PROTECT IP Renamed To the E-PARASITE Act 373
bs0d3 writes "The U.S. House has drafted their version of Protect IP today. They have renamed the bill to 'the Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation Act' or the E-PARASITE Act. The new house version of Protect IP is far worse than the Senate bill s.968 and it massively expands the sites that will be covered by the law. While the Senate bill limited its focus to sites that were 'dedicated to infringing activities,' the house bill targets 'foreign infringing sites' and 'has only limited purpose or use other than infringement.' They're also including an 'inducement' claim, any foreign site declared by the Attorney General to be 'inducing' infringement, can now be censored by the US. With no adversarial hearing. The bill can be read here."
chill out, guys (Score:2, Informative)
This is a House bill. The President can always veto it, and that's assuming it gets past the Senate. Call your Congressman, call your Senators, write the White House. There's still a chance for the people to lobby against this.
Re:American rights? (Score:5, Informative)
That's not even wrong. Nobody said that CU caused that.
They're saying that CU gave corporations more rights to pour money into politics, thereby giving them more "speech" than natural people. This happens to be true.
So bye-bye these American rights (Score:5, Informative)
I can still remember
How that music used to make me smile.
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And, maybe, they’d be happy for a while.
But legislation made me shiver
With every takedown I’d deliver.
Bad news on the doorstep;
I couldn’t take one more step.
I can’t remember if I cried
When I read about their lawless crime
But something touched me deep inside
The day the freedom died.
Re:china copys us stuff and pass it off as there o (Score:4, Informative)
A microwave oven these days costs $35!
Yes, and it costs $35 because corners have been cut in its production. Microwave ovens today are far simpler and more fragile than their counterparts from 20 or even 10 years ago.
A side effect of this: because new ones are so cheap, a broken one will be thrown away instead of repaired. More waste. More consumption. Is the world any better off because of it?
Re:We Salute Our New Media Overlords (Score:2, Informative)
Infringing on (Corporate 1%) 'Truth' & Profitability - Government Regulation, Democrats, 'Occupy Everywhere'
Sorry, the Dems are just in favor of protecting the "Corporate 1%"'s profitability as the Reps.
Infringing on (Apple's) Patents & Profitability - RIM (darned Canadians Eh?)
RIM's products are crap, and no one who wants an iPhone ever looks twice at a Crackberry, it's a totally different market. I think you're thinking of Samsung here.
Re:American rights? (Score:2, Informative)
Books sell well for a long time, and often take years before becoming popular - it's a different pattern than movies and popular music. There were very few authors (even per capita) under patronage - we moved to copyright because it did a much better job at encouraging writers, and as self-publishing becomes much more practical with modern technology, this will be even more true, as we leave the "Borders only stocks 100 titles" effect behind.
We certainly need copyright, and the current term is certainly too long, but where's the happy medium?
Re:china copys us stuff and pass it off as there o (Score:5, Informative)
Re:china copys us stuff and pass it off as there o (Score:5, Informative)
Could you please at least try to refrain from running your mouth before you check your facts? The largest owner of American debt [blogspot.com] is not China- Over 40% of US debt is owned domestically. China owns about 10%. These figures are about a year old, but they've changed significantly.
China is, for all intents and purposes, a single creditor. While domestically held debt is a much larger share of the total debt, that is spread out among millions of individual creditors. So, Chiner is still holds the largest share of US debt than any other creditor.
Re:China copies U.S. Intellectual Property... (Score:2, Informative)
How so? WWI you joined very late in the game, after millions had been killed, leaving you as the only power who hadn't had pretty well a whole generation where the best had died.
WWII you had a choice of surrendering or getting involved after Germany declared war on you. It was easy to help as you had just about the only functioning industrial base at that time and couldn't very well continue selling stuff to Germany after they'd declared war on you and it was the Russians who made the real sacrifices to win the war.
The Marshall plan was probably guilt driven after the demands that you made on the English to dismantle their industry in return for loans combined with fear about the Russians who you had witnessed being willing to make sacrifices to win the war.
America did pretty well out of the wars, much better then any one else.
Re:Presumption of guilt (Score:2, Informative)
That's not novel. Just ask the many people who've had their possessions seized by the police because of simple suspicion of illegal activity -- even those possessions that have absolutely no evidentiary value, such as money, cars, boats, etc. Most Americans really don't give a shit about it because the goernment wouldn't seize your shit unless you're guilty of dealing or hacking or whatever, right?