[vox] What's On the Blacklist? Three Sites That SOPA Could Put at Risk [EFF]

Thu Dec 1 18:58:32 PST 2011

Under current law, the copyright owner can notify the host of alleged 
copyright infringement, and request that the item be removed.  (5-days 
to comply)

The poster, also, has the right to request that it be replaced by 
stating it doesn't violate copyright under "Fair Use".

This constitutes "reasonable effort".

Under the new bill, should the copyright owner file a false report of 
copyright infringement, the poster and the host can both sue for 
expenses associated with defending themselves.

Also, as someone has mentioned (maybe me?), to get a court injunction to 
freeze payments to the hosting site requires "probable cause" that the 
material violates copyright AND that the hosting site has ignored 
requests to remove the material.

FURTHER, IF the hosting site is UNABLE through their efforts to remove 
the posted material, the hosting site is NOT held accountable or liable. 
The hosting site is deemed to have made a reasonable effort.

Takes practice, but almost all laws are written to the 10th grade level 
of reading. Please, do NOT interpret that as a "FLAME".  Laws are 
required to be written so that the average citizen can read and 
comprehend. It just takes practice wading through all the rhetoric. All 
bills are broken into at least 3- parts: 1) Description of what the law 
is addressing 2) the law itself 3) the penalties and protections for 
violating the law and/or filing false reports.

What usually happens though is that the average citizen trusts some 
"authority" to tell them what the law means rather than trust their own 
ability to correctly interpret the material.

Oftentimes, the organizations or individuals screaming the loudest are 
the ones at risk should the legislation be passed and signed into law 
because they know they might be held accountable for future 
transgressions. Laws can NEVER be written to be retroactive, BTW.

Hope you finish reading it.

IMHO,

MJR

On 12/1/2011 3:10 PM, Eric Rasmussen wrote:
> I did read the majority of the bill, but as I said, I'm relying on the
> EFF's interpretation because I am not a lawyer. Also, I haven't been
> talking about liability in terms of fines or later judgments in court.
> We're talking about copyright holders having the ability to notify a
> potentially copyright infringing company's payment processor of the
> copyright infringement, and the payment processor having a period of 5
> days to react. One of the ways they might do that would be to suspend
> payment processing.
>
> If you have an understanding of specifically how that fits in with the
> host showing they've made a reasonable effort to remove the
> copyrighted materials (for instance, do they have a period of time
> after being notified by the payment processor?), then I'm definitely
> interested in learning more about it. Unfortunately that part of the
> bill isn't clear to me.
>
> Thanks!
> Eric
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 2:52 PM, Mikies Runs Baal
> <mikiesrunsbaal.sec at sbcglobal.net>  wrote:
>> READ the bill...
>>
>> It EXPLICITLY states that the host is only liable IF they do NOT make a reasonable effort to remove misused copyrighted materials.
>>
>> IMHO,
>>
>> MJR
>>
>>
>> On 12/1/2011 12:03 PM, Eric Rasmussen wrote:
>>
>> I read that as EFF saying "we don't believe websites that let users post potentially copyright infringing content should be subject to legal threat, but under the new law they will be".
>>
>> If I start an Etsy shop reselling goods from Acme and use Acme's original copyrighted product photos, Etsy could be at risk, even if they don't reasonably have a way to automatically filter out that content. Etsy is then put in a position where they have to put unreasonable controls on the majority of non-copyright-infringing customers to prevent potential legal action.
>>
>> Acme could always ask Etsy to remove the copyright-infringing content, but with the new law they could go straight to the payment processor and prevent Etsy from collecting funds they might need to continue running, regardless of the eventual outcome of the investigation.
>>
>> If I'm understanding it correctly, this means that any of us that one day start a site where users can freely post photos, text (copyrighted lyrics/slogans/etc.) would also be at risk. Sites like Tumblr that host blogs for many users are very concerned about the law for this reason.
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 11:44 AM,<timriley at appahost.com>  wrote:
>>>> -------- Original Message --------
>>>> Subject: [vox] What's On the Blacklist? Three Sites That SOPA Could Put
>>>> at Risk       [EFF]
>>>> From: Brian Lavender<brian at brie.com>
>>>> Date: Thu, December 01, 2011 11:18 am
>>>> To: vox at lists.lugod.org
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> What's On the Blacklist? Three Sites That SOPA Could Put at Risk
>>>> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/11/whats-blacklist-three-sites-sopa-could-put-risk
>>>>
>>>> Don't let well intended idealists fool you. EFF put together some details
>>>> regarding unintended consequences and SOPA.
>>> The key sentence is, "To be clear: we don’t believe that the way
>>> these websites operate is or should be subject to legal threat."
>>>
>>> In other words, the author of this page doesn't believe these websites
>>> are
>>> violating copyright laws. But the author is still going to present these
>>> websites as unintended consequences.
>>>
>>> The reason for one website's unintended consequence is described as,
>>> "That’s a problem, because  under SOPA, anybody who is a 'holder of an
>>> intellectual property right harmed by the activities' of even a portion
>>> of the site, could serve Etsy’s payment processors with a notice that
>>> would
>>> require them to suspend Etsy’s service within 5 days."
>>>
>>> I can't make any sense out of this. Explain again why SOPA could put
>>> Etsy at risk?
>>>
>>> <snip>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> vox at lists.lugod.org
>>> http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox
>>
>>
>>
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