Why we are not RATTLED by SOPA?

Spacedog

If SOPA is rejected in the US mainly because of the DNS blocking issue, it will be a hell of a lot harder for US representatives in trade talks with other countries, including Ireland, to threaten to exclude them for not implementing laws to force ISPs to implement DNS blocking, as was the case with eircom and the pirate bay.

Considering that bit torrent has evolved to the point where a central server is no longer even necessary, these laws will only serve to unnecessarily complicate the architecture of the internet further, as people encrypt and circumvent DNS with various fragmented home brew solutions, spammers and virus writers will take advantage and using a PC will soon be like running windows millennium edition with no antivirus.

that's my 2 cents

clink clink

Overheal

It will be interesting when half the internet goes underground and you have to find your websites through peer to peer.

Doctor DooM

Just FYI, the net black out is today. PIPA is up for vote on the 24th of Jan and SOPA will not be long after. This is far from a dead issue.

Tallon

I took down my site in protest.. Not that it has amazing traffic, but it's the principle!

Nearly 90% of my time outside work is Youtube / gaming based, and additional finacial income, so this will hit me hard

Doctor DooM

Tallon wrote: »

I took down my site in protest.. Not that it has amazing traffic, but it's the principle!

Nearly 90% of my time outside work is Youtube / gaming based, and additional finacial income, so this will hit me hard

Yeah, I spend a huge amount of my free time promoting or playing fighting games. I work for a software company. I use Youtube to promote what I do. It'll hit me too.

I also just believe this is an abhorrent abuse of people's rights. No company should be able to shut down a persons ability to express themselves "on good faith".

Magill

**** ! Wikipedia is offline for the day ! Madness.

Spacedog

"intellectual property is the oil of the 21st century"
- some prick

Doctor DooM

Magill wrote: »

**** ! Wikipedia is offline for the day ! Madness.

Yeah... the point is if SOPA or PIPA pass, wikipedia can't really exist any more. A site will be responsible for its user generated content. That's the madness.

Magill

Doctor DooM wrote: »

Yeah... the point is if SOPA or PIPA pass, wikipedia can't really exist any more. A site will be responsible for its user generated content. That's the madness.

lol, im not stupid, i know the point :P

Doctor DooM

Magill wrote: »

lol, im not stupid, i know the point :P

lol sorry that whole "no tone of voice thing"

Helix

Doctor DooM wrote: »

Yeah... the point is if SOPA or PIPA pass, wikipedia can't really exist any more. A site will be responsible for its user generated content. That's the madness.

it can exist

itlll just need to move outside the united states

itll be blocked and made inaccessible for non tech savvy users in the states, but people outside the country would still be able to access it as normal

Doctor DooM

Helix wrote: »

it can exist

itlll just need to move outside the united states

itll be blocked and made inaccessible for non tech savvy users in the states, but people outside the country would still be able to access it as normal

And how many users would they lose, and how much funding?

And how much would migrating everything cost?

You make it sound like losing access to the casual net users in America is nothing instead of access to one of the biggest markets in the world

Myrddin

I agree with Doom. It also wouldn't be long before a European equivalent is drafted up for us here.

Hopefully, with the big corporations against it it won't go any further. I'm sure Mr. Sony & Mr. [insert big business here] all have friends in high places.

ktulu123

What is the likely hood of this actually being passed? What is their reason for wanting this stupid bill?

Dave_The_Sheep

EnterNow wrote: »

Hopefully, with the big corporations against it it won't go any further. I'm sure Mr. Sony & Mr. [insert big business here] all have friends in high places.

Some of Sony's child companies are listed as being in support of SOPA, as far as I know. And some aren't. Bit of an odd one.

Myrddin

Dave_The_Sheep wrote: »

Some of Sony's child companies are listed as being in support of SOPA, as far as I know. And some aren't. Bit of an odd one.

That wouldn't surprise me, Sony & logic rarely tend to go in the same sentence. But people in congress & big business ceo's all attend the same dinner parties, I doubt it'll pass.

Helix

ktulu123 wrote: »

What is the likely hood of this actually being passed? What is their reason for wanting this stupid bill?

it wont be passed

they want it because they're being leaned on my big money business

Helix

Doctor DooM wrote: »

And how many users would they lose, and how much funding?

they'd lose plenty of users, however i dont think funding would necessarily be an issue. you'd have plenty of places that would be willing to take on companies like google, facebook etc for global headquarters (in fact, ireland would be very well placed for that)

Doctor DooM wrote: »

And how much would migrating everything cost?

again, probably not as much as you think. there would certainly be a hit, but it would be a lot lower than the hit taken by the closure of the business

Doctor DooM wrote: »

You make it sound like losing access to the casual net users in America is nothing instead of access to one of the biggest markets in the world

320,000,000 americans
6,520,507,000 everwhere else

it's a good percentage alright, but it's not insurmountable. plus if these companies were just up and leaving, the yanks would very quickly do something about it

Grimebox

I'm 100% rattled by SOPA. Reddit is down.

Doctor DooM

Helix wrote: »

they'd lose plenty of users, however i dont think funding would necessarily be an issue. you'd have plenty of places that would be willing to take on companies like google, facebook etc for global headquarters (in fact, ireland would be very well placed for that)



again, probably not as much as you think. there would certainly be a hit, but it would be a lot lower than the hit taken by the closure of the business



320,000,000 americans
6,520,507,000 everwhere else

it's a good percentage alright, but it's not insurmountable. plus if these companies were just up and leaving, the yanks would very quickly do something about it

320,000,000 people who live in the biggest market in the world.

Part of the provisions of SOPA is to make payments to "rogue" sites difficult.

Migrating your head office to a new country is a lengthly and expensive task for any company.

Overheal

Actually if you want an insight into underground internet, there is in fact an underground internet. And it started with bitcoin. Read more here, I found it in my Wired subscription when I was taking an epic poo:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/mf_bitcoin/all/1

see also Silk Road: http://gawker.com/5805928/the-underground-website-where-you-can-buy-any-drug-imaginable

And Tor (The technical explanation): http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0A1zlJzMyKgJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_%28anonymity_network%29+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

Helix

Doctor DooM wrote: »

320,000,000 people who live in the biggest market in the world.

how do you make out it's the biggest market in the world? there are 3 times as many people in europe, for example

Doctor DooM wrote: »

Part of the provisions of SOPA is to make payments to "rogue" sites difficult.

cant stop a cheque

Doctor DooM wrote: »

Migrating your head office to a new country is a lengthly and expensive task for any company.

its not as expensive as you think

amacachi

Helix wrote: »

how do you make out it's the biggest market in the world? there are 3 times as many people in europe, for example

Really?


The wonderful thing about this law is that as usual it'll be mainly innocent stuff that would fall foul of it. Pirates will use DNS addresses where needed and it won't take an awful long time before new ones can be passed along. FFS Newsgroups are still on the go now with little sign of stopping. If it got to the point that it was needed (a good while away) TOR is already available. It'll be a while before it's needed and longer before it can be closed, somehow I imagine that by that stage it will have been superceded.

dahamsta

Overheal wrote: »

Actually if you want an insight into underground internet, there is in fact an underground internet. And it started with bitcoin.

There's been an underground internet since there was an internet, bitcoin just made it more convenient. Carders have been around for donkeys years, for example; they already had their own currency. The clue is in the name.

Doctor DooM

Helix wrote: »

how do you make out it's the biggest market in the world? there are 3 times as many people in europe, for example



cant stop a cheque



its not as expensive as you think

I really think you are just arguing for the sake of it.

There might be some slight discussion to be had over whether the EU or the USA are the biggest market: however, here in the real world, there's not a company trading who would say "I know, instead of complying with the new laws in America and making all our customers too, lets lose all our American customers, uproot all our business, lose all revenue from America, and go through the legal, human resources and tech budget drain of migrating our business processes and servers to another country".

Kiith

Seems like a few of the original senators backing SOPA/PIPA are pulling their support.

http://gizmodo.com/5877185/pipa-co+sponsor-retreats-from-awful-bill

humanji

Saw this on Twitter last night: The awkward moment when you break the law you proposed.

humanji

The bill has apparently been pulled: http://mashable.com/2012/01/20/sopa-is-dead-smith-pulls-bill/

Lamar Smith, the chief sponsor of SOPA, said on Friday that he is pulling the bill “until there is wider agreement on a solution.”

“I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy,” Smith (R-Texas) said. “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 also released the following statement on Friday:

“We need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products. “The problem of online piracy is too big to ignore. American intellectual property industries provide 19 million high-paying jobs and account for more than 60% of U.S. exports. The theft of America’s intellectual property costs the U.S. economy more than $100 billion annually and results in the loss of thousands of American jobs. Congress cannot stand by and do nothing while American innovators and job creators are under attack.”

“The online theft of American intellectual property is no different than the theft of products from a store. It is illegal and the law should be enforced both in the store and online.

“The Committee will continue work with copyright owners, Internet companies, financial institutions to develop proposals that combat online piracy and protect America’s intellectual property. We welcome input from all organizations and individuals who have an honest difference of opinion about how best to address this widespread problem. The Committee remains committed to finding a solution to the problem of online piracy that protects American intellectual property and innovation.”

The move comes after widespread protest on the Internet on Wednesday by Wikipedia, Reddit and others. The sites signaled their displeasure with the bill by going dark. That day, several Congressmen dropped their support for SOPA and its Senate counterpart, PIPA. The latter bill has also been taken off the table for now.

SEE ALSO: Is There a SOPA Alternative Both Sides Can Live With?
“In light of recent events, I have decided to postpone Tuesday’s vote on the PROTECT IP Act,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in a statement Friday morning.

Smith’s stance comes just two days after he told The Wall Street Journal that he didn’t plan to back down on SOPA, telling the newspaper he expected to “move forward” with the bill in February.

humanji

And who needs SOPA when we've got Fine Gael: http://www.tjmcintyre.com/2012/01/adrian-weckler-confims-that-irelands.html

Adrian Weckler confims that "Ireland's SOPA" will be vague and open-ended
Adrian Weckler has a worrying piece on government proposals for blocking legislation in today's Sunday Business Post (paywalled). I've taken the liberty of extracting some of the highlights:

Is Ireland about to introduce a law that will allow music companies to order Internet service providers to block access to websites? I rang up the Minister of State at the department of Enterprise, Jobs and Innovation, Sean Sherlock, to find out. "The statutory instrument to be introduced is completely different to Sopa [Stop Online Piracy Act] in America" he told me. "We are simply addressing the High Court judgment handed down by Mr Justice Peter Charleton in relation to copyright law... I will introduce this imminently, by the end of January." That's a yes, then ...

The Irish governments new “statutory instrument” threatens to do some of the same things as Sopa, mainly introducing the power to force ISPs to block websites suspected of having copyrighted material on them.

While that means curtains for the Pirate Bay (which few people here will miss), it also leaves open the possibility for a judge to order ISPs to block YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

Why? Because, with their billions of users, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter inherently find some copyright protected material leaked onto their web services. The new law will give music and movie firms the legal footing to get ISPs blocking. That may not go down too well with Google and Facebook, which are two of Dublin's biggest employers. It probably won't sit easily, either, with the IDA, which may have to alter its pitch to large US social media firms who may have been thinking of setting up in Ireland. (That includes Twitter.)

Given the seismic nature of the proposed change to Irish internet access, surely more detailed primary legislation would be in order here? For example, could there be a limit to enforcement of the injunctions? What defences might be available? Could there be exceptions? "We will probably need a test case to come before the courts before primary legislation such as that could be considered," said Sherlock. In other words: don't look at us, guv. We may be the government, but this kind of law-making is really a matter for judges. We don't really do that kind of thing ...

Politically, this is a no-win scenario. Even with the government about to open the legal doors for the music and movie companies to start directing ISPs' access policies, the content creation industry is frothing and fuming. Ironically, by taking a leave-it-to-m'lud approach, the government is also now attracting the anger of an increasing tranche of the technology and digital community. It is unusual to alienate both sides of a legislative argument ...

So this really is turning out to be a lose-lose episode for the government. Yet the issue wields vast significance for both sides of the debate (the music industry and the digital technology industry). It could also have profound, long-lasting consequences for Irish industry.

The clear implication from his interview with Sean Sherlock is that the proposed measures will be lacking in any real detail, leaving it entirely up to the judges as to what types of blocking might emerge. (Possibly going beyond web blocking to also target hosting and other services.) This ambiguity - as well as jeopardising fundamental rights - will create intolerable uncertainty for businesses such as Google who might find themselves at risk of business threatening and unpredictable injunctions and will certainly deter others from setting up in Ireland. Instead, any action should only take place by primary legislation which the Oireachtas would have a chance to scrutinise and debate. As I said previously:

It is significant that Charleton J. in EMI v. UPC [2010] IEHC 377 referred to any legislative intervention being properly a matter for the Oireachtas. The Opinion of the Advocate General in Scarlet (Extended) v. SABAM (Case C-70/10) similarly referred to a need for legislation in this area to be "democratically legitimised" (at para. 113).

It would be undesirable in any event for a matter dealing with fundamental rights to be disposed of by way of secondary legislation. It is all the more undesirable in this case, however, given the vague and open-ended nature of the powers involved. This is, in effect, a case of delegation heaped on delegation - rather than rules governing blocking and other remedies being made by primary legislation, or even secondary legislation, they are instead effectively being made by delegation to the judiciary.

Although it's the 11th hour, it's not too late for the Irish government to see sense and abandon this proposal. If you agree then you should let Sean Sherlock and your TDs what you think of it.

death1234567

humanji wrote: »

Adrian Weckler has a worrying piece on government proposals for blocking legislation in today's Sunday Business Post (paywalled). I've taken the liberty of extracting some of the highlights:

Copyright infringer!!! Oh My god they were right all along



Bring back SOPA!!!