Destroying internet freedom to make copyright cartels happy

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http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news ... cycles.ars

US congress wants to give government and media owners the right to shut web sites out of existence. This is the sort of off switch, Egypt's old goverment an Iran's current government would love to do. It is the sort of thing that would be very useful shutting down wikileaks or any site the US does not like. No matter if it is in another country or not.

The copyright cartels want the US government to destroy all of your "basic internet rights". Just so that they do not have to do ANY work at all to battle piracy. Right now, piracy is already illegal, but it is the responsibility of the copyright holder to denounce his violations. They want to remove Safe Harbor and make ISPs and google and everyone do THEIR job of finding copyright violations of THEIR stuff for free. Basically, they want to turn google and ISPs into copyright police, all while giving the federal government the right to shut down sites without a court order.

The bill is completely bipartisan, liberals, conservatives, tea parties, nobody is safe from the control of the media giants. Ok, except for a single democrat congressman.

Saddest of all, after the internet freedom gets raped and screwed up, the pirates will find a new whole way to share their stuff, and media giants will still not be able to force costumers to buy their stuff. The recording industry will still die, just like scribes were killed by print.

So, if you have a congressman, I guess you have already written a letter, considering how you like the internet and that stuff, and these guys intend to kill it.

Last edited by Vexcalibur on 21 Feb 2011, 7:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

Have you ever produce an iota of intellectual property of your own? Do you live twenty-four hours every day trolling the internet to police infractions?

Really. It's time to live in the real world. A world where what's traded needs its counterpoint, reimbursement. You can't live freely off of someone else's work. It's the very DNA of America.

Indeed.
People will just go back to buying bootlegged DVDs instead of downloading them.

I program, I work for products of my own.



Your statement is horrendously Irrelevant though. COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT IS ALREADY ILLEGAL. Companies already have more than enough ways to tackle the issue.

Destroying Internet freedom, just so that the lives of the media giants gets easier is completely ret*d stuff. It is inexcusable to think that just because media giants want it, we should allow the government to be able to shut down sites at will. Safe Harbor is also a very necessary aspect of current bylaws. Forcing search engines and ISPs to become copyright police has no benefit to anyone, except the media giants.

Removing safe harbor, would in effect make everybody have to work for free for the media giants. In practice, It is them that want other people to work for free, they are the freeloaders in this case.

I will also ask you to stop using propaganda terms like "Intellectual property". Copyright, patents or trademarks, be specific about the topic you are talking about, because they are not the same thing.

Freedom to produce your own stuff, freedom to share knowledge. Freedom of speech and press. An ambiguous law to shut down any site that "may" infringe copyright, is an abomination. Hey, I bet you that WP has some copyrighted articles CNPed by some people. In effect, if media giants get what they want, google would have to stop providing search results and ads for WP.net. Because the forum is too open. This will actually force every web site to close its doors and turn to moderated discussion so that they cannot allow any infringement ever. Because else, Google would avoid showing its results to other people (If google do not they would be target-able by copyright owners for providing the search results).

Do you know what will happen? Small sites don't have the time to police every post made to make sure it is not stealing copyright. Giants like youtube will have it hard but will survive. But all the small internet business will be killed and the internet will become a conglomerate like what cable already is.

And the giants will need to make every discussion moderated in fears of getting shut down by piracy stuff. No, no Egypt uprising would happen, because Facebook wouldn't have the employees to approve the posts and calls for protests that fast. No Iran reaction to electoral fraud. No sites reporting alternative news and points of view. No sites that allow independent artists to distribute their work. No innovation. And saddest of all, pirates will still pirate.

Piracy is wrong, stealing is bad. But what media giants and congress want is ridiculous.

Last edited by Vexcalibur on 22 Feb 2011, 10:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

^ Amen

Okay there is a valid point about copyrighted material, however there is a way to allow things to be viewed online but not saved to a computer.

Why don't some of these places get together with filesharing sites and work something out so that people don't make off with stuff for free, but they can still air shows on the web, movies, etc. However if you want to actually download to the pc and not watch it online, it costs a fee.

It has been my understanding that many download sites are legal and are often paid for through advertising, though just how legal they are has been discussed with varying degrees of legitimacy. I suspect most of this copyright issue stuff has more to do with finding ways to make the Internet a more centralized system of information sharing. It's part of the same reason that NetNanny is now installed on many laptops available for purchase. They want the parents to monitor their children's activities when they're young, and once we get older we can let the corporations and the media do it. It makes us all believe that surveillance is in the best interest of society, so that we can become blind and desensitized to the fact that it's really opposing views that the elites want eliminated.

How the Internet can be centralized has always been an ongoing debate, with little to no reasonable actions on how to do it. I suspect that a large part of what many of our leaders want in regards to this is unconstitutional. And that's not taking into consideration that the Internet is global and not simply national. YouTube currently makes distinctions between this video and that video being banned in such and such area, but it's seriously flawed. Some people know how to get around that, and YouTube is loaded with all sorts of videos that can teach children how to hack systems and get away with all kinds of stuff. This is not the kind of stuff that NetNanny can stop. They're trying to stop children from using Facebook and other social networking sites, as well as pornographic content. Also, most children can easily learn ways to simply get around NetNanny. It's all about public perception and a continuing focus on corruption and crime. The leaders can't control it, and that is what's scary. If they think this law is going to stop it, they've got another thing coming. The only way that they could find a necessary means to control it would be to eliminate a large part of the constitution. That would be a blow to the Republican Party, the major business party, and doing so would simply destroy them in the public view. They can get away with it a bit in terms of foreigners, because they weren't born in the United States, but this is an act upon everyone. If the politicians are that stupid to allow such hegemony, then more power to them. They'll simply self-destruct. And that may not be a bad thing.

This is the camel sticking its nose under the text. Hell no is an understatement.

It has always blew my mind that people don't understand the concept of one thing taking the place of what was previously there. This has implications for all types of subjects in politics.

I propose that America has absolutely nothing to do with policing the internet, and instead hand the rights over to China or Iran. They have already baggsied the title of the De Facto "World Police", which wouldn't be so bad if they weren't corrupt as s**t, and propping up dictatorships around the world (guess what tanks the Egytian Army were drivin'? US built of course). So let China get the position of Thought Police. They're more experienced anyway....or maybe not

*sardonically waves US flag

You have to realize that this is a great way for the government to take control over the internet moreso here. They'll defend it not just with that but also the horrors of child pr0n and use that as justification for this.

First, Child Porn
Then, Copywrite enfringers
Then, people advocating "hateful and polemic position"
So, basically, they'll eventually be controlling political sentiment even moreso. I guess TV isn't free, or newspapers, or radio, so it's about time the US stuck its proverbial thumb up the Internet's Ass.

The worst thing is it will happen. Slowly but surely.

The internet is still very new compared to other forms of media.

There are groups with interest in doing that and the resources to spend on it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imV3pPIUy1k[/youtube]

I understand your regard for intellectual property, but your not saying you actually advocate state control of the internet, are you?