What is your opinion of SOPA?

[Fred Sherman]

I thought it might make sense to actually review the text rather than buy into the net hysteria that seems so prevalent.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/C?c112:./temp/~c112iSG7nS

Can you site be shutdown without warning or due process?

Section 102(b)(3)(B) and Section 103(c)(3)(B), which define when and how the Office of the Attorney General may act, require the site over to be contacted and details how that contact is to be made, including mail. The only provisions for acting without notifying the site owner is when there is no known owner or registrant. So, for those of you that are jumping ship, going somewhere where you're information is hidden or changing your registrant information, you are doing the exact opposite of what you should do, making it possible to do the very thing you are afraid of.

If you read the proposed bill, you'll see that - worse case scenario if you haven't bought in tot he hysteria - you;ll be contacted outlining the problem area and you are protected if you correct it. The worst that can happen is you may have to provide the username, IP address and email address of the offender.

You can accept the misinformation and panic if you want, or you can read it for yourself. Who do you trust more to decide - the Chicken Littles or yourself?

 

[Shamil]

Good luck dealing with international contacts.

 

[Bob]

and now online Gambling is LEGAL in all 50 states (its all over CNN right now).

For Fred: ACCORDING TO CNN.

 

[Fred Sherman]

and now online Gambling is LEGAL in all 50 states (its all over CNN right now).

No, thats not accurate at all. The DoJ has changed its interpretation of the 1961 Wire Act to allow state-run online lotteries. The language still explicitly forbids online betting on a "sporting event or contest".

So what it really means is that states can impose the online idiot tax.

 

[Bob]

No, thats not accurate at all. The DoJ has changed its interpretation of the 1961 Wire Act to allow state-run online lotteries. The language still explicitly forbids online betting on a "sporting event or contest".

So what it really means is that states can impose the online idiot tax.

Yer probably right (you always are). better stop what you are doing and correct all the news stations saying that online gambling (their words) is now legal in all 50 states.

 

[Jaxel]

@Fred... they cant SHUT DOWN your website without due process. But they CAN block your domain address... which to legal, non-piracy websites is a death sentence. A pirate will just use the IP address instead; a normal user isn't that smart. As well, they can force your advertisers to close your accounts.

Think of it this way with an analogy. You may say this analogy is overreaching, but its actually the exact thing it's doing.

Lets say you can buy guns at X-Mart. Then someone buys a gun at X-Mart, takes it into a school and kills a bunch of kids. The government would like to stop the sale of guns at X-Mart, but they can't because its across some arbitrary border and they have no rights there. So what does the government do? They blow up the roads leading to X-Mart, and freeze their bank accounts.

This doesn't shut X-Mart down, but it removes their lively-hood. It doesn't remove access to their store, because people can go off road. Even though X-Mart is a general store and sell way more than guns, their business is ruined.

Then the government goes one step further... they shut the school down for letting guns get in.

 

[Naix]

Always have had a bad experience with GoDaddy. However I don't see whats the big deal about SOPA, especially if you running a legit business? I'm confused.

 

[Andy.N]

I use EasyDNS.org for premium DNS

How much you pay each year for it.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

GoDaddy is cheap for the first year, then you pay a lot extra for private registration if you want to keep it.

My problem with GoDaddy -- and I do have domains there -- is their constant upselling. They offer what seems to be a good package, but when you take apart the bundle, you find deficiencies. Consider an email package. If you want an email forward or alias, it's extra, unless you the domain in question is registered with them.

Meantime, Namecheap is reporting that GoDaddy is "thwarting" domain transfers, witness an article at Macworld by my friend Jason Snell:

http://www.macworld.com/article/164529/2011/12/competitor_godaddy_is_thwarting_domain_transfers.html

 

[Gene Steinberg]

Dang it, I move 3 of my domains from Namecheap to GD few months ago to use their Premium DNS service. Wish Namecheap has this service.

GD's Premium DNS is BS. The "extra" features are mostly snake oil. I tried the service and saw no speed advantage or enhanced availability. But at least they refunded my money.

Namecheap actually has a free DNS that offers all the features you need, assuming you need DNS beyond that offered at the registration or hosting level, of course.

 

[Forsaken]

Always have had a bad experience with GoDaddy. However I don't see whats the big deal about SOPA, especially if you running a legit business? I'm confused.

The issue isn't so much about it attempting to stop piracy but more that it won't work, and that it gives too much power to the government and groups like the RIAA/MPAA over the Internet.

The kicker is the people attempting to pass the bill have absolutely no clue what it'll do as they have no understanding of the Internet (Or technology in general). When the possibility of bringing in experts to explain and advise on SOPA/PIPA it was spurned and had people trying to push it even when they admit to not having any concept of how the Internet works.

This is a major issue for forum owners, as posting anything that is seen to infringe SOPA/PIPA could result in the website being blocked.

 

[Jaxel]

it should work too as long as your keep your mx and a records untouched.

Nope... the moment my domain moved from GoDaddy to NameCheap, my email (which I pay $2.99 a year for) stopped working with GoDaddy. Can't access it through POP3 or Webmail and its not even listed in my GoDaddy account anymore.

 

[Brent W]

How much you pay each year for it.

20 bucks a year per domain.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

The larger question is whether the bill will ever get beyond the hearing stage. But GD really stepped in it when they first said they approved of the measure, then changed their minds when customers began to leave.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

20 bucks a year per domain.

Really?

Here's their current price list:

Registration only​

DNS Hosting​

DNS Pro​

Enterprise​

.COM, .NET, .ORG,​

.CA, .BIZ, .INFO, .EU,​

.MOBI Domains per year​

$19.00​

$35.00​

$55.00​

.UK Domains per 2 years ​

$50.00​

$70.00​

$110.00​

.CO Domains per year ​

$40.00​

$59.00​

$79.00​

​

Basically, minimum for registration AND DNS is $35.00 per year.

 

[mrGTB]

I'm so glad I registered my domain for 50 years - 4 years ago. No worries about price increases for a while.

 

[Fred Sherman]

So what does this act really mean, all of the hyper aside?

If a foreign site is peddling pirated software, the federal government has the authority to direct Google to remove it from its databases (and to stop crawling it), all authoritative DNS servers top stop resolving its name and all backbone routers to not route traffic to it. It won't simply disappear; all traffic must be rerouted to a new site explaining that action is being taken against the site and why.

Paypal must stop processing money for it and must turn over any financial information.

The short of it is within the US, the hostname and IP is highjacked to routed to an "AG Seized" page. You won't be able to find it in any search engine and its means to process electronic payments are removed. Also revenue ads like Ad Sense and the like are similarly cut off.

The only thing that changes for domestic servers, is they can go right to your service or connection provider and seize your server or VM and physically disconnect you.

Regardless, there are still provisions that require the AG to perform their due diligence search for the owner/operator and contact them first to resolve the situation "nicely".

The reason Google, Yahoo and others oppose this (as would I if I were them) is:
1. It all has to be done within 5 days or THEY also become liable for failure to act. Thats a pretty short timeframe.
2. Its going to be a lot of additional work. Who is paying for that headcount?
3. They may not have provisions in place to even perform the actions.

So what is unreasonable? How does anyone figure they are at risk? Keep in mind, the AG isn't going to start scanning the internet. First, you're going to have to run afoul of someone and not remove the offending data when requested, just like now. The only thing this ads to the mix is some measure when someone says , "Screw you, I'm not in the US."

I'm not seeing the digital boogieman in this. It seems like a big scare over nothing unless you are engaging in illegal activity, either explicitly or by looking the other way.

 

[TNCclubman]

The U.S. is trying to control what you can or cant see on the internet just like china and iran. The irony is amazing to me. the damage from 9/11 is much more for the rest of society than the lives lost on that day. AL CRACKA are laughing in pakistan right now watching our freedoms fade away.

 

[turtile]

Through this act, would IB be able to claim something against all of us? How would that work - that's the problem with this bill.

 

[jasetaro]

No offence but you sound like a goat running into the slaughter house with "What's the big deal? I am cool and safe; and I trust the butcher. He is our savior!"

SOPA, is the brain child of politicians who have a huge misunderstanding of how the internet works and who are simply doing the bidding of the entertainment industry... And industry that has shown a huge disregard for it's customers -- anyone remember the Sony DRM root kit fiasco?

The simple truth is SOPA won't work... Monkeying around with DNS is incredibly stupid idea, for starters people seeking to illegally obtain copyrighted materials will simply change their DNS settings to point to publicly available services in other jurisdictions... DNS servers that will ultimately end up being run by the bad guys -- take a moment and think about the security ramifications of that.

Second pirates will simply use services like Tor, BitTorrent or offshore VPN services to subvert the US government controls.

Take a look at this paper (PDF) by Steve Crocker, David Dagon, Dan Kaminsky, Danny McPherson and Paul Vixie for some insight into the serious security ramifications of SOPA.

And if you think I'm joking about politicians doing the biding of the entertainment industry maybe this will change you mind:

Allison Halataei (former deputy chief of staff for House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas)) and Lauren Pastarnack (former senior aide on the Senate Judiciary Committee) have cool new jobs. Having written the Internet-destroying Stop Online Piracy Act for their bosses while drawing a salary at public expense, they've now accepted massive raises to go work for the entertainment companies who stand to benefit from the law they wrote. Their new job? Helping to run the campaign to push their law through.