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."
American rights? (Score:5, Interesting)
Bring it on (Score:4, Interesting)
The internet will go darknet so fast it will make their heads spin.
Re:American rights? (Score:2, Interesting)
Corporations have been considered legal persons for hundreds of years in jurisdictions based on British law. I don't understand why there's this meme that the Citizens United decision created that...
Read up on the case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad to see how the modern concept of corporate personhood got started. Prior to that, there was a long standing concept of "natural person" and "artificial person".
On Piracy... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm in the process of writing a book, called Lacuna: Demons of the Void, seen here [lacunaverse.com]. I'm just in the final review and cleanup pass now.
The first three chapters are available for free, and are CC-BY-SA-NC; this means that you can legally and safely write whatever fanfiction you want, or pass the sample chapters around, or change and remix them or do whatever you want basically as long as you don't sell it, don't change the licence and credit me appropriately.
I did this because if the book (and subsequent sequels if any) gets popular, I didn't want to get old and fat and retarded and turn into the next George Lucas, grabbing hold of my precious precious IP and never letting go.
Anyway. This law is basically insane.
I've never understood musicians, writers and artists who get all messed up about digital piracy. It just strikes me as entirely retarded, especially if they're not in full compliance with every piece of software, hardware, music and movies they've ever seen or owned. I'm sure their $2,000 copy of Adobe Photoshop is fully legitimate now and was when they were 14, and I'm sure they've never downloaded an MP3 in their life.
I see this crap everywhere. I see rap artists thumbing their nose at society, waxing lyrical about sticking it to the man, pimping hoes, glorifying robbery, murder and pushing drugs, while at the same time appearing bereaved that their latest forgettable album appeared on The Pirate Bay the day after it appeared in iTunes. I see armies of cocaine huffing, hooker bashing, Harvard educated RIAA trust-fund babies who've never wanted for anything in their life but a full head of hair, going on about how Limewire costs them the GDP of the entire world ($75,000,000,000,000 dollars) in lost revenue and also, simultaneously, claiming to have had one of their most profitable years ever. How do you even rationalize that kind of blatant, intrinsic wrongness?
Fuck those guys.
Re:China copies U.S. Intellectual Property... (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed. Didn't the US do this for a longish while, signing up to the International treaties after they'd got the good stuff?
I'm not saying that China is "faultless" or the US is "all bad", but let's face facts - America would not have made the progress it has if it had respected European patent laws and European property rights. If it wants to claim China is in the wrong, then I have nothing against that provided it is NOT for the purpose of maintaining a hegemony obtained solely through the same practices. If China is guilty, then American corporations and the American government owe Europe a percentage of the profits secured through IP theft.
Sure, that might push the US into recession. Isolating China and closing down all counterfeit goods plus genuine goods based on stolen IP would not merely put China into recession, it would bankrupt it. If you're willing to do the latter, you should be man enough to accept the former.
The good news is that 100+ years of compound interest for some of the products and 60+ years of accumulated value in the case of property illegally confiscated from British and other Allied nations during WW2 should cover the combined debts of Italy, Greece, Spain and Ireland, and leave enough left over for the heads of State to put in advance orders for GTA 5.
Re:china copys us stuff and pass it off as there o (Score:5, Interesting)
Welcome to world where you do what's good for you at the moment. It's not like this is a new concept for US either. China practically owns US now, and in 10-20 years it will start to really show. In the end, they will probably fall again, but it will be China who controls the world soon (again). It's the cycle of life.
Back in the eighteenth century Lord Macartney approached the Emperor with the finest goods of Britain - which paled in comparison to the riches of the asian court. There's a saying, "China already has everything, would could you possibly offer China", ultimately the answer was Opium.
China is returning to glory days, where China will have everything everyone else has and the question will be, "What can you possibly offer to the Chinese?" Tough question to answer.
Re:china copys us stuff and pass it off as there o (Score:2, Interesting)
Step 1. The Chinese have everything.
Step 2. Offer them opium.
Step 3. PROFIT!!
Step 4. Repeat
Re:Land of the free? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:china copys us stuff and pass it off as there o (Score:4, Interesting)
The main sign of failure in pre-WW1 and pre-WW2 Europe has been copyright crackdown, while New World has been blatantly copying and pirating everything.
Look at how that story ended up. Truly history keeps repeating itself, and every time we do not learn.
The true parasites are the corporate banksters and their bought dog lackeys in government. It is said of the mafia that it is like an artichoke, attack any part and the whole will continue to grow. However, salt the whole ground and the plant will die.
The time to make the environment between corporate and state so toxic that it can no longer flourish is fast approaching.The 99% have a voice, yet, the ears that need to listen only hear the jingling of thirty pieces of silver.
Re:American rights? (Score:5, Interesting)
Please allow me to expand upon this a little bit:
As early as the mid-1800's the trusts and tycoons had been trying, without success, for decades to have the SCOTUS declare corporations people. In Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 118 U.S. 394 (1886), the Supreme Court recognized corporations as persons for the purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment.
In 2003, the SCOTUS declared corporate funding cannot be limited under the First Amendment, in 2010 SCOTUS declared money to be speech and removed all limits to corporate spending on lobbying.
The corporate person-hood aspect of the campaign finance debate turns on Buckley v. Valeo (1976) and Citizens United (2010): Buckley ruled that political spending is protected by the First Amendment right to free speech, while Citizens United ruled that corporate political spending is protected, holding that corporations have a First Amendment right to free speech.
Result: corporations, government licensed creatures, now have become the government, by using their wealth to "unfairly influence elections." This lead to the first stirrings of unrest in the civil populous, most notably the 'Occupy Wall Street' demonstrations, citing no faith in their elected officials because of the undue power wielded by corporations and special interest groups to influence law makers.
Now, protected by the very institutions that had been in place to protect people, citizens of the United States are denied at least two of the traditional corner stones of a democracy. Those foundations stones being the Ballot and Jury box.
Timeline: -Tillman Act of 1907, banned corporate political contributions to national campaigns. -Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, landmark campaign financing legislation. -Buckley v. Valeo (1976) upheld limits on campaign contributions, but held that spending money to influence elections is protected speech as in the first amendment. -First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978) upheld the rights of corporations to spend money in non-candidate elections (i.e. ballot initiatives and referendums). -Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990) upheld the right of the state of Michigan to prohibit corporations from using money from their corporate treasuries to support or oppose candidates in elections, noting that "[c]orporate wealth can unfairly influence elections." -Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (McCain–Feingold), banned corporate funding of issue advocacy ads that mentioned candidates close to an election. -McConnell v. Federal Election Commission (2003), substantially upheld McCain–Feingold. -Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. (2007) weakened McCain–Feingold, but upheld core of McConnell. -Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) the Supreme Court of the United States held that corporate funding of independent political broadcasts in candidate elections cannot be limited under the First Amendment, overruling Austin (1990) and partly overruling McConnell (2003).
Re:American rights? (Score:4, Interesting)
BTW cheap publishing + distribution is an argument against long copyright. If the cost of publishing is lower, you need less of a reward to get someone to risk publishing a work.