[vox] Regarding: "Stop Online Piracy Act" that everybody screams about...

[Brian Lavender]

On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 11:11:48AM -0700, timriley at appahost.com wrote:
> > -------- Original Message --------
> > Subject: Re: [vox] Regarding: "Stop Online Piracy Act" that everybody
> > screams about...
> > From: Bill Broadley <bill at broadley.org>
> > Date: Tue, November 22, 2011 10:42 pm
> > To: vox at lists.lugod.org
> > 
> > 
> > On 11/22/2011 08:41 PM, Mikies Runs Baal wrote:
> > > Heya Bill,
> > > 
> > > Besides me, has anyone bothered to d/l and read the actual bill to find 
> > > out IF and WHAT the hubris is actually about.
> > 
> > I've not read it, care to summarize?  I found this link but no idea how
> > biased it is:
> > http://mashable.com/2011/11/16/sopa-infographic/
> 
> Well, this viewpoint is definitely biased against the bill. It admits,
> "An activist group organized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation
> (EFF),
> Creative Commons, Mozilla, Public Knowledge, the Free Software
> Foundation
> and others who oppose the bill, created the infographic."
> 
> I would even go to say it's propaganda. The first sentence is,
> "A new bill will allow the US Government to block Americans from
> visiting websites." Following, it lists 3 totalitarian countries
> (including China) using blocking technology. Then it says it's
> going to summarize the bill: "As with any bill, it???s complicated,
> but this infographic boils it down." But still, you have to press
> a link to get any idea of what the proponents are saying.
> 
> However, that link doesn't "boil it down" either. The best
> proponent information is, "While they support the bill???s goals
> of preventing rogue sites from distributing copyrighted
> materials, ..." Well, that seems prudent -- copyright
> laws go back to colonial times, and they should be
> enforced. If a rogue site is giving away an art that
> the artist should otherwise receive a royalty, then
> the government should try to prevent this theft.
> 
> I tracked down the actual bill:
> http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr3261ih/pdf/BILLS-112hr3261ih.pdf
> 
> The key sentence is:
> "In GENERAL -- A service provider shall take technically feasible and
> reasonable measures designed to prevent access by its subscribers
> located within the United States to the foreign infringing site
> (or portion thereof) that is subject to the order, including measures
> designed to prevent the domain name of the foreign infringing site
> (or portion thereof) from resolving to that domain name's Internet
> Protocol address."
> 
> The term "foreign infringing site" is not defined. But it can
> technically
> only mean an Internet site in a foreign country that infringes upon
> a U.S. copyright law.
> 
> So probably, the top-level domain servers (.com, .net, etc.) will have
> to obey a government-produced DNS blacklist. Every IP address
> on that blacklist is supposed to be located outside the U.S.,
> and the owner(s) of that server are alleged to have hosted
> copyrighted material without the copyright owner's permission.
> 
> Opinion: This will succeed at mitigating copyright infringement.
> (Of course, I can already feel your gears churning with
> workarounds.) And it doesn't seem to violate the U.S
> constitution. Maybe the devil is in the details.
> 

A lot of legislation these days comes from corporations. It goes
like this.  If you want to get elected, you need money to campaign to
buy advertising and fund groups (think tanks) that will create good
propaganda for you. And, most politicians return the favor. I find it
ironic that TV and radio advertising rakes in billions of dollars from
election campaigns that broadcast on the air we breath.

Copyright now is on the Mickey Mouse payment plan as copyright law
continually gets extended so that Mickey won't fall into public domain.

Programming which is based upon language theory now falls under patent
law. But, if you think patents on software is bad, wait until patents
on biotechnology start to show their impact. That will be a doosey.

We had a decent copyright and patent system, but as technology has
changed the tricksters say that the laws need revising.

Seeing how the supreme court now considers corporations people, I guess
they ought to have an opinion too. Especially considering that they are
the ones who contributed mostly to the bill.

-- 
Brian Lavender
http://www.brie.com/brian/

"There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to
make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other
way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies."

Professor C. A. R. Hoare
The 1980 Turing award lecture