What is your opinion of SOPA?

No. Accusations aren't accepted at face value and still require judicial review before a court order is issued. The AG must perform an investigation and the judge reviewing the case would have to feel there is enough evidence to warrant a court order.

Frivolous or fraudulent accusations face prosecution.
 
But will the prosecution include mandatory jail time for large executives who's companies make these accusations (I guess it is fitting, I am responsible for post at my site, they are responsible for false accusations) , or can large companies get away with just paying a fine which doesn't hurt them anyways?

If it is not written into the law explicitly that false accusations = jail time for the false accusers then I simply do not feel safe with these guidelines...I mean...realistically... If I have to be aware of what is in the contents of a million posts on my site , then they should have to be 100% on point and factual for their 1 accusation with any discrepancies harshly punished...don't you agree?
 
So the first key point is it isn't a law, its a bill that hasn't even left committee yet, and it won't pass in its current form. And there aren't two bills, there are three.

ProtectIP is DOA. It was a fatally flawed Senate bill. SOPA, a House bill, was an attempt to correct ProtectIP. Now we have the House bill, OPEN (Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade) which correct some of the SOPA flaws, but is also too soft. What the introduction of OPEN should tell people is this:

1. Congress is listening to the feedback, but...
2. Congress IS going to do something about digital piracy, so this isn't going away.

SOPA will probably die in committee and never make it to the House floor. OPEN will be amended to give it some more backbone and it will pass. There will be no opposition to OPEN by Google et al. When its all over, everyone will get to claim victory.

Congress will claim victory because they'll still be able to shut down piracy sites. Google will claim victory because they'll have defeated what they really want defeated in SOPA - punitive actions against them. The little guys will claim victory, because OPEN will provide more due process. At the end of the day, the wording will change, search engines will avoid financial responsibility, but the end result will remain the same.

Thats politics for you.
 
Under SOPA, wouldn't the accusation from vB towards XF be enough to have the site nulled?
Never trust information from untrustworthy sources, especially when it comes to law.

Here is piece written by a Constitutional Law Professor criticising the bill - http://www.net-coalition.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/tribe-legis-memo-on-SOPA-12-6-11-1.pdf

Excerpt:
(1) Section 103 of the bill establishes a private right of action authorizing plaintiffs to seek remedies against both domestic and foreign websites that are “dedicated to theft of U.S. property.” The plaintiff may be anyone with an intellectual property right harmed by copyright or trademark infringement on the site; the plaintiff need not be the owner of the infringed copyright or trademark.

Under a notice-and-termination procedure, the plaintiff notifies an online advertiser or payment processor (such as a credit card processor) of an allegedly infringing site. The advertiser or payment processor must take action to cease providing service to that site within five days.
 
Never trust information from untrustworthy sources, especially when it comes to law.

Here is piece written by a Constitutional Law Professor criticising the bill - http://www.net-coalition.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/tribe-legis-memo-on-SOPA-12-6-11-1.pdf

Excerpt:
Yeah! Like the guy that says the accuser can contact the credit card processor directly when the bill clearly requires a court order. Constitution Law professor at what community college night program?
 
Harvard Law School actually.

And your own background in law is?
Enough to be able to read.


Section 102 (b) (5)
RELIEF- On application of the Attorney General following the commencement of an action under this section, the court may issue a temporary restraining order, a preliminary injunction, or an injunction, in accordance with rule 65 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, against a registrant of a domain name used by the foreign infringing site or an owner or operator of the foreign infringing site or, in an action brought in rem under paragraph (2), against the foreign infringing site or a portion of such site, or the domain name used by such site, to cease and desist from undertaking any further activity as a foreign infringing site.

Section 103 (c) (5)

RELIEF- On application of a qualifying plaintiff following the commencement of an action under this section with respect to an Internet site dedicated to theft of U.S. property, the court may issue a temporary restraining order, a preliminary injunction, or an injunction, in accordance with rule 65 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, against a registrant of a domain name used by the Internet site, or against an owner or operator of the Internet site, or, in an action brought in rem under paragraph (2), against the Internet site, or against the domain name used by the Internet site, to cease and desist from undertaking any further activity as an Internet site dedicated to theft of U.S. property.

You sure that wasn't Harvard Community College? Maybe its just me, but it seems like an awful lot to miss. Thats what happens when professors try to do things on their own instead of letting the TAs do the work.

:ROFLMAO:
 
Your logic is that theft of property of US citizens isn't really theft because its not illegal under Chinese law?
So would you also support that various states and localities in the USA have banned the viewing of porn on the net? That therefore the providers should take it down because those folks are accessing it?

Are you a Big Government guy on every subject?

http://www.forumopolis.com/showthread.php?t=95029
"Originally Posted by *******'s TOS
Prohibited U.S. Zip Codes

You are prohibited from accessing this Website from, or if you reside in, the U.S. postal zip codes commencing with the following 3-digit numbers:
ALABAMA:

350
351
352
354
355
356
357
358
359"

and hundreds more....
 
You sure that wasn't Harvard Community College? Maybe its just me, but it seems like an awful lot to miss. Thats what happens when professors try to do things on their own instead of letting the TAs do the work.

:ROFLMAO:
No. He is a Harvard University Professor (a title only given to a small number of people). He is also a renowned legal scholar on constitutional law who even taught your very own President Barack Obama, has argued in front of the U.S. Supreme Court 35 times and has authored various constitutional law books.

I will be sure to trust your reading capabilities over his experience in law tho!
 
Seems to be losing a lot of support now all these sites went into blackout mode.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16623831


Eight US lawmakers have withdrawn their backing from anti-piracy laws, amid "blackout" protests on thousands of internet sites.
Two of the bill's co-sponsors, Marco Rubio from Florida and Roy Blunt from Missouri, are among those backing away.
Online encyclopaedia Wikipedia and blog service WordPress are among the highest profile sites to block their content.
 
Maybe the politicians will consult with people that actually know what the internet is next time instead of taking $94 million in lobbying money from Hollywood and leaving out tech sector.
 
Another article worth reading: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16596577

...with particular emphasis on illegal copies of films and other forms of media hosted on foreign servers.
Yeah, I've said that and been told I was wrong.

The US government and rights holders would have the right to seek court orders against any site accused of "enabling or facilitating" piracy.
Yeah, I said that too, but an idiot from Harvard missed that part, so I was told I was wrong.

To protect sites against false claims of illegal activity Sopa proposes penalising copyright holders who knowingly misrepresent a site's activity...
Yet one more thing I was told I was wrong about

Sopa's supporters are trying to reach consensus on the bill before putting it to a vote in the House of Representatives...
Like Ive said before, not a law. Just a draft bill that hasn't even made it out of committee.

As for the original article...

US Chamber of Commerce said claims against the legislation had been overstated.
Seems we've heard that somewhere too

Always being right in the face of so many lies is such a burden.
 
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, no matter how it may differ from yours.

Please avoid personal attacks and tit-for-tat responses.

There's always the ignore feature as a last resort.
 
Leaving the insults aside...

Repeating a lot of what I posted earlier, I am just going to leave this link here:

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2011/12/controversial-copyright-bills-would.html

Note that they're both legal scholars. ;) Remember to read their full in depth responses available as links on the last line in the starting paragraph of the article.

Excerpt:

They do not, as often advertised by the copyright industry, merely target foreign “rogue” sites like the Pirate Bay. They are not even limited to sites guilty of any copyright infringement, direct or even contributory infringement. Instead, the bills would extend not only to foreign but also to domestic websites that merely “facilitate” or “enable” infringement. Thus, in their language, the bills target considerable protected speech on legitimate sites such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. The bills also affect non-infringing speech by search engines, advertisers, and domain name providers.
 
The problem isn't the bill, but the people driving it. Copyright piracy has always been around in one shape or another since the event of taping and before. The industry has never really dealt with it. Instead of innovating and developing new ways of delivering content to consumers (using the most powerful network ever created), the music and film industry want to tightly control their content and restrict its use. They see control as the means to defeating piracy.

SOPA and PIPA would be used to take down the large file-sharing sites, thats academic to be honest (and not something I have a problem with). The problem is what is left afterwards. Assuming that the people behind such sites didn't decentralise and move their operations to a new name or new country (unlikely), the authorities and the industry would be left with smaller scale infringers, some deliberate, some accidental. And they would go after them to set the example and scare the rest of the internet into line. It would target legitimate sites, and apart from pre-moderating every link, video, attachment or picture, there would be no other alternative for sites to follow to protect themselves against it.

My gripe with the music/film industry is this insistence on control of their media. I'm a DJ, and like most DJs nowadays, I use a digital playback system. Mine's based around a Denon desktop player rather than a laptop, it has 160GB of storage on it, so instead of lugging around cases of vinyl or folders of CDs, I have one device I carry round in a padded case. A few years back with the prevalent use of DRM on every track sold, the use of this device with legitimately downloaded content would have been next to impossible, as it only supports a few file formats (I would have only been able to play the tracks I've ripped from vinyl or CDs that I currently own, and only then if there had been no DRM built into those!). It would have also made use of several industry software packages (Ableton, Traktor, Serato) extremely difficult if not impossible.

Thanks to iTunes, Beatport, DJDownload, Juno, and others, I'm able to get ahold of high-quality copies of tracks quickly and cheaply. It's great and I love it. But if the music industry had their way, all of my 100GB of music would be wrapped in DRM restrictions preventing me from using the music in the way I want. These creative industries need to be dragged into the 21st Century kicking and screaming. Loss of control does not equal loss of revenue, as long as they provide the user with a better alternative to piracy. Something that is more convenient, more practical, cheaper than current physical media and less restrictive.

If you want a glimpse of the future, look at Valve's Steam network (for games). Steam has been running for 4-5 years now, and it features regular cut-price sales on games (with full games like GRID going for £2.75 on some occasions). Heavy discounting of some of these games ends up with more profit being made than if the game was full price.

From Gabe Newell's keynote speech in 2009 (http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/693342/live-blog-dice-2009-keynote-gabe-newell-valve-software/), and from an interview with him last year (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-10-24-newell-stop-piracy-by-offering-superior-service)


6:51 PM - Price changes in the retail world don't allow for much freedom. Steam and other services offer flexability. In fact, users apparently respond to pricing discounts within five minutes.
Valve was afraid that too many price changes would "confuse and anger" customers. It isn't the case.
Last weekend, Valve decided to do an experiment with Left 4 Dead. Last weekend's sale resulted in a 3000% increase over relatively flat numbers. It sold more last weekend than when it launched the game. WOW. That is unheard of in this industry. Valve beat its launch sales. Also, it snagged a 1600% increase in new customers to Steam over the baseline.
Worried retailers, fear not. The weekend sale didn't canabalize sales from retail. In fact, they remained constant. Well, constant isn't a 3000% increase, but it's still pretty good, right?
6:56 PM - Looking at a third-party game, it saw increases of 36,000% with a weekend sale. Oh. Em. Gee. Okay, Gabe is starting to convince me that PC at retail is going to die very soon.
Oh, more data. I'm such a data nerd. Here's some data!
During the Holiday sales:
  • 10% sale = 35% increase in sales (real dollars, not units shipped)
  • 25% sale = 245% increase in sales
  • 50% sale = 320% increase in sales
  • 75% sale = 1470% increase in sales
At 75% off, they are making 15 times more money than they were at full price.

He cited one example where a 75 per cent off online offer had increased revenue by a factor of 40.
Not only that, but Valve saw a knock-on effect on the boxed version, which it attributes to happy customers evangelising the game.
"Promotions on the digital channel increased sales at retail at the same time, and increased sales after the sale was finished," he explained.
"Essentially, your audience, the people who bought the game, were more effective than traditional promotional tools.

The Steam model is the future, if the record/film companies are really interested in making a profit over controlling their "IP". With Steam, I can download the client onto a PC anywhere in the world, sign onto the network, and have immediate access to every game I've ever bought from them. I would kill for a music/film solution that made it that easy with my other media.

The pirates won't threaten your business if you make it worthwhile for people to buy content legitimately.
 
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