New Legislation Would Crack Down On Online Piracy 350
GovTechGuy writes "Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee unveiled new legislation to combat online piracy on Monday that gives the Department of Justice more power to shut down websites trafficking in pirated movies, films or counterfeit goods. The new bill would give the government the authority to shut down the sites with a court order; the site owner would have to petition the court to have it lifted. The judge would have final say over whether a site should be shut down or not. Business groups including the US Chamber of Commerce hailed the legislation as a huge step forward."
it is cute.. (Score:1, Interesting)
..that they actually have the nerve saying it will benefit consumers, because piracy is holding IP holders hands from innovating. Cute.. really cute..
Why the U.S. shouldn't control DNS (Score:2, Interesting)
The only point to having a new law for this, is to make it hard to access web servers that aren't in the U.S. by messing with DNS, regardless of whether the material was legally hosted where the servers were located. (If the problem was with U.S. hosted servers, existing law would be plenty good enough.)
What impact would this actually have? (Score:2, Interesting)
Another law makes the US less competitive (Score:5, Interesting)
The DCMA notoriously was touted as solving the online piracy problem. The cold reality is that almost ten thousand small companies have shuttered their doors in the last almost 15 years. New startups are forced to prove that they are not infringing and while waiting they must cease all development. This can take months and cost upwards of 100K meaning that most tech startups must simply shutter their doors. Microsoft alone has filed DCMA takedown notices almost 500 times and is successful at shuttering the company nearly every time.
Now, media sites can be shut down for being "copyright infringing" with very little evidence to the contrary. A small company cannot fight the likes of MS, IBM, Apple, Sun, or the host of other awful DCMA bastards and now they'll need to worry about Bartlesman, Dreamworks, Pixar, and the like. This simply makes it impossible to start a new media company because all that the media conglomerates have to do is claim that someone is stealing and without your company being informed, you can be shut down. The DCMA shuts down software and this new rule will shutdown new media.
The DCMA is one of the main reasons that more and more companies are successfully competing in software development overseas and why more and more software is coming from Russia, China, Norway, and so on. It is becoming impossible to create a new software startup. And now in the land of unintended consequences, we just shipped all of our movie, music, and game production overseas.
There have been no new Googles for over a decade and we wonder where all of the jobs are going.
Re:Checks and Balances are soooo 1900's (Score:2, Interesting)
I tend to agree....
But I think people feel that since the government and corporations are one, and considering how corrupt our government is.... that its a bit of the old kettle and tea pot. In most situations concerning the people, corporations, and wealth are favored over what the people want. I think the little guy likes to know that he too deserves to fuck over the corporations and government who use law to fuck over the little guy constantly.
So here you have what probably makes sense and is fair in terms of law... but in the big picture of things.... Its just another oppressing law handed down by the wealthy elite who always get their way.
Regulate BANKS, not downloads!! (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously. The US government is 100% committed to spending a fortune regulating and enforcing use of the internet due to 'online piracy'. As a result the US government is directly providing law enforcement, judicial, and legislative staff to protect the video and music industry..... and yet they openly claim REGULATING BANKS and stock market (NOTE: the Republican party is almost 100% against regulating the banking industry) is bad???
Am I the only one who is concerned with this criminally insane paradox?
Re:Bye Bye EBAY (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes.......... but how?
When a website is "taken down" on a U.S based server that does not mean it is dead. Far from it. What happened was the hosting company shut it down due the court order. There are some hosting companies that will refuse based on principles.
Now let's say that the site owner is risking contempt of court if they move the website out of the U.S jurisdiction. Maybe they will get the site started up under somebody else? Sell all the corporate assets to a foreign company for $1.
I guess what I am getting at, is that shutting down a website has not been incredibly effective when the principles involved and hosting is not inside the U.S. Just how long will it take before the Justice Department can get a court order to interfere with the DNS records of allegedly infringing websites?
Manipulation and control over the DNS is what is ultimately required to do anything effective. This law will just drive all the businesses outside of the U.S, just like the DMCA has driven a lot of businesses outside as well.
It will be DNS too, since the Great Firewall of Freedom will be more expensive then the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined and even less effective.
Talk about a wonderful day for hosting providers huh?
Why the government is involved (Score:4, Interesting)
So the plaintiff doesn't have to pony up the cash to do it, and can now accuse at will, without any regard to potential returns. However, keeping it in civil court keeps the accused at a disadvantage as they have to effectively prove their innocence, at their expense.
Buying laws is fun.
Re:Another law makes the US less competitive (Score:2, Interesting)
In fact, the only important new software companies in the last 12 years have been Facebook and Twitter and they are often cited as a counter example to those who hate the DMCA.
Ignoring their insignificance, can you think of one other...?
These companies succeeded because MS, Sun, and their ilk ignored these startup companies until they were large largely because the conglomerates didn't understand them or their significance. Now, MS tries to pay attn to all startups and we haven't seen a single company in 5 years (Twitter is 2006) since.
On a positive note...shutdowns have slowed as the conglomerates are seeing that their efforts in DMCA notices are "killing the golden goose" that they can later buyout and remain competitive.
Re:Governmental Takeover? (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a seemingly small but significant difference. Usually "regulation" connotes guidelines for a practice that you do want to allow, but need to place boundaries on, like trading stocks or selling pharmaceuticals. Whereas standard law enforcement usually concerns practices you don't want to allow at all, like fraud and theft.
That's why there was only one item I actually filed under the heading of "regulation" in my previous post. That would be a simple law stating that ISPs and carriers may not discriminate on the basis of destination or origin. This would be a regulation, as we do want ISPs to transmit IP packets and this rule would set boundaries on how they may do so. Every other concern mentioned was either basic law enforcement or the difference between a responsible admin and an incompetent admin.
Speaking only for myself, I think that's a reasonable distinction that can be objectively applied. It neatly avoids any concerns about whether I happen to like something. You can have excessive law enforcement just as you can have excessive regulation. While I like to call things what they are, neither excess is desirable.
Re:Bye Bye EBAY (Score:1, Interesting)
See how fast they work, they have already taken all the evidence offline. That is the evidence. As long as you can't find any evidence of this then it must be true.
In all seriousness though, ebay isn't going to come under any scrutiny over this, even though they account for at least 90% of commercial counterfeit trade.
Re:No kidding (Score:4, Interesting)
A corporation requires money and resources, without that it dies. In a free market, no one is forced to pay for anything they don't want, this is in sharp contrast with a government where you -have- to pay for things, even if you don't want them. For example, if you disagree with Wal-Mart's hiring practices, you don't have to shop there, they don't get any of your money or support. On the other hand, if you oppose the war in Iraq, you still have to pay for the bullets or else go to prison.
Given a free enough market, corporations won't become tyrannical because of the fact that the market balances itself out. Even the "worst" monopoly was broken up in essence by market forces (the government breakup of Standard Oil was not needed because it no longer was even close to a monopoly at the time of its breakup). Anytime you see a monopoly, it either A) Is government imposed (postal service, utilities, etc), B) No need for competition (as in, if no one thought hamburgers would be profitable and therefore McDonalds was the only store selling hamburgers) or C) Is very temporary.
The problem is, our government is not free enough, when boiled down to a government whos only job is to protect against fraud and force both corporations and consumers win. Consumers win because they are free to screw the corporations, for example, no DMCA and most likely no (or very, very limited) copyright. Corporations win because they are free to innovate and expand beyond government constraints artificially limiting them. Consumers also have more choice, imagine if all the oil in the world was monopolized and there was incredibly high prices, a few things would have happened, either A) we'd find new sources of oil or more likely B) We'd develop things that didn't need oil thus pushing oil prices down further leading to a loss of that monopoly. Corporations also can provide infrastructure, if Company X needs to have an airport near Nowheresville, they will build an airport, because they can't utilize all of it 24/7, they rent it out to private airlines, therefore, suddenly Nowheresville has an airport and gets more trade without government waste.
I guarantee making voting more complicated is not the answer. You need an educated, informed electorate first. But if you have that, playing silly games with the ballot won't be necessary.
Look at countries with high voter turnout, almost all of them use the solution I'm proposing, for example, the US only has a 54% voter turnout, on the other hand, look at Sweden with 86% voter turnout because they use proportional voting.
Proportional representation is the easiest way to make sure that people's vote counts. Just because you don't agree with 50% of people, doesn't mean your voice shouldn't be heard. The idea that people vote politically based on the surrounding area is outdated, it worked before the civil war, where industries were tied to certain geographical areas. But they aren't.
To quote JFK (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Bye Bye EBAY (Score:5, Interesting)
I own a small hosting company. We have operations in the US, Europe, and Asia. Each operation is owned by a seperate corporate entity. Chance favors the prepared.
Re:Bye Bye EBAY (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, DNS is the lynchpin. And I gotta wonder to what extent DNSSEC consolidates lockstep control over DNS servers.
Well, according to this Wired article, court control of the DNS servers is just about here:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/justice-department-piracy/#ixzz10Aeo5Tmt [wired.com]
Quite frankly, I'm surprised this isn't bigger news here at SlashDot than the originally linked article.
Re:Piercing the corporate veil (Score:3, Interesting)
Frankly sir, I'm not trying to disguise anything. I've simply followed the letter of the law in all the jurisdictions I operate in. Of course, it wouldn't protect me if I went all Wikileaks and countries started doing underhanded things to go after me, but you have to balance risk and reward.