Thread: Internet on Strike

Yeap

Rupert Murdoch turns to Twitter to attack Obama
ReutersBy Ilaina Jonas | Reuters – 25 mins ago
Rupert Murdoch turns to Twitter to attack Obama - Yahoo! News

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Media baron Rupert Murdoch used his new Twitter account this weekend to attack the Obama administration's opposition to parts of proposed legislation designed to combat Internet piracy.

"So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery," News Corp's chairman and chief executive officer posted on his personal Twitter account Saturday.

Murdoch, whose media empire includes Fox TV, The Wall Street Journal, Fox Studios and the Sun newspaper in Britain, continued with several tweets, attacking Google as the "Piracy leader" for streaming movies free. In later tweets he called Google a "great company."

Google could not be reached for an immediate comment. The White House declined to make any other comment beyond their statement issued Saturday.

At issue are the concerns White House officials raised on Saturday about elements in the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) pending in Congress.

Google and Facebook already have decried as heavy-handed and Hollywood studios and music labels say is needed to save U.S. jobs.

In a blog posting, three advisers to President Barack Obama said they believed the act and similar bills could make businesses on the Internet vulnerable to litigation and harm legal activity and free speech.

"Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small," said the officials, including White House cyber-security czar Howard Schmidt.

The House of Representatives' SOPA bill aims to crack down on online sales of pirated American movies, music or other goods by forcing Internet companies to block access to foreign sites offering material that violates U.S. copyright laws.

U.S. advertising networks could also be required to stop online ads and search engines would be barred from directly linking to websites found to be distributing pirated goods.

Those who support stricter piracy rules reacted strongly to Saturday's White House statement, which darkened prospects for legislation already expected to struggle to clear Congress in an election year.

Schmidt and the other advisers said the Obama administration was ready to work with lawmakers on a narrower, more targeted approach to online piracy to ensure that legitimate businesses -- including start-up companies -- would not be harmed.

Murdoch, who opened his Twitter account this year, has used it to colorfully opine on a number of topics. Tweeting last week, Murdoch praised New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's latest proposal to overhaul the city's public schools, but referred to New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo as "chicken Cuomo."

He also admitted in a post to his company's mishandling of social network MySpace, which News Corp bought in 2005 for $580 million. Today the site is nearly irrelevant.

"...we screwed up in every way possible.." Murdoch posted last week.

(Reporting By Ilaina Jonas, editing by Maureen Bavdek)

Class notes on SOPA:


May 2011 the US Senate passes the PROTECT-IP (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property) October 2011 Congress suggests E-Parasite (Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation Act), shortened to SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). If a website is found to have infringed on copyright law, the website is immediately shut down and the offender has 5 days to appeal. Furthermore, the record company can talk to financial institutions and prevent you from earning money off of ads on your webpage. Not only that, they can also to go Google and other search engines and remove you from search engine databases. Virtual Execution.

The problem is not the Americans, rather it's the international community. This law prevents people from accessing international websites. This law in essence wants to remove Chapter 512 of the DMCA, the Safe Harbor clause. According to chapter 512 of the DMCA, as long as they remove the copyrighted material as soon as they are asked, they are not culpable. This means that you are now guilty until proven innocent

SOPA's Architect Is Finally Starting to Back Down
The Atlantic WireBy Adam Clark Estes | The Atlantic Wire – Fri, Jan 13, 2012
SOPA's Architect Is Finally Starting to Back Down - Yahoo! News
Less than 24-hours after promising not to yield, the Texas congressman and author of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) Lamar Smith is yielding on the bill's controversial language that would allow the government to censor the Internet -- for now. "After consultation with industry groups across the country, I feel we should remove Domain Name System blocking from the Stop Online Piracy Act so that the [Judiciary] Committee can further examine the issues surrounding this provision," Smith said in a Friday afternoon press release. "We will continue to look for ways to ensure that foreign websites cannot sell and distribute illegal content to U.S. consumers."

RELATED: The Author of SOPA Is Also a Copyright Violator (Sort of)

First of all, three cheers for the Internet. (That's an evergreen sort of thing to say, but we're pretty sure the Internet is collectively cheering the new.) Second of all, it's still not time for civil rights types to start popping corks. The bill is not dead. As Chairman Smith says, the Judiciary Committee is only pumping the brakes on the progress of the bill, while Internet experts can properly study the implications of censoring the web by using DNS blocking. This is weird because pretty much every Internet expert in the country has unabashedly condemned SOPA's domain-blocking measures and, well, the entire bill. But it is certainly a little victory for the tens if not hundreds of thousands of freedom advocates who've been protesting the bill for months. If anything, it's a major, frankly embarrassing loss for Smith. Now, he not only looks like a hypocrite, he also looks like a waffler. Americans have a tendency not to (re-)elect wafflers.

SOPA 'shelved' indefinitely, but Reddit's Jan. 18 blackout is still on, as PIPA fight continues
Digital TrendsBy Andrew Couts | Digital Trends – 7 hrs ago
SOPA 'shelved' indefinitely, but Reddit's Jan. 18 blackout is still on, as PIPA fight continues - Yahoo! News

A vote on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) has been delayed indefinitely, but the fight against Internet censorship continues: Reddit.com will go forward with its site-wide blackout on Wednesday, January 18, to protest the Senate’s Protect IP Act (PIPA), Digital Trends has confirmed. PIPA, a similar bill to SOPA, is scheduled to go up for a vote before the Senate on January 24.

“Protect IP Bill is still scheduled for a vote. Senator Reid said on Sunday that they’re still going forward with it, so [the Reddit blackout is still on],” said Erik Martin, Reddit’s general manager, in a phone interview with Digital Trends on Monday morning.

While SOPA has received the brunt of the backlash, PIPA contains similar provisions, which critics say could usher in an unprecedented level of government-enforced censorship online, harm the underlying infrastructure of the Internet, and hamper online innovation by stifling investment in Internet startups due to a more risky investment environment.

In the face of constituent outrage, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), co-author of PIPA, said in a statement on Thursday that he would be willing to remove the portion of the bill that would empower Internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to foreign websites that have been accused to distributing copyrighted material illegally. Despite the possible removal of this highly contentious provision, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Trevor Timm wrote on the EFF’s website today that “the fight is still far from over,” due to a number of other potentially “damaging” parts of the bill. These include the “vigilante” provision, which allows ISPs to block sites voluntarily, without recourse; and the anti-circumvention provision, which seeks to punish sites that give users information for how to access blocked sites.

In addition to Sen. Leahy’s admitted willingness to remove one of the most-criticized parts of PIPA, six Republican senators sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, urging him to postpone a vote on the bill, reports ComputerWorld.

“We have increasingly heard from a large number of constituents and other stakeholders with vocal concerns about possible unintended consequences of the proposed legislation, including breaches in cybersecurity, damaging the integrity of the Internet, costly and burdensome litigation, and dilution of First Amendment rights,” the senators said in the letter. Signers of the letter include Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), John Cornyn (R-TX) Mike Lee (R-UT), and Tom Coburn (R-OK).

Greater focus on PIPA follows an announcement from House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA), a vocal opponent of SOPA, who said that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) “assured” him that SOPA will not be brought up for a full House vote until consensus on the bill is achieved.

“While I remain concerned about Senate action on the Protect IP Act, I am confident that flawed legislation will not be taken up by this House,” Issa said in a statement, quoted by The Hill. ”Majority Leader Cantor has assured me that we will continue to work to address outstanding concerns and work to build consensus prior to any anti-piracy legislation coming before the House for a vote.”

Sen. Cantor’s promise to shelve SOPA indefinitely — a major win for the opposition — follows a statement from President Obama’s chief technology officer, Aneesh Chopra, and National Security Staff cybersecurity coordinator Howard Schmidt, which said that the White House “will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.” The statement is not an explicit declaration that President Obama would veto SOPA or PIPA, were they to make it to his desk, but the possibility of such a veto appears to have resonated on Capitol Hill.

In addition to Reddit, Boing Boing, Mojang, Destructoid, Anonymous, and the entire Cheezburger Network have announced blackouts planned for Wednesday. We are in the process of contacting each of these parties to confirm whether or not they still plan to follow through. Wikipedia, one of the first sites to propose a blackout protest, has not yet announced its plans.

Updated with additional information at 11:43am ET

I think in the future if forums like ours have unauthorized copied articles from other news sources, we may be threatened to remove the posts and if we don't, we may be blocked and sued. Is that correct?

Not quite. As long as the proper byline and original web address are added in, it shouldn't be a problem. Copy/pasting text that is meant to be in the public sphere for free is one thing.

The problem with PIPA and SOPA is that they focus on copyrighted content, such as movies and songs, but have the caveat that if a link to copyrighted material is found (i.e., linking a YouTube video of your favorite artist onto your Facebook profile), then the ISP has to immediately shut down the entire website until you can appeal and the appeal is passed.

Used to be that if you posted something that was copyrighted, if the copyright holder told you about it, you could remove it immediately claiming that you had no idea that's what one of your users put up. This was Chapter 512 of the DMCA, known as the safe harbor clause. PIPA and SOPA seek to throw that out the window, and plenty of people have a problem with that, and with good cause, since basically it allows the US Gov't to censor the internet, so to speak.

Big player websites have joined in on the blackout, including Wikipedia. Hope you don't have any studying to get done tomorrow...

Originally Posted by bigross86

Big player websites have joined in on the blackout, including Wikipedia. Hope you don't have any studying to get done tomorrow...

No quiz answers tomorrow

Thankfully I don't have quizzes tomorrow. I am expecting a pop quiz, but I've already read the material

Wikipedia landing pages:







And if until today the entire SOPA strike was a guerrilla army, a new player has entered the battlefield on the side of the SOPA protesters:



Google has an anti-SOPA doodle up!

As for wiki, you can still read their articles, just press stop before it redirects you. Fail.
I mean if you miss continue to wiki link, like I did the first time

Google does it better

It's not a fail, it's actually a brilliant compromise. For one thing, it inconveniences people regarding the use of their website and if you don't catch it in time and have to refresh, you've made your point.

The Oatmeal is also blacked out:

Why SOPA Is Dangerous

I’m sure you’ve heard by now that SOPA is bad and would ruin the Internet, but have you actually read the bill? If not, it’s worth reading, for two reasons. First, if you are going to oppose a bill, you should know exactly what you’re opposing, not just the vague principle behind it. Second, it’ll provide you with a valuable insight: that these bills are written in an attempt to obscure the truth.

First off, I’m going to qualify that I’m not a lawyer. However, I am a programmer, and that’s made me pretty good at unraveling spaghetti code. If ever a bill was spaghetti, this is it. If a programmer on my team wrote code as convoluted as this bill, I would fire him on the spot. That being said, there may be provisions I’m wrong about; if there are, please do correct me. My intent is to communicate the truth of this bill as cleanly as possible.

Here is the full text of the bill, as of Jan. 15, 2012. Open a copy, because I’ll be referring to it. It helps to click the “Printer Friendly” link to access a single-page view of the bill.

The Scalpel

Section 102(a)(2) permits the attorney general to take action against foreign sites (i.e., sites that do not fall under U.S. jurisdiction) if “the owner or operator of such Internet site is facilitating the commission of [copyright infringement].”

We’ll expand on this further down, but the really scary thing here is that there isn’t any qualification that the site be solely for the purpose of theft, only that it facilitate it. Since copyright violation is ridiculously easy, any site with a comment box or picture upload form is potentially infringing. Furthermore, DMCA Safe Harbor provisions are no defense. You, as a site operator, become liable for copyright infringement committed by your users, even if you comply with DMCA takedown requests.

This isn’t quite as bad as the rest of the bill because the power lies with the attorney general, rather than the copyright holder. But it’s not good, either. The language is so broad that it could be wielded against most any foreign site the AG chooses to target.

If the AG chooses to take action against a site (either against the operator, if they are subject to U.S. jurisdiction, or against the site itself if no one under U.S. jurisdiction can be found), then a subsequent court order would require the following:

Internet service providers will be required to block your access to the site (section 102(c)(2)(A)(i)) within five days.
Search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) will be forced to remove all references to the offending sites from their indexes (section 102(c)(2)(B)).
Ad providers (Google AdSense, Federated Media, etc.) will be required to stop providing ad service to the site.
Payment providers (PayPal, Visa, etc.) will be required to terminate service to the site.
Effectively, this bill gives the attorney general the power to fully censor foreign sites that the government does not have jurisdiction to take down directly. The most immediate example is WikiLeaks — under such an order, your ISP would be forced to block your access to Wikileaks. Once the technical means to do this are in place, then it becomes very easy for this power to be extended.

Implementing censorship protocols and giving the keys to the government is a scary, scary thing, and SOPA should be opposed simply based on this provision alone. But that’s not all.

The Sledgehammer

The really unsettling part of the bill is section 103. It is titled “MARKET-BASED SYSTEM TO PROTECT U.S. CUSTOMERS AND PREVENT U.S. FUNDING OF SITES DEDICATED TO THEFT OF U.S. PROPERTY.” On a first reading, it doesn’t sound that frightening. Read through section A1.

DEDICATED TO THEFT OF U.S. PROPERTY- An ‘Internet site is dedicated to theft of U.S. property’ if–
it is an Internet site, or a portion thereof, that is a U.S.-directed site and is used by users within the United States; and

either

the U.S.-directed site is primarily designed or operated for the purpose of, has only limited purpose or use other than, or is marketed by its operator or another acting in concert with that operator for use in, offering goods or services in a manner that engages in, enables, or facilitates–
a violation of section 501 of title 17, United States Code;
a violation of section 1201 of title 17, United States Code; or
the sale, distribution, or promotion of goods, services, or materials bearing a counterfeit mark, as that term is defined in section 34(d) of the Lanham Act or section 2320 of title 18, United States Code; or
the operator of the U.S.-directed site–
is taking, or has taken, deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability of the use of the U.S.-directed site to carry out acts that constitute a violation of section 501 or 1201 of title 17, United States Code; or
operates the U.S.-directed site with the object of promoting, or has promoted, its use to carry out acts that constitute a violation of section 501 or 1201 of title 17, United States Code, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement.
QUALIFYING PLAINTIFF- The term `qualifying plaintiff’ means, with respect to a particular Internet site or portion thereof, a holder of an intellectual property right harmed by the activities described in paragraph (1) occurring on that Internet site or portion thereof.

Wow, now there’s a chunk of legalese that’ll make your eyes gloss over. Let’s cut straight to the nasty bits.

An `Internet site is dedicated to theft of U.S. property’ if [a portion of the site is US-directed] and is used by users within the United States and is primarily designed or operated for the purpose of offering services in a manner that enables or facilitates [copyright violation or circumvention of copyright protection measures].

Still doesn’t sound that bad, but consider this: Any site that allows users to post content is “primarily designed for the purpose of offering services in a manner that enables copyright violation.” The site doesn’t have to be clearly designed for the purpose of copyright violation; it only has to provide functionality that can be used to enable copyright violation.

This means that YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Gmail, Dropbox and millions of other sites would be “Internet sites…dedicated to theft of U.S. property,” under SOPA’s definition. Simply providing a feature that would make it possible for someone to commit copyright infringement or circumvention (see: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0) is enough to get your entire site branded as an infringing site.

Furthermore, you may be painted as infringing if you, the site owner, “take deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability of the use of…the site to carry out acts [of copyright infringement or circumvention].” This means if you deliberately decide that it’s not cost-effective to screen every piece of content and determine whether or not it is copyright-free before it is posted to your site (whether there is infringing content on your site or not), then you are labeled as an “Internet site…dedicated to theft of U.S. property.” Simply the act of not actively screening every piece of content makes you a criminal under SOPA.

So, We’re All Infringing, Now What?

Section 103(b) is really hairy, but we’ll attempt to parse through it. I’m not going to copy the whole text here, for the sake of brevity, though I do encourage you to read and understand it. Instead, we’ll discuss the most salient parts.

Payment providers (section (b)(1)) and ad networks ((b)(2)) are required, upon receiving a claim against a site by a copyright holder (section (4)(A)(i)), to cut off all services to the accused site within five days, unless they receive a counter-notification from the operator of the accused site. Note that there is no requirement that the accused be notified of said accusation, and thus, they would have no opportunity to provide a counter-notice. In practice, you’d probably find out about it when you notice that the money stops coming in, maybe a week or two later.

The only way to provide a counter-notice is to agree to submit to U.S. jurisdiction (section (5)(A)(ii)) if you are a foreigner (yikes), and to state under penalty of perjury that your product does not fit the definition of an “Internet site…dedicated to theft of U.S. property.” As we discussed above, it’s nearly impossible to not fit that definition. If you have a comment box, and you state that you aren’t guilty under that definition, you just committed perjury. Enjoy prison. Furthermore:

Any provider of a notification or counter notification who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section…that such site does not meet the criteria of an Internet site dedicated to the theft of U.S. property shall be liable for damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, incurred by the person injured by such misrepresentation as a result of the misrepresentation.

So, if you provide that counter-notification that you aren’t an infringing site, but if you can possibly be painted to fit the definition of an infringing site (and again, you will be), you are now liable for all of the attacking party’s attorney fees. By replying, you give them carte blanche to sue you with no cost to themselves.

Now, if you provide a counter-notice, or an ad network or payment provider fails to cut off service within five days, then the accusing party may then serve you (the site owner) with a lawsuit. If they can’t get a hold of you, they may serve an in rem lawsuit against your site. If they win the lawsuit (and they will, if nobody is there to challenge them), then the court will award them ownership of your site (likely, the domain). This is the point where your accuser is required to notify you that they are taking action against you. This is how the situation could play out.

Plantiff accuses your site of infringement and serves notice to PayPal and Google, et al. PayPal and Google must shut off your payment services and ad services in 5 days. You are never notified.
If a service provider fails to shut off service, then the plantiff may may now take you to court for infringement.

Once you become aware that you’ve been accused of infringement, you either a) let your services get cut off by taking no action, or b) serve a counter-notice, which places you under US jurisdiction (if you’re not in the US) and sets you up for a perjury charge.
If you respond with a counter-notice, then Plantiff may now take you to court for infringement.

Plantiff accuses your site of infringement, and you don’t respond. Plantiff files an in rem lawsuit, and seizes control of your domain.
The Bulldozer

Section 201(b)(1) expands criminal copyright infringement to include:

…At least 10 copies or phonorecords, or of at least 10 public performances by means of digital transmission, of 1 or more copyrighted works, during any 180-day period, which have a total retail value of more than $2,500.

Now, the way that the value of a work can be computed in court is the very crude (value of the work times number of views).

…Total retail value may be shown by evidence of the total retail price that persons receiving the reproductions, distributions, or public performances constituting the offense would have paid to receive such reproductions, distributions, or public performances lawfully.

This means, for example, if you upload a video to YouTube of you singing a popular song, and that song might sell for $1, and your video gets 2,500 views, you are guilty of felony copyright infringement. Furthermore, you can tack on “willful infringement for commercial gain or valued at more than $1,000.”

This would make you a felon, and if a copyright holder were to bring a suit against you, would give you a criminal record that would make it virtually impossible to gain future employment, and may subject you to up to three years in prison for singing a song. You don’t have to receive any money. You don’t have to gain anything from your video. Simply receiving 2,500 views on a song you sung, which happens to have copyright held by someone else, makes you a felon.

Section 201(c) of SOPA includes a new rule of construction: a person with “a good faith reasonable basis in law to believe that the person’s conduct is lawful shall not be considered to have acted willfully for purposes of the amendments made by this section.” By implication, a person who believed her conduct was protected (e.g., fair use) might be found to have acted “willfully,” if her belief about the law is held to be unreasonable.

SOPA expands “willful infringement” to include those who don’t understand the law, not just those who understand it and choose to ignore it.

To Sum Up

SOPA:

Gives the government the right to unilaterally censor foreign websites.
Gives copyright holders the right to issue economic takedowns and bring lawsuits against website owners and operators, if those websites have features that make it possible to post infringing content.
Makes it a felony offense to post a copyrighted song or video.
This bill turns us all into criminals. If it passes, then you either stop using the Internet, or you simply hope that you never end up in the crosshairs, because if you’re targeted, you will be destroyed by this bill. You don’t have to be a big, mean, nasty criminal — common Internet usage is effectively criminalized under this law. This bill will kill American innovation and development of the Internet, as it will become too risky to do anything of value. It is toxic and dangerous, and should not, under any circumstances, be supported.

I hope that this helps you to more clearly understand why SOPA is bad. Rhetoric is efficient, but you should know what you’re opposing and why you’re opposing it. It’s difficult to read and understand, but if you care about the Internet, free speech and personal freedom at all, you owe it to yourself to understand and oppose SOPA.

Courtesy of Questionable Content