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Guitar chord forum - chordie → Chordie's Chat Corner → Intellectual Property
Any political minded chordians care to comment on that internet cencorship bill? The way I understand it, it would give the government the right to ban american access to any site they decide contains copyrighted material. Doesn't Chordie fall under that kind of thing? Several sites are blacking out in protest, most notably Wikipedia...
Hi hanna,I for one think the government shoud be working on Important issues like our economy and jobs the unemployment the national debt. Right now we do not even have a budget and they keep stalling that,they need too adress those things ,not fooling around with cencorship. I think chordie has been abiding by the laws we have now.
Hi hanna,I for one think the government shoud be working on Important issues like our economy and jobs the unemployment the national debt. Right now we do not even have a budget and they keep stalling that,they need too adress those things ,not fooling around with cencorship. I think chordie has been abiding by the laws we have now.
I agree dino, I was just curious how this might affect chordie if it went through. I def think they need to focus on the economy right now though for sure. Its interesting how politics work, whenever someone gains popularity by talking about the economy wveryone jumps on the bandwagon, then when that person isn't a threat anymore its back to the old run around. Anyway not to rant but this bill is exactly the kind of thing we cant afford to mess with right now, but maybe thats the plan? To sneak it past us while we're all concerned with bigger issues?
yea thet need too work on getting our country rightand economy. Seems like chordie has been compliant with all the music publishers and artists etc. most people can not get the Beatles music in the U.K. and alot of songs have been taken down on site as chordie has been within the law,I know chordie put up a notice here awile back concerning song copyrights and removing them if they needed too do so.
i see the bill as something that was supposed to be good, albeit misguided and untimely in this economy, and grown to monstrous proportions by addendums annd add-ons. Just another Washington boondoggle.
I think it had good intentions but I also see it as a way for the government to shut down sites that are contrary to it's viewpoints. That scares me.
I really should not given the direction this country has taken in the past years but I see it as another possible symptom of our rights eroding even more.
The primary function of the government is to protect it's citizens. This bill does not protect its citizens it protects ideas which have protections already in place, EI: copyright laws, trademark infringement laws, etc... The problem is that many foreign countries do not follow our laws nor recognize them. This bill was intended to close that loophole (especially in China's piracy history of copyright infringement) yet it has become a domestic "cure" too.
I see the bill as an attempt to protect profits. Whether that's good or bad is for each person to decide. However, the internet has always been about freedom. Censorship, in any form, violates freedom, and we have had many freedoms legislated away in the last ten years.
So, I guess I'm agin it!
In my opinion they are over-reaching bills that throws out the baby and keeps the bathwater. It will do nothing to reduce piracy but will have severely deleterious effects on on-line commerce and discourse. There is no portion of them worth maintaining. It does to the U.S. what Americans have long found disgusting that the Chinese government does to their citizens. They're...just...bad.
- Zurf
SOPA, Stop Online Pirating Act is simply to try to stop the illegal selling or usage of music and movies. As we know, this is rampant on the internet and I assume they are just trying to get a hold of the problem. As with everything else the government does, it does tend to go overboard, as Zurf says. I don't know enough about it to comment intelligently about it. I'm afraid they may make it messier than it already is because the internet has no borders.
I've been trying to wade through all the legal mumbo-jumbo to see what all the hoopla is about. From what I understand, the 2012 "Stop Online Piracy Act" (SOPA) is to replace the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act" (DMCA) and is trying to stop foreign piracy of intellectual property originating in the US. The DMCA placed responsibility for illegal downloads on the "end user". SOPA places website operators on the hook for the content of the material their users upload. The bill would make a website a violator if it "facilitates" copyright infringement. Sites like Youtube would be forced to more closely police their content to ensure copyrighted material isn't uploaded.
The bill requires network operators to set up a process in which outside parties can notify the company that one of its customers is an "Internet site dedicated to the theft of U.S. property". Once a network receives notification it is required to cut off services to the target site in 5 days. Filing a false notification would be a crime but burden of proof lies with the accused so the proposed legislation seems to favor the copyright owner's intellectual property rights over the accused website's rights.
The bill is supported by the music and picture industries as well as companies like Time Warner while opposed by the large internet sites who are crying "censorship" and trying to rally support for their multi-million dollar industry. Who to believe? I don't know but I tend to stand behind those who create the music, art and other "intellectual property" and make their living from their creativeness. I also understand the network operators fighting to keep the sweet deal they have going in which they make billions by allowing copyrighted material they haven't invested in to pass through their sites. I don't know what it would cost then to police their sites but it will surely cut in to their profits.
I'm guessing the bill will be delayed while some kind of compromise is worked out.
DE
Well, it's not the government that it provides censorship to, it's content owners. I'm going to copy an email I sent to my mom when she asked about this.
The bill in question, SOPA (Stop On-line Piracy Act), will "change the internet as we know it" depending on who "we" is. If you use the internet to surf web sites, email, and share pictures you took, then it isn't going to effect you at all. If you are a person that provides content, it may impact you. If you are a person that provides a facility for people to provide content, then you are heavily impacted. If you are a person that facilitates access for stealing other people's intelectual property, then you're going to hate it.
So, is this a bill you should support? No. It is a crappy bill, but it addresses a real problem. Like all legislation in the US, it is motivated by corporate concerns, and like all legislation motivated by corporate concerns, it over reaches in scope and intent. This one was motivated by pharmaceutical companies worried about "fake" versions of their drugs being promoted by on-line websites. Pfizer doesn't like it if you don't buy the officially sanctioned boner pills from them, after all, and the congressmen they own are there to help!
Right now the law grants to people who create stuff almost unlimited rights to distribute, re-create, or otherwise control the stuff they produce. As a guy that writes software and writes songs (the two big areas impacted by law) I think that's pretty important. There is a small army of degenerate thieves out there that believe they have a right to other people's stuff. They upload movies and songs and software to websites so other people can download it, which is a violation of the rights of the dude that actually created the work. So right now the law holds the people that upload and download this content accountable for it. You may have heard horror stories about the RIAA suing 12 year old kids for sharing songs, those evil bastards. What you don't hear is that poor 12 year old was sharing the entire Sony catalog and costing them millions in sales.
Now, when we say our little shit 12 year old was "uploading" we tend to overlook where he was uploading too. There are companies out there that do nothing but host websites for other people. Netflix, for example, is hosted almost entirely by Amazon. So if I'm a hosting company and I have literally thousands of websites on my computers, am I responsible for the content that our little shitbird uploads? Right now the law says "no" and provides some indemnity to me for his actions. If I find out about it and do nothing, then I have liability. If I don't actively protect against such things, then I have liability, but otherwise it's our turd-bird punk that is going to jail for it, not me. That is all well and good and reasonable.
SOPA would change that, and hold the hosting provider liable regardless of their knowledge of such things. That isn't right, which is why the bill is a bad one.
If you take a look at the list of companies that support SOPA, they are almost all companies that generate on-line content that is stolen and re-distributed without their consent. They have a right to be pissed, and I support their efforts to crush the little bastards that steal their shit. If you look at the list of companies opposed, they are almost universally companies that provide places on the internet for content to live. They have a right to be concerned, as this law would expose them to massive liability and the result would be less content, or content provided only by organizations that can afford the lawyers. Small hosting companies would assuredly be sued out of existence. The problem the law addresses is real. This isn't the right way to address it, though. It would mean Amazon was responsible for what Netflix does, which is unfair to both Amazon and Netflix.
This isn't a 1st amendment issue. There is no free speech when it comes to someone else's stuff. This is an Article 1 Section 8 issue. It involves balancing my right to control my material with liability for the people that inadvertently help facilitate its theft.
Short story: You shouldn't support it, but don't freak out.
Love,
-J
I have several specific problems with it.
1. It is a situation of guilty until proven innocent. So, let's say I have permission to post a Dirty Ed song. I post a Dirty Ed song. Someone else sees the Dirty Ed song and knows that I am not Dirty Ed. So he notifies the site that there is copyrighted material being distributed. HOW IS THE PERSON REPORTING SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHAT PERMISSIONS ANYONE HAS? They aren't. BUT if the site doesn't stop not just the offending content, but the entire account of the individual who created this non-event, then the government has the right to cease the entire domain. All over someone's mistaken but well-intentioned report of a violation. That's bad. Bad, bad, bad. Anytime "guilty until proven innocent" is a reasonable description of something, I'm against it.
2. It addresses the U.S. issue with piracy, but most piracy is not U.S. based. It is primarily taking place in Asia, specifically Eastern Russia and China. So we have a VERY heavy-handed law that encourages the confiscation of sites without due process, reduces income without due process, and which misses the target by several thousand miles.
3. Because of these two issues, we are likely to have a large number of erroneously false reports, severe repurcussions as the result of well-intended but erroneous action, and NO RECOURSE FOR THE FALSELY DAMAGED INDIVIDUALS because they aren't permitted to sue the government for actions taken in the course of performing their duty.
To me, that is three strikes.
- Zurf
Yet again I'm with Jerome. The bill is crap. The intent may be good but execution is terrible. The lack of presumption of innocence or due process is very alarming.
I'm an online marketer by trade...my whole industry is having a fit about it right now. Horrible bill.
Hackers retaliate http://rt.com/usa/news/crippled-fbi-meg … ymous-239/
Under SOPA it would take only ONE single rights holder to force Chordie to shut down. If I then were to provide chords on my server here in Germany, PIPA would see to it that you wouldn't be able to access it and if you did via a proxy or such you could get into serious trouble.
The sum of SOPA and PIPA makes censorship in China and Iran look like outdated attempts.
You upload something to facebook, and with no judge or such involved someone can say: facebook, you need to shut down because you didn't see to it that my intellectual property wasn't uploaded to your site.
Yes, it would be effective. But so would amputating hands to prevent guncrime...
Hackers retaliate
I love those guys! Especially the Guy Fawkes masks!
Obviously Jerome
knew his stuff on this one, thanks for the post it clarified alot of things. I read a brief congressional summary of the bill and i guess my
main problem was the general term used to describe the offenses which the Department of Justice could take
action against. Taking
everything Jerome said into account I think its the bill itself (as worded) thats the problem and not its intentions. Its
the open endedness of the terminology that sacred me for Chordie's sake but maybe a more specifically written bill could help the problem?
Congress suspended the vote.
Generally speaking, when it comes to legislation I'm of the "If no one is happy about the bill it is probably the right way to go" school. With this one, there were way too many happy people for it to be right.
I am an avid intellectual property rights advocate and am fully in favor of draconian enforcement against violators, but you have to hold the actual violators responsible. This bill doesn't do that.
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