US Senate tries to take us back to the Dark Ages

Excellent! Eventually they will all be replaced anyway. By attrition. They do eventually retire or die.

 

On the contrary, I think it would be a tremendous improvement.

 

Blockbuster killed off most of their home video and video game rental competition then went broke in their turn due to competition from net-based video sources. Shark-eats-shark. I don't know of any place I can rent DVDs or BluRays around here, although plenty of places sell them.

 

Here in Mexico we have Blockbusters, Movieland, lots of private mom pop rental stores, and also pirates selling videos in every plaza and many street corners.
The movie theatres usualy have a dozen or more auditorium screening rooms, and are very sucessfull.Tub of Popcorn and a large coke costs as much as the ticket.

 

In Spain video rental shops are common. Internet commerce is much less prominent

 

Boy, I really hate it when non-US citizens step in with their astounding lack of knowledge about US law and history.

FWIW, what SOPA does is provide a tool to enforce what has been US law for almost 200 years. The issue of intellectual property, and the rights thereof, was a founding basis of US law. US Patent and Copyright Protection legislation formed one of the basic differences between the Federalists (i.e. Adams) and the Republicans (i.e. Jefferson) of the new republic way back in 1783. With the coming of the digital age, the ease of illegal copying, and the dispersed jurisdiction of enforcement, some people did not believe US, and international law, still applied. However, recent SCotUS jurisprudence told congress that it needed to clean up the mess that some criminals made on the internet. That is all that SOPA and PIPA do, restore the rule of law to a lawless frontier.

I’m not going to argue either for against either SOPA or PIPA, but it really wouldn’t matter to me if the US shut down all the domain servers, I’m sure China would have the back up in a few days with the General Staff Second Department overseeing a smooth transition.

 

How does SOPA PIPA fit into global Internet governance ? Are other countries on board or is the US going its own way ?

 

Keep in mind that SOPA and PIPA are proposed legislation and have not been enacted. Also most legislation in the US which becomes law is considerably modified between when it is first proposed and when it is enacted and signed by the president.

The legislative process in the US is considerably different than parlimentary systems where the head of government (but not necessarially head of state) is the prime minister, including that of our northern neighbors. I don't think this is understood by many outside of the US.

 

Will the passage of these laws affect the internet in Italy ? Will these laws present a burden to new internet start ups ?

 

Having supposedly laudable ends doesn't make SOPA a good tool.

Locking people up for life on mere suspicion of lawbreaking or terrorist leanings is simply a law enforcement 'tool' also, but that doesn't make it right.... Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.

And like a lot of other laws, SOPA would come down heavily on mostly law-abiding people, while the criminals work their way around it and keep right on going.

As I once said in a letter to Senator Barbara Boxer, 'I own two dozen guns. If you take every last one of them, you can brag about getting that many dangerous weapons 'off the street' -- but it won't stop a single drive-by shooting in Los Angeles. So what's the point?'

Strangely enough, I never got an answer. Not even a canned response signed by a staffer in her name.

These laws aren't going to pass. Even if they get through the Senate, they'll die in the House. And if by some miracle they get passed there and reconciled with the Senate version, Obama has promised to veto them.

 

SOPA and PIPA? Oops!

Screw that. I just want to throw the bums out on general principles.

 

Well there is your problem right there..

 

Ok, I don't do this often, but... I am a lawyer, however noting in the following post should be relied upon as legal advice. I make no representations as to the veracity of the information provided, or the effect specific action may have in relation to the law.

For those of you who dont know SOPA is basically a frontal assault funded by Hollywood on the stability and safety of the Internet, and would fundamentally break major parts of the way the Internet works in order to protect the IP rights of US rights holders. It does this in a few ways, but fundamentally the legislation does the following:

1) allows the US Attorney General, OR any content owner to declare that certain websites are hosting infringing property. Once the AG, or content owners, have done this they issues a directive that all ISP's must follow that prevents your browser from going to that website. This may seem reasonable, but the AG can make this declaration without court review, or adversarial hearings, or notice to the potentially infringing website.

2) This attack on DNS stability by the US AG would have effect against any website, anywhere in the world, that connects with, or can be accessed by any browser in the US. Since most of the worldwide major DNS servers are located in the US it would make US copyright law the defacto standard world wide, regardless of the location of the hosting website.

3) As a technological matter, it won't take much to circumvent this process by the people who are actively engaging in copyright violation, like The Pirate Bay, but it would destroy the availability of the common user significantly.


So how would this work in reality... Let's say I contact boatdesign.net and say I own the picture used in the websites banner. The mods tell me that they took the picture, and therefore they own the picture, and I can just sue them. Instead of filling suit I file an affidavit with the court saying I own the picture, the court then must issue a directive to ban DNS servers from directing to it.
The DNS servers then remove the website from their registry so no one can go to the site. Assuming BD.net wants to fight this, they have to file a copyright claim suit in federal court in the US claiming the picture is theirs, and only after the suit is legislated will they be able to get the DNS servers to allow you back to the website. Best case the site is down for 1-2 years and they win, worst case they loose and the site never goes back up. From my stand point best case is I get a multimillion dollar settlement from BD.net, worst case I loose my attorneys fees, sinc I am not liable for a mistaken copyright claim.

This ignores major security risks with the scheme, like the bill breaks the secure certificates from sites like banks, eBay, Amazon, and the like. Because the DNS scheme of SOPA is incompatible with the way DNS security works.

Also SOPA would make it a criminal violation to post or download copyrighted images. So if you have ever been, or go to a website that even accidentally posts a copyrighted image you are subject to a five year prison sentence. So for instance if you post a YouTube video of yourself sailing, and captured in that video is the boat manufacturers label on your boat ( these are all copyrighted btw) you have committed a criminal violation of SOPA. Or if you take a picture of your kids, and they have a t-shirt on that has the name of a business on it, or a cartoon character, or picture, ect... Same deal 5 years in prison.

The problem here is that the fair use exception which normally might cover these events is excluded from consideration by the SOPA scheme when applied to images.

For further reading:

Stanford law review
http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/dont-break-internet

The Volokh Conspiracy
http://volokh.com/?s=Sopa

Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_States

 

I was responding to a comment about IP in general, not SOPA or the debate
in the USA about its intentions or proposed implementation.

Personally, I get a good laugh watching people express their moral indignation
about IP. It's almost as funny as people who think that the current IP system
will last forever, if we just pass enough legislation, or pray really hard.

 

It is comforting to know that we can count on the promise of a politician.