SOPA aka Internet Censorship: Who's For It, Who's Against It...

[TheZookie007]

...and why we ALL have to make sure that it never succeeds. You thought the diminution of newsgroups was bad (no thank you to the current Governor of New York for his role in that)? You should get a load of what the Stop Online Piracy Act would do:

The Stop Online Piracy Act would ruin so much of what's best about the Internet: It will give the government and corporations new powers to block Americans' access to sites that are accused of copyright infringement, force sites like YouTube to go to new lengths to police users' contributions, and put people in prison for streaming certain content online.

For:  
Gizmodo: "Apple, Microsoft, and the 27 Other Tech Giants Who Support the Awful Internet Censorship Bill"


Against:
Demand Progress: "We Are Winning: Pelosi Comes Out Against Internet Censorship Bill"


Please consider signing the Demand Progress petition. Oh, and keep an eye on the PROTECT IP Act too; an equally nausea inducing attempt to clamp down on the Internet.

[TheZookie007]

If you purchased any domains via GoDaddy, now would be a good time to transfer them away. GoDaddy is the only Internet domain name registrar on the list of supporters for this pernicious bit of legislative overreach. As if you needed another reason to hate fucking GoDaddy. 

Here is step-by-step guide to transferring your domains away from them, and you will be in good company: Ben Huh of the I Can Haz Cheezburger empire is moving 1,000 domains away from them. And if you want to save a few bucks, you can use the coupons here and  here and here.

Fuck Bob Parsons.

[TheZookie007]

namecheap: "GoDaddy and Transfer Issues"

We wanted to give our customers a quick update on the status of domain transfers associated with one of our competitors, GoDaddy.

First, we’re very sorry that some of you in the past 24 hours have experienced delays in transferring domains over to us.

As many customers have recently complained of transfer issues, we suspect that this competitor is thwarting efforts to transfer domains away from them.

Specifically, GoDaddy appears to be returning incomplete WHOIS information to Namecheap, delaying the transfer process. This practice is against ICANN rules.

We at Namecheap believe that this action speaks volumes about the impact that informed customers are having on GoDaddy’s business.

It’s a shame that GoDaddy feels they have to block their (former) customers from voting with their dollars. We can only guess that at GoDaddy, desperate times call for desperate measures....

[Night Lord]

I don't think that this falls into the category of censorship at all. Censorship is limiting someone's right to free speech. What this bill does is stop people from illegally misappropriating the intellectual property of a third party. I am totally against censorship in nearly every venue, especially on the internet. I'm not particularly fond of this proposal either, but let's not mislead people. No one is saying 'you can't comment about subject X,' which is censorship. What they are saying is 'You can't have total free reign over someone else's words (music, video, photos, etc) because they are not yours. Create your own, use the property of others within the scope of the law or stay silent.' This is by its very definition NOT CENSORSHIP.

[Palomine]

FUCK SOPA!

[sidewalkpsycho]

And this, my friends, is how free a country you really live in.

[pedonbio]

So, Pal, tell us how you REALLY feel.

Night Lord, there are a whole bunch of problems with SOPA. Have you ever posted a picture here? That becomes a crime. Have you ever morphed a picture? That would probably be a crime. Have you ever posted a link? Dude, under SOPA you would be a multiple offender!

[TheZookie007]

Under SOPA a site like this would be completely illegal.

[MasterDragonfly]

Right-click on image and open in new tab/window for full size.

Original: http://www.joyoftech.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/1633.html

[TheZookie007]

TechDirt: "The Definitive Post On Why SOPA And Protect IP Are Bad, Bad Ideas"

[MasterDragonfly]

Law Professors On SOPA and PIPA: Don't Break the Internet

[Bad Kitty]

Boycott on GoDaddy.com causes the loss of 37,000 clients in 48 hours. GoDaddy immediately reverses it's prior support for SOPA. Sony, EA, Nintendo also reverse their support for SOPA after observing the potential for substantial boycott leverage.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sopa_godaddy_and_the_bottom-up_democracy_or_mob_ru.php

AOL, eBay, Etsy, **24**, foursquare, Google, IAC, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Open DNS, PayPal, Twitter, Wikipedia Foundation, Yahoo!, and Zynga Game Network are considering a 24 hour blackout of their web content to protest the SOPA act, and raise public awareness of the proposed bill. (yeah, that's like half of the internet)
http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/sopa-opponents-unite-and-consider-online-blackout.html/



*Congress reconvenes on Jan 24th, the SOPA bill could go to vote as early as then.

[rtpoe]

Life will suck if they censor the Internet

[TheZookie007]

Boycott on GoDaddy.com causes the loss of 37,000 clients in 48 hours. GoDaddy immediately reverses it's prior support for SOPA.

GoDaddy didn't reverse its support. They helped write the damn thing. Unless and until they actively oppose SOPA, I will continue to encourage boycotting them.

[Bad Kitty]

*nod*
they did say something to the effect that sopa has failed to garner widespread industry support, so maybe it's not so good.
it's kinda just lip service anyway. they saw business drying up, and they said whatever would slow that loss of profit.

I agree with continuing to boycott them.

[gonZo]

White House Will Not Support SOPA, PIPA
First Posted: 1/14/12 12:19 PM ET Updated: 1/14/12 04:59 PM ET

Saturday marked a major victory for opponents of proposed anti-piracy legislation Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), which would target foreign-based websites violating U.S. copyrights.

House of Representatives bill SOPA and its Senate counterpart PIPA are designed to punish websites that make available, for example, free movies and music without the permission of the U.S. rights holders. Opponents of the bills, however, worry that the proposed laws would grant the Department of Justice too much regulatory power. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has called the measures "draconian." Other Internet giants who oppose the bill include **24**, eBay, Mozilla, Twitter, and Huffington Post parent company AOL.

The White House on Saturday officially responded to two online petitions, "Stop the E-PARASITE Act" and "Veto the SOPA bill and any other future bills that threaten to diminish the free flow of information," urging the President to reject SOPA and PIPA.

The statement was drawn up by Victoria Espinel, Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator at Office of Management and Budget, Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Chief Technology Officer, and Howard Schmidt, Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator for National Security Staff. They made clear that the White House will not support legislation that disrupts the open standards of the Internet.

"While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet," the statement read in part.

The White House statement went on to say, however, that the Obama Administration believes "online piracy is a real problem that harms the American economy" and that 2012 should see the passage of narrower legislation that targets the source of foreign copyright infringement.

The letter also highlighted the following four points:

Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small. [...] We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet. [...] That is why the Administration calls on all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors and rights holders new legal tools to combat online piracy originating beyond U.S. borders [...] We expect and encourage all private parties, including both content creators and Internet platform providers working together, to adopt voluntary measures and best practices to reduce online piracy.

This is not the end of the debate, the White House statement emphasized. "Moving forward, we will continue to work with Congress on a bipartisan basis on legislation that provides new tools needed in the global fight against piracy and counterfeiting, while vigorously defending an open Internet based on the values of free expression, privacy, security and innovation," the letter also read.

Following the release of the White House's statement, SOPA sponsor and House Judiciary Chairman (R-Texas) Lamar Smith issued a statement of his own.

“I welcome today’s announcement that the White House will support legislation to combat online piracy that protects free speech, the Internet and America’s intellectual property," Smith said, according to The Hill. "That’s precisely what the Stop Online Piracy Act does."

On Friday, CNET reported that Smith said he will remove from the bill one of the most hotly contested provisions, Domain Name System requirements. Previously, SOPA had called for DNS blocking of infringing websites.

On Thursday, PIPA author Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) said that "more study" was needed to asses the bill's DNS-blocking provision.

The White House's statement condemned DNS blocking in regulatory efforts and said that it "pose(s) a real risk to cybersecurity and yet leave contraband goods and services accessible online. We must avoid legislation that drives users to dangerous, unreliable DNS servers and puts next-generation security policies, such as the deployment of DNSSEC, at risk."

A House Oversight Committee hearing on SOPA's DNS-blocking provision had previously been scheduled for January 18. However, according to Tech Dirt, Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-California) said that the hearing will be postponed for the time being and that the focus now should be placed on the Senate's PIPA bill, which Senate Majority leader Harry Reid has committed to moving forward in the next two weeks.

UPDATE: The Motion Picture Association of America Inc. (MPAA), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have each released a response to the White House's position on SOPA and PIPA.

Michael O’Leary, Senior Executive Vice President for Global Policy and External Affairs for the MPAA said the following in a statement emailed to the HuffPost:

While we agree with the White House that protection against online piracy is vital, that protection must be meaningful to protect the people who have been and will continue to be victimized if legislation is not enacted. Meaningful legislation must include measured and reasonable remedies that include ad brokers, payment processors and search engines. They must be part of a solution that stops theft and protects American consumers. [...] On behalf of the 2.2 million Americans whose jobs depend on the film and television industries, we look forward to the Administration playing a constructive role in this process and working with us to pass legislation that will offer real protection for American jobs.

In the same email, Mitch Glazier, Senior Executive Vice President of the RIAA, said, "[L]egislation is of no benefit, nor will we support it, if it allows the leading Internet companies to direct law abiding consumers to unlawful and dangerous sites."

David Hirschmann, President and CEO of the Global Intellectual Property Center at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, reiterated the Chamber's strong support for both SOPA and PIPA. "The Administration's main concern, centered on DNS issues, has already been addressed by both Senator Leahy and Representative Smith. We also applaud Senator Reid, Senator Leahy, and Representative Smith for their commitment to move forward with pending legislation through an open and bipartisan process," Hirschmann said.

[pedonbio]

Just a note: Rupert Murdoch has denounced President Obama's opposition to both bills.

[Bad Kitty]

Just a note: Rupert Murdoch has denounced President Obama's opposition to both bills.

wha? the media mogul? crying because not every politician wants to crown a handful of media corporations "dictators of the internet"? *gasp*

[TheZookie007]

I'm not declaring victory until all three bills (SOPA, PIPA and e-Parasite) die, and die a death. No "shelving", no "we're going back to the drawing board", no "we're waiting for a consensus of the Internet community", none of that shit.

[TheZookie007]

Oh, and FUCK RUPERT MURDOCH. Two times!

vimeo: "PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet"

[pedonbio]

I'm not declaring victory until all three bills (SOPA, PIPA and e-Parasite) die, and die a death. No "shelving", no "we're going back to the drawing board", no "we're waiting for a consensus of the Internet community", none of that shit.

I agree, Zookie. It is damn near impossible to see what is going on, not being in congress. But it looks like the votes aren't there for SOPA; apparently there are enough votes in the senate for PIPA, but Reid won't bring it up if President Obama opposes it.

[SamV]

I have no problem with protection of the intellectual property rights of media content creators, but I wonder if the huge drop in US ticket sales this past year is one reason the MPAA is pushing so hard for passing of this legislation due to the belief that piracy is the reason for this drop in their business among the movie going public?

Of course given the fact that almost every major motion picture churned out this past year by the studios was shown in 3D (and rather crappy 3D at that) along with an associated jacked up price for a ticket (not wise in these tough economic times) for said 3D movie might have had more to do with it.

Perhaps the studios should go back to making regular (read that as non 3D) movies and lower the ticket prices to get more people back in the theaters. After all, not every movie can be an Avatar; nor should they.  

[gonZo]

.

[pedonbio]

I have no problem with protection of the intellectual property rights of media content creators, 

Nobody does. This is yet another example of Disney throwing its weight around. What Disney wants, Disney tries to buy.

[rtpoe]

And you'd think Disney would be burying Julius Zimmerman in C&D letters for his pornographic drawings of their characters....

[TheZookie007]

You ask the likes of the MPAA and the RIAA and they say "We're doing this for our artists". Meanwhile, here's those same artists saying, in effect, "Nuh-uh, you don't represent us. Step off."

Ars Technica: "The Lonely Island gets off its boat to oppose SOPA"

The Lonely Island, the three-man comedy troupe behind such hit songs as "I'm on a boat," has joined a group of artists opposed to SOPA.

"As creative professionals, we experience copyright infringement on a very personal level," they wrote in a letter today. "Commercial piracy is deeply unfair and pervasive leaks of unreleased films and music regularly interfere with the integrity of our creations."

But they add that they, "along with the rest of society, have benefited immensely from a free and open Internet. It allows us to connect with our fans and reach new audiences. Using social media services like **24**, Twitter and YouTube, we can communicate directly with millions of fans and interact with them in ways that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. We fear that the broad new enforcement powers provided under SOPA and PIPA could be easily abused against legitimate services like those upon which we depend."

As for effectiveness, the artists are concerned that it would be "negligible compared to the potential damage that would be caused to legitimate Internet services. Online piracy is harmful and it needs to be addressed, but not at the expense of censoring creativity, stifling innovation or preventing the creation of new, lawful digital distribution methods."

The letter was signed by comic Aziz Ansari, author Neil Gaiman, musicians Trent Reznor and MGMT, MythBusters host Adam Savage, and others.

Separately, a host of small performers' organization have come out in opposition to SOPA, including Chorus America, Dance/USA, Fractured Atlas, National Alliance for Media Art and Culture, National Alliance for Musical Theatre, National Performance Network, and OPERA America.

[pedonbio]

 

[Bad Kitty]

even as it looks as though sopa may be reeling from the public backlash, let us not forget about PIPA...

and let us not forget that fundamentally, our government leaders have proven themselves far more interested in bribes by media corporations than in doing what is right. perhaps that's not surprising, but the scale and degree of it, means that we cannot even for a moment assume they will vote with good intentions or the best interests of the people at heart.

'the system' is broken to the point of needing continuous monitoring, and massive public participation, just to function correctly.

the people who wrote SOPA for congress, will continue to try to take control over the internet. Making charts labeled "piracy losses" that mainly depict the recession, and the fact that many artists now self-promote using the internet (instead of signing with them), both of which are responsible for the vast bulk of lost revenues, as an excuse to leverage lawmakers into granting them ridiculous powers over the only media market which is not yet completely controlled by this handful of monopolies.

[solvegas]

Maybe now many of you can understand what we gun owners have to continiously fight when anti-gunners want to regulate us out of existance. The misuse by a few should be no excuse to deny all their civil rights, especially those emnumerated on the Constitution.

[Bad Kitty]

Honestly with large well funded watchdog groups like the NRA, keeping track of gun legislation is much easier.
plus there are politicians who side with gun owner's rights, as a platform principal to get votes. with things like SOPA, it had almost unilateral support in congress, because almost all of them took bribes to railroad the bill through. the first amendment is unfortunately in more dire danger than the second. ideally neither should be in danger though.

[Palomine]

Maybe now many of you can understand what we gun owners have to continiously fight when anti-gunners want to regulate us out of existance. The misuse by a few should be no excuse to deny all their civil rights, especially those emnumerated on the Constitution.

No offense, but that's the silliest and most spurious analogy I've heard in ages!

As much as I thoroughly detest SOPA, over-zealous copyright protection is responsible for ZERO lives lost in the United States each year. On the other hand, the staggeringly excessive quantity of firearms in this country (conservative estimates generally range from 192 to 235 MILLION guns in a country of only 307 million people TOTAL including chi1dren) plays a major factor in the deaths of thousands of Americans each year (8,875 in 2010 per The Guardian).

"Regulate gun owners out of existence!?" That's alarmist rhetoric not based in reality. That's like all the right-wing demagouges constantly complaining that Christianity is under attack in America with their 'war on Christmas' nonsense: how self-identified Christians, who make up between 60-76% of all Americans according to Wikipedia (the next largest group other than unaffiliated are Jews, who make up between 1.2 and 2.2%), can manage to see themselves as a persecuted minority is just an example of propaganda... just like the 'trying to take away all privately-owned guns' meme. It's nothing more than a convenient fiction used to play on base fears, manipulate followers and raise funds for lobbying (in exactly the same way that SOPA gained congressional support: money). Thusly: there are roughly 35 TIMES as many Christians in the US vs the next largest self-identified religious group (Jews at about 2% max) yet the 'poor persecuted Christians are under attack' meme thrives daily thanks to Faux Nooz et al... similarly, there's at least one (and probably more like 1.something) gun for every single adult in America: about/at least 200 million firearms in private hands, yet the NRA and it's lackeys/propaganda/lobbyists/purchased politicians would have you believe that too is a precarious situation about to be reversed any minute now (as if such a thing were even ever possible... such paranoia of Big Bad Government coming to take away guns reminds me of nothing so much as the pathetically paranoid fictions of "The Turner Diaries" ...that's how little sense it has in the actual world of our shared reality). The fact that the NRA continues to leverage these lies to raise cash simply proves that it's happy to lie to people if doing so serves desired ends and from that, we can easily infer that it has a very low opinion of the intelligence of NRA members given how eager it is to foist such fictions upon them.

SOPA sucks, but even if implemented exactly as the MPAA and RIAA would like, it wouldn't ever kill a single person. Neither will copyright infringement for that matter. You can't say the same thing about firearms, especially when owned and sold in vast quantities, some to folks proud of their own ignorance and paranoia.

[brakblake]

FUCK SOPA!

2nd

[Palomine]

SOPA BLOWBACK:

After the forced closure and legal action against Megaupload the other day, FileSonic just discontinued all sharing of online files this afternoon (the only DLs possible are from within accounts: i.e.: only the party that ULd something can still DL it... the days of clicking on a link there to see something that someone else uploaded are over). Other services may be likely to follow... I've noticed that a ton of very-recently-uploaded stuff was lately purged from Wupload too (just prior to the Megaupload thing). More here courtesy of Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/filesonic-has-disabled-file-sharing-in-wake-of-megaupload-takedown.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss

There's speculation that the Megaupload crack-down happening so close to the consideration of SOPA isn't entirely coincidental... that it's the Justice Dept's way of saying to the interested pro-SOPA parties: "don't worry, we've got your back even w/o SOPA". Though it's always been a wise policy to consider ALL content at third-party hosts TEMPORARY it would seem that's going to be even MORE TRUE than ever before now.

Not to come off like Chicken Little, but recent events would suggest that online material will likely have fewer safe harbors than in years past, and when something is posted, it's lifespan (of availability online) is likely to be much shorter than before. Given their distributed nature, individuals utilizing peer-based networks shouldn't be impacted (though aggregators remain potential targets of course).

Added Sunday evening: I gather that Uploaded.to has discontinued access to it's file hosting services to all US users, though I haven't verified this personally. Turbobit.net has done the same: U.S. users can no longer use it.

And tangentially related, it would seem that US Customs now requires your solemn oath that media you receive in the mail from overseas doesn't advocate anti-American ideologies: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.339243-USA-Customs-are-policing-DVDs-now ...the irony of this: how inherently un-American such a demand is... seems lost on our government, no matter how well-intentioned they might be (or think themselves to be).  

Added Jan 24: the Ultrafiles server is gone now too. Not such a loss since Ultrafiles' server never 'had any slots available in your country' pretty much no matter which country you were in and what time of day you were trying. IMO, they 'offering' the *theoretical possibility* of a free DL was merely their way of marketing paid DL subscriptions. Yet another fileshare site now apparently vanished is Uploadstore.net though I don't know if it disappeared recently or not.  

Added Feb 6: as of today FileFactory is 'temporarily' suspending all free downloads beyond 500M... after MegaUpload and Filesonic, Filefactory was/is probably the most heavily used file host, so this limit will impact some. Also, today turbobit.net suspended all downloads to the U.S.

Added Feb 11: FileFactory continues to be overwhelmed due to traffic... if something you want is hosted there, you'd better access it sooner rather than later since I'd not be surprised to see it go the way of FileSonic. Other hosts that still work more-or-less include: Oron, Hotfile, Crocko, Furk, Rapidshare, Depositfiles, Mediafire and Fileserve... some purge new ULs quicker than others of course. 

[pedonbio]

SOPA sucks, but even if implemented exactly as the MPAA and RIAA would like, it wouldn't ever kill a single person. Neither will copyright infringement for that matter. You can't say the same thing about firearms, especially when owned and sold in vast quantities, some to folks proud of their own ignorance and paranoia.

One of the deepest pieces of anaysis I've come across about guns in the U.S. is Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" movie. What is amusing about it is that I have read scores of rabid, right-wing and gun enthusiast denunciations by people who have never seen it. Those of us who have seen it know that after considerable exploration, Moore concludes that the difference in murder rates between the U.S. and Canada is not because of gun ownership, but because of the ignorance and paranoia resulting from the failures of local television news reporting.

Of course it is necessary to parse out the various ways of dying. Owning a gun makes it much more likely that a person will die by suicide, or that a family member will die in a gun-related accident. 

[Poli]

Big brother is watching your ass.. and fucks it up..