Copyright Lobbyists make third push for Net Censorship Powers:

[RedwallFortress]

Copyright Lobbyists make a push for Net Censorship Powers:

They originally tried to get a Senate Bill passed in 2010 called COICA, and are trying again this year with
PROTECT IP.

Both Bills passed the Judiciary Committee, and were then blocked by Senator Ron Wyden

So while they are still pushing for PROTECT IP in upper house, a similar law has been been raised in Congress called "SOPA".

It's basically the same bill only with even more overbroad wording, plus they slipped in parts of the "Streaming Criminalization" Bill S.978.

One of the main goals of the bill is: "blocking access to foreign sites, which are beyond the reach of US Copyright Law".

The creation of a Blacklist for Sites that "have only limited purpose or use other than infringement, or inducing infringing activities".

Mass IP Blocking + Search Result Censoring to used on offshore Websites by all US ISP & Search Engines.

Also the power to issue injunctions to US Payment Processors (PayPal, etc...), to stop all money going to those sites.

Apparently, websites "that offer ways, or tools to bypass blocks" are also to be blocked off...

Make unauthorized streaming a felony punishable by 5 years in prison, and a $5,000 fine.

Websites in the USA are already vulnerable to being seized under current laws (see example: Operation In Our Sites).

However these new powers would also no doubt be used against domestic sites as well...

Considering the "Shoot first, ask questions later" attitude of the Copyright Industry, this could seriously damage Internet in the USA.

 

[Thoughtful Thug]

It is going to be somewhat similar to China's Great Firewall

If all of those proposal reach at the desk for the President to sign, it will only result in more traffic in the Darknet, more creation of private I2P anonymous networks suitable to adapt to any hostile blocking or circumvented schemes.

Hell, it might add more people to engage in more hacktivism and further enhance bittorrent protocols to operate securely in Tor as well.

Challenge excepted

 

[GenMarshall]

I hope this legislation is stricken down.

 

[Thoughtful Thug]

Proposed Copyright Bill Threatens Whistleblowing and Human Rights

In the past week, the larger Internet community has joined EFF in sounding the alarm about the new copyright bill, now known as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), as it makes its way through the U.S. House. The bill threatens to transform copyright law, pushing Internet intermediaries—from Facebook to your ISP—to censor whole swaths of the Internet. SOPA could forever alter social networks, stifle innovation and creativity, and destroy jobs, which is why Rep. Zoe Lofgren wasn’t exaggerating when she said SOPA “would mean the end of the Internet as we know it."

But this bill could also have a huge impact on the work of human rights advocates and whistleblowers who depend on online tools to protect their anonymity and speak out against injustice. Platforms created to provide anonymity software to human rights activists across the world, as well as next generation WikiLeaks-style whistleblower sites, could be major casualties of this bill—all in the name of increasing Hollywood’s bottom line.

Under SOPA, private companies will be able to force payment processors to shut down payments to websites by merely claiming the site “engages in, enables or facilitates” infringement. This broad provision could target websites behind important Internet projects such as Tor, the anonymity network that has been vital for protecting activists from government surveillance in Tunisia and Egypt. While Tor is designed to promote free expression, privacy, and human rights (and has had an amazing impact on the Arab Spring), it can unfortunately also be used to mask one’s IP address when downloading copyrighted content, such as music. Corporations concerned about users illegally downloading music could use SOPA to force Visa and Mastercard to cut off donations to Torproject.org—despite Tor’s aim to facilitate human rights activism, not piracy.

Political and human rights video hosting sites like EngageMedia, which is committed to raising awareness about social justice and the environment in the Asian Pacific region, might also be under threat. If a single video on the site arguably contains infringing content (keep in mind that only a portion of a site has to be engaging in infringement), an IP rightsholder could reach out to Paypal and demand it shut down EngageMedia’s account.

We’ve seen the effect of this kind of action before, in the recent attack on WikiLeaks. In December, WikiLeaks started publishing its cache of leaked State Department cables, which also exposed many human rights violations. The First Amendment barred the government from censoring WikiLeaks directly, but that didn’t stop Senator Joe Lieberman from pressuring private companies to stop doing business with WikiLeaks. The media organization lost its domain name and servers. Then Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal stopped processing their donations—cutting off 97% of the global payment processing market for Wikileaks. As Harvard Law Professor Yochai Benkler put it, “This…allowed [the government] to obtain results (for the state) that the state is prohibited by law from pursuing directly.”

Last week, WikiLeaks announced that it would have to temporarily suspend its publishing operations because of this private-sector censorship, despite the fact that the organization has not been convicted, or even formally accused of, any crime. A similar fate awaits the next WikiLeaks if SOPA passes—even if the government never gets involved or has a legal leg to stand on.

Emerging nonprofit whistleblower sites could find themselves in the jaws of SOPA if they post any documents related to corporate corruption or law breaking, if those documents contain trade secrets or are copyrightable. In 2010, Microsoft unsuccessfully tried to knock the whistleblower website Cryptome offline in a comparable situation. Now, the offended corporation may simply send a notice to the payment processor alleging the posted documents violate their rights and the processors will have five days to cut off the whistleblowing site’s service. Those sites could be starved out of existence before they can ever gain traction to defend themselves. Potential whistleblowers wishing to prevent the next Enron could be shut out of the Internet, even though the Enron whistleblower herself has said how important sites like WikiLeaks can be for exposing corporate wrongdoing.

It’s unclear whether SOPA’s authors intended it to cover these websites that are vital to whistleblowing and human rights. If they didn’t, they need to press re-set; and next time, consult with the numerous Internet communities the bill could affect, rather than exclusively Hollywood lobbyists. But the immediate need is clear: the bill must be killed. If you care about free speech and a free Internet, act now!

 

[innonimatu]

The american government seems hell-bent in undermining its own country, for the sake of defending the privileges of a few. And I'm sure those won't be abused, oh no...

I do find it funny, what with all the talk of free speech and freedom...

 

[stormerne]

One of the main goals of the bill is: "blocking access to foreign sites, which are beyond the reach of US Copyright Law".

Let's become an island nation, not share ideas with the rest of the world, nor trade with them. After all, there's no need to communicate with the rest of the world when you have everything, produce everything, can imagine anything and can invent everything.

Anyone want to buy an ANL badge? (Association of Neo-Luddites.)

 

[Skwink]

Let's become an island nation, not share ideas with the rest of the world, nor trade with them. After all, there's no need to communicate with the rest of the world when you have everything, produce everything, can imagine anything and can invent everything.

Anyone want to buy an ANL badge? (Association of Neo-Luddites.)

Well that's be cool and all but we'd have to dig a big canal on the Canadian and Mexican borders. The fun probably wouldn't be worth the effort.

 

[Thoughtful Thug]

I don't think all of them will get passed with no scrutiny. There is still a barrier, or set of barriers that can defeat the bill. Namely the President and the Senate. I don't think people like Chris Dodd is powerful enough to convince many people on the Democratic side to go with this extreme rough draft of this bill.

 

[Ajidica]

I'm starting to think that a bunch of old white guys deciding internet policy is a bad idea, given that most of them probably ask Tech Support for help on "How do I make the Internets work?"

 

[Spidernova]

The fact that the copyright people are so determined to preserve their profits by blocking off all non-us websites is alarming in the extreme.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I'm starting to think that a bunch of old white guys deciding internet policy is a bad idea, given that most of them probably ask Tech Support for help on "How do I make the Internets work?"

Or forget their passwords and then scream that MY HOTMAIL WAS HACKED!!!!!!!!! (which my mom does more often than not.....)

 

[PredatorFett]

Wrote my Congressmen already. This is more important to me than the Healthcare legislation was to the tea party camp. Having said that, this issue is not a 'left' or 'right' issue. This legislation will make the internet a virtual dystopia. It is beyond what any organization, government or corporation should have the authority (and audacity) to enforce.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Wrote my Congressmen already. This is more important to me than the Healthcare legislation was to the tea party camp. Having said that, this issue is not a 'left' or 'right' issue. This legislation will make the internet a virtual dystopia. It is beyond what any organization, government or corporation should have the authority (and audacity) to enforce.

Id write a letter but Im not in the US so I dont think they would care about what a Canadian thinks.

 

[classical_hero]

I'm starting to think that a bunch of old white guys deciding internet policy is a bad idea, given that most of them probably ask Tech Support for help on "How do I make the Internets work?"

Don't forget that Al Gore invented the internet, and he is an old white guy.

 

[Archbob]

Also the power to issue injunctions to US Payment Processors (PayPal, etc...), to stop all money going to those sites.

I hate the rest of the bill, but this part I wouldn't mind passing. There's foreign(namely chinese) websites that basically steal content, re-brand it, and pass it off as their own.

 

[BvBPL]

I love how the title of this thread discusses copyright lobbyists, but no lobbyists are actually discussed in the thread itself. Also, “copyright industry” was good for a laugh.

 

[Formaldehyde]

If the EFF is upset there is good reason to be concerned.

SOPA: Hollywood Finally Gets A Chance to Break the Internet

As promised, here’s the first installment of our closer review of the massive piece of job-killing Internet regulation that is the Stop Online Piracy Act. We’ll start with how it could impact Twitter, Tumblr, and the next innovative social network, cloud computing, or web hosting service that some smart kid is designing in her garage right now.

Let’s make one thing clear from the get-go: despite all the talk about this bill being directed only toward “rogue” foreign sites, there is no question that it targets US companies as well. The bill sets up a system to punish sites allegedly “dedicated to the theft of US property.” How do you get that label? Doesn’t take much: Some portion of your site (even a single page) must

be directed toward the US, and either
allegedly “engage in, enable or facilitate” infringement or
allegedly be taking or have taken steps to “avoid confirming a high probability” of infringement.

If an IP rightsholder (vaguely defined – could be Justin Bieber worried about his publicity rights) thinks you meet the criteria and that it is in some way harmed, it can send a notice claiming as much to the payment processors (Visa, Mastercard, Paypal etc.) and ad services you rely on.

Once they get it, they have 5 days to choke off your financial support. Of course, the payment processors and ad networks won’t be able to fine-tune their response so that only the allegedly infringing portion of your site is affected, which means your whole site will be under assault. And, it makes no difference that no judge has found you guilty of anything or that the DMCA safe harbors would shelter your conduct if the matter ever went to court. Indeed, services that have been specifically found legal, like Rapidshare, could be economically strangled via SOPA. You can file a counter-notice, but you’ve only got 5 days to do it (good luck getting solid legal advice in time) and the payment processors and ad networks have no obligation to respect it in any event. That’s because there are vigilante provisions that grant them immunity for choking off a site if they have a “reasonable belief” that some portion of the site enables infringement.

At a minimum, this means that any service that hosts user generated content is going to be under enormous pressure to actively monitor and filter that content. That’s a huge burden, and worse for services that are just getting started – the YouTubes of tomorrow that are generating jobs today. And no matter what they do, we’re going to see a flurry of notices anyway – as we’ve learned from the DMCA takedown process, content owners are more than happy to send bogus complaints. What happened to Wikileaks via voluntary censorship will now be systematized and streamlined – as long as someone, somewhere, thinks they’ve got an IP right that’s being harmed.

In essence, Hollywood is tired of those pesky laws that help protect innovation, economic growth, and creativity rather than outmoded business models. So they are trying to rewrite the rules, regulate the Internet, and damn the consequences for the rest of us.

Watch this space for more analysis, but don’t wait to act. This bill cannot be fixed; it must be killed. The bill’s sponsors (and their corporate backers) want to push this thing through quickly, before ordinary citizens get wind of the harm it is going to cause. If you don’t want to let big media control the future of innovation and online expression, act now, and urge everyone you know to do the same.

 

[RedwallFortress]

I hate the rest of the bill, but this part I wouldn't mind passing. There's foreign(namely chinese) websites that basically steal content, re-brand it, and pass it off as their own.

I agree, but this part also has some problems:

As currently worded, the mechanism to issue requests for injunctions on payment is somewhat similarly to DMCA Takedown Notices, only with appeals process being quite weak.

This leads to the prospect abuses through mistakes and overzealous action.

The prospect of being suddenly faced with the cutoff of all financial resources by mistake is quite a serious problem for any website owner...

I love how the title of this thread discusses copyright lobbyists, but no lobbyists are actually discussed in the thread itself. Also, “copyright industry” was good for a laugh.

Last I heard one of the major roles of MPAA, RIAA, ESA, BSA, & NCTA was was "lobbying for laws in the interest of their member corporations".

As for term “copyright industry”, it refers to Corporations whose main source of income comes from the "ownership, development, and exploitation of Intellectual Properties."

An example's would be Movie Studios, Record Labels, and Software Companies...

 

[dirtyparrot]

I wouldn't be surprised if this bill or a similar one passes because the US legislature has already passed all sorts of laws that really don't have the interests of their constituents. I think that the only thing that will stand in the way is that people can now mobilize their anger much more quickly to put at least some pressure on their politicians in ways that they couldn't before.

 

[Archbob]

I doubt this bill will actually pass. Isn't it somehow against the 1st amendment?