So how does ATOT feel about SOPA?

[Modelworks]

Block all the web sites and it will change nothing. I read somewhere that people were talking about if they take away download sites, torrents and newsgroups what would people do ? Go back to IRC.
IRC is a slower way of piracy but it worked for many and is MUCH harder to stop.

My stance is I have no sympathy for any audio/video pirates as they know they do not have the owners permission when they download. Downloaders have a choice to avoid that content , it isn't a right or something they have to do. Don't want to be penalized then don't download the stuff.

I do have a problem with just accusing someone because of a single download, but those that have hundreds of transfers , throw the book at them.

 

[cubby1223]

And what happens when the media companies use this as a launching point to block competing technologies that will cut into their profits. User made videos, new times of entertainment, etc. This whole idea will hurt innovation as a whole. It will give companies a free pass to shutup any one who is saying anything they don't like.

It also gives asshats the ability to take down any form they don't like and get companies sued into oblivion. I don't like this forum, ok I'll post a link to a britney spears album and report it. I'm sure once you remove the offending link their will be a easy and simple process to remove your DNS block.......

Twitter, facebook, forums, newsgroups, download sites, torrent trackers, blogs, etc would all be destroyed by this bill. There would be no point to having a DNS system, competing DNS will be created, this will lead to more laws requiring even more filtering and costs from ISPs, and making them liable will force up costs even more to deal with lawsuits. Finally, these costs will stifle improvements of service and turn companies into police forces to stop users from 'breaking the law'.

Last but not least, this bill is yet another way to ruin the lives of children by allowing jail time for downloading music. I'm all for all of this though. I think we need more 12 year olds in jail.

All of your fears, I believe this bill will make into reality exactly none of them.

So where do we go from here with this debate?

Be honest with yourself, newsgroups, download sites, torrent trackers are driven by piracy. Driven by the distribution of copyrighted material.

 

[cubby1223]

I do have a problem with just accusing someone because of a single download, but those that have hundreds of transfers , throw the book at them.

And the problem with the current laws is, about the only people who can be caught are the single downloaders, those that have hundreds of transfers are well shielded from the reach of the current laws.

How do you "throw the book at them"?

(oh and in this day in age, I believe it is more accurate to say "millions" of transfers).

 

[Modelworks]

A
How do you "throw the book at them"?

Forbid them access to any network connected device except for work related for a period of time. Just like they do with those caught hacking networks.

 

[Modelworks]

I went through the bill looking for scary stuff and the majority of the copyright stuff really isn't different than what we already have. It doesn't allow them to take down sites without a court order and it doesn't require ISP to monitor connections. It mainly allows them to take down a site that is foreign if they issue a court order and the site is in a country that does not accept US court authority. They would go to the isp with the court order and the site would be blocked.


What is bigger about this than the copyright stuff is the back door stuff. They always sneak things into bills that are unrelated to the main bill and in this one they are trying to block online prescription sales outside the country. Currently you can get the same medications from Canada for $65 that cost over $250 in the USA. This bill would stop that. They tried blocking online drug sales in its own bill and it failed, so now they slip in this:

INTERNET SITE THAT ENDANGERS THE
2 PUBLIC HEALTH.—The term ‘‘Internet site that en-
3 dangers the public health’’ means an Internet site
4 that is primarily designed or operated for the pur-
5 pose of, has only limited purpose or use other than,
6 or is marketed by its operator or another acting in
7 concert with that operator for use in—
8 (A) offering, selling, dispensing, or distrib-
9 uting any prescription medication, and does so
10 regularly without a valid prescription; or
11 (B) offering, selling, dispensing, or distrib-
12 uting any prescription medication that is adul-
13 terated or misbranded.

adulterated to the FDA basically means any place the FDA has not given its stamp of approval, meaning anywhere outside the USA.

 

[lxskllr]

Politicians, and their puppetmasters have perverted the concept of copyright. The reason it was created was to trade some rights of the people to encourage art creation. Copyright was meant to to be extremely limited, but somehow we now have perpetual copyright. Tell me again how retroactive copyright going back to 1923 stimulates creativity?

Corporations DO NOT have more rights than the people of this country, no matter how many times they say it. Our rights have been trampled for so long, I don't really give a shit about their rights. Support the arts, support the artists, but fuck the corporations.

 

[sourceninja]

All of your fears, I believe this bill will make into reality exactly none of them.

So where do we go from here with this debate?

Be honest with yourself, newsgroups, download sites, torrent trackers are driven by piracy. Driven by the distribution of copyrighted material.

And what if I post a link to a torrent on facebook? Should we shut facebook down? What if my youtube video of my kid has a song in the background on the radio? Should we shut youtube down for piracy? The media companies would say YES without a second thought.

There is a reason that Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, AOL, Yahoo!, eBay, Mozilla — and of course, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) — all oppose this bill.

This bill will block at a DNS level. This means alternate DNS will become popular. This means a fractured internet. Next will be laws to force ISP's to monitor connections and block people attempting to connect via IP or use alternate DNS services (probably for their own safety). A black list is still a black list, even if they don't want to call it that. It WILL be abused. Judges are not equipped to make technology decisions. As evidence I site every single software patent lawsuit on the planet.

SOPA will remove safe harbor provisions provided by the DMCA. This means anyone who continues to run a service like youtube would be a fool. ISPs will be forced (to protect themselves) to filter all internet service and block any service that could be used for piracy. This means there will be no such thing as legal torrents, IRC, newsgroups, etc. Why would AT&T risk letting you download Ubuntu via bittorrent or patch WoW with bittorrent. Being allowed to use torrents at all could open them up to huge lawsuits.

A such, my point stands.

I am against piracy. I just think the media industry has enough tools to fight it already. In fact the solution has already been shown to them by guys like Steve Jobs. They need to embrace technology and provide their products in formats and delivery methods that people want. People want the easy solution. Instead of making pirating content harder, let's make getting legal content easier and higher quality.

 

[lokiju]

Strange thing is, if we really are ruled by Corporations, it should fail given the corporate opposition (Google, Ebay, Zynga, Mozilla, among many others).

Oh really?

http://gizmodo.com/5860802/apple-mi...ho-support-the-awful-internet-censorship-bill

 

[zinfamous]

Crazy religious people will always win because sane people are scared of them.

They didn't kill him because they were religious. They killed him because he dared ask them to challenge the infallibility of their vaunted social order.

 

[Jeffg010]

I am against piracy. I just think the media industry has enough tools to fight it already. In fact the solution has already been shown to them by guys like Steve Jobs. They need to embrace technology and provide their products in formats and delivery methods that people want. People want the easy solution. Instead of making pirating content harder, let's make getting legal content easier and higher quality.

This quote is so fucking true. These corporations have not figured this out yet. Steam for example has it right. It is so fucking easy to get a game from there and I bought games that I'm never going to play but were such a good and easy deal that I could not pass up. Netflix is anther example that makes it easy but you still have movie corporations that refuse to be part of it. It all comes down to greed.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Oh really?

http://gizmodo.com/5860802/apple-mi...ho-support-the-awful-internet-censorship-bill

That's not shocking in the slightest. The companies who run internet sites are concerned about the bill because they'll be the ones hit by it; Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc., would be the ones shut down for copyright claims. The list on that site is a whole bunch of software producers; you know, the people who make things like Windows, Photoshop, antivirus software, and other commonly warezed things. Microsoft isn't worried about their site being shut down for copyright claims, they're worried about people getting Windows 7 for free. It's not even remotely surprising that the software producers would be for this while the social media site operators are against it.

 

[Bryf50]

http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/18/2571658/200-labels-leave-spotify

The only thing killing their industry is themselves.

 

[ViRGE]

I am against piracy. I just think the media industry has enough tools to fight it already. In fact the solution has already been shown to them by guys like Steve Jobs. They need to embrace technology and provide their products in formats and delivery methods that people want. People want the easy solution. Instead of making pirating content harder, let's make getting legal content easier and higher quality.

At this point I feel the entertainment industry has met the rest of the world half-way. The iTunes Music Store is now the largest distributor of music in the world, and that's DRM free. Meanwhile a copious amount of TV shows and movies are available for purchase through iTunes, Amazon, etc. It would be nice if they were DRM free, but I'll admit that doesn't seem any more likely than Valve or EA suddenly shipping a game without DRM.

The problem at this point isn't business models, it's that people don't want to pay.

That's not shocking in the slightest. The companies who run internet sites are concerned about the bill because they'll be the ones hit by it; Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc., would be the ones shut down for copyright claims. The list on that site is a whole bunch of software producers; you know, the people who make things like Windows, Photoshop, antivirus software, and other commonly warezed things. Microsoft isn't worried about their site being shut down for copyright claims, they're worried about people getting Windows 7 for free. It's not even remotely surprising that the software producers would be for this while the social media site operators are against it.

Google, Facebook, etc aren't at any real risk of being shut down. They already comply with the DMCA by taking things down. SOPA is going to hand-in-hand with stronger enforcement though, so it means they're going to have to take more stuff down and keep it from reappearing in the index by coming from a different site. In other words they would have to step up their enforcement for the Google index to the same level that they already enforce on YouTube, which isn't a particularly high bar and has worked very well.

Ultimately all of those services are worried about the bottom line. Enforcement is going to cost more (it won't break the bank, but you are going to have to hire some people to write the tools), and more importantly in the case of Google it's going to result in a reduction in search traffic. They're indirect/accidental beneficiaries of piracy in that people use their services to find warez and as such they get to serve up more ads.