SOPA Goes Back To the Drawing Board, PIPA Postponed 267
New submitter rivin2e writes "SOPA has been sent back to the drawing board. 'The move came shortly after the Senate postponed a key vote on the companion PIPA bill scheduled for next week and amid calls for consensus before Congress moves forward on any legislation to address the problem of foreign piracy websites,' as written by the Los Angeles Times today. Hopefully the next draft of this bill will create a better foundation to stop piracy and not just assert control over the internet."
Support for the bill eroded on Wednesday as several of its co-sponsors withdrew their support. The issue is not over, however; statements were issued by both Senator Patrick Leahy and Rep. Lamar Smith indicating that they still want to find solutions to online piracy, and Smith also wrote an editorial piece for CNN to explain why he thinks such legislation is necessary. The SOPA issue was raised at the recent GOP debate, and all four candidates spoke against it.
All this... (Score:5, Interesting)
Over movies & music.
Check this out...
http://imgur.com/pPDak [imgur.com]
It's not enough to kill them (the world would be a much better place w/o the riaa & mpaa), but it might roll some heads, the kind that need rolling.
Keep the momentum going (Score:5, Interesting)
So now is the time to get Smith and Leahy out of office in the next election cycle, I plan to donate to their competitors campaign funds and to let them know why I'm doing so.
aren't there already laws in place they can use? (Score:4, Interesting)
if current copyright legislation such as the DMCA isn't performing as expected, perhaps they could take it off the books before piling new laws on top?
Re:Likely answer... (Score:4, Interesting)
Child porn laws themselves aren't the problem, the problem is that they're selectively enforced and don't require any knowledge or intent on the part of the accused to be prosecuted that is the problem.
What I want to know is why none of the FBI agents working on those cases hasn't been prosecuted. If any of the rest of us were caught with the stuff on our machines for any reason we would be prosecuted.
Re:Likely answer... (Score:2, Interesting)
Next time the ACTA approach: secret international negotiations, participants to sign non disclosure agreements and once a treaty is signed national parliament only have to ratify and not renegotiate.
Re:Keep the momentum going (Score:2, Interesting)
Good luck, Lamar Smith has been in office since the mid-80's, he hasn't even had to run against anyone in over a decade to keep it.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's easy to reduce piracy... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's okay, though, because we're (ostensibly) not out to satisfy either pirates or copyright cartels. 28-year copyright would serve to benefit the individual creators of the works in question and still create an incentive for either their successors, or they themselves later in their lives, to create additional work to continue to profit. Satisfying pirates is a non-starter - they can be written off because they can be assumed to disregard whatever copyright terms are in effect. To slightly twist a meme, "Pirates gonna pirate." Copyright cartels are trickier, as they have at least an air of legitimacy about them despite their rampant exploitation of copyright itself and the legal system that establishes it.
I think the focus should be on up-and-coming artists. Get them to eschew "Big Copyright" and maybe use the OWS rhetoric (1%/99%) to do so.
Re:aren't there already laws in place they can use (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:We don't need legislation (Score:4, Interesting)
This kind of plays into the whole ethical/lawful debate. From what it appears, the majority don't have a big ethical problem with buying a handbag designed to look like someone else's. What does that mean, and what really causes the most benefit vs harm?
Re:All this... (Score:5, Interesting)
All this... Over movies & music.
This coincidential yahoo news screen shot shows two facts together that really puts the whole music and movie thing into perspective...
http://i44.tinypic.com/vpwbht.jpg [tinypic.com]
The two headlines are:
- Jury awards $80,000 per download
- Air France to give $24,000 to families of crash victims
1 illegal download == 3.3 dead relatives
Your life is only worth a third of a Metallica song
Re:We don't need legislation (Score:4, Interesting)
Good question, and one that may be expanded to the entire "piracy" debate. If the point of copyright was to promote art and science for the overall benefit of society, then at what point do you take into account that most people seem to be happy with some low to mid level of copyright infringement?
If you keep introducing new laws which interfere with the daily lives of the populace, aren't you swimming against the tide?
Re:Likely answer... (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, you can rephrase the same argument I made relative to a reference point, I'd still argue that the new generation is pulling the Internet towards more free exchange of information than where it is today.
And that's what will happen to the internet, given time. If you doubt it, think about the Patriot Act. It would never fly in the 90s, even most conservatives of the time would find it baffling. I may be a bit too optimistic here, but I think there would be, at least, lots of marches and vocal oppositors. But once 9/11 happened and, in a nationwide panic, it became institutionalized, then the reference point moved. And now you don't see a lot of people trying to repeal it, because they're used to it. The frog has been slowly boiled.
I think you're very selectively choosing the data to fit your theory. If at any time during the Cold War communist supporters had staged and launched an attack on the leading centers of commerce and government killing 3000 people, you'd see something far, far worse than the Patriot Act. Possibly even a WWIII no matter if it was authorized by the Soviet Union or not, probably internment camps like the US hadn't seen since they put Japanese people in them during WWII and massive new government powers that'd make McCarthyism look like a footnote. The 90s were a period of extreme dominance where the US seemed to have no significant enemies, foreign or domestic. Yes, 9/11 did move the reference point far back towards the US having enemies that they must defend against and that fear may linger a bit even though it's more than a decade ago and Osama bin Laden is dead, but as a slippery slope argument that the US has now taken one big step backwards when it comes to civil liberties so now it is doomed to take all the other steps until it falls into a full blown totalitarian nightmare is a very weak argument.
Let's face it, the Internet has totally changed the picture of information exchange. We're now moving towards a system where we can mass duplicate and send staggering amounts of data over encrypted, untraceable communication lines that are totally immune to warrants. Pretty much every restriction there has been on speech, be it libel, slander, threats, pump&dump stock scams, copyright, kiddie porn, every balance struck between privacy and rule of law through use of warrants and wiretaps is cracking up. I think in the end it will come down to a showdown that either everything must be traced, recorded and tracked or none of it is. That we're either headed for information anarchy or totalitarianism and technology is imposing that we make a choice. Now I predicted this years ago (really, I did) and it hasn't come down to it yet, but I keep seeing there are skirmishes and battle lines being drawn. Take down MegaUpload, take down TPB (conjecture), force the masses into the deep undercurrents of the Internet and maybe it'll come.