Pajiba

The King estate might not be the holder of the copyright at the moment. I think it's BMI.

Oh and if you think 70 years is a long time, SCOTUS just pronounced that it can be..a bit, longer:

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2012/01/golanscotusruling.pdf

We need to damage the supporters of SOPA/PIPA financially. We need to boycot all companies that support it. And not for a day, or a week, but until they withdraw support for these horrifying bills. They need to understand that we are tired of our laws being written to benefit the corporations while ignoring the rights of the individuals. That greed will no longer be the Alpha concern in the laws that our corrupt and bought Congress bring to the table.

If Disney supports SOPA/PIPA (and they do), then boycott Disney in all forms. Don't see their movies, don't watch ABC, don't watch ESPN, boycott ABC advertisers, all of it. Same with Rupert Murdoch and the Fox family. Will this be difficult? Yes, it will. And there is no way we could get more than 20% of the population AT BEST involved in it. But that 20% would send one hell of a message that we will no longer stand by while our rights are trampeled in the name of the almighty dollar.

Think of it this way, the machinery of state necessary for tracking down and destroying the life of any citizen who says something that is copyrighted is indistinguishable from the machinery necessary to do the same thing to someone who says something that the government simply does not like. That machinery cannot be allowed to exist in a free society.

This.

And, worse, it is the nature of these grand machines to take on their own agenda. We must with great care consider when creating such machinery ... "the machinery to do XXX is indistinguishable from the machinery to do YYY" ... because given the possibility they will eventually, inevitably do YYY no matter how many times they pinky-swear they will not.

And it never ends ...

Supreme Court Upholds Law That Pulled Foreign Works Back Under Copyright -
http://chronicle.com/article/Supreme-Court-Upholds-Law-That/130376/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

With some analysis from Althouse (I know, I know.)
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2012/01/professor-lost-his-long-legal-fight-to.html

Of course if we had that universal internet ID the administration's been working on in the background, they could track these potentially-infringing links back to me & leave our kind hosts alone. Naaaahhh. They'd just try to nab us both.

The ID proposal is *entirely* about making it easier for people to log in places, like the folks doing it say. It doesn't have to do with making your every keystroke trackable at all.

Godtopus help me, I was nattering on about sentimental movie moments, then this article. Just when I thought I was out they pull me back in!

So then what's the problem? The speech is legally available online in video, audio, and text forms. Where's the censorship? I believe they have to craft a bill that minimizes collateral damage. However, to say that copyright enforcement is censorship is absurd.

He never claimed it was censorship. The problem is that speech doesn't belong to any single entity. I don't give a fuck who or what entity holds the copyright, that speech belongs to everyone. It's too important to not be freely available to anyone.

I think I might be to the point where I disagree with Thomas Jefferson on copyright being a "necessary evil". I'm beginning to think it isn't necessary at all. If the people who keep extending copyright terms had their way, fucking Shakespeare would still be under copyright.

What fucking arrogance some people have. for example, Disney takes fairy tales that belong to everyone (Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty, Robin Hood, etc...), makes a cartoon about it, and then feel that they have some right to make money from the thing they pilfered from our shared culture for one hundred fucking years or more? The balls these people have...

It really seems like you are in the know on this.

Ok, reality check here, NOTHING IN THE BILL MAKES IT A FELONY TO POST A LINK TO A YOUTUBE VIDEO! Jesus people, at least be opposed to SOPA for the right reasons.

To start with, Google/ YouTube takes an ASCAP license that covers music, and for video clips they have a system in place that manages takedown notices from content owners. Moreover, Youtube is not a foreign rogue website.

Specifically, SOPA is intended to target foreign hosted websites (though Anti-SOPA professor Marvin Ammori has an interesting analysis about how it might,be misused and net domestics, but his theory has got a lot of hypotheticals in it).

But let's not talk about either side's interpretation, instead here's SPECIFICALLY what the bill says constitutes a foreign rogue site:

DEFINITIONS.—In this section:
(1) DEDICATED TO THEFT OF U.S. PROPERTY.—An Internet site is an ‘‘Internet site dedicated to theft of U.S. property’’ if—

(1) the Internet site is a U.S.-directed site and is used by users in the United States; and
(2) the Internet site is being operated in a manner that would, if it were a domestic Internet site, subject it (or its associated domain name) to
(A) seizure or forfeiture in the United States in an action brought by the Attorney General, by reason of an act prohibited by section 2318, 2319, 2319A, 2319B, or 2320, or chapter 90, of title 18, United States Code; or
(B) prosecution by the Attorney General under section 1204 of title 17, United States Code, by reason of a violation of section 1201 of such title.

Just to be clear, the bill says you are defined as foreign rogue website dedicated to theft of U.S. property if the foreign site would be totally busted by existing domestic US law if it were U.S. based.

So acting like SOPA and PIPA are fundamental changes to the system is over the top. It is currently illegal (and criminal) for any intermediary to benefit by facilitating access to the US market by operators of notorious foreign rogue websites. And it is currently perfectly legal for private parties or the DoJ to make a given foreign rogue website notorious by calling its misdeeds to the attention of intermediaries. Proof that the DoJ can already act was shown today when the DoJ took down MegaUpload, and that's without either SOPA or PIPA.

There's probably a better anti-SOPA argument to be made that rights holders already have considerable power under existing law, it's just convoluted and needs to be cleaned up.

On the "free speech!" side, most of the first amendment concerns stem from an intentional over-read of "encourage" or "enable", but the language quoted comes from the federal “civil forfeiture” statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2323. It defines the standard for forfeiture to the government of property used to facilitate the commission of certain types of crimes. In other words, today, DoJ could invoke that standard in order to seize all the physical assets of any domestic site operator culpably facilitating the illegal acts of foreign rogue websites. (And forfeiture is not a form of “monetary relief covered by § 512—no safe harbor). If SOPA passed, DOJ could, instead, send a notice. Of course, they could do that today, or they use the threat of forfeiture to extract a whopping settlement—which is precisely what they did with the Google Non-Prosecution Agreement, (which cites 18 U.S.C. § 2323).

Let's take a look at the $500 Million dollar settlement / Non-Prosecution Agreement under which Google barely avoided criminal prosecution for helping rogue, no-prescription pharmacies sell illegal, adulterated or counterfeit drugs through its ad network. Suppose DoJ were to become concerned--as it should--that Google was STILL promoting many of the same no-prescription rogue pharmacies through its search engine. Do we really think that the Internet would die were DoJ to be able to forego another complex sting operation by suing the worst rogue pharmacies directly and notifying Google to stop promoting those rogue pharmacies found to be targeting the US by a US court?

Theoretically, PIPA/SOPA notifications are simply a much more efficient way of calling out the worst wrongdoers more directly, and without DoJ or US rightsholders having to accuse US intermediaries of wrongdoing, again, I think the SOPA fails here and actually makes things worse, but the intent is pretty straightforward.

There ARE serious problems with PIPA/SOPA, but the problems aren't the "bumpersticker" slogans. The worrisome stuff in SOPA has to do with things like DNSSec (though that has been mostly fixed), or the injunction-circumvention provision (Ammori writes about this), and a waaaay too loose way to deal with subdomains.

Now, if you want to know why Google hates this (and yeah, it's really Google behind a big portion of the anti-SOPA rhetoric) take a close look at the Non Prosecution Agreement I mentioned. Google had to divest itself of 500 MILLION dollars. That wasn't 500 million in penalties, that's 500 million that the DoJ said represented revenue and profits from the sale of phony or illegal pharmaceuticals. It just got busted again by the BBC for facilitating the sale of fake Olympics tickets, and the FTC is investigating Google's support for mortgage scam artists.

In the case of the fake drugs, Google admitted that they coached fake pharmacies on how to "game" the verification system, so it wasn't even just an "oops, we didn't know". In fact the DOJ made it clear that C level people in Google were aware and approved this.

Therefore if SOPA passes Google will find itself under pretty much constant attack whenever they sell ads to fake websites or total outright fraudsters. That will cost them money in legal fees and revenue from fraud. Worse still, taking fakes out of the mix will probably reduce the price that legitimate companies have to pay for ads because Google uses a quasi-auction format. Finally, if the DNS stuff were in the bill, it would harm the data-mining they do through their OpenDNS service.

For Facebook, the law could create a lot of nuisance notices, for eBay, it hurts PayPal. AOL and Yahoo also depend on ad network revenue, and this could hurt them as well.

Being opposed to SOPA is a good idea because the bill is a half-baked mess at this point, but don't for a SECOND think that all the "outrage" by Google and others has anything to do with free speech.

It's about money. That's why Google hired 14 lobby shops in DC recently, and started righting huge checks to Markham Erickson at NetCoalition.

It's good to be against SOPA and PIPA, but people need stop acting like it drowns kittens.

@squirrel

First, resorting to "chilling effect" or unintended consequences is the very essence of a lost argument. You are essentially admitting that the bill, as written, does not do bad things, but rather as a consequence some other thing will happen. To borrow from First Amendment law, that's a prior restraint versus post punishment perspective.

The vast majority of the time the feared consequences never come to pass. The best proof for this is actually what is being said about the DMCA. I assume you are old enough to remember when we all sat around saying how the DMCA is the worst bill of all time, and that it would destroy the internet as we knew it. I admit to participating in many anti-DMCA conversations myself. The threat of that bill was ALL about the unintended consequences and chilling effects.

Here's what all those who hated the DMCA now say about the bill " Since their enactment in 1998, the DMCA's safe harbor provisions for online service providers have been a cornerstone of the U.S. Internet and technology industry's growth and success. " (Google, Facebook, eBay etal in an open letter)

So the bill went from being utterly destructive to "the cornerstone of the Internet's success"?? Talk about reversal!

So resting my opposition to SOPA on portents and omens is stupid; I need to look at the facts that are at hand, not mythology.

Second, you are doing a bit of mixing here when it comes to the purpose of Article I Section 8 of the Constitution. Here's exactly what it says:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries

In general the courts and society have looked at this in multiple ways. We grant trademark rights in perpetuity, we grant copyright for enough time for the author and his family to profit from it, and then the patent system is where we focus on what you describe - an exchange of knowledge for exclusivity.

Patents are a way to break the old trade-secret, guild style hoarding of knowledge. The government basically says "if you show us how you do this thing (remember a patent is granted not for the idea, but for the method/way of doing a thing) then we will grant you a time limited monopoly, but you must share HOW you do this thing right now (called publication) so that others may learn from it".

Because copyright doesn't really have this "teaching" element, copyright has been more about making it economically viable for someone to make money in the creative arts.

Side note here - this is the problem with software and copyright. Copyright only protects software to a certain extent, and software doesn't really need the same kind of reward structure. Unfortunately, patents are theoretically the better vehicle for getting software out of "trade secret" and into the public, but software patents have been so butchered that it's really untenable. But I digress...

So copyright is not about getting stuff into the public for free, it's always been about getting people paid.

In your next section, you make a whole bunch of declarative statements, but I can't find any place in the legislation that actually does what you say. Specifically, you claim that the content industry has been granted new enforcement powers. Under what section of the bill? Every discussion of enforcement in the Managers Amendment refers to powers granted to the Attorney General, not private rights of action. So either find me the site or admit that it's not there. Same goes for "dissemination of information" what do you mean? and under what provision of the proposed legislation?

And then your final statement alludes to barriers to entry because of additional policing, but you already admitted that the requirements are there today under existing US law. Where is this additional policing coming from? What section of the bill? The manager's amendment specifically and concretely states that DMCA safe harbor provisions remain and are not superseded by the legislation.

Next, I wouldn't hang my hat on MegaUpload, it's really clear from the log files that the "vast majority" of what they did was not legitimate. They, like Grooveshark did bullshit things in their terms of service that said 'Anyone using the locker service "represents" that the have legal authority from the copyright owner to grant, as to every song in their music collection, a worldwide, royalty-free, permanent, irrevocable, on demand streaming license to MegaUpload.'

Sorry, but that doesn't even pass the laugh test. Pawnshops are required to be more than just fences for stolen goods, and MegaUpload can't just pretend that these people all have a magical, unavailable and never ever granted license. It's not "reasonable", and no jury will find it such.

Now to Wikileaks. Here we agree, I am not sure the protections in SOPA do enough to prevent blocking of sites like Wikileaks, though I think that the courts would crush an AG that tried to use it in that way. My only hesitation is the collected Scientology cases, so I'm with you here.

We get now to the beloved ICANN. I have had the pleasure (?) of sitting in many hours of meetings at ICANN and the Internet Governance Forum. We are eons away from any kind of industry regulatory capture from the copyright holders. And again, you use scare worlds like "end anything approaching what the FBI and MPAA consider rogue websites". How? under what provision? And a "thick" WhoIs is simply pressure on ICANN to meet the requirements that information about the registrant be accurate and accessible. (and there are LOTS AND LOTS of civil society types working to make sure you can still run fully anonymous websites). It will have zero impact on the vast, overwhelming, unfathomably large number of websites out there. How do I know this? Because most registrars are already collecting accurate information on owners through credit card information, and the world has not come to an end.

And then you add a smattering of just full on conspiracy with the new gTLDs, this paragraph just seems off topic, so I'll let it lie.

Take the crazy out this discussion and we can still agree on SOPA being bad, but don't make it about things that aren't true.

Not sure anyone else besides squirrel is still reading this thread, but here goes:

First, I clearly identified why Google was fighting SOPA, and it had nothing to do with chilling effects. Google is a company run by a board of directors aimed at maximizing profits. Scroll up and read through my brief summation of the recent HALF A BILLION DOLLAR settlement Google had to pay out for intentionally gaming the system to allow the sale of illegal and or counterfeit drugs.

Next, you are just plumb plain 'ol wrong on what the word "progress" means here. Progress means to advance, or move forward. Since copyrighted works of art or music are not something than can be protected as a trade secret, the progress here is monetary. No information is lost if a work is under copyright, it's just not available to be copied freely. In the case of music, there are actually compulsory licenses, which means that the rights holder can't even prevent you from re-recording a song, and the fee that you must pay is set and is essentially only negotiable downward (this is called the Harry Fox agency).

This isn't something about how you feel about things, this is established law, and really pretty easy to understand conceptually. a song is something you can hear and essentially reproduce with your own voice. Once you hear it, you "have" it. Now the only question is, what can you do with it?

Patented inventions (or inventions held as trade secret) are very different. Minus the instructions that come in the form a patent filing, you may not be able to figure out how someone did something.

I can look at a painting, and if I am skilled, I can tell you "how" they did it. And if I'm good enough, I can copy it stroke for stroke. So there's no element of "learning" that copyright prevents. The arts can "progress" in that sense regardless of copyright. From Thomas Jefferson on up, the concept of "promote the progress of arts" had to do with making it financially viable to invest in them, and to seek monetary gain from them.

Moreover the whole "those evil studios" stuff is just tired. All of the work Dustin and the Pajiba crew have put into this website is protected by copyright. I can't legally set up a site called paijaba.ru that basically automatically took all of the content here on this site on an hourly basis, put my name as author of all articles, stripped off the ads and replaced them with my ads. Dustin would rightfully move to shut me down, yet would he be an evil guy blocking the "progress" of the arts?

On to powers. Here's a reality check for you. ALL property rights flow from the government/judicial system. Pretty much the origin of government and the law is wrapped around property rights. Without government rules outlining boundaries of use, we have total anarchy - this is the world of "I only control that which I can protect with the barrel of my gun". Therefore government involvement in property disputes is a good thing. So to go into all caps mode about the fact that the Attorney General would be "CONTROLLING PRIVATE PROPERTY" seems a bit strange, since that's kind of a key part of his/her domain.

Pretty confident that I am well informed about MegaUpload and it's TOS. Moreover, I am intimately familiar with what the courts say about actions where you are "willfully ignorant". For now, let's look at the wikipedia definition, it will do:

Willful blindness (sometimes called ignorance of law, willful ignorance or contrived ignorance or Nelsonian knowledge) is a term used in law to when an individual seeks to avoid civil or criminal liability for a wrongful act by intentionally putting himself in a position where he will be unaware of facts which would render him liable.

The courts have explicitly thrown out this defense in the 2003 Aimster case, so this is really a non-starter. MegaUpload's whole goal was to get you to upload stuff to share that you didn't have permission to share. Please note that Dropbox, which actually provides the service you claimed MegaUpload provides, doesn't have any problems with the law, nor does Amazon, nor Apple's iCloud, or Microsoft Live, etc.

Your next point about "is this needed" is actually a valid one, and the one that everyone should be asking. Does current law provide a workable remedy? Is it overly complex or burdensome on either party? Is there a solution that will make it better? These are the questions that should be at the heart of any debate about SOPA, not conspiracy theories on new gTLDs.

I'd be hard pressed to look any deeper into WhoIs. And in this case identification is the goal, but not in some kind of sccarrrrrryyyy way, but in a simple way of requiring that which has always been required, that owners provide accurate information about who owns a website. Please refer to the original WhoIs RFC back from the 1970's and you'll notice that privacy was never part of the original spec. It's ALWAYS been required that you provide accurate information. Nowadays there have been moves within civil society groups to allow for anonymity and good questions have been raised (read Rebecca Mackinnon's work here) but there's no "there there" that it's all some star chamber plot to destroy the internet.

So I applaud you for asking the one right question - but you didn't need to bury it in tinfoil hattery.

Sorry to say, but your title ""Put Your Bodies Upon the Gears and Upon the Wheels": Martin Luther King and SOPA/PIPA" really isnt very good with SEO.

Why is files sharing not really a trending topic? Megaupload's Kim Dotcom arrest is gonna change several things we do in this world.

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