Should i be scared of sopa

SOPA does not concern itself with that. Taking indie LGBT filmmakers out of the market or impeding the ability of LGBT authors to publish future books limits the options of LGBT consumers, limits the diversity of stories and voices in the marketplace, and has a detrimental impact on the understanding of social issues affecting the LGBT community.

Many in the LGBT community argue that online piracy threatens not only the livelihoods of artists in the LGBT community but may also silence the voices of this community. Also, the type of DNS filtering contemplated in the bill is a popular approach that some DNS service providers already use to protect their subscribers from websites known to be the origin of phishing attacks and other malicious activity. It simply did not happen.

Legal wiretaps on drug lords are a good thing, wiretaps on millions of citizens to keep them repressed is a bad thing. Likewise DNS blocking that happens all the time today to accomplish very useful things — blocking child porn, malware, hacking, etc. DNS blocking to eliminate all references to Tiananmen Square is clearly a bad thing.

We need to make that obvious distinction and move on. Thanks again for investing the time to post on this topic. Today, when I get a DMCA notice alleging copyright infringement for activities that I know are permitted on advice of counsel, of course under US law, I can respond without taking down the content.

And, these major institutions seem to be highly deferential to IP owners after all, you guys have a lot more lawyers. As far as human rights groups, I brought up TOR. You have ignored this, and talk about defending human rights websites.

At all. But other people have, and most major human rights groups have come out strongly about SOPA because of this concern. More on that in another comment. Feeding me some bland generality that the Secretary of State has said is a dodge. I recently spoke at the Silicon Valley Human Rights conference, which brought together human rights activists from around the world to meet with tech companies.

The collateral damage to human rights by IP enforcement was a frequent and constant theme. For some reason, suppressing human rights, activists and freedom of speech to make Hollywood a little more money seems like a poor bargain to me. Human rights, like the right to not be tortured, abused, or discriminated against, or the right of some people to make more money?

How many LGBT rights groups have expressed their support for this bill? JEM, that is an idea that we might try to pursue if this thing comes to pass.

But, my guess is that it probably won't work. These companies are about building systems to follow. The way the bill is structured with extensive immunity for the payment processors from following through on these orders and incredibly short timetables 5 days makes it likely to look like DMCA notices on big websites: shut it off right away, and make it hard to consume legal bandwidth to undo the deed.

And even if Benetech could pull off preemptive protections through pulling strings and evading systems designed to prevent end-runs, what about the many organizations that aren't sophisticated about this stuff and get into deep trouble before they figure out what hit them? Although I have to protect my organization, I feel I have a responsibility to the social movement to speak up on behalf of the many orgs who have no idea how this might make their life miserable.

Well Jim you and others certainly have a right to speak up And Senator Wyden can use all the procedural moves if there is no cloture vote.

Maybe there is a need for a reference service that hosts relevant copyright data for a payment processor to access within the 5-day window to which even the not-so-sophisticated website can register especially those with human rights exposures. I am responding to the third comment by the Copyright Alliance. Sorry to be slow about this: my main job is not lobbying! Responding on the technical issues, you assert in your comment that the detractors are incorrect and that SOPA would hardly break the Internet.

So, who would your average techie believe on this point? Lobbyists for copyright holders, or the leading engineers responsible for the Internet? My bet would be on technical experts, unsurprisingly. A smart and technically competent fellow. The legislation could even damage the underpinnings of the Web, he said. However he works for Google, which strenuously objects to the bill.

Of course, Google has a reputation of being one of the most stellar Internet technology companies. These legislative attacks are not motivated by clear thinking about the future of the Internet or the global economy, but instead are motivated by the desire to protect large, entrenched companies with outdated business models that are threatened by the Internet.

Rather than adapting, and competing with new and better services, they are going to Congress asking for protection.

If they succeed, they will vitiate the Internet economy. Zoe Lofgren D-California whose district includes Silicon Valley, expressed alarm that Google was the only company invited to testify against the bill. When that happens, she said, Google usually stops displaying results pointing to that particular page within six hours. Rep Issa and Sen Wyden have been floating ideas for a revised bill that would focus on real abusers, rather than catching a whole bunch of organizations that are pretty much law abiding.

I've heard they are coordinating with the tech companies who have led the opposition to the two bills. In the Wired. The groups that along with Rep. Issa and Sen. Wyden who are formulating a counter-proposal would do well to stay away from the comments of Mr. O'Reilly above that the IP owners are incurring losses due to their obsolete or outdated business models. Given the mood in Congress, it may be difficult to pass legislation acceptable to both Houses that these 'large entrenched companies' should just resolve that they must continue to incur these large losses with no help from Congress.

That's OK This is legislation. Arguing about obsolete business models to most persons is like blaming-the-victim and is not IMHO going to change a lot of Congressional votes. Valdemar Van Hout said…. Do you ask permission from each author before making their work available? If not, then it is theft.

I would not want my work freely distributed without my consent - and I'm a severely disabled combat veteran. Wow, Valdemar. Big and evil word. Is it theft to quote a sentence from a book? Lend a book in a library without permission? Read a couple of pages of a book in a bookstore and then decide to not buy it? If I hear a preacher make a great point, is it theft to repeat the idea?

Jefferson made this point most eloquently. It is not rivalrous: I can use the same idea, or the same words, without stopping other people from using it.

And, the idea that ideas, and the text in books, and the words in a song are the equivalent to my car or my house, is frankly, scary. Most recently Rackspace and GoDaddy have added their voices. Opponents also include conservative think tanks like Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation , which oppose the bills on free-speech grounds, a whole other issue.

The law would potentially threaten any Web-based company that included user-supplied content. This excerpt captures the concern about the chilling effect the law would have on start-ups:. And that may be true—as long as copyright trolls and the government never abuse the powers granted by the bill, and as long as venture capital is not scared off by the threat that such over-reaching might one day occur.

The burden of unintended consequences falls most heavily on small companies. Major online content providers have the legal resources to do battle with nuisance claims of copyright infringement.

The [accused] website has five days to figure out how to respond before it's cut off. Cutting off access to the URLs of rogue sites messes with online security protocols, raising unknown risks for any site that relies on e-commerce.

Then, without due process, your site and payment systems are shut down. You're going to have to hire lawyers," he says. Holly Pranger, a lawyer based in San Francisco, specializing in technology and start-up law, isn't so skeptical that adding more teeth to DMCA would have widespread effects. But it would kill particular—already not entirely legal—lines of business.

Business watchers say they are separately unnerved by how little the proposed bill will do little to stem real piracy—the illegal downloading of movies, music, and software that has frustrating creators for years.

And there's concern that should legitimately pirated sites be blocked, they can simply be recreated as strictly numeric URLs i. But with the big money of Google, Facebook, and the rest of the respected movers and shakers of the Internet world lobbying against it, most are optimistic the bill in its current form will never become law.

Amol Sarva, CEO of Peek, a veteran of Virgin Mobile USA, and a mentor to NYC Seed, which funds technology innovations, says after sifting through the bill's proposals, the start-up world is simply frustrated at how lawmakers seem to lack an understanding of modern technology.

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