American Censorship Day 11/16

[La Bijou]

Today, Congress holds hearings on the first American Internet censorship system.This bill can pass. If it does the Internet and free speech will never be the same. The government can order service providers to block websites for infringing links posted by any users. It becomes a felony with a potential 5 year sentence to stream a copyrighted work that would cost more than $2,500 to license, even if you are a totally noncommercial user, e.g. singing a pop song on Facebook. Thousands of sites that are legal under the DMCA would face new legal threats. People trying to keep the internet more secure wouldn't be able to rely on the integrity of the DNS system. - http://americancensorship.org/

Let’s make one thing clear from the get-go: despite all the talk about this bill being directed only toward “rogue” foreign sites, there is no question that it targets US companies as well. The bill sets up a system to punish sites allegedly “dedicated to the theft of US property.” How do you get that label? Doesn’t take much: Some portion of your site (even a single page) must

be directed toward the US, and either
allegedly “engage in, enable or facilitate” infringement or
allegedly be taking or have taken steps to “avoid confirming a high probability” of infringement.

If an IP rightsholder (vaguely defined – could be Justin Bieber worried about his publicity rights) thinks you meet the criteria and that it is in some way harmed, it can send a notice claiming as much to the payment processors (Visa, Mastercard, Paypal etc.) and ad services you rely on.

Once they get it, they have 5 days to choke off your financial support. Of course, the payment processors and ad networks won’t be able to fine-tune their response so that only the allegedly infringing portion of your site is affected, which means your whole site will be under assault. And, it makes no difference that no judge has found you guilty of anything or that the DMCA safe harbors would shelter your conduct if the matter ever went to court. Indeed, services that have been specifically found legal, like Rapidshare, could be economically strangled via SOPA. You can file a counter-notice, but you’ve only got 5 days to do it (good luck getting solid legal advice in time) and the payment processors and ad networks have no obligation to respect it in any event. That’s because there are vigilante provisions that grant them immunity for choking off a site if they have a “reasonable belief” that some portion of the site enables infringement.

At a minimum, this means that any service that hosts user generated content is going to be under enormous pressure to actively monitor and filter that content. That’s a huge burden, and worse for services that are just getting started – the YouTubes of tomorrow that are generating jobs today. And no matter what they do, we’re going to see a flurry of notices anyway – as we’ve learned from the DMCA takedown process, content owners are more than happy to send bogus complaints. What happened to Wikileaks via voluntary censorship will now be systematized and streamlined – as long as someone, somewhere, thinks they’ve got an IP right that’s being harmed.

In essence, Hollywood is tired of those pesky laws that help protect innovation, economic growth, and creativity rather than outmoded business models. So they are trying to rewrite the rules, regulate the Internet, and damn the consequences for the rest of us.

Watch this space for more analysis, but don’t wait to act. This bill cannot be fixed; it must be killed. The bill’s sponsors (and their corporate backers) want to push this thing through quickly, before ordinary citizens get wind of the harm it is going to cause. If you don’t want to let big media control the future of innovation and online expression, act now, and urge everyone you know to do the same. - https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/10/sopa-hollywood-finally-gets-chance-break-internet


I copy and paste from this site, but if this gets passed, this will also affect Gaia also, hell it will affect ALL social networks. You can sign the petition on the site. The site has video and more info then what I just put up. If this passes, we will be just like China. Our downloading or even watching youtube videos will be taken away from us.  

[RaynebowBunnyBuns]

Why do we need to pass laws to protect the wealthy? Nearly everyone uses the internet. Most of those people are stupid. They won't know any better, and bllions of people would be screwed.
So where am I supposed to watch my pirated films and illegally download music? Have you EVER seen a starving movie star or musician who had albums popular enough to actually be able to illegally download? I know I haven't.
This bill can burn.  

[La Bijou]

BunnyMonstarz

Why do we need to pass laws to protect the wealthy? Nearly everyone uses the internet. Most of those people are stupid. They won't know any better, and bllions of people would be screwed.
So where am I supposed to watch my pirated films and illegally download music? Have you EVER seen a starving movie star or musician who had albums popular enough to actually be able to illegally download? I know I haven't.
This bill can burn.

Ditto  

[Necro the Reapess]

★ When I saw that on the 15th, it made me so mad. :]