copyrighted, isn't it?

What if a law came and said that the articles are piracy matters? The journalist that made a article revealing the end and the mysteries of a Dan Brown book was considered a copyright pirate!
I know that a journalist should hold on to reveal the core of such material, but what if he doesn't? Is he a pirate?

What are the laws regarding News sites? Are they the same? When you include a video from movie A, that video should be allowed by the producers, but what about if the movie is somehow polemic? Like, say, The Brown Bunny and that porn-scene, I'm sure that if it sells, they would risk it (didn't they?).

I think those laws (soup and wine) can't cover every aspects of internet publishing. It will fail, in my opinion because sites will adapt faster than they can act.

[Khris]

Call me an overtly positive thinker, but I want to believe these laws will be used to their greatest extent to damage the true pirate networks and will bring us closer to an internet where copyright laws are obeyed more closely, without going overboard with this.

You mean just like the DMCA, who wasn't abused at all? Oh, wait.
Seriously. :

miguel:
In a nutshell, SOPA and PIPA are about taking down entire sites until the site owner can prove in court that their site doesn't contain any infringing material and not even a single link to a site that does. It's ineffective and crippling.
Not sure I see the relation to what you described.

[RickJ]

Miguel, what you describe is called "Fair Use" and it's not limited by institution or profession - it covers everyone.  Soup&Wine would, for all practical purposes, eliminate it.   "Fair Use", as it exists in the US, is fairly subjective (like porn -- you know it when you see it).  What is and is not fair use is often decided in the courts.  Soup&Wine doesn't need to go through the court system so people will be silenced with little recourse.

I believe the UK has something similar called "Fair Dealing".

[Atelier]

Just in case somebody desperately needs to use Wikipedia just press esc straight after the text appears.

[Diath]

I am probably rather ignorant in the SOPA ordeal but from my understanding is that it is censoring what Americans can and cannot view on the internet. Also with the National Defense Authorization Act, the outlook here is getting to be quite scary. Regardless if the congressmen want these laws for good reasons. There is no telling how the government will interpret them years from now.

[Snarky]

No.  Just no.  Coupled with the National Defense Authorization Act, America is now designated a 'battlefield' and American citizens may now officially (NB: Obama seized the power to assassinate American citizens previously with an Executive Order which he used to kill Anwar Al-Awlaki and his teenage son) be arrested and indefinitely detained outside of American soil on the mere accusation of terrorist involvement without a writ of habeas corpus or a trial.  This completely defies the 6th and 12th Amendments of the Constitution.

I agree with ProgzMax.

I believe that might be one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

Indeed.

The erosion of civil liberties in the US is terrifying stuff. The executive asserts (in some cases is pressed by the legislative to assert) the unchecked power to arbitrarily wiretap, censor, imprison and kill, merely by declaring individuals terrorists, enemy combatants or copyright infringers. Most Americans still have their civil liberties, but the government can suspend them at any moment. It's hard not to recognize the outline of a police state in these provisions. (That's probably not the intent of most of the people driving the development - I think few politicians are actually malevolently set on destroying freedom - but that's what they're setting up the foundations for.)

SOPA and PIPA are only a small part of this bigger picture, and I wish we'd seen this level of protest against the latest National Defense Authorization Act, but I guess Google and all the other Silicon Valley companies didn't see that as a direct threat to their business.

[ThreeOhFour]

This made me chuckle:

(╯°□°）╯︵ ∀ԀOS