What is your opinion of SOPA?

I have already transferred any domains I had with Godaddy after the elephant fiasco, For me it was not so much that he shot an elephant but the fact that it was turned into a Godaddy advertisement campaign with people eating the elephant whilst wearing Godaddy hats.

Just wish I had a few other domains to transfer after the recent Godaddy SOPA backflip.
 
Jason said:
I'm not sure what your point is.

I don't dispute there aren't ways to mitigate the effects of a DDoS attack, or that there are different methods of attacks (eg., p2p, icmp floods, syn floods, etc.). Anyone who has operated servers for a large IRC network and/or a successful web site knows this. But no DDoS protection service (which mostly just perform filtering -- some provide extra bandwidth (the over provisioning I mentioned earlier)) is going to save you if someone is hell bent on bringing you down, at least not without further disrupting legitimate users in the process. Unless of course you have a really good working relationship with your upstream providers, and/or money to throw at the issue.
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I've not had a single problem with DDoS Defend since I started using them. Prior to that, I use ServerOrigin, BlackLotus, and SharkTech; none of which provided me with the uptime DDoS Defend has against DDoS. Since using them, I've had hundreds, maybe thousands of attacks...those use to slow the site down, take me offline, or as you stated...block legitimate users. In the year I've been with them, I've had 1 slow down due to a massive DDoS on their entire network. So I use them for server protection and DNSmadeEasy for my DNS protection. So far, so very good.
 
mcrider said:
Interesting take on SOPA by Alex MacGillivray, general council for Twitter and a former attorney for Google

http://www.bricoleur.org/2011/12/overbroad-censorship-users.html
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That scenario isn't very likely, nor is it an effective argument. The gist is that if you use a site and it is engaging in illegal activity, you won't be able to use it anymore. Well, no kidding! So we shouldn't shut down restaurants that are dealing drugs out of the back of the house because you won't be able to eat there?


Where it fails to be likely, is it combines several worst case abuses and postulates them as probable. Neither does it present a case of censorship, as the title would imply. We're still in the realm of knee-jerk reactions. To a draft bill.
 
Fred Sherman said:
That scenario isn't very likely, nor is it an effective argument. The gist is that if you use a site and it is engaging in illegal activity, you won't be able to use it anymore. Well, no kidding! So we shouldn't shut down restaurants that are dealing drugs out of the back of the house because you won't be able to eat there?


Where it fails to be likely, is it combines several worst case abuses and postulates them as probable. Neither does it present a case of censorship, as the title would imply. We're still in the realm of knee-jerk reactions. To a draft bill.
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It is people like you that let the Patriot Act get passed and that want to let **** like SOPA get passed.
 
lasertits said:
A good real world application:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/to...nline-Piracy-Act-PROTECT-IP-Senate,14393.html


Tom's Hardware Community Manager commented that they would have to explode their moderation team to unbelievable numbers in order to potentially police and filter everything that was submitted by users. "One of the biggest problems with SOPA implementation would be that it would offload the assumption of innocence and the idea that sites operate in good faith with regards to intellectual properties. With SOPA, having an item up that infringes if only for a brief period of time would be an actionable cause for DNS blacklisting, and through no fault of the site owner."

What scares me is the possibility of abuse with this bill. Just accusing a site of copyright infringement allows the gov. to block it. Since media companies are the most likely to do the complaining and one of the greatest contributors to political campaigns, it gives them unprecedented control over internet content. I'm all for protecting copyrighted content to a further extent, but the problem with SOPA is the way it goes about 'thwarting' online piracy. Anyone semi tech savvy will have no issue circumventing DNS-level censorship (http://domainincite.com/docs/PROTECT-IP-Technical-Whitepaper-Final.pdf - see section III B, written by those who invented DNS). Hell, if SOPA does happen, sites will be distributed as IP lists and I'm sure it won't be long before someone writes a browser addon / extension with automatic updating and all. It's going to have about the same success combating piracy as the War on Drugs has in combating drug use.

It has been hard for some companies to police their material online because the courts can't figure out how to handle these issues, but SOPA flips the situation to the other extreme; with site owners having no rights. Investors will not put money in a site that is open to serious litigation simply based on its business model. This is horribly bad for the Internet, but because lawmakers have no clue how social media and user generated content works, they're writing legislation full of holes that does far more than their stated purpose.

There is also no recourse I've seen outlined in the bill that specifically outlines formal recourse in case the party that initiates claims against you is fraudulent. It's basically shoot first, ask questions later. If anyone has evidence that disproves this, please share.

On a related note:

http://www.aclu-wa.org/blog/mission-creep-patriot-act-and-war-drugs

Further reading for those interested:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...t-why-sopa-protect-ip-are-bad-bad-ideas.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act#Ramifications
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/free-speechs-weak-links-under-internet-blacklist-bills
http://dottvnation.typepad.com/.a/6a00d834522c0b69e201543838c9c8970c-pi

Get involved:
http://americancensorship.org/
http://campaigns.dailykos.com/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=53
http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_internet
https://donate.mozilla.org/page/s/SOPA?source=tw_share
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You make several errors here. I will point out just a few. SOPA and ProtectIP are two separate pieces of legislation. The former originates in the House, the latter in the Senate. After SOPA clears the judiciary committee and makes it through amendments and voting on the House floor, both bills will be brought together in a joint committee for reconciliation. Then the reconciled bill goes back to the House judiciary committee, then to the full House and back to the Senate.

Every reference you make to SOPA is to ProtectIP, and they are not equal and interchangeable.

SOPA is a corrective action against ProtectIP and adds many of these protections you claim are missing, including a due diligence requirement to contact the site owner/operator.

The DNS thing is a red herring. I can accomplish what the bill intends on the hardware quite easily without worrying about DNS. You push the solution down to a lower layer in the OSI model. If I can do it at the physical layer, game over. I can and their argument in moot; you can distribute IP addresses all you want. I can make sure you never reach it even by IP.

And keep in mind that US law is applicable to iCANN, who can decertify any registrar anywhere in the world for aiding circumvention.

What many aren't realizing yet is this is part of the mobilization efforts in a planned trade war against China.

There, my friends, is where you should be concerned. Why would a country that is 16 trillion in debt with 26% of its annual budget being deficit spending be planning a trade war against its largest creditor?
 
The Patriot Act is a really good backdrop for this discussion. The arguments against the Patriot Act are always about what could happen if it were abused, much like these arguments against SOPA. In reality we have ten years worth of data, and no specific examples of abuse. You get generalized accusations that assume all "roving wiretaps" are an abuse, but never anything with specificity of an actual government directed abuse.

But there are plenty of examples of the good done by the Patriot Act, and many more that are so highly classified, you'll never know.

Draw whatever comparisons you wish.
 
One issue here, and it's one that people with forums should fear, is having one or messages posted by someone that appears to link to, say, a repository of counterfeit products. Maybe it's just an accident; someone sees a good place to buy movies, not realizing that they are pirated. Well, the forum owner, despite all the proper disclaimers in the Terms of Service, could be attacked for carrying such links and not taking them down in time, and thus would face the wrath of the authorities. How many forums have a 24/7 staff of moderators?

More to the point, SOPA takes the assumption that you are innocent until proven guilty and turns it on your head. You should have the right to defend yourself before your site is shut down, and you're forced out of business, because you don't have the money to hire an attorney or time to allow that attorney to petition the court to overturn the ruling.

But since the U.S. Congress accomplishes very little these days except for engaging in noisy battles when funding deadlines are near, the chances that SOPA and its Senate counterpart will actually pass are probably little to none. But GoDaddy was stupid, stupid, and did I say stupid, in favoring the bill, before, of course, they turned against it.
 
Gene Steinberg said:
More to the point, SOPA takes the assumption that you are innocent until proven guilty and turns it on your head. You should have the right to defend yourself before your site is shut down, and you're forced out of business, because you don't have the money to hire an attorney or time to allow that attorney to petition the court to overturn the ruling.
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Please read the proposed bill. Nothing you say is true. The AG has an OBLIGATION under the bill to contact the former owner/operator and allow them to correct the issue AS A POSITIVE DEFENSE. And thats just the draft legislation, not even the final bill. A little bit of paranoia towards government is healthy but this is ridiculous.
 
Fred Sherman said:
Please read the proposed bill. Nothing you say is true. The AG has an OBLIGATION under the bill to contact the former owner/operator and allow them to correct the issue AS A POSITIVE DEFENSE. And thats just the draft legislation, not even the final bill. A little bit of paranoia towards government is healthy but this is ridiculous.
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If that's the case, then I take it as a case of misinformation being presented about the contents of the bill. On the other hand, what about existing copyright laws? Don't they protect the copyright owner without having to go to more extremes of government intrusion?
 
This bill is written so vague on purpose just to give the government more power. Little by little we will turn more and more into china. We can't allow this anti american bs to continue. #SOPASucks

Once they take the internet for us it's time for the American Revolution part 2
 
Fred Sherman said:
You misunderstood. I will not engage that user. He has shown himself for what he is. I will continue to try to educate others about the truth, those with a site whose sole premise isn't built around copyright infringement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_issues_with_fan_fiction).
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Fanfiction is not infringing if it constitutes fair use of the underlying copyrighted work. In determining whether a particular use constitutes fair use, courts consider the following four factors:

- "the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
- the nature of the copyrighted work;
- the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
- the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.”[9]

Fair use is assessed on a case-by-case basis. While such genres as parody and criticism are enumerated by statute and case law as presumptively fair uses of a copyrighted work, fan fiction has not historically been recognized by U.S. courts as necessarily constituting these or other enumerated fair use genres, and thus neither falls categorically inside nor categorically outside the presumptive boundaries of fair use. Works of fanfiction are more likely to constitute fair use if they are “transformative” with respect to the original work, if they are non-commercial, if they appropriate relatively little of the original work, and/or if they do not tend to detract from the potential market for or value of the original work
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More often than not, it would fall under fair use.

Thats ignoring the fact that the vast majority of the works on his site are actually original (submitted by others) and that should fall under fair use as there is very little used from the franchise, and it doesn't effect the potential market.

Sorry for being off-topic Brogan, delete this if needed.
 
Forsaken said:
More often than not, it would fall under fair use.

Thats ignoring the fact that the vast majority of the works on his site are actually original (submitted by others) and that should fall under fair use as there is very little used from the franchise, and it doesn't effect the potential market.

Sorry for being off-topic Brogan, delete this if needed.
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As forsaken said. 99 percent of the site is original work(We frown upon none original characters/settings) but we still have an occasional none original work like a star wars setting. But Why should I have to part with anything? it's completely stupid.

But lets get back on track. How was everyone's experience when it came time to move your domains? I got it all done in the same day. Had a nice chat with their support and a bunch of tweets with their twitter person and overall name has been a positive experience. Oh and namecheap does whois guard for your domains for free. I was paying a small fortune to godaddy for all my domains since for some reason some of them had different renewal rates.
 
Fred Sherman said:
You misunderstood. I will not engage that user. He has shown himself for what he is. I will continue to try to educate others about the truth, those with a site whose sole premise isn't built around copyright infringement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_issues_with_fan_fiction).
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Dont suppose you care to dumb it down and give me a quick brief ?
I am not from the US but sadly it seems that US internet censorship amongst other things seems to spread the infection across boarders :(
Can it be used for evil outside US jurisdiction ? Is it fair to assume it is somehow tied to the protect ip act ?
 
Brett Peters said:
Dont suppose you care to dumb it down and give me a quick brief ?
I am not from the US but sadly it seems that US internet censorship amongst other things seems to spread the infection across boarders :(
Can it be used for evil outside US jurisdiction ? Is it fair to assume it is somehow tied to the protect ip act ?
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1. SOPA and ProtectIP are separate pieces of proposed legislation. ProtectIP came first, originating in and passed by the Senate. It has not passed in the House, nor will it. It is poorly written legislation. SOPA is the House's attempt to come up with better legislation. Improvements over ProtectIP:
  • Requires the AG to make a due diligence attempt to contact the sites owner/operator to have them correct the issue. If only the mailing address is know, they must use snail mail, so nothing about this bill is "fast acting", or "overnight".
  • Provides for criminal prosecution for individuals or companies that make false claims (i.e.. prosecute for abuse).
  • Requires a court order for a shutdown/seizure/blacklist, which requires some level of evidentiary review - equivalent to a search warrant.
2. Depends on what you mean by "outside the US". One of its main purposes is the make a foreign site "disappear" from the internet to those inside the US. Let's say we find a Chinese piracy site which makes it through the process of getting a court order to act against it. No user in the US will have access to it. Ideally, it won't come up in a Google search either. Paypal won't process payments for it and Adsense won't advertise for it, to it, or pay against it. But, if you're one mile across the border in Canada, you are unaffected.

There is a grey area that will need to be explored. iCANN is a US company and would be subject to this law. As it is written, a very loose interpretation - the kind Cali-phony-a judges make, could be used to compel iCANN to revoke certification of the registrar for the site. I don't see that happening, because the repercussions would be well beyond the value.

3. At some point, SOPA and ProtectIP will merge. Neither of these are law yet. SOPA is in the infancy of the lifecycle of becoming law. Sometime in the future, both bills will be sent to a joint committee for reconciliation. Then the reconciled bill goes back to the House. If there is any sort of funding at required at all, it MUST originate in the House - which is why ProtectIP is really a non-issue as a Senate originated bill. It will go through the entire process one more time.

4. There are no provisions that allow censorship of any kind. Free speech is in no way compromised. It can't even be abused and be used for that purpose. no actions can be taken against a site without notifying the owner/operator, if they are known, and allowing the 5 days to correct the problem. sites won't even disappear, they will be redirected to an AG published site, stating what has occurred, why it has happened and who to contact for more information.

5. It is technically feasible. The dirty secret is Google is already doing far more for the Chinese government, filtering out content based on political content, so they're just a bit hypocritical in their objections.


So here are some of the objections that have been made.

1. My site is my sole source of income. If someone posts something that violates the law, I'll get shut down without notice and lose my income.

My response to that is first, you will be notified - it is a requirement. Second, you'll have 5 days to correct the problem. Finally, if your site is your sole source of income, you should do a better job of monitoring it. Maybe write a SQL script that reports on any post with a URL included int he last 24 hours, send the output to a shell script that parses out just the URL and then review the URLs daily. Pretty simple.

2. I have a fan fiction site and could run afoul of this pretty easily.

Yes, but that is the nature of the beast. A site like that ALWAYS had inherent risks and you accepted it then. Its your business model that is the problem, not the law. Consult a lawyer when the final bill passes and see what your exposures are and what guidelines you can develop to stay within the law.

The bottom line is that it will require forum admins to be more diligent. Thats not bad. Its not wrong and its not evil. In the adult world, we call that being responsible.
 

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