SOPA internet censorship bill

[A.Nonymous]

That's not how the courts work, they try to use common sense.

If you benefit in any material fashion from illegal use of copyrighted materials, you have proven the value of the worth. Then, the claim is awarded based on a typical rule of thumb of (what_you_gained) x (3 to 5) - the extra is strictly to punish you for the criminal act and to reward the injured party for the unknowable loss of income due to your shenanigans.

The injured party starts the ball rolling with a claim of lost earnings or profit, but it's just a claim. The injured party proves lost revenue by establishing that others benefited. It's that simple, honestly, as a matter of law.

And that benefit does not have to be direct monetary gain for the stolen material in question. Often, companies steal and then marginalize the stolen goods just to put the competitor out of business and then to increase profits later. So - the whole, but I made nothing, look, everyone agreed with me it's junk has already been exposed in court as the shaggy dog it truly is.

Therefore, there's no legal leg to stand on when an individual pirates media on the excuse that they charge too much, that you're teaching them a lesson, or that it's junk, or that you're actually helping them somehow advertise. The most hilarious defense is - I wouldn't have bought it anyway. Meaning - it has no value. Pretty obvious - if it had no value, you would not have stolen it.

So, it never starts with, "prove the worth of what was stolen from you, then we decide if you were ripped off."

It's always a case of, "I was ripped off, here is the basis for my plea for damages."

Yeah, you do have to prove that you are damaged in some way. Then it's a matter of how much you were damaged.

This is the problem with the piracy thing. The record companies and media companies want to measure each pirated copy as a lost sale, but that's not true. Many people pirate things and then buy them later on. But how do you measure how much piracy harms an industry and how much it benefits the industry?

 

[EarlyMon]

Yeah, you do have to prove that you are damaged in some way. Then it's a matter of how much you were damaged.

This is the problem with the piracy thing. The record companies and media companies want to measure each pirated copy as a lost sale, but that's not true. Many people pirate things and then buy them later on. But how do you measure how much piracy harms an industry and how much it benefits the industry?

All you have to prove is that your goods were taken in violation of your rights. You don't prove you were damaged.

The taking alone, all by itself, is the damage.

Once it's established that the taking occurred, then the damages are arrived at.

I want to clarify this point on American law, and I know it well - in the USA, we are not granted copyrights - our works have rights a priori and we simply perfect those rights through the copyright mechanism. Exact opposite of European copyrights, and many people don't know that.

It's not a meaningless subtlety, it's a very important point.

Imagine this silliness:

Officer: Ok, I'm holding this guy by the collar, he seems to have the stolen necklace that you identified out of your home - but first - you need to prove that you were damaged. And you need to prove the value of this necklace first.

Obviously silly and wrong.

Same thing with copyright infringement, even though it's not hardware theft. The key word in copyright is right - once your rights are violated, your rights are violated, you don't have to prove that you were damaged because your rights were violated.

First, prove the rights were violated. Then, plead for claimed damages.

~~~~~

As for defending the outrageous acts of the RIAA in our courts, or the MPAA's very inflated dollar numbers they use to sway congressional mindset - nope, I'm not arguing against of that baloney, I'm with you on that one.

But - are RIAA/MPAA rights being violated?

Yes, every day, and it's not right. It's not right at all.

 

[EarlyMon]

OK - this is a must read on this subject!

A Glimpse Of The Future Under SOPA: Warner Bros. Admits It Filed Many False Takedown Notices | Techdirt

 

[tommy_ed]

Congress is currently trying to pass a bill that will effectively censor the internet, even blocking some websites from being accessed entirely. Many online corporations including Facebook, Twitter, Ebay, and Google are all opposing the bill and Mozilla Firefox is launching a campaing of its own against it. Has anyone else heard of this?

SOPA Internet Censorship Bill

 

[B2L]

Congress is currently trying to pass a bill that will effectively censor the internet, even blocking some websites from being accessed entirely. Many online corporations including Facebook, Twitter, Ebay, and Google are all opposing the bill and Mozilla Firefox is launching a campaing of its own against it. Has anyone else heard of this?

SOPA Internet Censorship Bill

Yes I have heard about this, I signed a petition a month or two ago. Of course the government wants to ruin the one and only place that is "technically" free.

 

[Dark Jedi]

Yeah to try and help people / companies protect their copyrighted material from online piracy is so wrong.

 

[9to5cynic]

I agree. It puts too much power in the hands of business. Although, it will put the USA on track with China and Iran in terms of Internet censorship.

I'm of the opinion that RIAA/MIAA are not 'good'. They throw around way too much in front of Congress. Remember when 'radio' was going to kill the music industry? ssdd.

Reading the huffington post write up, found this:

Under current practice, copyright owners such as TV networks and Hollywood studios reach out to websites to request that pirated videos be taken down. Under the new regime, they could ask banks, Internet service providers and domain name registrars to stop doing business with websites that they believed were devoted to piracy. They could, for instance, go straight to YouTube's domain registration company and demand that the entire YouTube website be taken down. And if the registrar resisted, the copyright owners would have the legal ability to take the registrar to court.

 

[Dark Jedi]

I agree. It puts too much power in the hands of business. Although, it will put the USA on track with China and Iran in terms of Internet censorship.

I'm of the opinion that RIAA/MIAA are not 'good'. They throw around way too much in front of Congress. Remember when 'radio' was going to kill the music industry? ssdd.

Reading the huffington post write up, found this:

SO your saying that the copyright owners should just roll over and let anyone use their stuff? Thats like saying you own your car but I'll be over at 8 to take it for a spin. So by what your saying you shouldnt have a problem with me taking your car.

 

[9to5cynic]

That's not at all what I'm saying. They have means to get their content off of sites now.

Under current practice, copyright owners such as TV networks and Hollywood studios reach out to websites to request that pirated videos be taken down.

There's no need for the government to tamper with the Internet.

DNS filtering isn't going to solve anything, because the sites are still there, you just have to know the IP address. Which I'm sure will be widespread all over if this bill ever passes.

 

[Dark Jedi]

Isnt thats what the Government is there for. To try and protect our interests? No matter if its joe blow or some major corporation. We are all created equal and fall under the same protection. Democracy aint it a B****.lol

 

[BiggestManEver]

SO your saying that the copyright owners should just roll over and let anyone use their stuff? Thats like saying you own your car but I'll be over at 8 to take it for a spin. So by what your saying you shouldnt have a problem with me taking your car.

Copying isn't stealing.

Secondly, no company/person should have the right to take down a legitimately owned website due to "concerns" over the content.

 

[SamuraiBigEd]

Copying isn't stealing.

Secondly, no company/person should have the right to take down a legitimately owned website due to "concerns" over the content.

As a photographer I can most assuredly tell you copying is stealing. If you copy one of my photographs without my permission for your use you have stolen it and will most likely be hit with a lawsuit. Most of my work would never be copied, product images mostly, but I have a few hobby shots I consider my "masterpieces" and would prosecute to the full extent of the law.

SOPA is not the answer but there is need of new legislation giving "appropriate powers" in these situations. I would even go so far as to give the copyright owner the power to have the offending site taken down until the material is removed. This would limit further damages to the holder (and subsequesntly the site owner in a judgement) and give the owner of the site impetus to remove it immediately.

On edit: The laws need to address the sites that set people up for copyright infringement suits also. They represent the site as a "Free Image" site but then claim if no royalties were paid then there was infringement since they are hopelessly vague on what is considered free usage.

 

[tommy_ed]

isn't it already against the law to copy copyrighted information? the last thing we want to do is give the government free reign over which websites live or die.

 

[SamuraiBigEd]

isn't it already against the law to copy copyrighted information? the last thing we want to do is give the government free reign over which websites live or die.

It is, but it still happens a lot and it is sometimes difficult to enforce.

I don't advocate giving the government free reign to kill a website, merely to take it down temporarily till the infringement is remedied and only at the request of the copyright holder. I think this is a reasonable course of action and as I said previously it will give the website owner incentive to fix the problem quickly.

On the defendants side it will also limit damages. If they are being levied $50.00 per day the clock stops when the site goes down.

 

[OstrichSaK]

It is, but it still happens a lot and it is sometimes difficult to enforce.

That's the point. Laws as SUPPOSED to be difficult to enforce by design. The more easy we make them to enforce the more innocent people are going to be charged, convicted or at bare minimum horribly inconvenienced. It drives me nuts with all the legislation that makes it easier to pass and enforce laws because the people proposing it don't get the reasoning behind it. If liberties and freedoms keep taking a back seat to lazy people who find their jobs 'difficult' then this country will keep heading downhill.

 

[tommy_ed]

It is, but it still happens a lot and it is sometimes difficult to enforce.

I don't advocate giving the government free reign to kill a website, merely to take it down temporarily till the infringement is remedied and only at the request of the copyright holder. I think this is a reasonable course of action and as I said previously it will give the website owner incentive to fix the problem quickly.

On the defendants side it will also limit damages. If they are being levied $50.00 per day the clock stops when the site goes down.

What about fines? This just doesn't seem like a good idea to me. It's one step which will turn into something bigger, then something after that, etc... here's my big problem with it. If it's for the good of the people, and affects the people (which it certainly does) then we should be able to vote on it. There's way too many things in this country that go through that we should have been able to vote on. Like the ridiculous defense bill that they just passed. There's no way in hell that would have passed if the American people could have voted on it.

 

[KTW]

SOPA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act, is another one of those bills that sounds like it's going to do something mildly positive but, in reality, has serious potential to negatively change the internet as we know it.



Well, I see this almost as a joke, a serious one. The proposed bill is a great way to introduce censorship and filter information to the consumer - like reading news in a bowl of soup, (SOPA exactly what these initials mean in Portuguese, hence the picture above). Filtered, cooked, shredded news. Piracy to the big boys is four letter word.

Inevitably this follows-on after the EU also showed concern for all the "free and available" news on the internet, be it genuine or pirated, deeming us incompetent in filtering what we want, or understand. Rather they will prefer to tell us what we should see and read and get. And control who feeds us, or sells to us.

This bill will be introduced shortly in the US and it looks like it's a given fact that Congress will go with it. In the EU we expect the same, except we don't even know (or care to know, which is worse) who represents us. The complicated allotment allowed each country in representatives in the General Assembly sitting in Brussels, how much clout they have or even, if their vote means anything, makes our task of protest, here, very complicated. There are organized groups of course, but these I'm afraid are probably the 1% of the 99% that couldn't care less.

So this, amongst other things and new legislation being forged to damper our gluttony of anything out of sorts, out of the ordinary, new, inventive or admittedly pirated etc. are going the way of the big guns: filtered by the big companies; by the big lobbies; and finally in a generation or two to come, to a single someone who knows it all and will do everything for us. He or she will probably be a big and charming orator. Remember those ? Yuch...! No pirates then. The big guns will get you...

Makes you wonder why TIME Magazine chose The Protestor as Person of the Year. Maybe it's the last we'll see of them. On the Internet, Facebook or Twitter...

That's the path.

Read on:
From: Adam Dachis @ Lifehacker

 

[KTW]

this bill has the aim of disabling the internet to stop piracy.

 

[9to5cynic]

Last I heard the US congress hadn't voted yet and was putting it off to the new year?

Also, this is pretty bad IMO. But, at least we can get around it (sort of) by using non US DNS servers and/or by using an IP address. Hell, you could just modify your host files to grab anything like that....
rambling ...

Spoiler

host file in windows XP (seven should be similar, while not exactly the same)
C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
linux:
/etc/hosts

This is a list that is basiclly DNS on your computer so you don't have to do a DNS lookup. You can use this to block ads, or circumnavigate the potential DNS filtering.

Windows:
ipconfig /displaydns

will also be a bit helpful (not too helpful, but it'll look cool ? sorta)

 

[BiggestManEver]

As a photographer I can most assuredly tell you copying is stealing.

No, it's not.

Regardless of what you think, the two words are completely different with completely different meanings, and someone who saves a copy of a digital file is copying, not stealing. Period.

 

[SamuraiBigEd]

No, it's not.

Regardless of what you think, the two words are completely different with completely different meanings, and someone who saves a copy of a digital file is copying, not stealing. Period.

OK, I guess if you copy it and it never sees the light of day, never viewed by anyone but yourself or is never used in any way shape or form then copying wouldn't be considered stealing but even that is a stretch.

If you copy a picture I took and I hold the copyright on and you then make a print and hang it on your wall you are guilty of stealing, you display it on any other website you are guilty of stealing, you sell it to somebody else you are guilty of stealing, etc., etc.

If I spent my time, which does not come cheaply, to produce a photo worthy of display and copyright it (I even get basic copyright protection just by taking the photo) then it is up to me who can do what with it, I have full legal ownership over that image. Basically anything you do with my image without my permission is stealing.

 

[Bob Maxey]

OK, I guess if you copy it and it never sees the light of day, never viewed by anyone but yourself or is never used in any way shape or form then copying wouldn't be considered stealing but even that is a stretch.

If you copy a picture I took and I hold the copyright on and you then make a print and hang it on your wall you are guilty of stealing, you display it on any other website you are guilty of stealing, you sell it to somebody else you are guilty of stealing, etc., etc.

If I spent my time, which does not come cheaply, to produce a photo worthy of display and copyright it (I even get basic copyright protection just by taking the photo) then it is up to me who can do what with it, I have full legal ownership over that image. Basically anything you do with my image without my permission is stealing.

You own it. You have certain rights when you create it, but unless you properly protect it, you cannot sue for certain kinds of damages. If it is on the web, chances are, it will be all over the place, depending on quality and how many people are interested in it. All we can do is teach others that there are rules, laws, and common decency.

You might be upset that someone put your picture on their wall, but that matters not one bit because unless you have paid the fee and now own legal protection, no federal court will likely consider your legal rights. All you will do is spend money and gain nothing in return. That said, if you ever decided to sue, I'll definitely support you and wish you success.

People should not steal, but sadly, many net users are clueless about what is and is not legal. They make copies and post them elsewhere, print them out, add them to wallpaper connections, etc. All either without caring, understanding or giving a bloody hell.

 

[copestag]

yes for instance............ most avatars in this thread are stolen and subject to fines and or prison sentences for the user...... think about that when arguing about infringement

 

[Bob Maxey]

yes for instance............ most avatars in this thread are stolen and subject to fines and or prison sentences for the user...... think about that when arguing about infringement

Very true.

Senator Orrin Hatch made news some time ago with his plan to create software that would search everyone's computer for illegal IP. Then he discovered his own computer had illegal items and I recall that shut him up.

As I recall, he wanted software that would erase either the files in question or delete the HDD. Something like that.

 

[SamuraiBigEd]

You own it. You have certain rights when you create it, but unless you properly protect it, you cannot sue for certain kinds of damages. If it is on the web, chances are, it will be all over the place, depending on quality and how many people are interested in it. All we can do is teach others that there are rules, laws, and common decency.

You might be upset that someone put your picture on their wall, but that matters not one bit because unless you have paid the fee and now own legal protection, no federal court will likely consider your legal rights. All you will do is spend money and gain nothing in return. That said, if you ever decided to sue, I'll definitely support you and wish you success.

People should not steal, but sadly, many net users are clueless about what is and is not legal. They make copies and post them elsewhere, print them out, add them to wallpaper connections, etc. All either without caring, understanding or giving a bloody hell.

You are correct Bob, but I did say copyright it which gives you the right to pursue damages. The basic protection gives you the right to demand someone take the photo down from a website that is not authorized to use it but you can't recover damages, although if they refuse after being warned you can actually accrue damages from that point on if I remember correctly.

You are also correct that too many people are clueless or just don't care and will continue to do whatever they want regardless of decency and respect.

yes for instance............ most avatars in this thread are stolen and subject to fines and or prison sentences for the user...... think about that when arguing about infringement

This is true also, I have been guilty a few times though I usually try to make sure it is an open rights site I pull from.

Don't get me wrong, I don't care if someone uses a picture for an avatar somewhere, the problem arises when my work is used as a full background or stolen for publication, display or to generate profit in any way.

I am currently looking into pursuing one person who is using one of my work product images without permission, the problem is will it be worth it by the time I pay an attorney since the jerk has no money to speak of and will just pull up and move if a judgement is entered against him. This is one instance where I can see the ability to have a site taken down till the offense is remedied could be of advantage.