SOPA and The-RiotACT?

Jazz said :

All the comments above only support my own assessment that the SOPA legislation as currently presented in the US would be basically unworkable and unmanageable, even if I did support what its proposing. I do wonder if in the US it would be seen as a contravention of their constitutional right to free speech in linking to something else for the purpose of commentary.

Not really, whilst the intent of the laws according to the press releases is to remove illegal material off the web it will fail at that purpose, however I expect it will be used quite successfully as a very big stick by large companies to take down small fish as they see fit.

Ultimately very few individuals and small companies has the resources to fight a large company on the war path. It won’t be until they target someone with bigger pockets than the large company was expecting that how unworkable these laws really are will come to light.

Your right, as funny as it seems, it will probably be a first amendment argument which will be these laws undoing.

qbngeek said :

And if youwant to veiw Wikipedia, just hit stop between the page you want loading and the javascript pushing the blackout page through, or switch off your javascript.

I was going to mention this but you got in first. Although bloody firefox doesn’t seem fast enough (using right mouse). Works in Explorer though, with that nice fat red cross up top.

Of course we all need to remember that the president has the power of veto and he doesn’t support SOPA. Unfortunately he will be gone soon and then they can try it all over again.

I note from the ongoing commentary on Gizmodo that PIPA (the Senate bill) is bleeding supporters like crazy. SO far 3 or 4 of the senators that were co-sponsoring it have bailed since the blackout began.

And if youwant to veiw Wikipedia, just hit stop between the page you want loading and the javascript pushing the blackout page through, or switch off your javascript.

Am I the only who thinks that even if it passes we may still be able to do everything normally as the first time something iffy is blocked then there will be a suprime court case over it and the legislation could be deemed unconstitutional due to freedom of speech?

All the comments above only support my own assessment that the SOPA legislation as currently presented in the US would be basically unworkable and unmanageable, even if I did support what its proposing. I do wonder if in the US it would be seen as a contravention of their constitutional right to free speech in linking to something else for the purpose of commentary.

Henry82 said :

Myles Peterson said :

remove DNS control from the Americans.

this is what is required

+1000000

Although the obvious problem is who to give it too? Sen Conroy?

watto23 said :

My thoughts will all this piracy business is the fact that many industries are not sitting on their own self controlled cash cows any more. They are too stubborn to change their business practise, or don’t want to take a loss of income now to make greater gains in the future.

That’s pretty much the crux of it…

Realistically the film and music industries are scared of the internet full stop (not just with piracy). They are going to use any sort of big stick they can to kill it. Consider this, 20 years ago, if you wanted music you had to go to a record store. If you where a musician and you wanted to release music you had to go to the record companies, and they where taking a large percentage of the pie. These days musicians can simply post their music up online, I can then download that music, and if the artist asked for money I can pay them directly. At no point in time did a record company see a single cent and it’s not just small time musicians which are doing this.

This is why they want the internet to be unworkable, and this is why the SOPA has been written with such fuzzy language.

Also reading the link from adamthebastard has posted up, they are using the word site, not page, which makes it worse.

From that if that language is used then a the offending material \ links don’t even need to be available on the linked page. It just needs to be hiding somewhere on the site.

This means that if I wanted to create a link to another site, I would need to consistently look over every page in that site to ensure that at no point in time do they link to illegal material.

Henry82 said :

Myles Peterson said :

remove DNS control from the Americans.

this is what is required

+1

The international community should use this opportunity and stand up for this.

harvyk1 said :

Actually it’s believe the laws will be misused as a competitor take down.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see a new ‘business model’ appear similar to patent trolling

1.Acquire some popular content and use automated tools to find every site that links to it.
2. Send the owners of those sites a letter requiring the payment of a licensing fee or ‘bad things will happen’.
3. Profit

Stage two of the plan is:
1. Acquire a portfolio of content – or just sign up content owners as their ‘IP enforcement agent’
2. Send a letter to every site offering a ‘protective’ licence for all past and future links, with a warning that unlicensed links will result in ‘very bad things happening’
3. Profit even more.

qbngeek said :

Nah-ah, if these laws are passed the trick will be to do what I intend to do with the sites I control and my blog. IP block the USA from visiting your site. .

Exactly.

If these laws pass unmodified, then any competent risk assessment should result in you arriving in that conclusion.

In effect, what the Yanks are building is their own Great Wall, only it will be built from the other direction to the Chinese one, but still facing in.

And as other commenters have already noted above, the biggest realworld effect will be an increase in anti-competetive vexatious litigation, and countries outside the US already have some pretty good mechanisms for ensuring that crap doesn’t spill too much out of the US. (ie, see the raft of recent Sony court decisions here and elsewhere).

Wasn’t there some Australian action a while back? The idea was to censor kiddie-porn sites and such, IIRC, but the effect was to shut down any site the Government didn’t like, and they weren’t obliged to tell anyone. I’d look up the details on Wikipedia, but they’re protesting SOPA. Boingboing likewise, so this is an odd link via GitHub.com to Cory Doctorow’s address on general-purpose computers which pretty much explains why censorship and copyright protection can’t work in the face of determined resistance. https://github.com/jwise/28c3-doctorow/blob/master/transcript.md

It can’t possibly work. Not unless you destroy the Web 2.0 framework of our online lives. Think of the idiot airport security folk who confiscate cupcakes in case they are explosives, and then put an army of such people in charge of shutting down sites that might be breaching copyright because they have a scene from Shakespeare right there on a web page. Or a link to YouTube in a comment. Or, heaven forbid, a link to a torrent site that’s serving out university lectures (and yes, such things exist, it’s not all Disney movies and porn out there).

Blogs like RA would be especially vulnerable to malicious complaints, given the often irreverent nature of comments or criticism of government shenanigans.

But there are bigger fish out there in the webocean, and their management teams will be and are contemplating their responses. Where would we be without Google and Wikipedia? It don’t bear thinking about.

Myles Peterson said :

remove DNS control from the Americans.

this is what is required

My thoughts will all this piracy business is the fact that many industries are not sitting on their own self controlled cash cows any more. They are too stubborn to change their business practise, or don’t want to take a loss of income now to make greater gains in the future.

Yeah I’ve illegally downloaded stuff. I’ve also paid for probably a lot more, because it was priced fairly, available promptly and its the right thing to do. We have the added issue in Australia, that we are seen as a cash cow, so lets hike prices on electronic media formats over what other countries pay, even though its being supplied from outsiode Australia. So really, companies are allowed to rip people off and now we have a way of forcing competition, lets force government to change the laws so they can keep doing what they were doing.

Just in: in protest to the Stop Online Piracy Act, City News treatens to continue publishing online.

harvyk1 said :

johnboy said :

Yes, but they’ll be coming for us on that pretty much after they’ve taken out the other 500,000 websites in the world with more traffic than us.

SOPA is awful, but it’s relatively low down our list of problems at RiotACT.

Actually it’s believe the laws will be misused as a competitor take down. Basically a competitor \ someone you’ve pissed off goes over your website \ blog looking for links, and if (let’s face it, when) one is found they report you.

So if these laws are passed, the trick would be not to piss anyone off who has loads of free time \ loads of money.

Nah-ah, if these laws are passed the trick will be to do what I intend to do with the sites I control and my blog. IP block the USA from visiting your site. If they then claim anything under these laws it means they have circumvented the reasonable actions you took to remain within the technicalities of the law. I don’t host any pirated material, but I often link to youtube and plenty of other sites.

It is something I read on an android developers forum and the general consensus is that it should give you a reasonable defence if they ever come for you.

johnboy said :

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Yes, but they’ll be coming for us on that pretty much after they’ve taken out the other 500,000 websites in the world with more traffic than us.

This was kind of my thought as well. The act seems to be so encompassing that if it was followed to the letter the entire internet would be shut down. I imagine it would mostly be aimed at sites that are either giving people pirated material or solely focussed on giving people links to pirated material.

johnboy said :

Yes, but they’ll be coming for us on that pretty much after they’ve taken out the other 500,000 websites in the world with more traffic than us.

SOPA is awful, but it’s relatively low down our list of problems at RiotACT.

Actually it’s believe the laws will be misused as a competitor take down. Basically a competitor \ someone you’ve pissed off goes over your website \ blog looking for links, and if (let’s face it, when) one is found they report you.

So if these laws are passed, the trick would be not to piss anyone off who has loads of free time \ loads of money.

harvyk1 said :

I wouldn’t be sitting too comfortably there Johnboy, from what I know SOPA would mean that if you allowed a link to be published on the RiotACT, and on the page which you’ve linked to has any sort of illegal material they have the ability to go after you, because the RiotACT even though it’s Canberra centric can be accessed from the US.

It’s also not just links in future posts, its links in any post you’ve ever allowed on RiotACT. Furthermore, if you link to a page which has no illegal material at the point in time you create the link, but they later change that page so that illegal material is now available they can still come after you.

Also don’t feel that because you’re not in the US you’re safe, the US has recently extradited a UK resident on piracy charges that didn’t host any illegal material, but simply linked to it. Now this person who lives in the UK, and has never been to the US, has to answer for breaking US laws (because his site was accessible in the US). Now here is the kicker, he broke no UK laws in his actions.

These laws are like unleashing a nuclear bomb on a city because they think a terrorist cell might be operating there, and that’s exactly what the movie and music studios want.

I think SOPA is a total scam. I’m not really one for piracy, but heavy handed “submit or we crush you” approaches to controlling internet content make the thought of committing acts of piracy about 1000 times more appealing to me.

This comment on the SMH opinion piece sums things up pretty soundly:

“Just another attempt by rapacious corporations to shovel more loot into their insatiable coffers. This is an excellent demonstration of why the US government is almost completely at the mercy of big money interests. Without campaign finance reform there will be no meaningful democracy. With politicians utterly in the thrall of money, the interests of ordinary citizens and small businesses will be steamrollered by the corporations every time. To him that hath shall be given.

harvyk1 said :

I wouldn’t be sitting too comfortably there Johnboy, from what I know SOPA would mean that if you allowed a link to be published on the RiotACT, and on the page which you’ve linked to has any sort of illegal material they have the ability to go after you, because the RiotACT even though it’s Canberra centric can be accessed from the US.

It’s also not just links in future posts, its links in any post you’ve ever allowed on RiotACT. Furthermore, if you link to a page which has no illegal material at the point in time you create the link, but they later change that page so that illegal material is now available they can still come after you.

Also don’t feel that because you’re not in the US you’re safe, the US has recently extradited a UK resident on piracy charges that didn’t host any illegal material, but simply linked to it. Now this person who lives in the UK, and has never been to the US, has to answer for breaking US laws (because his site was accessible in the US). Now here is the kicker, he broke no UK laws in his actions.

These laws are like unleashing a nuclear bomb on a city because they think a terrorist cell might be operating there, and that’s exactly what the movie and music studios want.

Yes, but they’ll be coming for us on that pretty much after they’ve taken out the other 500,000 websites in the world with more traffic than us.

SOPA is awful, but it’s relatively low down our list of problems at RiotACT.

If a site is hosted in the US, it will be open to censorship under these bills and could theoretically be shut down.
If the site is not hosted in the US, it may be open to censorship under these bills and have entries removed from DNS in the US.
Reasons for censorship include:
– hosting content deemed to be in breach of US intellectual property laws.
– discussing methods or tools to circumvent the bills or their intent.

I think RedDogInCan has hit the nail on the head; it will be interesting to see if the law is replicated through FTA.

I wouldn’t be sitting too comfortably there Johnboy, from what I know SOPA would mean that if you allowed a link to be published on the RiotACT, and on the page which you’ve linked to has any sort of illegal material they have the ability to go after you, because the RiotACT even though it’s Canberra centric can be accessed from the US.

It’s also not just links in future posts, its links in any post you’ve ever allowed on RiotACT. Furthermore, if you link to a page which has no illegal material at the point in time you create the link, but they later change that page so that illegal material is now available they can still come after you.

Also don’t feel that because you’re not in the US you’re safe, the US has recently extradited a UK resident on piracy charges that didn’t host any illegal material, but simply linked to it. Now this person who lives in the UK, and has never been to the US, has to answer for breaking US laws (because his site was accessible in the US). Now here is the kicker, he broke no UK laws in his actions.

These laws are like unleashing a nuclear bomb on a city because they think a terrorist cell might be operating there, and that’s exactly what the movie and music studios want.

“does it really pose a threat to the internet as we know it?”

Short answer, yes. Long answer, no.

A good outcome would be SOPA passing followed by an online revolt that removes DNS control from the Americans.

The real danger to us is that if it becomes law in the US then, as part of the next free trade negotiations, they will then insist that we implement a similar law in order to ‘protect’ US economic interests – just the same way they have inflicted us with their copyright laws.

As well all know, on the Internet, haters are gonna hate. So imagine someone has a gripe with RA (yes yes, surely not, etc *cough*). Link away to a few pirate sites in a comment, somehow it gets through moderation, and ta dah! You have a way/reason to shut it down.

But it doesn’t have to be that malicious – how many YouTube items are linked here in a week? How much of that content is licensed? Take the “Salmon Mousse” Monty Python item, for a start.

Our main concern would be a vexatious complaint.

We believe that all material we use comes under fair use and if anyone’s got a complaint they’re welcome to let us know.

And I’ve been to the USA plenty of times, so can live without making another visit.

Extradition would be interesting if it was attempted for linking to something.

But given the hyperlocal scope of this site I suspect it will be more of a problem for others.