Author Topic: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act  (Read 25414 times)

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Offline Sigz

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #105 on: December 15, 2011, 04:11:08 PM »
Yeah, no verdict yet. From what little I saw of it, they did seem to agree that they had no idea what the fuck they're talking about.
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Offline Scheavo

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #106 on: December 15, 2011, 04:57:24 PM »
Insane tangent:

I think this debate makes me realize how much people don't like physical laws of reality. With the internet, we, in a lot of ways, have a world we can make, with our own laws, etc. For instance, in real life, it's somewhat hard to truly disguise your identity. Here, I mean literally face to face interactions. Humans are made to recognize faces, voices, etc, and to identify people; with the internet, on the other hand, we would have to create rules which allow for easy recognition, assuming we want to be able to identify and recognize people online. With those rules, comes possible ways to abuse those rules, so we don't like them. If we had a choice on the matter, I'm thinking most humans would do away with their body, and all the ways that makes it possible to identify you.

Offline Progmetty

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #107 on: December 15, 2011, 05:14:05 PM »
That's very interesting Scheavo. It would be the kind of thing we'd be in denial about.
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Offline energythief

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #108 on: December 16, 2011, 11:21:12 AM »
https://www.reddit.com/r/SOPA/comments/nf5p1/sopa_emergency_list/


Americans, start copying this info so you can still have an internet after SOPA.

Offline Super Dude

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #109 on: December 16, 2011, 01:12:14 PM »
Explain for the computer illiterate please. :P
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Offline Sigz

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #110 on: December 16, 2011, 01:18:57 PM »
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Let's say you have a friend, named Dave. When you want to send him mail, you can't put "Dave's house" and throw it in the mailbox, can you? DNS essentially translates "Dave's house" (The URL) to 123 Example St. (IP Address).

What the hosts file does is essentially skip the DNS and say "Dave's house IS 123 Example St.". This is also a way that malware can hijack websites on your machine. If you visit google.com and it redirects to somewhere else, it's possible that your hosts file has been edited by malicious software to say that google.com = some other IP address, other than google's website.
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Offline kirksnosehair

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #111 on: December 16, 2011, 01:25:10 PM »
Yeah, but the problem is many hosts use round-robin DNS or host headers for hosts with multiple websites on one server.  I'd estimate that less than 1/4 of those websites would be directly accessible via IP address.  Also, do you really think they can't block those sites by IP as well?  I've got news for you:  It's easy.  I do it every day.

Offline Sigz

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #112 on: December 16, 2011, 01:31:24 PM »
Yup. Just testing it now, a lot of them don't work. Not to mention that I'm sure the ISPs will block IP addresses, unsurprisingly they actually know how the internet works.
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Offline kirksnosehair

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #113 on: December 16, 2011, 01:31:56 PM »
Yup. Just testing it now, a lot of them don't work. Not to mention that I'm sure the ISPs will block IP addresses, unsurprisingly they actually know how the internet works.

Ya think?  :lol

Offline Sigz

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #114 on: December 16, 2011, 01:34:33 PM »
From that thread:

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This is so over the top it's insane. This is the Internet equivalent of the crazy suburban Mom duct-taping her house because Fox told her the terror alert went up to amber!

 :rollin
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Offline kirksnosehair

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #115 on: December 16, 2011, 01:38:16 PM »
By the way, adding these sites to your host file would be a better solution.  It still won't work for the majority of them because they'll block the IPs by policy at the firewall level, but it will work for some.

The hosts file is located in C:\<SystemRoot>\System32\drivers\etc   (where <SystemRoot> is the folder that you have Windows stored)

It's a text file that can be opened with notepad.

For each site you want to add, just put the IP on the left, and the site name on the right, like this:

172.27.80.56                www.ohshitthissitedoesntwork.com
99.45.129.78                www.anotherbrickinyourass.com
76.123.90.118              www.downloadmyassfromhere.com

etc, etc, etc

Again, it's highly doubtful that they won't be blocking IP addresses anyway, but if you want to try to circumvent the blocking your host file is the place to start.


Offline Super Dude

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #116 on: December 16, 2011, 05:03:25 PM »
I think I'd rather just work on blocking this bill.
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Offline antigoon

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #117 on: December 16, 2011, 05:32:21 PM »
I chuckled

Offline MetalMike06

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #118 on: December 16, 2011, 09:30:05 PM »
Eh. This will pass, and we'll be fucked, again.

Offline Progmetty

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #119 on: January 06, 2012, 01:09:28 AM »
Everyone's trying their best, but it sounds desperate:
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The Senate is scheduled to vote on the internet censorship bill on Tuesday, January 24th, and unless we can find 41 senators to block the vote, it is going to pass. Will you meet with your senators during the January recess and ask them to vote it down?
https://americancensorship.org/
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Offline Scheavo

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #120 on: January 06, 2012, 06:09:28 PM »
Everyone acts as if it would be the end of the world, when it would mostly just mean the end of a lot of congressional members careers.

Offline snapple

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #121 on: January 06, 2012, 08:14:38 PM »
What did we learn with Napster, Kazaa and LimeWire?

There will always be another one. So, while SOPA may take down a lot of sites, there will always be more.

Offline Super Dude

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #122 on: January 06, 2012, 08:21:57 PM »
I'm not really worried about that so much as the individual cost this implies, like what people have been saying about YouTube users, and how having their videos removed for copyright would now also mean that person is thrown in jail.
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Offline Scheavo

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #123 on: January 06, 2012, 11:44:20 PM »
I'm not really worried about that so much as the individual cost this implies, like what people have been saying about YouTube users, and how having their videos removed for copyright would now also mean that person is thrown in jail.

Or, the judge sentences to community service, or some other nonsense. Given a lot of the cases, the judge might also rule that it falls under common use laws. It would probably be ugly, but this is one reason why I think people get a little unrealistic. You honestly think the movie and other industries are going to shutdown youtube/Google, or Facebook? Like I put in the thread about IP, Google has already blatantly broken IP laws by photocopying books, and coming to negotiations that kept it from going to court. It would certainly shake up the internet, there are aspects about it which are worrying, but people completely overreact to the actual consequences, and ignore the fact that we still have trials for people. Jury can chose not to convict, even if there's obvious evidence; Judges can basically make their own ruling, so long as it lasts through appeals.

YouTube users would probably never go to jail. If they did, the law wouldn't have much life after that. People are growing tired of throwing people in jail for marijuana, making youtube videos is so much tamer than that, that jail would never pass the sorta democracy we have.

Offline orcus116

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #124 on: January 07, 2012, 01:51:28 AM »
Is there anything in this bill that is worthwhile or was it just of those things made by a bunch of people who have no understanding of what it actually contains?

Offline Sigz

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #125 on: January 07, 2012, 01:56:54 AM »
made by a bunch of people who have no understanding of what it actually contains?

From what I saw of the hearing before Christmas, yeah, they fall squarely in the 'series of tubes' category.
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Offline Scheavo

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #126 on: January 07, 2012, 04:52:49 PM »
Is there anything in this bill that is worthwhile or was it just of those things made by a bunch of people who have no understanding of what it actually contains?

Well, the people who wrote the bill are the companies with IP concerns on the internet. So no, it was made by people who have a very clear idea if what the bill contains, more than anyone on this board I'm sure. The people passing and voting on the bill probably have no clue though.

Offline glaurung

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #127 on: January 09, 2012, 01:13:09 PM »
What did we learn with Napster, Kazaa and LimeWire?

There will always be another one. So, while SOPA may take down a lot of sites, there will always be more.

This is different. All it would take to shut a site down is the person who owns the copyright to complain and a site is shut down with one click. There is no trial.
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Offline kirksnosehair

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #128 on: January 09, 2012, 02:05:18 PM »
What did we learn with Napster, Kazaa and LimeWire?

There will always be another one. So, while SOPA may take down a lot of sites, there will always be more.

This is different. All it would take to shut a site down is the person who owns the copyright to complain and a site is shut down with one click. There is no trial.

No offense, really, but that sounds like hyperbolic nonsense to me. 


Offline Super Dude

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #129 on: January 09, 2012, 03:09:00 PM »
True or not, we should all want Web 2.0 to remain a relatively free place. Some clamping down on file sharing and the like is laudable, but there should be limits.
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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #130 on: January 09, 2012, 05:26:53 PM »
I'm not really worried about that so much as the individual cost this implies, like what people have been saying about YouTube users, and how having their videos removed for copyright would now also mean that person is thrown in jail.

Or, the judge sentences to community service, or some other nonsense. Given a lot of the cases, the judge might also rule that it falls under common use laws. It would probably be ugly, but this is one reason why I think people get a little unrealistic. You honestly think the movie and other industries are going to shutdown youtube/Google, or Facebook? Like I put in the thread about IP, Google has already blatantly broken IP laws by photocopying books, and coming to negotiations that kept it from going to court. It would certainly shake up the internet, there are aspects about it which are worrying, but people completely overreact to the actual consequences, and ignore the fact that we still have trials for people. Jury can chose not to convict, even if there's obvious evidence; Judges can basically make their own ruling, so long as it lasts through appeals.

YouTube users would probably never go to jail. If they did, the law wouldn't have much life after that. People are growing tired of throwing people in jail for marijuana, making youtube videos is so much tamer than that, that jail would never pass the sorta democracy we have.
I'm not so worried about youtube posters going to jail as I much as I am the chilling effect.  Why would google even continue to operate youtube if it becomes a liability to the bigger picture.  If nothing else,  I could easily see creating enough hurdles that it's not worth the bother anymore.  Sort of like making people fork over a credit card number to sign up for a free porn site. 
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Offline Scheavo

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #131 on: January 09, 2012, 05:36:37 PM »
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Why would google even continue to operate youtube if it becomes a liability to the bigger picture.

Why did Google knowingly and willingly scan and digitize every book it could get, knowing full well it was breaking the law doing it? GOogle already loses profit on youtube itself, apparently they do it all for the sake of gathering information, to make their searches better, to make their ads more targeted, so they can get more advertisement money. Just had a commercial on youtube the other day. The "liability" that it'll become is Google giving some money to the music and other media industries, in relatino to their product, as a percent of their income.


Now, where I think this bill would cause issues is with the smaller players. Google is a huge, powerful company, you can't just push them around.
« Last Edit: January 09, 2012, 05:50:31 PM by Scheavo »

Offline ehra

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #132 on: January 10, 2012, 11:46:06 AM »
Massively just posted their own writeup on SOPA, for anyone interested. It's written from a slight gaming/blogging stance.

https://massively.joystiq.com/2012/01/10/the-sopabox-defeating-online-piracy-by-destroying-the-internet/

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Unless you've been living under a rock, chances are you've heard of SOPA and PIPA. The Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act are two radical pieces of copyright legislation currently being pushed through the US government. Although the stated intent of the new legislation is to provide companies with additional tools with which to combat piracy, the bill's loose wording has raised some serious alarm bells. Opponents to the proposed law say it would give corporations the ability to shut down any almost any website under the guise of protecting copyright infringement.

Gamers will be affected worst of all, as the loose wording of the law makes any website with user-submitted content potentially vulnerable to a shut down order. That could include YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, any blog with a comment section, or even any online game with a chat system. Perhaps the scariest part is that you'll be affected even if you're not in the US, as one of the new law's enforcement mechanisms is to remove a site from the DNS records, a move that assumes the US has jurisdiction over the global Domain Name System. AOL is among many huge companies strongly opposing SOPA, and so naturally Massively opposes it too.

In this week's massive two-page Soapbox, I make the case for why you should be worried about SOPA, and I suggest what can be done to tackle piracy in the games industry. Comments can be left on page two.

Current enforcement mechanisms

Companies in the film, music and games industries obviously have a need to protect their copyrights and prevent misuse of their intellectual properties. The internet has provided massive opportunities for piracy, making it incredibly simple and cost-effective to illegally obtain copies of games, films, and music. The use of digital formats means that the old argument of pirate copies being lower quality no longer applies as pirates are getting the full digital product for free.

The current system in place to stop this kind of copyright infringement is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a piece of legislation designed to provide a fast-track method for companies to get their copyrighted material removed from an offending website without putting that website at risk.

Because of the DMCA's "safe harbour" rule, a website with user-submitted content like YouTube is not held liable for the content its users post. If you upload a song to YouTube, you might be breaking the law, but YouTube isn't. When copyright owners find infringement like this, they send the website owner a DMCA request, and the offending content is selectively removed. The argument being put forward by corporations supporting SOPA is that the DMCA doesn't work against websites that just ignore the requests. Websites hosted in the US that ignore DMCA requests can eventually be taken down, as the webhost company would be aiding criminal activities if it refused, but foreign sites can't.

The spirit of the law

The US legal system has no jurisdiction over websites hosted outside the US, so pirates usually just move their servers to another country and ignore takedown requests. These "rogue websites" may be doing business with people in the US, and the spirit of SOPA is to provide a mechanism for blocking access to those websites for all US citizens. Unfortunately, it's such a badly worded piece of legislation that it can be used to block access to almost any legitimate website.

A website can be classified as rogue if it is primarily engaged in offering services that can enable or facilitate copyright violation, but any website with user-submitted content fits that description. The primary purpose of gaming forums and blogs, for example, is to offer people a means to have text discussions. As text can be used to share links to copyrighted material and therefore facilitate copyright violation, those sites (including Facebook and Twitter) could easily be deemed rogue if any user posts a link to copyrighted material. History is replete with examples of people using the word of the law to defeat the spirit of the law, and there's no reason to assume SOPA would be treated any differently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xrrj9Wc2L84

Shifting the blame

People have also complained about some of SOPA's bizarre provisions that expose website owners to uncertain liabilities; Section 103(a)(I)(B)(ii)(I) in particular renders a website owner liable if he takes "deliberate action to avoid confirming a high probability" that a user is infringing copyright. The unclear wording of this provision means website owners and ISPs that don't invasively monitor all user-submitted content (including private messages) could be held liable for the actions of their users. This would effectively override the DMCA's safe harbour rule for websites operating in good faith whose services are nevertheless used to facilitate piracy. YouTube, for example, could be made liable for copyrighted music appearing on the website even though it's financially and technologically infeasible to check every video for violations.

SOPA's own version of the safe harbor rule grants immunity from DNS takedowns to ISPs and websites that voluntarily block content they believe to be in violation of SOPA. This is so incredibly abusable that I'm shocked it's even being considered; it would allow any ISP to preferentially block content from a competitor as long as it could say it had reason to believe there was copyright violation involved. Imagine your ISP blocking a competing ISP's website because of "an anonymous tip" about copyright violation, or webhost Comcast blocking video streaming services that compete with its own NBC. Worse yet, imagine an MMO publisher that also owns an ISP throttling or blocking competing games, in clear violation of the principles of net neutrality. This is clearly a law created by people who fundamentally do not understand how the internet works.

DNS takedowns

SOPA has three major enforcement mechanisms: DNS takedowns, court orders to banks and advertisers, and search engine delisting. The possibility of a corporation getting a court order to cut off a foreign website's access to funds from the US could have dire consequences for startup game studios around the world. Startups won't have the financial backing to stay afloat while a challenge goes through a US court; they may not have the funds to even fight such a case. Delisting an upcoming online game from search engines could also destroy its launch, and Google may also be obligated to delist every gaming news website that linked to the offending website.

What I'm talking about is the most disgraceful form of censorship, with which any corporation with a strong enough legal team can try to erase a competitor from the web entirely at strategic times just by citing belief of copyright violation. The most contentious issue with SOPA has of course been the provision for DNS takedowns. If the law goes into effect, it will allow a corporation that believes its copyright is being infringed upon to get an entire website delisted from the domain name service so that it's inaccessible. This could be disastrous for online gaming, as shutting down an MMO's website via a DNS takedown request would also kill access to any game servers that resolve under subdomains of that domain.

The provisions of SOPA technically don't apply to US websites, only to foreign websites that are accessible in the US. Unfortunately, this too is a legal gray area as most popular websites are not hosted in one particular location. Google has servers around the world, and all of its services are accessible globally. What should really get you worried is that many MMOs and other online games have servers distributed throughout the world to reduce lag by directing players to a local server. Imagine waking up one morning to find the entire RIFT website and its game servers blocked in the US because people on an EU server were sharing links to copyrighted material in chat. It may sound far fetched, but it's all within the scope of SOPA.

At least it stops piracy, right?

If this weren't such a serious issue, I would be laughing at how ineffective the provisions in SOPA will actually be at combating piracy. Takedowns can be easily countered by anyone with half an ounce of wit, rendering it almost farcical that the anyone in the entertainment industries is supporting the bill. When a website hosting pirate material is taken down by its webhosts or domain host, which already happens regularly despite there usually being no legal basis for it, the website can be back online within minutes. If the domain is seized, which has also happened without a legal basis, a new one can be created and within a few hours the new name can proliferate through social media.

Taking a domain name out of the DNS register does nothing to stop people accessing the website, as it can still be accessed via its IP address, and there's no legal way to stop people sharing that. I could write a small piece of software in five minutes that would run in the background and resolve the IP of any website whose DNS record had been taken down through SOPA, thereby bypassing the entire system. People have already started working on browser extensions and alternate public DNS servers to nullify the effects of SOPA; the bill isn't even law yet and it's already obsolete.

SOPA is a goldmine of legal loopholes that grant any corporation with a good legal department shocking censorship powers over the web, and it's a chilling thought that it could actually go live. Just this month, Belarus made it illegal for foreign websites to offer goods and services to the country's citizens, and further made it illegal to access pornographic or extremist websites. Spain followed suit, with its newly elected government putting the controversial Sinde law into effect. Wikileaks reported that the US actually helped draft the Sinde law and threatened to put Spain on a trade blacklist if it wasn't put into force, a move that isn't altogether surprising since SOPA's being fast-tracked through the US government at the same time.

Copyright protection is a colossal issue for the games industry, but bills like SOPA will do nothing to stop it and will cost the world a great deal in personal freedoms. I think the way forward to combat game piracy will be to adopt the same model as the music industry. ITunes reduced the effort threshold to buying music legally so much that millions of users prefer it over pirating, YouTube Vevo monetises popular music through advertising, and a lot of money has been moving to live performances. For games, this model would involve both making it extremely easy for players to buy a game and offering a better product than it's possible to pirate.

Steam is the players' DRM and purchasing-platform of choice; offering free updates or downloadable content on Steam can go a long way to securing a sale and keeping honest people honest. Hard copies of games (even non-collector editions) can continue to offer things you can't easily pirate, like high-quality maps, posters, collectible pen drives and beautiful artwork books or manuals. MMOs in particular are largely insulated from piracy as the online community is what sells an MMO, so perhaps we should see a lot more games for which online play is the main selling point. Ultimately, the best way to combat piracy is just to offer a better product than the pirates.

Offline kirksnosehair

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #133 on: January 10, 2012, 11:59:49 AM »
Well, in the interest of providing some balance to this thread, which is obviously very strongly tilted against SOPA, here is something I read today in favor of the law that I thought was very well articulated:

Quote
Brian Dunlap, I work on a series of tubes.16 votes by Todd Branchflower, Noah Chestnut, Monil Kothari(more)I'll preface this with two statements:
  • I work in the content production field and, by extension, spend a fair amount of time pursuing legal action against other parties over copyright infringement.  Any law that makes it easier to pursue others for violating copyrights is likely one that I will benefit from.
  • I'm fully aware SOPA will have unintended consequences that are undesirable to most - even myself included as a fan of the free flow and exchange of information and ideas (legally) over the internet.
Having thrown that out there, I will say that I'm of the belief the best thing SOPA can offer - and this is all relative to existing law and the status quo - is encouraging ISPs and website owners to be more proactive in making sure their sites are not havens for copyright infringement.

DMCA is, like SOPA, far from perfect.  It places what I would consider undue burden open copyright holders to:
  • Seek out instances in which their copyrights are being violated
  • Absorb and suffer losses while awaiting responses to notifications and take-down notices
Unfortunately, I've frequently been a first-hand witness to ISPs abusing the safe-harbor provisions of DMCA, and going out of their way to avoid compliance with DMCA to the greatest extent possible - because they know they can, to a certain point.  I certainly would not say this is true for most ISPs, but I'll state my belief it is true for enough to cause content producers and copyright holders considerable harm as they go about attempting to protect copyrights online.  DMCA is currently structured to make abusing safe harbor quite easy, and many ISPs are fully aware of that.  While I'd consider most mainstream websites to have a genuine interest in complying with DMCA and respecting others' copyrights, the way the law is structured makes it quite easy for website operators with less noble intentions to freely distribute copyrighted material, in violation of those copyrights.

With SOPA, however, websites will be required to take a more proactive role in ensuring their product and service does not encourage copyright infringement, and their own success does not come at the expense of copyright holders suffering harm at the hands of their product and service. 

I've often dealt with website owners and operators who have knowingly published on their sites others' copyrighted material, feigning ignorance and doing the bare minimum to respond to DMCA take-down notices.  Among the actions I've observed have been:
  • Responding to take-down notices with no more than the deletion of a single dynamic URL to an infringing file, rather than removing the file itself.
  • Encouraging users to upload copyrighted material through financial incentives, "premium" download capabilities or access, "premium" access to libraries of other files on the site, and so on.
  • Not taking action against users who have been shown to repeatedly and regularly, if not exclusively, upload infringing material.
  • Attempting to block the IP addresses from which take-down notices are received.
  • Altering uploading content in attempts to remove watermarks, logos and other signs material may be copyrighted.
  • Simply moving or renaming files for which take-down notices have been received.
Proving, in court, such actions have taken place, or are taking place, can deny an ISP safe-harbor and open them up to considerable civil penalties - but only after what are often lengthy and expensive legal proceedings. 

Another possible benefit of SOPA is that US-based ISPs who are making genuine and good-faith efforts to respect the intellectual property rights of others will no longer suffer from such a competitive disadvantage as they now do with overseas sites/ISPs.  US sites that put in place an infrastructure and policies to effectively monitor copyrights and respond to DMCA notices might face far more difficulty gaining an audience and becoming successful when overseas sites are freely able to ignore DMCA and make no attempts to abide by it.

Admittedly, SOPA is far from perfect.  Likewise, though it's no consolation and certainly not an excuse, DMCA as it exists is far from perfect.  The latter places what I would consider to be an unfair and excessive burden upon copyright holders to ensure ISPs aren't permitting and even encouraging the violation of their copyrights, and the former may very well go too far in attempting to assign some of that burden to the ISPs.

I accept, from the perspective of a copyright owner, that owning copyrights in the digital age brings with it the risk your copyrights will be violated, and pursuing violators and enforcing copyrights is an accepted cost of doing business.  ISPs accepting user-submitted content may now have to accept that monitoring and more effectively policing such content to ensure it does not violate copyrights is an accepted cost of doing business for them.



Offline Scheavo

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #134 on: January 10, 2012, 06:13:42 PM »
DNS takedowns, court orders to banks and advertisers, and search engine delisting. The possibility of a corporation getting a court order to cut off a foreign website's access to funds from the US could have dire consequences for startup game studios around the world. Startups won't have the financial backing to stay afloat while a challenge goes through a US court; they may not have the funds to even fight such a case. Delisting an upcoming online game from search engines could also destroy its launch, and Google may also be obligated to delist every gaming news website that linked to the offending website.

See, this is what I'm talking about. It's such a load of crap.

Predatory examples like you use are usually thrown back in the faces by judges, common use laws and practices not only mean can gaming news websites use the content, but the game owners aren't going to go after the people doing free advertising for them and their product. Google would always vehemently fight that from happening, in court.

I think what that writer is complaining about is the corruption of our government, really.

Offline Implode

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #135 on: January 16, 2012, 01:51:10 PM »
House kills SOPA?

https://www.examiner.com/computers-in-denver/house-kills-sopa

Is that really as simple as it seems?

Offline Fiery Winds

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #136 on: January 16, 2012, 02:00:17 PM »
I think so.  Obama promised a veto of PIPA as well, not just SOPA.  Any more time spent in Congress would just be a waste of time, regardless of any changes.

Offline kirksnosehair

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #137 on: January 16, 2012, 02:06:41 PM »
Well, maybe now they'll go back to the drawing board and come up with something that everyone can get behind.

I think no matter what you're not going to please everyone, but something has to be done because the status quo is unsustainable, imo.

Offline antigoon

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #138 on: January 16, 2012, 02:09:23 PM »

Offline kirksnosehair

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Re: SOPA/"Protect IP" Act
« Reply #139 on: January 16, 2012, 02:13:35 PM »
They're going dark to protest a law that isn't going to pass and that the president said he'll veto?  :lol