SOPA Loses

[estragon]

Stop Online Piracy Act was torpedoed by an outcry from the ISPs and those of us who love the Internet and want it free. It's an important event. Here are some of my thoughts:

I thought I’d memorialize the defeat of SOPA/PIPA by referring to a fifty-five-year-old statement from China, a nation where internet freedom and intellectual piracy are burning issues. “Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land.”

Well, I don’t know about a “flourishing socialist culture”, but it sure must be nice not to have to pay royalties for grabbing someone else’s ideas. Nevertheless, I am in favor of blossoms. And a hundred schools of thought, or even one single thought, contending is how we make progress in the arts and sciences, and maybe even in the law. And culture will flourish, or not, depending upon what we do with those thoughts.

Now this is not a political rant. I'm grinding no axes here. I hold no more brief for the stealers of thoughts or ideas than I do for the stealers of wallets or purses. I also do not like censorship; my motto is simple: “Say what you like, and I will do likewise”. And by the fruits of our thoughts and words the world will know us.

So let’s get on with blossoming and schooling and contending and writing–and most of all, thinking.

 

[R_Percival_Shackleford]

it will pop back up again, but hopefully congressmen will be taught that the interent is not just some mysterious series of tubes and know what the hell SOPA/PIPA actually mean for it in the meantime.

 

[Stella_Omega]

This is copy and pasted in its entirety from a friend's blog-- with her permission


Representative Darrell Issa has introduced a new bill, supposedly a more net-friendly "fight piracy" bill than SOPA and PIPA. It's called the OPEN (Online Protection & Enforcement of Digital Trade) Act--and he's doing something new with it.

Keep The Web #Open has a copy of the bill, with places to annotate and comment, so that people (that'd be us, folks) can suggest minute changes in phrasing or mention loopholes or opportunities for abuse.

The media corporations don't like it; they say it doesn't let them stomp on people at will has "ineffective penalties." I consider this a strong mark in its favor, although I haven't yet gotten through the text. (Stupid scroll box. I've got it pasted into Word.)

It's about 7000 words, which should be fairly quick reading for people who're familiar with the structure and flow of these kinds of documents. (Otherwise? It's, ah, dense, and written in Politicalese, which is like Legalese only more shifty. Look out for the shifty bits.)

I encourage people to read, login and comment, because that's one of the few ways we can let legislators really know we want an *active* voice in new laws, and that we'd like to avoid a repeat of the Jan 18 swarm o' phone calls. We'd much prefer to be consulted *before* the laws get to the almost-voting stage--and now, because of the internet, we can; a legislator no longer has to sit through long committee meetings with one-at-a-time speakers to get public opinions on a proposed law.


http://www.keepthewebopen.com/

ETA: The site has the shortest TOS I've ever seen; it looks like all comments etc. go into the public domain immediately, so keep that in mind.

 

[Feotakahari]

So, anyone want to start fighting the Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act? (This one will be tricky--the misleading name makes it hard to fight without being accused of being a pedo.)

 

[TxRad]

So, anyone want to start fighting the Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act? (This one will be tricky--the misleading name makes it hard to fight without being accused of being a pedo.)

Where is the "Mom and Dad, raise your own kids" Bill?

 

[CarlusMagnus]

Stop Online Piracy Act was torpedoed by an outcry from the ISPs and those of us who love the Internet and want it free.

I don't think freedom of the internet is the real issue here.

Don't get me wrong---I despise SOPA and PIPA. But the problem is that they try to force the wrong people to do the policing. They seem to me to say that if you own the grounds on which a flea market is conducted, then you're responsible if someone should contraband out of one of the stalls without your knowledge---on the ground that you should have known.

That's bullshit.

 

[sr71plt]

That's just bringing to bear what already exists in the print world. If a publisher prints a book containing plagiarized material, that publisher is equally culpable to the plagiarizing author.

 

[Verdad]

it will pop back up again, but hopefully congressmen will be taught that the interent is not just some mysterious series of tubes and know what the hell SOPA/PIPA actually mean for it in the meantime.

As amusing as it is, I don't know where this idea of cutely naive, blundering politicians comes from. These acts are an attempted power grab of staggering proportions, done on behalf of big business, not a result of grampa congressman being behind on his tubes.

You're right in the first part, though. Hooray for this stage, but I wouldn’t expect the battle to be over just like that.

 

[estragon]

That's just bringing to bear what already exists in the print world. If a publisher prints a book containing plagiarized material, that publisher is equally culpable to the plagiarizing author.

That's relatively easy where the publisher has bought (presumably) the material, or at least has had a chance to read and review it (whether the publisher actually did read and review, or not); and where the publisher can limit in advance the material he/she/it/they will review and publish (the "slush pile", for those of us old enough to remember when one could submit one's writings to then then-relatively-few commercial publishers without the intervention of an agent).

But to cast an ISP, on whose sites literally millions of separate items can be "published" with the click of a mouse or a tap of the "enter" key, in the same role as a print publisher, seems to me to ignore technological reality.

As a lawyer who has been 45 years in practice, I know full well the law lags behind technology by at least fifty years. Hell, I remember when people stole copyrighted legal forms using the brand-new Xerox machine. One cannot impose on twenty-first century technology the legal confines of fifteenth-century (computer v. printing press) technology.

I realize that the computer has facilitated theft of intellectual property to an extent unimaginable even thirty years ago. Someone, it may even have been you, said that Lit is a shoppingcart for plagiarists. A week does not go by, nearly, when there isn't a thread on this BB that someone is ripping off the authors who post here.

But let's find a way to stop the real criminals. Because thieves use getaway cars, let's not ban automobiles.

 

[R. Richard]

SOPA and PIPA: House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) announced he will postpone consideration of his Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) for now. Because of constituent pressure and global reaction, the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products would be “revisited,” he said. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) announced he would shelve the Senate's version of the anti-piracy legislation, the Protect IP Act.

 

[sr71plt]

That's relatively easy where the publisher has bought (presumably) the material, or at least has had a chance to read and review it (whether the publisher actually did read and review, or not)

Guess those trying to get some legal control over this (especially since those doing it seem to be screaming for legal protections) expect Internet publishers to be as much publishers as print publishers are. As in pay some attention to what they are posting, which, in a legal sense, doesn't seem to be something unusual to expect. They don't lose responsibility for what they put on their platform just because it's inconvenient to actually look at what they are putting on their platform.

 

[R_Percival_Shackleford]

As amusing as it is, I don't know where this idea of cutely naive, blundering politicians comes from.

probably from their constantly demonstrated inability to get anything done, constantly demonstrated inability to agree to anything but what to have for lunch, and self-enforced isolation from typical peasant lives and how they work.

politicians know all the legal bullshit they need to, but work through delegation and have no idea what the internet allows, does, or means for the average person. you cannot apply current copyright law to the internet, which is what they are trying to do: it requires much, much more careful legal analysis because it operates differently than anything in the past. politicians cannot know how to regulate the internet because nobody knows: it is a massive sea of information that connects more people in more ways than anything in human history. millions of people uploading and downloading at more or less their own discretion every day.

but that is just the political side. as you said, this has nothing to do with free speech, and i agree with that. SOPA is the combined effort of copyright holders (NOT artists) to keep their dated money making tactics from becoming obsolete in the online age. they are becoming less and less relevant now that so much can be done through the internet, and instead of adapting they want to stifle the competition.

if someone broke into your house and stole a piece of leftover pizza, would you think it fair to be given the power to arrest anyone who had the same kind of pizza in their fridge? im sorry you lost your lunch for tomorrow, but im not supporting your insane plea for orwellian regulation of what is in peoples fridges either.

and there is also the fact that we have INCREDIBLY PRESSING ISSUES OF FINANCIAL CRISIS to deal with and somehow a bill to keep giant corporations from being slightly less rich gets attention. its like a cop stopping to help granny across the street while the dispathcer is screaming about a shootout going on at the bank.

 

[Verdad]

probably from their constantly demonstrated inability to get anything done, constantly demonstrated inability to agree to anything but what to have for lunch, and self-enforced isolation from typical peasant lives and how they work.

politicians know all the legal bullshit they need to, but work through delegation and have no idea what the internet allows, does, or means for the average person. you cannot apply current copyright law to the internet, which is what they are trying to do: it requires much, much more careful legal analysis because it operates differently than anything in the past. politicians cannot know how to regulate the internet because nobody knows: it is a massive sea of information that connects more people in more ways than anything in human history. millions of people uploading and downloading at more or less their own discretion every day.

but that is just the political side. as you said, this has nothing to do with free speech, and i agree with that. SOPA is the combined effort of copyright holders (NOT artists) to keep their dated money making tactics from becoming obsolete in the online age. they are becoming less and less relevant now that so much can be done through the internet, and instead of adapting they want to stifle the competition.

if someone broke into your house and stole a piece of leftover pizza, would you think it fair to be given the power to arrest anyone who had the same kind of pizza in their fridge? im sorry you lost your lunch for tomorrow, but im not supporting your insane plea for orwellian regulation of what is in peoples fridges either.

and there is also the fact that we have INCREDIBLY PRESSING ISSUES OF FINANCIAL CRISIS to deal with and somehow a bill to keep giant corporations from being slightly less rich gets attention. its like a cop stopping to help granny across the street while the dispathcer is screaming about a shootout going on at the bank.

Oh, you don’t have to convince me. I suppose it was just a disagreement about attribution. I prefer not to attribute to stupidity what can be attributed to interests. Both are biases, I guess, but I naturally prefer mine.

Not sure I agree with the last para, though. The future of the internet is a huge issue, whatever other issues are looming.