Hi Peter,
> 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.
Is that like trying to aid Canute by the odd helpful nudge in the right
direction? Except that Canute knew he was on a losing wicket from the
off.
> Have I got a valid viewpoint?
I thought Liz, a former lawyer, gave a good explanation of the problems
with SOPA/PIPA. Couldn't link to it earlier; the site was blacked out.
:-)
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/533
... Under the proposed legislation, it would be illegal for us (or
you) to link to any website – any website at all, including
community-driven behemoths like YouTube, Flickr, Blogspot or
WordPress – without checking first that nothing on that site
infringes copyright. And we’d have to review those sites
continually after a link was made.
Under these Acts, every person making a link to such a site would
have to check the millions of other pages on that site to ensure
that nobody, anywhere, is breaching copyright. Even search results
would be covered under the proposed law. And if a website like ours
were to be prosecuted for linking to another site where copyrighted
material was hosted, our domain could be confiscated and our IP
address added to a USA-wide blacklist, even though we are UK-based
and have servers hosted outside the USA – all this without legal
process. ...
Personally, I think it's great that someone cooks up these proposed
laws; helps bring the issue to the public's attention so they can start
to ask in whose interest it is.
Cheers, Ralph.
--
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
