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Serious stuff!
But I don't know if it is true...
You all MUST read about the latest congressional bill called 'SOPA'. It is being debated this week and it has a lot of support in this congress,
and if it were to pass then this site and others would be a banned site." Read and sign the petition!
Comments
It's true...
But if it's true, then call me a criminal! I'm mnot copying anyone's stuff...so stay outa my business! If Erin IS forced to shut down, I'll find someplace to post my stuff!
Wren
not sure what petition you speak of...
But I do what I always do about these things: looked up and read the full text of the current draft of this bill on the government web site.
This particular site and sites exactly like it are in no danger. Where we do have some "fanfiction" that falls under the First Amendment, which, one of the first things this bill says is that nothing in the rest of the bill can be construed or used to limit free speech and freedom of the press.
The bill is a nasty piece of work though, and should be opposed for what it does propose to do - including forcing search engines like Google to filter results for "known infringers" and manually preventing those results from being provided.
It's the DMCA take 3.
Abigail Drew.
Abigail Drew.
I don't follow?
Isn't SOPA ("Stop Online Piracy Act") supposed to be about protecting intellectual property created in the USA from those stealing it? My understanding was that it was broken into two sections - the first about restricting those in the USA from accessing "foreign infringing sites" - basically getting ISP's to block access to sites the DCMA doesn't cover because they're not within the federal jurisdiction. The second section appears to be about increasing existing penalties.
Given it's all about trying to treat non-USA sites like USA sites, I'm not sure how at all it would have any effect on those sites in the USA that aren't engaging in piracy - so am I missing something, or is this a beat up?
I agree it's probably the thin edge of the wedge - there's a common practice to "get the infrastructure in place" on something everyone agrees needs to be addressed (i.e., terrorism), and then once the infrastructure's in place, extend it to other things the government doesn't like. I also agree that if USA ISP's are forced to break the DNS in the proposed fashion, it's going to cause all sorts of nasty technical flow-on effects, and personally I think the bill is going to hurt tech workers in the USA for very little gain. But I still don't see how SOPA itself would cause this to be a banned site.
Please note
I started writing my message just before seeing Abigail Drew's message - and I completely agree with her.
Ah,
So Salrissa, you are another like myself, who prefer to know exactly what it is that they are being asked to oppose. Unfortunately, my younger brother does not seem to have learned this, and has readily accepted all kinds of things at face value that really aren't quite right.
I suppose if you have challenges reading legalese you might need someone else to interpret for you, but chances are good that everyone knows someone who can read legalese without difficulty and would be willing to give them a straight unbiased interpretation.
Abigail Drew.
Abigail Drew.
Actually, it can possibly
Actually, it can possibly put sites like BigCloset at risk, because the site has a lot of User Generated content. So it would be possible for someone to post a copy of a story, not get noticed by an admin, and cause issues if we didn't respond fast enough when it came to taking it down under safe harbor provisions. I've not read the bill to know even if this takes into account DMCA's safe harbor provisioning.
-HuGgLeS-
-P/KAF/PT
Entrapment?
So the morons who have done DoS attacks against BCTS could then have a poser become a member, insert some story then point the web nazi's at this site?
Or lets make that any group that opposes us and wants to shut us down?
In my semi-professional
In my semi-professional opinion, the bulk of the DoS accounts aren't actually targeted at BCTS. They're targeted at the content management system itself. I had a number of issues with that prior to putting in a proxy system on my main server. Most CMS systems just aren't very good at handling high loads, which causes slowdowns, which increases the load, which slows things down more.....
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
yes, this is completely anathema to the first amendment.
well spotted, piper. it is, as ms drew notes, dmca take 3, except that unlike the dmca as passed, it contains egregious provisions putting the burden of proof on the site, rather than the entity alleging copyright infringement. which means big closet would have to front the legal costs of proving the material should be re-published.
this comes against a backdrop of proven misbehaviour by copyright exploiters such as Warner Bros: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/warner-admit... . under the new provisions, the rent-seekers in the i.p. racket wouldn't have to defend their actions - erin would have to spend money to prove them wrong.
in a financial battle between erin and warner brothers (for example, for something as trivial as quoting lyrics, which has happened a lot here) i can see who's going to win. why would erin bother?
imagine a world with no youtube, or vimeo, or whatever: because that's what this measure means.
y'all can sit back and wait for a first amendment challenge, but good luck getting *that* past this supreme court.
this is a big issue. not a transient one. justice and congress are so in thrall to the lobbyists for the i.p industries it WILL pass if you don't speak out.
lastly, for those of you imagining the content industries need more protection, a word from amanda palmer, of the dresden dolls:
http://blog.amandapalmer.net/post/66586355/the-man-strikes-a...
as abigail drew said: "the bill is a nasty piece of work". it needs to be killed stone dead, before this site is.
not as think as i smart i am
Some people against
Some people against it.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111117/15492016808/senato...
EU is against the domain seizures that are related to the above.
https://torrentfreak.com/eu-adopts-resolution-against-us-dom...
List of companies supporting SOPA
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/11/17/which-tech-companie...
techdirt has a lot of other information related to SOPA and other items that might be of interest to people on this site. Groklaw is also a good place to look.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
The Issue Of China Stealing Intellectual
That may be the intent, but
That may be the intent, but this bill has a huge potential for misuse.
Have delightfully devious day,
You mean
the Chinese might plagiarise Bike? Horror upon horror!
Angharad
Angharad
Well those people who put
Well those people who put their blueprints on net accesible computers don't deserve better. That's like hosting your website on your system server.
That may be true...
... but blocking people in the USA from doing DNS lookups or searches on Chinese web sites is not going to stop Chinese hacking USA sites - it's enforcement in the wrong direction. However, that's not what it's trying to solve, only the piracy issue, the "P" in it's name. Doesn't stop some politicians from implying it's going to fix all those nasty crackers, though. :-(
The thing that worries me is the focus on DNS and search engines - given that peer-to-peer file-sharing (BitTorrent, etc) will be unaffected by both these measures. Sure, it'll stop those going to web sites that ask you to pay for pirated movies, but not people sharing them for free. :-(
It's the bureaucrats typical answer to all security problems...
Security through obfuscation. For some reason, they just can't get it through their collective noggins that it does not and and will not work. Ever.
They think that by making it harder to find such sites, they'll end them. This is what people have been trying to do to "secure" their data ever since the dawn of the information age. It does not work. The only thing that works is true active security that requires constant attention from experienced hackers and crackers. In the end, this will cost you far more than the loss of revenue from "clones" or ripped and cracked property - most intelligent people will buy the originals, or a competitor that's also original. Everyone else was unlikely to have ever bought your stuff in the first place.
As for the government, the answer there is simple - do not host sensitive data over open networks. If a computer is connected to the internet, it should not have sensitive data on it unless it also has both a hacker and a cracker (or someone who is both) constantly guarding it. Again, this would be a waste of our tax dollars better spent on better things. Simply do. not. put. sensitive. data. on. computers. with. internet. access. Simple. Don't even put them on computers that can be accessed directly by computers with internet access. Sensitive data at the government level should be kept completely entirely off the grid.
The problem is that major software developers early on tried and touted security through obfuscation, and, since software and therefore its piracy of it were still in its infancy then, it did work fairly decently for a little while... But these days hackers and crackers have gotten very very skilled at reverse engineering data once received and stealing data off networks to do so. Obfuscation no longer works. Encryption helps, some. But not nearly enough when you are actually a real target. The only real way is to actively protect it. And this costs too much.
Abigail Drew.
Abigail Drew.
this has nothing to do with china
it's got nothing to do with china, or intellectual property theft in general. those things are already illegal, and there's no need for a new law to deal with them.
not as think as i smart i am
0uch
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/11/16/sopa-is-an-easy-no-...
Sad stuff. Well, maybe it's the way it goes nowadays? Patriotism, propaganda, and looking the other way? Then if you're not happy, ask you what 'you got to hide?'. China will get come more 'cyber company' in censuring the Internet, I think France is there too btw. So, is this USA:s 'future'?
Internet a streamlined playground for big corporation's, and Governmental policies?