On Tuesday 17 Jan 2012 21:02:21 Peter Merchant wrote: > I see in the technical news that Obama doesn't like Sopa and Pipa as > currently prepared. It seems like a lot of other people (Wikipedia) > don't either and are taking attempts to block it/them totally by closing > down aspects of the Internet for a short time. I always feel in these > circumstances that negotiation/evolution is better than revolution, and > rather than taking revolutionary action to just make a point, these > intelligent people should be suggesting alternates or modifications to > make it workable in what Sopa wants to achieve, without the negative > aspects, such as the possible effect on open-source software.
They have. They've pointed out that the measures being proposed by the two bills will (as usual) penalise the honest and make absolutely no difference to the criminals. There are already work-rounds for the measures available, but of course the US would consider anyone who makes use of them a criminal under the DMCA. Not only that, the bills effectively allow the USA DoJ to dictate to the rest of the World by getting US Courts to close down whole websites (especially foreign ones) by removing their record in the DNS. The actions by Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, etc are simply top demonstrate to the World what would happen if a single page of a website, (say YouTube) was found to be infringing under the Act; the whole of YouTube could be blacked out with little or no right of defence until *after* the event. Having said all that, the argument is not really about copyright infringement; it's about freedom of speech and fair and just laws. What the people at Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, plus individuals like Vint Cerf, etc are worried about is that the bills give organisations, eg the US Government, the power to shut down dissenting voices by simply trumping up copyright infringement charges. > Have I got a valid viewpoint? You would have if there weren't vested interests. Since the whole thing has been funded by the movie and music industry (through campaign contributions etc), there is very little chance that take-downs will be fair and equitable. Remember that we are talking about an industry that have sued grannies and twelve year olds for Millions of bucks; they're not going to quibble just because their take down orders black out half of their competition. Some links: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57344028-281/vint-cerf-sopa-means- unprecedented-censorship-of-the-web/?tag=mncol;txt http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/17/stop-sopa-or- web-will-go-dark http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act -- Terry Coles 64 bit computing with Kubuntu Linux -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, second Tuesday 2012-02-07 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread on mailing list: mailto:[email protected] How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
