The Glade 4.0

Your Senate wants to kill your ability to access anything they deem inappropriate on the Internet. This looks like one of the biggest threats to free speech in the USA, ever.

Discuss.

http://www.eff.org/issues/coica-interne ... right-bill
http://www.eff.org/pages/sites-coica-ma ... ne-and-why

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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I need more info on how they enforce the blacklist.

In other news: don't provide links to tools or participate in piracy on your domain, and you're safe from this law, barring vendettas from the bench (which can be appealed, in theory).

Does it impinge free speech? Yes. But in a society where we have no qualms about outlawing and criminalizing hate speech, I see no reason to suddenly get up in arms over outlawing and criminalizing speech that is endorsing, encouraging, and facilitating (one could say "conspiring to sponsor") criminal activity. An example of which, last time I checked, copyright infringement is.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

So, you'd be okay with them blocking sites like Rapidshare (which cooperate fully with valid copyright takedown orders) and pirate-party.us (an official and legal political party dedicated to copyright reform)? You'd be okay with them beginning to block anonymizers and proxy servers, and bittorrent software providers? Last time I checked, bittorrent itself wasn't illegal, and has more legitimate uses than illegal ones.

Generally, if EFF opposes something, it's a very bad idea. Everything they have ever protected is absolutely essential to individual freedom in America. Of course, if you're okay with giving that up...

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of EFF. Sometimes they go a little wacky from my perspective, but they tend to, as a rule, choose their battles well and genuinely look for practical and equitable solutions.

The way I see it, Rapidshare could probably appeal, depending on the case made against it (which would depend highly upon how much copyrighted material was on their servers); when you have no screening process and millions of uploads, it's unreasonable to expect IP holders to find the needles in the haystack that represent their own IP in order to defend it. That's not a system that works.

Alternately, Rapidshare could create a screening process, or a process that can compare known copyrighted material to uploads to automatically flag potential violations to be screened manually. (YouTube does something like this, IIRC) Upon doing so, it could then claim that it has made good faith efforts and changed its model substantially to get unblacklisted.

Pirate-party.us has a right to political speech. It doesn't have a right to endorse or teach people how to break the law. If they want to maintain their right to political speech, they need to pare out the other kind.

So, yeah. I respect EFF's position, here, and I think that it may have a point (for instance, I see little purpose in this kind of action if it only applies to US-based DNS servers; such legislation would only be effective (and thus useful) if it were part of an initiative with the backing of the IAB); that does not mean that I'll blindly support or oppose something just because the EFF does. I want more info.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

The problem with these types of laws is they threaten to shut down anything that hosts user-generated content which doesn't rely on whitelisting. For example, depending on how strict the law is, they could shut down Battle.net because certain Starcraft II custom maps contain copyrighted material in them, it's simply not feasible for Blizzard to screen everything that gets uploaded.

Well, then either copyright law has to change, or these sites need to make it their priority to figure out how to make it feasible to screen user-contributed content.

Or, shock of shocks, maybe user-contributed content isn't the future. Or at the very least, maybe anonymous user-contributed content isn't. A lot of copyrighted **** gets taken off of these sites already; why is there no deterrent for the user to upload them? Because they're anonymous (or vaguely so) and thus the IP owner can't touch them to discourage infringing behavior. Right now, the best they can do is make the host take it down, and it'll just get uploaded again from somebody else.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Actually, copyright law would need to change to support your argument. It is not Youtube's responsibility to ensure posted videos do not violate copyright before they're available. It is never the site's responsibility. Their only responsibility by law is to comply with legal takedown requests from verified copyright holders. This is reasonable, and in line with every other area of law. It is not the landlord's responsibility to ensure his tennants are not laundering money on his property. It is not the auto manufacturers responsibility to ensure his vehicles are not used as getaway vehicles. The goverment is not held liable when a drunk driver hits somebody walking on a public sidewalk. So in current (and any sane iteration of) copyright law, it is not the site's responsibility to ensure user-uploaded content never violates any copyright.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

On the contrary, people do have a First Amendment right to endorse violation of the law and even to explain how to get away with it. There's a narrow exception for incitement when the speech is both intended and likely to create an imminent breach of the peace, but it really is a very narrow exception.

So, where's the line between conspiracy and free speech, then? Isn't conspiracy planning a crime? How does teaching somebody how to commit that crime, absent good faith judgements that the student is not going to commit them (say, teaching licensed locksmiths how to pick a new type of lock they might encounter on the job) not conspiring with them to commit the crime?

And, Talya -- I disagree. Copyright makes it illegal to distribute a copyrighted work without the express consent of the copyright holder. If I am hosting material on the internet, and allowing it to be accessed, I am distributing that work. We're not talking about a landlord, here -- the host is PROVIDING THE SERVICE OF DISTRIBUTION himself. We're not talking about an auto manufacturer building getaway vehicles, we're talking about the limo driver idling outside the bank robbery.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

If that were true, at $150,000 per incident of infringement, Google's billions would be in the hands of the RIAA for Youtube infractions.

But it is NOT true. The RIAA doesn't sue Youtube, it just notifies them that a particular video's audio-content is copyrighted and Youtube complies with removing it.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

And I can't figure out why that's the case. The way I've read what copyright law I have, I can't figure out why they're not getting nailed for violations, rather than getting the chance to comply with a cease and desist. Probably because it's civil vs. criminal prosecution, and the criminal prosecution doesn't want to test the user agreements (where the user agrees not to upload copyrighted content) for some reason.

In any event, copyright is the sole right, supported by law, to distribute the copyrighted material, not the right, supported by law, to ask nicely first when you catch somebody else distributing it.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Because copyright law has to be enforced by the copyright holder?

If the copyright holder doesn't say "Hey, that's copyrighted" then there's no infraction.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Conspiracy requires an actual agreement between the parties to commit the crime. Encouraging others to commit a crime, even giving advice on how it could be done, is quite different than actually teaming up to do it.

Conspiracy charges are far from that simple.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Oh I know, but in terms of differentiating between advocacy and conspiracy, the lack of agreement is key.

But can you honestly suggest that pirate-party.us, when it writes an article on bittorrent, *isn't* in agreement with the reader when the reader then goes on to download copyrighted ****?

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Actually, having actually read it, this bill is actually much worse than originally posted. Because it operates by imposing a blacklist on the Internet's root nameservers, this bill essentially allows the US government to dictate to the entire world what can and can not be accessed on the Internet. Remember, the US government or US companies own 10 of the 13 DNS nameservers, and have substantial control over the other three.

Then it would actually be effective. Nifty.

I should point out, that there are international agreements over the entire first world and 95% of the second world to honor each other's copyright laws.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Blocking DNS is equivalent to refusing to publish a number in the phone book.

No speech is infringed upon.

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In time, this too shall pass.

What percentage of Internet-using people do you think actually know you can reach a site by typing in the IP address?

DNS offers a convenient method to advertise and access a site, sure. Still doesn't infringe on speech if it's blocked.

http://74.125.95.99

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In time, this too shall pass.

Well, pretend for a minute that instead of piracy, the site is focused on something legal like buying a house. The site owner writes articles and hosts discussion forums advocating that people buy houses, providing advice on how to do it, and even linking to real estate agents, mortgage lenders, etc. Would you say the site owner and the readers have a mutual agreement to buy houses, that a subsequent purchase of a house by a reader is actually a joint undertaking with the site owner because the reader relies in part on advice/information he gleaned from the site owner's articles? Obviously not. Once you take away the criminality part of it, it's pretty clear that writing articles and hosting web sites on a topic doesn't establish any kind of agreement between the author/host and the readers to pursue a course of action together.

But doesn't intent factor into it RD?

If I post a website that gives a realistic how to guide on how to take down Marine 1 using easily obtained items and easily employed methods, would a reasonable person say that my intent was to have someone attempt to take down Marine 1? Or would a reasonable person say I was just attempting to host a discussion about what would be required to take down such a vehicle?

I think information should be free, but peoples intellectual property should not. Pirating things isn't justifiable, just rationalized.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

That's not such a great example because you're talking about taking down a specific helicopter and so a much stronger case can be made that you're advocating a specific course of action.

On the other hand, if you hosted a website on how one goes about shooting down helicopters in general, or how antiaircraft systems in general ought to be employed, or a study on improvised antiaircraft systems, that would be much closer to RDs example.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Not only that, but there are specific, exceptional laws when it comes to the POTUS.