US Threatens Spain For Not Implementing SOPA-Like Law 508
SharkLaser writes "In a leaked letter sent to Spain's outgoing President, the US ambassador warned that if Spain didn't pass SOPA-like file-sharing site blocking law, Spain would risk being put into United States trade blocklist. United States government interference in Spain's intellectual property laws have been suspected for a long time, and now the recent leaks of diplomatic cables confirm this. Apart from the cables leaked earlier, now another cable dated December 12th says U.S. expresses 'deep concern' over the failure to implement SOPA-style censorship law in the country. 'The government has unfortunately failed to finish the job for political reasons, to the detriment of the reputation and economy of Spain,' read the letter. Racing against the clock in the final days of the government, Solomont had one last push. 'I encourage the Government of Spain to implement the Sinde Law immediately to safeguard the reputation of Spain as an innovative country that does what it says it will, and as a country that breeds confidence,' he wrote."
correct response: "OK, put me on the list." (Score:5, Insightful)
All it needs is one domino to fall.
Freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dear US of A (Score:5, Insightful)
The questions is: Will the people living int he US finally elect a competent set of leaders, or will this worsening problem require an external solution? I guess another alternative would be a revolution? How many more years like this?
In about a 20 years... (Score:4, Insightful)
America will be the new China... everybody will hate your government, including the people who live there...
Now do you understand (Score:5, Insightful)
Why a large part of the world considers the USA to be a big bully?
And yes .. mod me to hell for that.
Re:correct response: "OK, put me on the list." (Score:2, Insightful)
I think its time (Score:5, Insightful)
to overthrow the US gov and burn down Hollywood. The two greatest threats to freedom since Hitler. Fuck em.....
Re:Freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, SOPA will make work for the police a lot harder.
As of now, it is easy to sit back and monitor connections, because people will do their business directly from their IP addresses.
Come SOPA, there will be a distributed, encrypted name system, and more people will move to offshore proxies. This will completely lock out passive spying, forcing LEOs to have to take an active role, either by blocking proxies by IP address, demanding endpoints have monitoring on them, or passing harsh, unenforceable laws, and then vacuuming up a script kiddy to throw a life sentence at as an example.
SOPA will just get P2P people to have to download an updated client. Law enforcement will be stuck out in the cold when all connections go dark as people start using VPNs as a matter of routine.
Re:Dear US of A (Score:4, Insightful)
Problem is, we get the same garbage up to the point where we are given a choice, so the question is not so much which candidate is good, as which maggot is the least rancid.
Re:Dear US of A (Score:5, Insightful)
We can't elect anyone who is competent until we somehow fix the lobby-centric corporate buyout principal the political environment is built on here.
People (like Obama) seem competent to voters and then turn around and act just like (or worse than) the previous administration due to their corporate entrenchment.
Re:correct response: "OK, put me on the list." (Score:3, Insightful)
Spain is only bankrupt if it can't provide all the necessities for its own people. If they can manage to self-sustain, all the blacklists in the world will have no effect on its economy.
Fuck America ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I am so fucking tired of hearing how America is bullying the world into being forced into implementing legislation that is utterly flawed and is only there to serve the interests of the *AAs.
America can go fuck themselves if this is the best they've got.
Things like fair use are legal rights in other countries, but the USA is working to be sure that we all have the same lowest common denominator -- them.
I think someone should start passing laws holding the US accountable for the financial melt-down they caused, and for charging them for the implementation of the laws they've been ramming down everyone else's throats.
America has become a bunch of pathetic, whining cowards who are only worried about copyright, and making sure they can buy cheap oil.
Re:Now do you understand (Score:5, Insightful)
Spain sent Columbus (Score:3, Insightful)
I find it so ironic that the USA is threatening a country that essentially found this side of the planet (admittedly, there were already people living here, but those indigenous populations are usually ignored by history books).
Secondly, exactly what items from Spain will stop being in Walmart if a trade embargo goes into place? And with "globalization", all Spain has to do is ship via a third party in a preferred trading partner status, like China or Canada.
And lastly, America is a failing empire. Apart from having a big military that they are borrowing heavily from the Chinese to pay for, they are no longer a threat. Rome lasted much, much longer, and was managed far better than the USA. A shame really.
Re:Why I love being an ex-pat living in China (Score:3, Insightful)
Pirated games and movies don't affect me, either. Does that mean I should shrug my shoulders and go "that's cute"? Fact is, while we should be concerned about copyright laws, it is YOU who should be MORE afraid of a country willing to censor "political stuff" You are only able to enjoy the life of an ex-pat because you have the luxury of leaving China whenever the politics do start to affect you.
Re:In about a 20 years... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why I love being an ex-pat living in China (Score:3, Insightful)
The local censorship is just political stuff so doesn't affect me. In fact it's quite cute.
...posted AC
Re:Dear US of A (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
99% of the population would not understand what you are talking about. Yes, people will wind up updating their clients to get some sort of encryption which will be traceable back to their IP.
I can tell you if I ask teenagers today most won't even know what a VPN is.
It will affect casual piracy as people are thrown in jail to make an example. Hardcore pirates will use workarounds such as VPNs. The average Joe won't and will see people being thrown in jail and stop.
That's all they want.
Re:correct response: "OK, put me on the list." (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really, the US represents a huge buyer of inexpensive cheap plastic crap from china and would devastate their economy if we stopped trading with them. The US would suffer because we would have to buy locally produced expensive cheap plastic crap, at least until we have had time to ramp up the cheap plastic crap industry at home and solve the unemployment problem.
Re:Fuck America ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Occupy this, occupy that. (Score:5, Insightful)
They need to stop occupying parks and what not and start occupying the front yards and offices of the politicians that are trying to impose SOPA.
These guys are dirty and are obviously getting money in their bank accounts for doing this.
The media needs to expose these guys by putting their face all over the news papers, magazines, blogs, TV, etc. Expose these political criminals and get them the hell out of office.
Re:correct response: "OK, put me on the list." (Score:5, Insightful)
I really don't get this - is SOPA so important to US interests that it would risk a trade war with an EU country? I get that it's in the interests of some media companies, but they are puny in comparison with other US industries. Don't these industries have lobbies, too?
Re:Now do you understand (Score:3, Insightful)
USA only seems like a bigger bully because it has bigger economic muscles. You can see France and Germany throwing their economic weight around to the detriment of smaller EU neighbors. You see China throwing its economic weight around to the detriment of the SEA neighbors. You see Russia throwing its economic weight around to the detriment of its former satellites. Yet these other bullies are rarely the focus of internet moralists, many of whom live in or are more affected by their proximity to those countries.
Great news for the conspiracy theorists! (Score:5, Insightful)
We've discussed the technical merits (or lack thereof) of SOPA here on Slashdot numerous times, and always, the inescapable conclusion came out that we simply had Luddites and idiots for leaders. Now, we have a better, more accurate answer. Our leaders may still count as idiots, but they fully realize just how deliberately-bad a law they've crafted in SOPA.
Can you hear the drums in the distance, getting ever closer, Washington?
Re:correct response: "OK, put me on the list." (Score:5, Insightful)
1. SOPA is so important to U.S. corporate interests that they are exerting enormous pressure on our Legislature.
2. Our Legislature, being so dependent on corporate insider trading, is willing to do their will.
3. Our Executive branch, being utterly bereft of ethical standards, is willing to threaten Spain with actual economic damages for no more reason than to support U.S. corporate interests, which uktimately serve to enrich the Legislature (and other insiders) to the disadvantage of the general population.
4. There are virtually NO U.S. corporations that would not benefit from the enactment of SOPA, in some way. Virtually none would suffer any damages from enactment of SOPA. Even Internet-based corporations would benefit from having clear rules to follow. Ambiguity is not always profitable.
Re:Now do you understand (Score:5, Insightful)
Being a big bully is one thing. It's one thing if we're a big bully on things like human rights. What's more distressing to me is that we're basically allowing the media companies to push the US into being a big bully for things that even our own citizens think is ridiculous.
Before the media companies there were other commercial interests that pushed the US government to do their bidding. Go back to 1893 and you'll find that sugar interests were responsible for Hawaii being taken over by the US. And that is just one example.
Yep. Not to mention all of the banana republics in South America, who had their approximately-democratic governments violently toppled by the CIA acting on behalf of American produce companies.
America has never been The Good Guy, it has just been a typical state out to get ahead at any cost... any cost, that is, short of allowing its citizens to discover that it is not The Good Guy.
That's why the diplomatic cable leaks are such a Big Deal, and the reason why Bradley Manning will get no popular sympathy. His revelations cause American citizens to feel cognitive dissonance ("We aren't the Good Guy? Really?")... and people deeply hate those who cause them cognitive dissonance.
I'm an American citizen and I feel ashamed about the degree to which my country has fallen to regulatory capture.
Re:Now do you understand (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm really hoping that Google, Facebook, etc. pursue the "nuclear option" that has been discussed. It will kill SOPA almost instantly, making SOPA politically untouchable. It will also serve as a wakeup call to politicians that they were meant to serve the people, not lobbyists.
At this point, we'll have serious egg on our face for implying that another country is a "bad country" because their politicians didn't want to commit political suicide.
Re:Dear US of A (Score:5, Insightful)
Lobbying is basically people banding together and expressing their opinion with promises of campaign money. Im not sure how you intend to get rid of that without curtailing people's right to vote, or to speech, or to the press.
Re:Now do you understand (Score:2, Insightful)
America has never been The Good Guy, it has just been a typical state out to get ahead at any cost... any cost, that is, short of allowing its citizens to discover that it is not The Good Guy.
That's why the diplomatic cable leaks are such a Big Deal, and the reason why Bradley Manning will get no popular sympathy. His revelations cause American citizens to feel cognitive dissonance ("We aren't the Good Guy? Really?")... and people deeply hate those who cause them cognitive dissonance.
I wish I had mod points because this is just about the most concise description of American reality I've seen in a while.
Re:correct response: "OK, put me on the list." (Score:5, Insightful)
what makes you think this doesn't apply to any trade blacklist globally?
The market is no longer "us centric", so any trade blacklist just makes it worse for us. Who would do business by choice with a country that is blacklisting (and blackmailing) countries into being the same kind of failure they are becoming?
Re:Freedom (Score:4, Insightful)
You miss one point - it's possible to make more sophisticated P2P programs.
I don't (personally) want to get involved in it due to prevalence of child porn, but tru darknets like freenet start to look more appealing.
It would also be perfectly possible to set up an encrypted multi-bounce net that connects friends to each other to share data. Direct connections need go no further than friends-of-friends, each one trusted because a direct friend has signed for them. Each person shares a list of media they can 'see' with their connections, the kevin-bacon effect ensures that the net eventually encompasses a whole heap of people who can now trade data across the world but appear only to be connected to local folks.
Traffic disguising algorithms like those used by WASTE can hide or at least randomise a lot of traffic and... well. There are attempts in this direction already with projects like OneSwarm.
And as pipes get faster all the time this sort of thing just gets more feasible.
(no, I haven't got the search algorithm worked out yet)
Re:Freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a difference between US companies individually saying "we dont like how spain doesnt support SOPA, we wont do our business there", which your analogy would be like, and the US imposing nationwide sanctions on trading with spain.
Re:correct response: "OK, put me on the list." (Score:5, Insightful)
4. There are virtually NO U.S. corporations that would not benefit from the enactment of SOPA, in some way. Virtually none would suffer any damages from enactment of SOPA. Even Internet-based corporations would benefit from having clear rules to follow. Ambiguity is not always profitable.
This is just ridiculous. First of all, what about the existing law is supposed to be so ambiguous? New laws almost always produce more ambiguity because there has to be a period of years before the courts have a chance to write decisions interpreting them where any number of the new provisions remain uncertain. This is especially true of SOPA because parts of it are so obviously subject to a constitutional challenge, which means companies won't know whether they have to follow them until it goes to court -- which is the worst kind of uncertainty; the kind that leads to expensive protracted litigation.
In addition to that, if SOPA will have no negative effects on them, why have they all come out against it [techcrunch.com]? Why are they running full page ads in the New York Times [boingboing.net]?
I think you'll find that the US Trade Representative's positions are set not based on what US companies want, but rather based on what US companies that do the most lobbying want. The RIAA and MPAA have long been prolific in their employment of lobbyists; tech companies less so until very recently and even there they lack the sort of experience necessary to be as effective as would be expected from their size and economic importance. One can hope that they get it right before it's too late, but I prefer to hope that Americans come to their senses and make it a defense to murder that the victim was an entertainment/fossil fuel/defense/telecommunications industry lobbyist.
Re:I think its time (Score:5, Insightful)
NDAA says you are a thread to the country, citizen or not, and can now be detained indefinitely. And no one is going to be able to counter the massive firepower, including automated drones, to make this happen.
Maybe 11 years ago it might have been remotely possible, but the republic is here to stay until people start starving in the streets (no citizens to tax) or another country takes over violently.
Re:correct response: "OK, put me on the list." (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dear US of A (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, although it kind of says something when someone refers to "that supposedly crazy person running for president" and disambiguation is needed.
Re:correct response: "OK, put me on the list." (Score:5, Insightful)
What he was doing (rightly or wrongly) was paraphrasing the old saying "When you owe the bank a thousand dollars, you have a problem, but when you owe the bank a million dollars, the bank has a problem."
Re:Why Spain? (Score:5, Insightful)
If piracy had disappeared altogether, though, Spanish album sales would still be at an all-time low. Unemployment is over 20% and salaries for everyone else have gone down, so it's hardly surprising that spending on non-essentials is at an all time low. In particuar, unemployment amongst the young (who are probably the people who buy the most albums) is around 40%. Piracy has very little to do with it.
Re:Republitarians no better (Score:5, Insightful)
Its time to put your money where your mouth is right-wingers...
Re:correct response: "OK, put me on the list." (Score:5, Insightful)
In the day the dollar stops being a priority for the chinese, probably it won't worth the paper is printed on. A considerable devaluation of the currency would lead all those countries that also negotiate in dollars (officially or unofficially) to exchange them as fast as they can. Given the amount of forged currency in circulation, it would have a catastrophic effect - not only for the USA, but for every other 1st world country whose financial sector is backed by dollar investments.
Re:Freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
That 99% of the population will just go to the 1% that knows how to pirate shit. The cat and mouse game will continue. There are already informal "clubs" springing up just to share media. As it is now, many people in our circle carry their huge external hard drives around with them everywhere they go, explicitly so we can share media with each other. I'm the music guy, another is the movie/tv guy, another is the windows software guy, then there's the Apple software guy...hell, I even know someone that has almost any ebook I would ever want, plus thousands of comic books in a variety of formats.
The irony in all of this is, they'll spend or otherwise forego billions of dollars fighting piracy when they could put that money into providing a better product with more value and sell more than they ever did. The RIAA has been fighting music piracy for over a decade and what did they gain? Nothing. How many billions did they waste?
Piracy is like the hydra, you cut off one head and two more grow in it's place. Wiping out Napster just moved everyone to Kazaa and Limewire. Fighting Limewire just moved everyone to P2P. Fighting P2P just moved everyone to digital locker sites, and SOPA will just move everyone to encrypt their traffic and give rise to the sneakernet once again, and the only way they're going to police that is to start searching people...and once that comes to pass the U.S. Government might as well start putting it's affairs in order, because it will not last long after that...
Re:Now do you understand (Score:3, Insightful)
America was one of the Good Guys circa 1941-1945. And even that is debatable. I'm not gonna argue about whether or not the nukes were necessary (I think they probably were), but you don't get to be called a Good Guy for using them.
Re:correct response: "OK, put me on the list." (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:correct response: "OK, put me on the list." (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really, the US represents a huge buyer of inexpensive cheap plastic crap from china and would devastate their economy if we stopped trading with them. The US would suffer because we would have to buy locally produced expensive cheap plastic crap, at least until we have had time to ramp up the cheap plastic crap industry at home and solve the unemployment problem.
Cheap plastic crap such as laptops and tablet computers almost all produced in China in Taiwanese-owned plants [wikipedia.org]
China gets squat in exchange for the goods they ship to the US. The reason they continue is to keep their productive infrastructure operational and their people industrious. They could dump manufactured goods into the sea and be no worse off.
As for being blacklisted by the Americans... the US got where they are on the basis of trade. The reason they got that way is because people who trade with them usually end up getting the short end of the stick. This being the case, any rational person would see that doing business with the US is a bad idea. This isn't a secret. It's not even a controversial statement. The problem is, Americans are extremely good at corrupting representatives into screwing over those they represent by continuing to do business with them.
Re:Fuck America ... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, you're right. The people are not being shot in the streets in America. They are having chemical weapons, banned under the Geneva convention, deployed against them at peaceful protests. That's much better.
Speaking as someone who was pepper-sprayed, beaten, and detained for a legal, peaceful demonstration, I'd say we've got a few problems here.
Re:correct response: "OK, put me on the list." (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, China is one of the (non-american) biggest USA debt buyer,
That is like saying that a 4 ft tall person is the tallest person in a room full of midgets. The amount of US debt owned by China is only 8% of all US public debt. Their interest in the US economy is solely as a potential market to sell goods. And soon they won't even be worried about that as their middle class keeps growing. But right now the US is the larget market out there, with no real replacement.
Re:correct response: "OK, put me on the list." (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:correct response: "OK, put me on the list." (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been reading more about SOPA recently, and the list of opponents is actually relatively small. Most of them are internet-based service companies, without tangible products. Google's the biggest of the bunch, followed by Amazon, Ebay, Yahoo, and AOL. Everyone else is tiny--miniscule even--compared to the list of SOPA supporters.
On the other hand, everybody from cosmetics to media support SOPA. Every industry that involves a tangible product has at least one company or lobbying group within it supporting SOPA.
Tech giants like Microsoft and Apple are staying quiet, though I suspect the BSA's stated reservations are close to their official position. Collectively, they're neutral at best.
But everyone else is in favor of SOPA. Everyone. Except the ones whom the government is supposed to represent.
Re:correct response: "OK, put me on the list." (Score:5, Insightful)
DCTech wrote:
Really? Is that the way it works? Sorry if I'm completely ignorant of the way this market works. Why would one large player completely selling out of the market only affect the price by the amount that player holds? I'm just asking because in just about any other market I've heard of, that kind of move would trigger a huge drop as other players struggle to be the first to abandon what they see as a sinking ship (even if their intention is just to sell high and then buy low later). Why would it be different in this market?
Re:correct response: "OK, put me on the list." (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't.
Your question reminds me of the old joke about the guy asking the lady in a bar, "Would you sleep with me for a billion dollars?" to which she says "Yes"; then he asks "For a hundred?" and she responds "What kind of lady do you think I am?"; his answer: "We've already determined that. Now we're negotiating the price."