PROTECT-IP Makes Its Way To the Floors of Congress 145
New submitter trunicated writes "Everyone on Slashdot seems to know about PROTECT-IP Act — how it will push responsibility for the contents of the internet onto the search engines that index it, how it will give even more power to the *IAA industries, and, worst of all, how it will provide the U.S. government with a kill switch they can use at their discretion. However, this write up may provide you with a bit more information and help you explain the issues to those that won't be able to get around the poisoned DNS entries that this bill will allow."
Popularity in the single digits (Score:2)
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Low enough to bring about the wrath of the community they are oppressing. Did you know the piratebay is actually not the piratebay, but rather 194.71.107.15?
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How about IPv6? Might as well be prepared.
Won't work. The *IAA, et al, must be salivating at the thought of foisting new purchases of IP-Spy-O-Lux network appliances on carriers and the hardware industry (yet another wolf lurking in the shadows) must be positively writhing at the prospect of big sales of those IP-Spy-O-Lux appliances.
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The point is that DNS poisoning doesn't affect IP addresses, I presume.
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You think they can't block IP addresses? With active monitoring, they can not only do that, they can also keep track of when those addresses change and block proxy sites too.
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How low can they go?
You have to ask? Sometimes they make me feel like we really missed a golden opportunity to join the Communists.
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How low can they go?
You have to ask? Sometimes they make me feel like we really missed a golden opportunity to join the Communists.
[sarcasm on]
No, we should have payed Osama to drop some airplanes on the RIAA and MPAA headquarters, planes full of MPAA and RIAA layers of course. He could have done a great favor to humankind, instead look what a selfish prick he was.
[sarcasm off]
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It's PAID, moron. P-A-I-D past tense of P-A-Y which you would know if you really knew the language of your country.
But what really is stupid is your lumping of Osama in with "communists." It's as if you have had so many bullshit fears stuffed into your eagerly stupid head, you think all of your imaginary demons are the same.
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Well, now that we are "The Banana Republic" of North America ranking 23rd in economic health, 50+ in medicine and science, 45+ in education and literacy ... we need to accept the future we have built for our children and posterity, and accept the rule of the elite sociopath community of plutocrats (C*Os, politicians, clergy ...)
HAVEFUN.
Re:Popularity in the single digits (Score:4, Interesting)
Occupy MPAA/RIAA ?
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Plutocrats: They rule US and EU. They fool US and EU. They are not US or EU. We lost the totalitarian war on economies and capitalism to the sociopath community of politicians, C*Os, clergy .... We can now go submissively to hell.
Re:its a limit problem actually (Score:4, Insightful)
So much for the internet. (Score:5, Insightful)
It was fun for a while. Too bad they've decided to kill it.
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It was fun for a while. Too bad they've decided to kill it.
Seems I've seen a bumper sticker somewhere - Nothing ever imrpoves with Government involvement.
A pretty general statement, but certainly applicable here.
More accurately... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:More accurately... (Score:5, Insightful)
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P.J. O'Rourke is a tool.
If he said water was wet, I'd want a second opinion.
You've got to follow the strings, and the ones holding all the strings are corporations. They became more powerful than any government decades ago.
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"You've got to follow the strings, and the ones holding all the strings are corporations. They became more powerful than any government decades ago."
Right. That's why California, New York, Illinois and many other states are near bankruptcy.
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...and why Citigroup, General Motors, Chrysler, and Bank of America aren't.
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California Near Bankruptcy, still #8 or #9 economy in the world.
If that doesn't paint a bleak picture, I don't know what will.
Re:More accurately... (Score:5, Insightful)
Texas was closer to bankruptcy than Illinois before they used all that Federal stimulus money to buy their way out of debt.
Maybe those states are near bankruptcy because corporations that make all the money in those states aren't paying taxes. Here in Chicago, every big box store that opens up does so thanks to a tax abatement in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Koch Brothers only decided to do business in Wisconsin when Scott Walker pushed through his big tax giveaway to them.
Again, what I'm saying, that corporate lobbyists are currently in charge of at least two of the three branches of the US government, is not really disputable. Most new legislation is literally written by lobbyists. Every single new regulation is written by lobbyists. Every change to the tax code, without exception, is written by lobbyists.
Just by promising fat paydays to congressional staffers, they control more than 80% of all legislators. If you're a congressional staffer right now, your average salary on the day you leave congress is more than a half-million dollars. If your congressman is a member of a powerful committee, you're guaranteed seven figures. The first thing every single elected official does when leaving office is become a lobbyist. It's a big club and it has replaced our constitutional representative government in a silent coup which started in earnest in January of 1981 when Ronald Reagan declared the US government for sale to the highest bidder.
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You've got to follow the strings, and the ones holding all the strings are corporations. They became more powerful than any government decades ago.
Riiiiight. That's because of all the enforcement of corporate policies by armed bureaucracies, the IRS, autonomous drones and legions of ... rent-a-cops?
Strings are more powerful than guns, now?
If only the government had MORE power (to beat MORE heads), everything would be okay, right? Then they would only protect the people that spend their days working and have limited funds for lobbying and media time, right?
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Strings are more powerful then guns if the strings decide who gets shot. And I've said it before, will say it again. I'll take my chances with the gov't, because at least I HAVE a chance. Corporations stated goal is profit, not matter what the cost. The gov't at least has the potential to be "By the people, for the people". A corporation will never be anything but what it is: A replacement for the apparatus of the Divine Right of Kings.
The "Divine Right of Kings" IS, a form of government. Corporations have no power in a free market, only the consumers do. They have no powers of coercion, they require government for that. Government retains a monopoly on violence - all over violence is unlawful. A government "By the people" does nothing to protect the rights of its people, unless it is constrained from doing so - that's the purpose of the US Constitution - to constrain the powers of the government to its primary purpose: protecting the
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Strings are more powerful then guns if the strings decide who gets shot. And I've said it before, will say it again. I'll take my chances with the gov't, because at least I HAVE a chance. Corporations stated goal is profit, not matter what the cost. The gov't at least has the potential to be "By the people, for the people". A corporation will never be anything but what it is: A replacement for the apparatus of the Divine Right of Kings.
The "Divine Right of Kings" IS, a form of government. Corporations have no power in a free market, only the consumers do. They have no powers of coercion, they require government for that. Government retains a monopoly on violence - all over violence is unlawful. A government "By the people" does nothing to protect the rights of its people, unless it is constrained from doing so - that's the purpose of the US Constitution - to constrain the powers of the government to its primary purpose: protecting the individual rights of its people.
Except, as you pointed out, the corporations have bought the government. Then, it devolves down to 'all personages are equal, but some ore more equal than others', since corporations are personages by law...
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Corporations have no power in a free market, only the consumers do.
That is frighteningly optimistic. Any truly free market naturally gravitates toward a plutocracy of monopolies, as companies continually get bigger and buy each other out unchecked (see Big Oil, Big Media, Big Telecom, etc). Then what power do consumers have? We might a government that can provide and enforce regulation to prevent this.
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Corporations have no power in a free market, only the consumers do.
That is frighteningly optimistic. Any truly free market naturally gravitates toward a plutocracy of monopolies, as companies continually get bigger and buy each other out unchecked (see Big Oil, Big Media, Big Telecom, etc). Then what power do consumers have? We might a government that can provide and enforce regulation to prevent this.
Those are ALL examples of market distortions caused by government, not problems with the market. Big Oil is subsidized and heavily regulated by government. Everyone remembers the "trust bust" of Standard Oil, but few people realize that Standard was actually LOSING market share BEFORE the breakup, when its market share stood around 60 to 65%. Big Media is supported by never-ending copyright laws, trade agreements, and government-sponsored enforcement of private contracts. Big Telecom was created as a go
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Corporations have no power in a free market
Except when they have lots of money, monopolies, and the method which they use to screw consumers over is small enough that consumers won't shop elsewhere.
If the "screwing" is "small enough" that consumers won't shop elsewhere, it pretty much sounds like that's a functional market. Small-dicked corporations don't really seem like much of a threat.
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Actually - government does need more power. Whatever happened to that "for the people, by the people, and of the people" thing? I guess that got shitcanned sometime around Grant's day. The Teapot scandal was all about making rich men richer, and I can't see that much has changed since then.
Today, there are people protesting in the streets, trying to get government's attention, and the response is to make those protests illegal, and to jail the protesters. Didn't they do the same thing in the '60's and '
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You do realize it's government that's shutting down the protests and jailing the protesters, right? How does it make sense, then, to make them more powerful? So they can arrest protesters even faster?
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My sidewise sarcasm failed to make it's mark. When one reads the various documents associated with the founding of this nation, it becomes apparent that you and I are the government, along with about 350 million other citizens. At least, that was the plan. Something seems to have happened along the way, though.
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Always have been. Napoleon was the most powerful man in the world and yet was small and weak. He didn't even carry a gun.
If you can control government, you control the guns.
Oh come on, you know all this. You're just playing dumb.
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You said "corporations" hold all the strings, and you compare them to Napoleon - a dictator with an army. Excellent example of a false equivalency if I ever saw one.
The last I saw, it was 535 people in Washington that pass, enforce, and uphold the laws, and a smaller number than than in charge of the military and all the armed bureaucracies. If you're complaining about about outside influences on the decisions those people make, then fine, but they are still the ones making the decisions, and claiming cor
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Slowly now...
Napoleon had an army.
Corporations have a government, which has guns.
And 40,000 lobbyists, each offering money to those 535 people.
If you're a big strong contract killer and you work for a mob boss, who's got the power? Trans-national corporations
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Even more false equivalencies. If you think your description of a mob boss with a hit man on salary is comparable, then please provide an example of a corporation ordering a hit that was carried out by a government official. I can think of lots of examples of the opposite (government agencies ordering hits carried out by corporations). They still do that in Iraq.
Now sure, you can claim that corporations wanting access to oil prompted the invasion of Iraq, the takeover of Libya, and the threats against th
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God, you make it too easy.
Guatemala, 1954. United Fruit Co orders President Eisenhower to assassinate President Juan Jose Arevalo. Eisenhower complies. This is at least the second time that United Fruit Co orders US assets to kill leaders in Guatemala.
Chile, 1973. A group of US mining and energy companies, afraid that their interests in Chile would be nationalized by Salvador Allende, ord
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God, you make it too easy.
Easy because you're making stuff up. Yea, making stuff up is easy. Try some truth instead, that's what I was looking for.
Guatemala, 1954. United Fruit Co orders President Eisenhower to assassinate President Juan Jose Arevalo.
Bzzzzt!Arevalo died in 1990, and his term as President ended in 1951. What happened in 1954 was, after many years of bad relations, the Secretary of State of the US, and the CIA, backed a rebel (Carlos Castillo Armas), who eventually took over. The President he deposed was exiled. Yea, it protected the interests of United Fruit, who had been losing property to the Communist governme
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You're right. I had my presidents confused. It was Jacobo Arbenz GuzmÃn that United Fruit ordered Eisenhower to kill. He got out of the country because there was an attack of conscience on the ground. There is no dispute that within the orders to cause the overthrow of Guzman there was "technical information" about how to execute a political assassination. I guess you believe that was just there for fun.
And you are absolutely ri
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Really? When SCOTUS decided that corporations were people, was that first a law? Which law? When SCOTUS decided that money = speech, was that first a law?
Nice repetition of statist backwards meme propagation, there, have to hand it to you for that. FYI, corporations ARE people. That is, they are government-sanctioned ways to organize groups of people, by government rules. While I agree that government has provided corporations too much protection, they didn't get it from the SCOTUS. All that Woodward did was say they have a right to enter into contracts and have them enforced. That is essential for any functioning system of commerce. The Santa Clara Co
Distinction without a difference (Score:4, Insightful)
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. ~P.J. O'Rourke
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomas Jefferson
Looks like Jefferson didn't get his wish.
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When has the government ever not teamed up with corporations?
Well there was that brief period in America between 1775 and 1789.
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As much as I admire them Jefferson and Washington were both 1%'ers who wanted among other things relief from taxes on their businesses.
That explains the Declaration of Independence, but it doesn't explain the Constitutional Convention, and the results of it, which vastly expanded the power of the central government.
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Seems I've seen a bumper sticker somewhere - Nothing ever imrpoves with Government involvement.
Government involvement in this case is kind of ridiculous. This is completely a defense of corporations thing and corporations should have to deal with it themselves. Protect their own content or change their business model. If the government wants to help out, have an Arts Fund where a portion of everyone's taxes goes to struggling artists (and I think that's about 99% of them, no pun intended). Don't spend t
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And you thought government was by the people, for the people?
Only if you define "the people" as the top 1% who run the corporations.
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Why? Because the US companies have found that they lose too much money to poor-quality product and unreliable or even non-delivery.
More and more, ads on the contractor boards have been saying "We are accpepting North American and European contractors only." And when you inquire about why, those are the kinds of answers you get.
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Goddamn right. Clear Channel owns over half of the stations in the United States, and they only play what they're told (paid) to by the same ass clowns behind this bullshit.
It boggles the fucking mind that shit like Payola [wikipedia.org] and Hollywood Accounting [wikipedia.org] is still going on openly. Was our government EVER not totally corrupt? I want to build a time machine and go back to that time period I think...
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It was fun for a while. Too bad they've decided to kill it.
Seems I've seen a bumper sticker somewhere - Nothing ever imrpoves with Government involvement.
A pretty general statement, but certainly applicable here.
I'd say its the MAFIAA more than the government here.
Actually, they are failing in the free market, because they no longer serve their customers and should be left to die and rot. But, in the US, a little government intervention goes a long way toward keeping the slaves from having any power like that.
Re:So much for the internet. (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder what would happen if say Google would go dark for a day, US only: replace the standard search page with a page "this is what you will see if the PROTECT-IP act becomes law". It seems, from the face of it, that this is basically the only thing Google can do to survive under such an act. Let the country feel how it would be, to do without their favourite search engine. Have Bing and Yahoo cooperate in this - all out for a day in the US, not a holiday or so, no a normal weekday - and the outcry should be sufficient. And it would give a good idea on the economic losses this bill could cause.
And in the meantime of course they would continue to provide services as usual in jurisdictions that are not affected, i.e. the rest of the world.
If that doesn't get the message home, nothing would, and the US is doomed.
Re:So much for the internet. (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder what would happen if say Google would go dark for a day, US only: replace the standard search page with a page "this is what you will see if the PROTECT-IP act becomes law". It seems, from the face of it, that this is basically the only thing Google can do to survive under such an act. Let the country feel how it would be, to do without their favourite search engine. Have Bing and Yahoo cooperate in this - all out for a day in the US, not a holiday or so, no a normal weekday - and the outcry should be sufficient. And it would give a good idea on the economic losses this bill could cause.
And in the meantime of course they would continue to provide services as usual in jurisdictions that are not affected, i.e. the rest of the world.
If that doesn't get the message home, nothing would, and the US is doomed.
Wikipedia just did that to Italy. The law proposal was amended within days of Wikipedia strike. Maybe they SHOULD.
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Have Bing and Yahoo cooperate in this - all out for a day in the US
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Really not a problem if the US drops out of the Internet. Other than for the US of course. But the rest of it will just continue to work.
You ain't seen nothin' yet (Score:2)
I'm not young but I would not be surprised if, one day, my wife and I find ourselves living in a tent somewhere, eating what we can catch or forage.
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Hehehehehe.
I have bad news for you about the likelihood of there being anything alive for you to catch or forage.
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Complete control over everything is their goal.
I'm not young but I would not be surprised if, one day, my wife and I find ourselves living in a tent somewhere, eating what we can catch or forage.
So ... that'll be one camping pass ... and one hunting/fishing permit, unless you plan to eat only plants, then you'll run afoul of the regulations on havesting plants, which are protected, on public lands.
The way to beat the system is to become part of it and then force change from within.
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People will be fighting over cats and dogs and sunflowers.
Dismantling their homes for fuel.
Et cetera.
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So ... that'll be one camping pass ... and one hunting/fishing permit, unless you plan to eat only plants, then you'll run afoul of the regulations on havesting plants, which are protected, on public lands.
Well, I'm a hunter, and back home in Pennsylvania, one needs not an extra permit to hunt on state game land, just the $20 or so license. Even without that, you can hunt and eat nuisance animals (coyote, crows, starlings, perhaps bobcats) on any day of the week, without limit, even Sunday when no other hun
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Self Healing & Self Explanatory (Score:5, Insightful)
help you explain the issues to those that won't be able to get around the poisoned DNS entries that this bill will allow
When Pakistan screwed up, according to their own internal policies, and altered the routing (BGP) and effectively caused youtube.com to be /dev/null'd for a half a day, the rest of the world responded. They fixed the routes, and Pakistan lost a lot of credibility and respect from other IT people. Were Pakistan to continue affecting the rest of the world with its internal policies, the rest of the world would respond more and more stringently, to the point that Pakistan would not have access to such systems anymore.
This is no different. If the US decides to mess around with DNS in accordance with its own internal policies, the rest of the world will respond by taking that control away. Either through a EU sanctioned DNS infrastructure, or some sort of p2p infrastructure.
The alternative is the rest of the world dealing with clearly incorrect DNS entries and businesses having to deal with US control.
This problem does not need to be further explained, and the ones that do understand it, will work around it. This is a good thing. It will push DNS beyond US control, and might actually start a decentralized/fractured DNS system where those that care can resolve host names the way they see fit.
In short, this only provides more motivation to "solving" our problem of a monitored Internet. Create a secondary Internet on top of it that is not monitored and cannot be interfered with. Several projects in the works, and this only puts more fuel on the fire so to speak.
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-- Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Re:Self Healing & Self Explanatory (Score:5, Insightful)
I think I understand what you are trying to say, but it does not apply to a secondary layer or DNS.
DNS is just name resolution. It does not imply splitting into many pieces at all, and in fact, would more than likely be redundant. I can see DNS resolution becoming more granular, and its set up and operation more than just a few dialog boxes in a control interface.
You can have DNS networks that forward their questions to other networks. That's not new. Using it in a way to create a separate infrastructure and preferred resolution with other networks depending on the TLDs, etc. would be. I don't see that as far fetched either.
As for the secondary layer, that is not affecting the primary layer at all as far as divisions, peer and transit agreements, etc. There could be multiple secondary layers, which is highly likely, and would be more like protected communities. The secondary layer that delivers the most popular features with the highest level of service will win.
In any case, I don't think it will have an outcome as dreary as the one you portray. It's going to happen eventually, and some people might get left behind for awhile. Right now we live in a idealistic paradise compared to what content companies, carriers, and governments want us to have. Even if it is like you say, we are headed for it.
The Internet will fork. That's my post 2012 prediction.
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(regarding the Internet) "Anyone that tries to chop it into two will find that their piece looks very boring"
-- Sir Tim Berners-Lee
That is essentially the point. Censorship is intentionally trying to create a boring environment where nothing strange or gross exists so that everyone can live in a bubble echo chamber.
Once someone starts cutting things up, repairing it is the only option and, unfortunately, DNS is centralised (unlike routing) so isn't self-healing.
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What you will end up seeing is that the internet in America is going to end up looking and working a lot like the internet in China does but instead of being controlled by the government, it will be controlled by corporations. In this case, *IAA will be initially in charge but if the bill is passed and goes into effect, how long will it be until other corporations start to jump onto the band wagon and start to control/block things they don't like.
Lets also be honest, how many other governments/corporations
Tech industry (Score:3, Insightful)
Please buy the media industries already. They have way too much power over your business in comparison to their economic weight.
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Please buy the media industries already. They have way too much power over your business in comparison to their economic weight.
Be careful what you wish for. Look what happened to Sony.
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We already have Sony who are both a tech company AND a media company and the media side clearly rules the roost there.
Remember when Sony was cool and made things like the Walkman, the Betamax video player (famous because of the victory by Sony in "Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc" that found recording of TV to watch later to be legal) and the 3 & 1/2 inch floppy disk.
That was before they bought CBS Records & Columbia Pictures (and later BMG records and a stake in MGM) and became
It's not the PROTECT-IP Act. (Score:5, Informative)
It's now known as the E-PARASITE Act. Normally I wouldn't bother posting over something so trivial, but the new name is so poetically apt that I have to mention it.
Rob
Re:It's not the PROTECT-IP Act. (Score:4, Informative)
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Here's their reply:
Dear concerned citizens,
We appreciate you taking the time and effort to file a petition,
but we don't care what you think, so kindly go fuck yourselves.
Regards,
Re:It's not the PROTECT-IP Act. (Score:4, Informative)
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I actually went over and signed it. How naive I am. But then I read the "responses" to the other petitions.
They actually do a lot of bullcrap spin before politely saying "screw you".
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... Regan era internet regulations.
There's no such thing. Unless you're referring to the Acceptable Use Policies written by the government agencies universities that wholly owned the entire network.
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Your congressman/senators are your lawmakers (unless they have been bought). Write to them and tell them not to vote for it. People always overstate the power of the executive branch and seem to try to understate the power of congress. https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml [house.gov]
Too late, they're already bought. The technical term for this is 'campaign contributions'.
Even better. Somebody with more resources and experience than I should try to croudsource a bill to update the DCMA and Regan era internet regulations.
Until you can field a wad of cash greater than the *IAAs can, you can do all the crowdsourcing you want, it won't mean a thing. As has been noted several times over the last several years, 'If voting ever really changed anything, they'd make it illegal'.
The more paranoid among us of course will theorise that attempts like this are a way for the *IAAs are doing this to scrape every possible dime from the consumer t
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I tried that. The reply was rather discouraging. I'm attempting to figure out what to say in return, and whether it would have any effect.
Subject: RE: Your response from Senator Bill Nelson
From: Bill @billnelson.senate.gov
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2011 10:27:50 -0400
Dear [....]:
Thank you for contacting me regarding S. 968, the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property (PROTECT IP) Act of 2011. I am a cosponsor of this legislation. Introduced by Senator Leahy, this bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 26, 2011.
This legislation would authorize the Attorney General or an intellectual property right owner to take action against a registrant, owner, or operator of an Internet site dedicated to infringing activities. It also provides guidelines for preventative measures to be taken by operators of nonauthoritative domain name system servers, financial transaction providers, Internet advertising services, and information location tools, with respect to nondomestic or domestic domain names.
I appreciate the time you have taken to express your thoughts on this issue, and I will be sure to keep them in mind should the bill come to the full Senate for a vote. Please do not hesitate to contact me again in the future.
Sincerely,
Bill Nelson
P.S. From time to time, I compile electronic news briefs highlighting key issues and hot topics of particular importance to Floridians. If you'd like to receive these e-briefs, visit my Web site and sign up for them at http://billnelson.senate.gov/news/ebriefs.cfm [senate.gov]
hmmm (Score:2)
Re:hmmm (Score:4, Informative)
As I read about the poisoned DNS entries, I pause to edit /etc/hosts
Yeah, a while ago (3 months and a day, my comment shows) I stopped Facebook's ability to monitor me, at least from this computer. Added to /etc/hosts:
# screw facebook 2011-07-31
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com
I'll likely do the same once the details of this are known...
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They have a whole slew of domains, blocking these two hosts is not enough. The other big fat one is fbcdn.net, but that's just a start.
You really want to block whole domains rather than just @ and www.@, too.
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Great, you've accomplished nothing. [...] (fbcdn.net and fbcdn.com)
Thanks for pointing out the flaws in a typical open source manner. I will fix my /etc/hosts. Are there any other Facebook sites that I should be bit-bucketing? Thanks in advance.
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Do we even have to worry? (Score:3)
Does this even have much of a chance of passing? Considering how hard it's been lately to get IMPORTANT laws passed... do we even have to worry?
Our government can't seem to get much of anything done lately; how is this different?
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/house-republicans-keeping-the-faith/2011/11/01/gIQAP8EPdM_story.html?hpid=z3 [washingtonpost.com]
And the patent reform bill passed both houses a month or so ago.
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Does this even have much of a chance of passing? Considering how hard it's been lately to get IMPORTANT laws passed... do we even have to worry?
Our government can't seem to get much of anything done lately; how is this different?
Like all laws that benefit only the government and their corporate buddies, it will be passed as a "bi-partisan effort", and sold as "an important innovation to protect the American people."
Wrote to my senator, and... (Score:4, Interesting)
I wrote to my senator (Mike Johanns, R-NE) to urge him to oppose the Hollywood Welfare Act [1] which helps a tiny (but vocal) cartel at the expense of everyone else. His office replied to say he agreed that it was crucial legislation to protect America's creative industries. So much for letter writing. :-/
In fairness, the last time I wrote him on a completely unrelated subject, he called me himself. I got home to an answering message: "Hi Kirk, this is Mike Johanns and I wanted to talk to you about your letter. Sorry I missed you! Give me a call back if you'd like." We never managed to meet up, but I respect that he personally went of out his way to address a constituent. I just hate that he's firmly on the wrong side (in my opinion) of this issue.
[1] I called it by its official name in my letter, but call it by its real name elsewhere.
Re:Wrote to my senator, and... (Score:4, Interesting)
See you when your stuff gets 'uploaded'.
You can download my stuff - legally - in a lot of places. Share and enjoy!
It is not only about big corporations and big media, independenst and small artists alike need this badly.
Bullshit. Independents and small artists will never have the resources to wield these sticks. This is a Hollywood power grab and there's simply no other reasonable way to describe it.
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The Wall (Score:1)
Throw away everything you've ever been taught about copyright, neighboring rights, moral rights, etc.
Treat copyright the same as patents: allow exclusive rights for a limited time to earn back investments made. Art in the mainstream is and has been treated as products/merchandise, so we might as well let the legislative side reflect that fact and forget about that small world of a few publishers and creators, and a huge world of consumers. The public are still consumers but at the same time are creators and
Anyone read the current version? (Score:1)
IANAL, but it seems to me the latest version of the bill gives this power only to the attorney general, and gives it only for "nondomestic" sites "dedicated" to infringing activities. Now I have no idea what the burden of proof is for "dedicated", but it seems like this is pretty squarely targeted at foreign video sharing sites that are outside of US laws. So they want to blackhole them.
I guess I'm not against that if the burden of proof is set high ( yes I know it probably won't be )
Maybe the MPAA should j
Not yet on the House floor (Score:2)
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Why would you want to shutup an idiot? The more they talk the better. (Para: Ben Franklin)
The ones idiots you want to shutup are the ones that claim to be on your side. (Me) If anybody is going to shutdown it will be the Democrat party. The fleabaggers are making them all look like equal fools.
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All I said was that you don't want to shutup fools as they hurt their own cause. I said nothing about supporting any party. Just absolutely not supporting these idiots.
The fleabaggers are just the same ol same ol.
I ignored them when they were protesting the WTO, D convention, R convention etc etc etc.
The fact they have new publicists hasn't made them any smarter. The .99% are just the permanent protesting class. I have no doubt the D's would love for them to shut the fuck up as they are vote losers a
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