Stop SOPA n PIPA

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Believe

@-Believe-

Stunner

+ 2

Posted: 13 years ago

#61

SOPAthetic

According to SOPA you can get five years for downloading a Michael Jackson song illegally, that's a year more than the doctor who killed him.😆

Edited by Prometeus - 13 years ago

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Divya

@dkmystery

Stunner

+ 4

Posted: 13 years ago

#62

Lawmakers stopped anti-piracy legislation in its tracks, delivering a stunning win for internet companies that staged an unprecedented online protest this week to kill the previously fast-moving bills.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said he would postpone a critical vote that had been scheduled for January 24 "in light of recent events."

Lamar Smith, the Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, followed suit, saying his panel would delay action on similar legislation until there is wider agreement on the issue.

"I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy. It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products," Smith said in a statement.

The bills, known as PIPA (PROTECT IP Act) in the Senate and SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) in the House, are aimed at curbing access to overseas websites that traffic in pirated content and counterfeit products, such as movies and music.

The legislation has been a priority for entertainment companies, publishers, pharmaceutical companies and other industry groups who say it is critical to curbing online piracy, which they believe costs them billions of dollars a year.

But technology companies are concerned the laws would undermine Internet freedoms, be difficult to enforce and encourage frivolous lawsuits.

Public sentiment on the bills shifted in recent weeks after internet players ramped up their lobbying.

White House officials weighed in on Saturday, saying in a blog post that they had concerns about legislation that could make businesses on the Internet vulnerable to litigation and harm legal activity and free speech.

Then on Wednesday, protests blanketed the internet, turning Wikipedia and other popular websites dark for 24 hours. Google, Facebook, Twitter and others protested the proposed legislation but did not shut down.

The protest had quick results: several sponsors of the legislation, including senators Roy Blunt, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, John Boozman and Marco Rubio, have withdrawn their support.

In a brief statement on Friday, Reid said there was no reason why concerns about the legislation cannot be resolved. He offered no new date for the vote.

Reid's action comes a day after a senior Democratic aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the measure lacked the 60 votes needed to clear a procedural hurdle in the 100-member Senate.

Swift reaction
The indefinite postponement of the bills drew quick praise from the Internet community, and ire from Hollywood.

"We appreciate that lawmakers have listened to our community's concerns, and we stand ready to work with them on solutions to piracy and copyright infringement that will not chill free expression or threaten the economic growth and innovation the internet provides," a Facebook spokesman said.

Chris Dodd, chief executive of the Motion Picture Association of America and a former Democratic senator, said the stalling of legislation is a boost for criminals.

"As a consequence of failing to act, there will continue to be a safe haven for foreign thieves," Dodd said.

Way forward?
Lawmakers, technology companies and the entertainment industry pledged to find a way to combat online piracy and copyright infringement.

Reddit.com, a vocal leader in the protests and among the sites to go dark on Wednesday, said it was pleased the protests were able to slow things down, but said piracy needs to be addressed.

"We really need people at the table who have the technical expertise about these issues who can ensure that whatever bills are drafted have airtight, technically sound language, definitions and frameworks," the company's general manager Erik Martin told Reuters.

Reid expressed hope on Friday that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, who has been shepherding the bill through Congress, could help resolve differences in the legislation.

"I am optimistic that we can reach a compromise in the coming weeks," Reid said.

Leahy slammed the Senate derailment of the anti-piracy legislation as a "knee-jerk reaction to a monumental problem" but said he is committed to getting a bill signed into law this year.

There are already alternatives in the works.

Senator Ron Wyden introduced a bill last month that he said "meets the same publicly stated goals as SOPA or Protect IP without causing massive damage to the internet."

Representative Darrel Issa on Wednesday introduced a companion bill in the House.

Issa said SOPA and PIPA lacked a fundamental understanding of how Internet technologies work. The technology sector has shown more optimism about prospects for Issa and Wyden's alternative bill, called the OPEN Act.

"It's a great starting point for discussion, and we're definitely very open to that," said Tiffiniy Cheng, co-founder of Fight for the Future, a nonprofit that helped organize the Internet protests against SOPA and PIPA.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/internet/US-Congress-puts-brakes-on-anti-piracy-bills/articleshow/11576715.cms

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redrose-

@redrose-

Beginner

Posted: 13 years ago

#63

so dumb what US wants to do. i do see a point for PIPA not for SOPA. it shouldnt happen

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return_to_hades

@return_to_hades

Stunner

+ 6

Posted: 13 years ago

#64

Originally posted by: souro

I asked why should I (who is not a US citizen) be interested? Answer that.

My first reading of the SOPA/PIPA outrage was in Portuguese and I could not understand heads or tails of it. But the fact that it took a whole page made me think some serious shit was going down. 😆

The reason SOPA/PIPA got so much attention is because what they proposed would negatively affect a much wider audience outside the United States. It would give the US government too much control to block sites and information for the rest of the world as well.

For example all of Wikipedia could be taken down, simply because one editor posted a copyrighted image on the site. Or Paypal could be taken down for one transaction of bootleg DVD. It is not merely casual/social internet use that gets affected, but it would create widespread chaos and block legitimate use for innocent people around the world. Many small businesses, websites, NGO's etc use Paypal to conduct their day to day business and Paypal being blocked for even a brief time can be crippling. Many people actually use file sharing sites for legitimate reason sharing actual professional files and the loss of this shared data could be disastrous. Blogs or twitter is not just for fun, they are used to disseminate information, provide customer service, interact with clients, end users etc and losing access to that can impact social media aspect of organizations. Hence these acts are not of interest to just US citizens but the world in general.

Most of the drastic overreaching measures like DNS blocking etc have been dropped by now. So the impact would not be as far reaching as above, but it would still effect how people across the world use the internet. However, with the weight of Google, Facebook, Wikimedia against it and the global outrage, the chances of even a watered down SOPA/PIPA passing are very slim.

The amusing thing (for US citizens) regarding SOPA/PIPA are the strange bedfellows in both the for and against sides.

Personally, aside from all this I'm against all the anti-privacy mumbo-jumbo. These acts are more about protecting the coffers of the conglomerates in the music and movie production and less about actually protecting the intellectual property of people rightfully.

All hail PirateBay!!!!

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Bankim Chandra Chaterjee

@mr.ass

Rocker

Posted: 13 years ago

#65

Originally posted by: return_to_hades

My first reading of the SOPA/PIPA outrage was in Portuguese and I could not understand heads or tails of it. But the fact that it took a whole page made me think some serious shit was going down. 😆

The reason SOPA/PIPA got so much attention is because what they proposed would negatively affect a much wider audience outside the United States. It would give the US government too much control to block sites and information for the rest of the world as well.

For example all of Wikipedia could be taken down, simply because one editor posted a copyrighted image on the site. Or Paypal could be taken down for one transaction of bootleg DVD. It is not merely casual/social internet use that gets affected, but it would create widespread chaos and block legitimate use for innocent people around the world. Many small businesses, websites, NGO's etc use Paypal to conduct their day to day business and Paypal being blocked for even a brief time can be crippling. Many people actually use file sharing sites for legitimate reason sharing actual professional files and the loss of this shared data could be disastrous. Blogs or twitter is not just for fun, they are used to disseminate information, provide customer service, interact with clients, end users etc and losing access to that can impact social media aspect of organizations. Hence these acts are not of interest to just US citizens but the world in general.

Most of the drastic overreaching measures like DNS blocking etc have been dropped by now. So the impact would not be as far reaching as above, but it would still effect how people across the world use the internet. However, with the weight of Google, Facebook, Wikimedia against it and the global outrage, the chances of even a watered down SOPA/PIPA passing are very slim.

The amusing thing (for US citizens) regarding SOPA/PIPA are the strange bedfellows in both the for and against sides.

Personally, aside from all this I'm against all the anti-privacy mumbo-jumbo. These acts are more about protecting the coffers of the conglomerates in the music and movie production and less about actually protecting the intellectual property of people rightfully.

All hail PirateBay!!!!

Starting reading right there 😆

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246851

Hibernated

Posted: 13 years ago

#66

I know this post is for SOPA and PIPA but from what i am reading and following, theyx are quitely bringing ACTA. 22 countries have already signed the agreement. and from what i informed myself a bit about it, its even worse. Its a gross misuse of power for not just infringement but alleged infringement , not to mention forced invasion of privacy for millions of innocent users by the ISPs with a possibility of penalising the ISPs even.

It is a violation of fundamental rights to speech and freedom. On the top of it, the whole proposal of ACTA, the way it has been conceived has been shrouded in secrecy right from the beginning. ONly a few wikileaks cable here and there are just tip of iceberg. here is what i found on

http://www.edri.org.

A little copy paste from the website:

The EDPS warns that ACTA could lead to the "unnoticed monitoring of millions of individuals and all users,

irrespective of whether they are under suspicion", and "the systematic recording of data [on Internet use]

In theory, most policy-makers agree that intellectual property legislation should focus on ensuring that

dangerous products are not sold and that industrial-scale misuse of protected material should be targeted.

Despite the fact that such an approach is essential for proportionality, ACTA fails to deliver on both of these

priorities. It attempts to address potentially life-threatening physical products and duplication of digital

material as if these two very different phenomena were of the same importance and functionally identical.

"Indirect" economic advantage

ACTA provides an extremely low threshold for imposing criminal sanctions. Article 23.1 starts by limiting (as

a minimum that can be exceeded by parties) criminal procedures/penalties to wilful offences undertaken on

an undefined commercial scale. It then broadens the scope to "acts" which are for direct commercial

advantage but also for, also undefined, "economic advantage" or "aiding and abetting" (also undefined).

Such unclear wording is simply inappropriate in a key provision, on whose meaning the proportionality and

the legality, of the Agreement rests. As the EDPS stated, "the 'commercial scale' criterion is decisive".

What does this mean in practice?

A member of the German parliament unintentionally put multiple copyright-protected images on his website.

Large numbers of visits to the page led to a "commercial scale" reproduction of the image. He received an

"indirect economic" advantage by not paying for the images and his service provider "aided and abetted" the

"infringement" by not taking action against this repeat "offender". Is he or his Internet provider a criminal?

According to ACTA, they are. Unquestionably.

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