Stop the US internet blacklist

Yeah, I like the idea of the government telling me what illegal things I can't do. Freedom of choice is for pussies.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']If you read the bill, it emphasizes websites that use infringement. Which has a specific legal definition.

Try again, kid.[/QUOTE]

"(B) engaged in the activities described in subparagraph (A), and when taken together, such activities are central to the activity of the Internet site or sites accessed through a specific domain name."

From what I can tell, you could argue sites like Youtube fall under B) and could possibly be censored if this bill was passed. (If I'm reading that correctly.)

Plus, under A) it says mere links can be means to censor a site which I think is kind of stupid.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']If you read the bill, it emphasizes websites that use infringement. Which has a specific legal definition.

Try again, kid.[/QUOTE]

Actually I thought it said it was okay for the site to contain infringed materials as long as it was dedicated to some other commercially viable enterprise. Double-standards ahoy.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']If you read the bill, it emphasizes websites that use infringement. Which has a specific legal definition.

Try again, kid.[/QUOTE]

Ever hear about the various internet blacklists around the world that are only suppose to be used to take down child porn sites but when the contents of the list leak out it has fun stuff on it like gambling sites, normal porn sites, random legit websites and (in Thailand's case) sites criticizing the royal family.

[quote name='wikileaks']
The list is generated without judicial or public oversight and is kept secret by the ISPs using it. Unaccountability is intrinsic to such a secret censorship system.

Most sites on the list are still censored (i.e must be on the current list), even though many have clearly changed owners or were possibly even wrongly placed on the list, for example the Dutch transport company Vanbokhorst.

The list has been leaked because cases such as Thailand and Finland demonstrate that once a secret censorship system is established for pornographic content the same system can rapidly expand to cover other material, including political material, at the worst possible moment -- when government needs reform.

Two days ago Wikileaks released the secret Internet censorship list for Thailand. Of the 1,203 sites censored this year, all have the internally noted reason of "lese majeste" -- criticizing the Royal family. Like Denmark, the Thai censorship system was originally promoted as a mechanism to prevent the flow of child pornography.

An Australian anti-censorship activist submitted the page to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), requesting that they censor it, under their internal guidelines. The activist wished to expose the "slippery scope" of the proposed Mandatory Internet Censorship scheme.

The press release and the list itself have now been placed into the secret Australian government blacklist of "Prohibited Online Content".

The content on the blacklist is illegal to publish or link to in Australia, with fines of upto $11,000 a day for contraventions.[/QUOTE]

And the government never ever puts in a small wedge and either expands it when nobody is paying attention or abuses the power they get when there is no oversight to keep them in check. Yup, that has never ever happened, nor will it.

Everything is a-okay. This is clearly for pirate sites only. Nothing else will come of this. There is no threat to you, the common man. If you don't do nothing wrong, there is nothing to worry about.

- edit But on a different note, didn't they already delay the voting on this bill until after the election?

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/09/victory-internet-censorship-bill-delayed

- edit 2 And Myke, what do you think about this?

We, the undersigned, have played various parts in building a network called the Internet. We wrote and debugged the software; we defined the standards and protocols that talk over that network. Many of us invented parts of it. We're just a little proud of the social and economic benefits that our project, the Internet, has brought with it.

We are writing to oppose the Committee's proposed new Internet censorship and copyright bill. If enacted, this legislation will risk fragmenting the Internet's global domain name system (DNS), create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet infrastructure. In exchange for this, the bill will introduce censorship that will simultaneously be circumvented by deliberate infringers while hampering innocent parties' ability to communicate.

All censorship schemes impact speech beyond the category they were intended to restrict, but this bill will be particularly egregious in that regard because it causes entire domains to vanish from the Web, not just infringing pages or files. Worse, an incredible range of useful, law-abiding sites can be blacklisted under this bill. These problems will be enough to ensure that alternative name-lookup infrastructures will come into widespread use, outside the control of US service providers but easily used by American citizens. Errors and divergences will appear between these new services and the current global DNS, and contradictory addresses will confuse browsers and frustrate the people using them. These problems will be widespread and will affect sites other than those blacklisted by the American government.

The US government has regularly claimed that it supports a free and open Internet, both domestically and abroad. We can't have a free and open Internet without a global domain name system that sits above the political concerns and objectives of any one government or industry. To date, the leading role the US has played in this infrastructure has been fairly uncontroversial because America is seen as a trustworthy arbiter and a neutral bastion of free expression. If the US suddenly begins to use its central position in the DNS for censorship that advances its political and economic agenda, the consequences will be far-reaching and destructive.

Senators, we believe the Internet is too important and too valuable to be endangered in this way, and implore you to put this bill aside.
Click to expand...

96 key people signed it.

David P. Reed, who played an important role in the development of TCP/IP and designed the UDP protocol that makes real-time applications like VOIP possible today; former Professor at MIT
Paul Vixie, author of BIND, the most widely-used DNS server software, and President of the Internet Systems Consortium
Jim Gettys, editor of the HTTP/1.1 protocol standards, which we use to do everything on the Web.
Bill Jennings, who was VP of Engineering at Cisco for 10 years and responsible for building much of the hardware and embedded software for Cisco's core router products and high-end Ethernet switches.
Steve Bellovin, one of the originators of USENET; found and fixed numerous security flaws in DNS; Professor at Columbia.
Gene Spafford, who analyzed the first catastrophic Internet worm and made many subsequent contributions to computer security; Professor at Purdue.
Dan Kaminsky, renowned security researcher who in 2008 found and helped to fix a grave security vulnerability in the entire planet's DNS systems.
David Ulevitch, CEO of OpenDNS, which offers alternative DNS services for enhanced security.
John Vittal, Created the first full email client and the email standards.
Esther Dyson, chairman, EDventure Holdings; founding chairman, ICANN; former chairman, EFF; active investor in many start-ups that support commerce, news and advertising on the Internet; director, Sunlight Foundation
Brian Pinkerton, Founder of WebCrawler, the first big Internet search engine.
Dr. Craig Partridge, Architect of how email is routed through the Internet, and designed the world's fastest router in the mid 1990s.
David J. Farber, helped to conceive and organize the major American research networks CSNET, NSFNet, and NREN; former chief technologist at the FCC; Professor at Carnegie Mellon; EFF board member.
John Gilmore, co-designed BOOTP (RFC 951), which became DHCP, the way you get an IP address when you plug into an Ethernet or get on a WiFi access point. Current EFF board member.
Karl Auerbach, Former North American publicly elected member of the Board of Directors of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
Paul Timmins, designed and runs the multi-state network of a medium sized telephone and internet company in the Midwest.
Lou Katz, I was the founder and first President of the Usenix Association, which published much of the academic research about the Internet, opening networking to commercial and other entities.
Walt Daniels, IBM’s contributor to MIME, the mechanism used to add attachments to emails.
Gordon E. Peterson II, designer and implementer of the first commercially available LAN system, and member of the Anti-Spam Research Group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
John Adams, operations engineer at Twitter, signing as a private citizen
Alex Rubenstein, founder of Net Access Corporation. We are an Internet Service Provider for nearly 15 years, and I have served on the ARIN AC.
Roland Alden, Originator of the vCard interchange standard; builder of Internet infrastructure in several developing countries.
Lyndon Nerenberg, Author/inventor of RFC3516 IMAP BINARY and contributor to the core IMAP protocol and extension.
James Hiebert, I performed early experiments using TCP Anycast to track routing instability in Border Gateway Protocol.
Dr. Richard Clayton, designer of Turnpike, widely used Windows-based Internet access suite. Prominent Computer Security researcher at Cambridge University.
Brandon Ross, designed the networks of MindSpring and NetRail.
James Ausman, helped build the first commercial web site and worked on the Apache web server that runs two-thirds of the Web.
Michael Laufer, worked on the different networks they dealt with including the Milnet, other US Govt nets, and regional (NSF) nets that became the basis of the Internet. Also designed, built, and deployed the first commercial VPN infrastructure (I think) as well as dial up nets that were part of AOL and many other things.
Janet Plato, I worked for Advanced Network and Service from 1992 or so running the US Internet core before it went public, and then doing dial engineering until we were acquired by UUNet. While at UUnet I worked in EMEA Engineering where I helped engineer their European STM16 backbone.
Thomas Hutton, I was one of the original architects of CERFnet - one of the original NFSnet regional networks that was later purchased by AT&T. In addition, I am currently chair of the CENIC HPR (High Performance Research) technical committee. This body directs CENIC in their managment and evolution of Calren2, the California research and education network.
Phil Lapsley, co-author of the Internet Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP), RFC 977, and developer of the NNTP reference implementation in 1986 ... still in use today almost 25 years later.
Stephen Wolff. While at NSF I nurtured, led, and funded the NSFNET from its infancy until by 1994 I had privatized, commercialized, and decommissioned the NSFNET Backbone; these actions stimulated the commercial activity that led to the Internet of today.
Bob Schulman , worked on University of Illinois’ ANTS system in the Center for Advanced Computation in 1976 when ANTS connected a few hosts to the ARPAnet.
Noel D. Humphreys, As a lawyer I worked on the American Bar Association committee that drafted guidelines for use of public key encryption infrastructure in the early days of the internet.
Ramaswamy P. Aditya, I built various networks and web/mail content and application hosting providers including AS10368 (DNAI) which is now part of AS6079 (RCN), which I did network engineering and peering for, and then I did network engineering for AS25 (UC Berkeley), followed and now I do network engineering for AS177-179 and others (UMich).
Haudy Kazemi, Implemented Internet connections (from the physical lines, firewalls, and routers to configuring DNS and setting up Internet-facing servers) to join several companies to the Internet and enable them to provide digital services to others.
Mike Meyer, I helped debug the NNTP software in the 80s, and desktop web browsers and servers in the 90s.
Richard S. Kulawiec, 30 years designing/operating academic/commercial/ISP systems and networks.
Michael Alexander, I have been involved with networking since before the Internet existed. Among other things I was part of the team that connected the MTS mainframe at Michigan to the Merit Network. I was also involved in some of the early work on Email with Mailnet at MIT and wrote network drivers for IP over ISDN for Macintosh computers.
Gordon Cook, I led the OTA study between 1990 and 1992 and since April 1992 have been self employed as editor publisher of the cook report.
Thomas Donnelly, I help support the infrastructure for the world’s most widely used web server control panel.
Peter Rubenstein, I helped design and run the ISP transit backbone of AOL, the ATDN.
Owen DeLong, I am an elected member of the ARIN Advisory Council. I am the resource holder of record on a number of domains. I have been active on the internet for more than 20 years. I was involved in getting some of the first internet connections into primary and secondary schools before commercial providers like AT&T started sponsoring events like Net-Day.
Erik Fair, co-author, RFC 1627, RFC 977, former [email protected].
Tony Rall, I was involved in providing Internet access to the IBM corporation - from the late 80s until last year. I worked within the company to ensure that Internet access was as "open" and transparent as possible.
Bret Clark, Spectra Access. We are New Hampshire's largest wireless Internet service providers and have built a large footprint of Internet Access for businesses in New Hampshire.
Paul Fleming, Run as33182 as a large hosting provider (5gbps+). develop monitoring software suite.
David M. Kristol, Co-author, RFCs 2109, 2965 ("HTTP State Management") Contributor, RFC 2616 ("Hypertext Transfer Protocol")
Anthony G. Lauck, I helped design and standardize routing protocols and local area network protocols and served on the Internet Architecture Board.
Judith Axler Turner, I started the first NSF-approved commercial service on the Internet, the Chronicle of Higher Education's job ads, in 1993.
Jason Novinger , I was the Network Administrator for Lawrence Freenet, a small wireless ISP in Lawrence, KS.
Dustin Jurman, I am the CEO of Rapid Systems Corporation a Network Service Provider, and Systems builder responsible for 60 Million of NOFA funding.
Blake Pfankuch, Over the years I have implemented thousands if not tens of thousands of webservers, DNS servers and supporting infrastructure.
Dave Shambley, retired engineer (EE -rf-wireless- computers) and active in the design of web site and associated graphics.
Stefan Schmidt, I had sole technical responsibility for running all of the freenet.de / AS5430 DNS Infrastructure with roughly 120.000 Domains and approximately 1.5 million DSL subscribers for the last 9 years and have been actively involved in the development of the PowerDNS authoritative and recursive DNS Servers for the last 4 years.
Dave Skinner, I was an early provider of net connectivity in central Oregon. Currently I provide hosting services.
Richard Hartmann, Backbone manager and project manager at Globalways AG, a German ISP.
Curtis Maurand, founder of a small internet company in Maine in 1994. started delivering low cost broadband to municipalities and businesses before acquired by Time-Warner.
James DeLeskie, internetMCI Sr. Network Engineer, Teleglobe Principal Network Architect
Bernie Cosell, I was a member of the team at BBN that wrote the code for the original ARPAnet IMP. I also did a big chunk of the redesign of the TELNET protocol [addding DO/DONT/WILL/WONT].
Eric Brunner-Williams, I contributed to rfc1122 and 1123, and co-authored rfc2629, Domain Name System (DNS) IANA Considerations, and authored the "sponsored registry" proposal, implemented as .aero, .coop and .museum, and assisted with .cat, authored the privacy policy for HTTP cookies, and contribute to both the IETF and to ICANN.
Nathan Eisenberg, Atlas Networks Senior System Administrator, manager of 25K sq. ft. of data centers which provide services to Starbucks, Oracle, and local state
Jon Loeliger, I have implemented OSPF, one of the main routing protocols used to determine IP packet delivery. At other companies, I have helped design and build the actual computers used to implement core routers or storage delivery systems. At another company, we installed network services (T-1 lines and ISP service) into Hotels and Airports across the country.
Tim Rutherford, managed DNS (amongst other duties) for an C4.NET since 1997.
Ron Lachman , I am co-founder of Ultra DNS. I am co-founder of Sandpiper networks (arguably, inventor of the CDN) I am "namesake" founder of Lachman TCP/IP (millions of copies of TCP on Unix System V and many other other platforms) Joint developer of NFS along with Sun MicroSystems.
Jeromie Reeves, Network Administrator & Consultant. I have a small couple hundred user Wireless ISP and work with or have stakes in many other networks.
Alia Atlas, I designed software in a core router (Avici) and have various RFCs around resiliency, MPLS, and ICMP.
Marco Coelho, As the owner of Argon Technologies Inc., a company that has been in the business of providing Internet service for the past 13 years.
David J. Bowie, intimately involved in deployment and maintenance of the Arpanet as it evolved from 16 sites to what it is today.
Scott Rodgers, I have been an ISP on Cape Cod Massachusetts for 17 years and I agree that this bill is poison.
William Schultz, for the past 10 years I've worked on hundreds of networks around the US and have worked for a major voice and data carrier. I do not agree with Internet censorship in any degree, at all.
Rebecca Hargrave Malamud, helped advance many large-scale Internet projects, and have been working the web since its invention.
Kelly J. Kane - Shared web hosting network operator. Tom DeReggi, 15yr ISP/WISP veteran, RapidDSL. Doug Moeller, Chief Technical Officer, Autonet Mobile, Inc.
David Boyes, Operations Coordinator, SESQUInet, First mainframe web server, First Internet tools for VM/CMS, Caretaker, NSS1, Caretaker ENSS3, Author, Chronos Appt Management Protocol, Broadcast operator, IETF telepresence, IETF 28/29
Jim Warren, I was one of Vint Cerf’s grad students and worked for a bit on the early protocols for the old ARPAnet ... back before it became the DARPAnet
Christopher Nielsen, I have worked for several internet startups, building everything from email and usenet infrastructure to large-scale clusters. I am currently a Sr. Operations Engineer for a product and shopping search engine startup.
David Barrett, Founder and CEO of Expensify, former engineering manager for Akamai. I helped build Red Swoosh, which delivers large files for legitimate content owners, and was acquired by Akamai, which hosts 20% of the internet by powering the world's top 20,000 websites.
David Hiers, I have designed dozens of Internet edge networks, several transit networks, and currently operate a VOIP infrastructure for 20,000 business subscribers.
Jay Reitz, Co-founder and VP of Engineering of hubpages.com, the 60th largest website in the US with 14M monthly US visitors.
Peter H. Schmidt, I co-founded the company (Midnight Networks) that created the protocol test software (ANVL) that ensured routers from all vendors could actually interoperate to implement the Internet.
Harold Sinclair, design, build, and operate DNS, Mail, and Application platforms on the Internet.
John Todd, I invented and operate a DNS-based telephony directory "freenum.org" which uses the DNS to replace telephone numbers.
Christopher Gerstorff, technician for a wireless broadband internet provider, Rapid Systems, Inc.
Robert Rodgers, Engineer at Juniper and Cisco. Worked on routers and mobile systems.
Illene Jones, I have had a part in creating the software that runs on the servers.
Brandon Applegate, I have worked in the ISP sector since the mid-1990s as a network engineer.
Leslie Carr, Craigslist Network Engineer
Doug Dodds, wrote several pieces of software for ARPANet in the 1970s, including BBN TENEX User Telnet and the HERMES email system.
Jamie Rishaw, Formerly, network architect to Big-10 Universities, the Dalai Lama, NFL and Playboy. Currently active in DNS Security steering and planning, and Global Network Operations.
Jeff Hodges, Protocol Architect: LDAPv3, SAML, Liberty Alliance ID-FF ID-WSF
Bob Hingen, worked at BBN and helped build the Arpanet and early Internet. I have been very active in the IETF and am the co-inventor of IPv6.
David M. Miller, CTO / Exec VP for DNS Made Easy (largest IP Anycast Managed Enterprise DNS Provider in the world by number of domain names served).
Ben Kamen, started an Atari based BBS in 1982 and has worked with networks ever since.
Brian Lloyd, key contributor to the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) used by with modems to connect to the Internet; co-wrote the California Department of Education's, K-12 Network Technology Planning Guide in the early 1990s
Steven Back, network administrator for many domain names related to medical studies
Brad Templeton, founder of ClariNet Communications, the world's first ".com" company and the net's first online newspaper; EFF board member.
 
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I mean really, aside from a couple of news sites, Yahoo, CAG, and The Hun, what do any of us really need with the internet?
People go nuts thinking that Big Brother is right around the corner, but think about how many sites can be put up in any given hour, and how well the govt could really audit them. It's just not possible to have "severe" censorship of the internet.
 
[quote name='nasum']I mean really, aside from a couple of news sites, Yahoo, CAG, and The Hun, what do any of us really need with the internet?
People go nuts thinking that Big Brother is right around the corner, but think about how many sites can be put up in any given hour, and how well the govt could really audit them. It's just not possible to have "severe" censorship of the internet.[/QUOTE]

tell that to the chinese people.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']"Worse, an incredible range of useful, law-abiding sites can be blacklisted under this bill."

...for instance?[/QUOTE]

Any site that the government doesn't like. That's the whole argument against this bill. It says only illegal sites, but before you know, every site that the government doesn't like is going to be blocked. For instance, Wikileaks.

EDIT:
[quote name='nasum']well played, but we're not China.[/QUOTE]

Exactly. So why are we attempting to suppress information like China?
 
[quote name='nasum']well played, but we're not China.[/QUOTE]

I was just saying that it is possible for the government to exert control over the internet. Our population is more entrenched in the internet though, so it would be vastly more difficult, but little bills like these only serve as a little by little attempt to do it.

The people involved may have absolutely no intention to censor anything besides the illegal things going on, but that doesn't mean it isn't moving the technology and idea of censoring forward inch by inch.
 
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I have to agree with Knoell. To me, the internet needs to stay the wild and unlawful place it is, if bcause it's one of the few places that are. You let them begin by taking down sites like pirate bay and over a large amount of time other laws get passed to blacklist more and more. Just think of how the morality police would love to censor the internet like broadcast television is.
 
Who needs piratebay when you can subscribe to giganews and service providers only care when you hit their datacap of 250 gigs...

LOLZJUSTPLAYIN...Keep the internet free.
 
[quote name='Clak']Just think of how the morality police would love to censor the internet like broadcast television is.[/QUOTE]

There was a recent Supreme Court case that was relevant as it involved FOX trying to fight against FCC guidelines, saying that they were draconian and written for a society in which television - network television, that is - was the dominant form of media (aside from radio, and those strange things called newspapers and books). I don't recall the details of the case, but it may have some relevance here. May.

I don't buy the doom and gloom slippery slope argument here, folks. The dominion of the law is rather clear, so I'm not sure I buy wikileaks being suppressed under that bill. Strikes me more as targeting the pirate bay and the like.
 
The only reason it worries me is that, as with most laws, things have to be categorized. Does it break the law or not, and we're still in the process of creating laws pertaining to the internet, the ones we have were written in our lifetimes. It just worries me that things which shouldn't be blocked will be, that somehow this will be abused. I mean look at how we have the FBI abusing wiretapping, I just don't trust that only illegal sties will be blocked.

I've known for years that once politicians and law enforcement began to understand the internet there would be a push to somehow block or censor sites, I just hoped it wouldn't happen.

And I'm not trying to protect pirates, let law enforcement do everything they can to punish them for breaking the law. I just don't think this really punishes them in any way.
 
I don't buy the slippery slope either.

As far as the China argument is concerned, their population is significantly larger than ours so the govt coupld employ people to be internet watchdogs. The flipside of that is that there's significantly less internet connection in rural china compared to rural america. Ergo it would be easier to surpress the internet because (and I hate the way this sounds but) it's more centrally located in the population.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']"Worse, an incredible range of useful, law-abiding sites can be blacklisted under this bill."

...for instance?[/QUOTE]

How about all the fun sites with SNES emulators for starters? How about any site that features a soundtrack from an RPG? With law in hand there's nothing to stop them from going after websites which contain these materials and also do game reviews. I'd say that hits too close to home!
 
[quote name='mykevermin']"Worse, an incredible range of useful, law-abiding sites can be blacklisted under this bill."

...for instance?[/QUOTE]

[quote name='the site in the OP']Well, it means sites like YouTube could get censored in the US. Copyright holders like Viacom argue that copyrighted material is central to activity of YouTube. But under current US law, YouTube is perfectly legal as long as they take down copyrighted material when they're informed about it -- which is why Viacom lost their case in court. If this bill passes, Viacom doesn't even need to prove YouTube is doing anything illegal -- as long as they can persuade a court that enough other people are using it for copyright infringement, that's enough to get the whole site censored.

Isn't the word censored a little overheated?

Not at all. In the US, the way things work is that if you're using the Internet to do something illegal, you're brought to court and the courts can shut you down. This bill would bypass that whole system by forcing Internet service providers to block access to sites that are otherwise up. People in other countries could still get to them, but Internet users in the US would be blocked. This kind of Internet censorship is exactly the sort of thing the US government has been criticizing China and Iran for -- just the other day, Obama told the UN that "We will support a free and open Internet." Now it turns out we're going to start censoring the Internet ourselves.

But it's just limited to copyright!

How long do you think that will last? Once the Attorney General has a system set up for censoring the Internet, everyone who has a problem with a website will want to get in on it. How long before it's expanded to block Wikileaks, pornography, gambling, anarchists, supposed terrorists, and anybody else the Attorney General doesn't like that day? If people are doing something illegal, the government should take them to court and shut them down -- not try to bypass due process by blocking their domain name.[/QUOTE]

---------------

[quote name='mykevermin']I don't buy the doom and gloom slippery slope argument here, folks.[/QUOTE]

[quote name='nasum']I don't buy the slippery slope either.[/QUOTE]

I don't know what to tell you guys. There are countless examples of other countries who have already done this and abused the power and there are a ton of examples of our own government putting a policy in place and either abusing it or expanding the reach of it when the public eye isn't on them. If you can look at those and still look at this bill as only a way to remove pirate sites...you are kind of blind.
 
There's no due process here. You're subject to the whims of the Justice dept.

You know what that means. Posted videos of
Girl scouts singing happy birthday (© 1935) - BAN HAMMER
Baby laughing with background WMG music (©) - BAN HAMMER!
Wedding party screwing up the electric slide (©) - BAN HAMMER!1!!

After all, Caesar's wife must be above suspicion.

Here's a fun vid that may help the short bus kids "get it". You're unleashing this level of bullshit on the internet, good times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP9U_mslaWU
 
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[quote name='Clak']Emulators are illegal.[/QUOTE]

No, emulators are perfectly legal pieces of software, it's the rom images that are not legal to own unless you posses the physical media as well. Of course, since most companies don't bother to enforce 15+ year old copyrights that they no longer make money off of, most people think that it's fine and dandy to emulate without and recourse, not that I disagree.
 
I don't get some of your (especially Myke's) boner for copyright law. It's been abused for years and is obviously a tool of corporate interest rather than to protect intellectual property.

This is a ridiculous bill and even if it isn't a slippery slope it does not promote net neutrality, something the U.S. Government has been bitching at other nations about.
 
[quote name='willardhaven']I don't get some of your (especially Myke's) boner for copyright law. It's been abused for years and is obviously a tool of corporate interest rather than to protect intellectual property.[/QUOTE]

Myke had some friends who owned a record store that went out of business.

When things get personal, reason often exits the conversation.
 
[quote name='spmahn']No, emulators are perfectly legal pieces of software, it's the rom images that are not legal to own unless you posses the physical media as well. Of course, since most companies don't bother to enforce 15+ year old copyrights that they no longer make money off of, most people think that it's fine and dandy to emulate without and recourse, not that I disagree.[/QUOTE]
Tell me how emulators are legal. I'm not being a smartass, I just want to know.
 
[quote name='willardhaven']I don't get some of your (especially Myke's) boner for copyright law. It's been abused for years and is obviously a tool of corporate interest rather than to protect intellectual property.

This is a ridiculous bill and even if it isn't a slippery slope it does not promote net neutrality, something the U.S. Government has been bitching at other nations about.[/QUOTE]

net neutrality is fine, but Net Neutrality is total BS. Can't wait for government to license broadcasting rights to ISPs and content providers. It'll be just like TV!

Kind of funny how when things get capitalized, the meaning changes drastically. free trade/Free Trade is another fun one.
 
[quote name='spmahn']No, emulators are perfectly legal pieces of software, it's the rom images that are not legal to own unless you posses the physical media as well. Of course, since most companies don't bother to enforce 15+ year old copyrights that they no longer make money off of, most people think that it's fine and dandy to emulate without and recourse, not that I disagree.[/QUOTE]

The problem is that reason doesn't really apply to the world of big corporations and lobbyists.

First you'll see malware sites blocked, then sites blocked to "protect children" (even legal ones) and various other (possibly technically) legal sites blocked to appease big companies.
 
[quote name='Clak']Tell me how emulators are legal. I'm not being a smartass, I just want to know.[/QUOTE]

I am assuming its the same reason modded xboxs aren't illegal. Sure they can play pirated games, but the pirated games are what break the law, not modding your console. Modding your console breaks the terms of service.

Of course Microsoft has taken it upon themselves to create a service that they can deny, and ban you, should they find you modding your console.
 
[quote name='Clak']Tell me how emulators are legal. I'm not being a smartass, I just want to know.[/QUOTE]
As I understand it, there's nothing inherently illegal about the software if you used good ol' fashioned reverse-engineering (falls under fair-use I think). It's another matter entirely if you used copywritten documents pertaining to the hardware and/or API.

FYI - Aaron Giles, who leads the MAME project, is a programmer at Microsoft, and his bosses are well aware of his side project.
 
[quote name='camoor']lol

Did I hit a little too close to the mark?[/QUOTE]

An equally plausible conclusion you could come to: you're just trolling.

I'm curious about issues of copyright law, control of the internet, property rights, and digital crime prevention. I'm quite agnostic about the whole thing, quite frankly; but, if you so desire, please continue to label myself and anyone who isn't in full favor of an anarchic web structure as worshiping at the feet of Standard Oil.

You're not interested in furthering any genuine conversation about control of the internet - you view *any* attempt to do so as a fascist takeover. You respond to genuine inquiry, not with a "no, but..." but rather a "no." That's not discourse, that's Mitch McConnell.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']An equally plausible conclusion you could come to: you're just trolling.

I'm curious about issues of copyright law, control of the internet, property rights, and digital crime prevention. I'm quite agnostic about the whole thing, quite frankly; but, if you so desire, please continue to label myself and anyone who isn't in full favor of an anarchic web structure as worshiping at the feet of Standard Oil.

You're not interested in furthering any genuine conversation about control of the internet - you view *any* attempt to do so as a fascist takeover. You respond to genuine inquiry, not with a "no, but..." but rather a "no." That's not discourse, that's Mitch McConnell.[/QUOTE]

Being curious is different from being informed.

I suggest you focus on the latter.
 
Well, I feel so much better informed thanks to you. I already knew you were a trite bastard, like a left-wing perditiontroy - but now I feel so much more informed because you spent this whole thread (1) acting a bastard and (2) showing us the very end of the slippery slope.
 
If they're reverse engineered I'd agree. The roms however are illegal, and owning the original doesn't make it legal. Just because it's legal to make a backup of software doesn't mean it's legal to go distributing copies are the internet. It's not illegal for you to make a back up copy, it still isn't legal to download a rom of the game online. If the games are copy protected then they're illegal to even back up.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']Well, I feel so much better informed thanks to you. I already knew you were a trite bastard, like a left-wing perditiontroy - but now I feel so much more informed because you spent this whole thread (1) acting a bastard and (2) showing us the very end of the slippery slope.[/QUOTE]

It's just extremist positions bandied back-and-forth (much like most of modern American politics)

Honestly until copyright law is given a complete overhaul, this is about as good as it gets.

Send in the clowns/lawyers (same thing)
 
Hardly. I'm not an extremist because I'm not completely, knee-jerk reactively against this law.

I'm not for it or against it; the idea has merit, the execution less than desirable.

Don't force a dichotomy on this when I'm quite frankly in the middle - ready for discussion and back-and-forth. Instead I get treated like I'm "I Can't Believe It's Not Mussolini!™" because I see the internet as something that deserves a modicum of regulation.

Which is rather silly, really, since we all agree on that. Otherwise we would defend distributors of child pornography. So, honestly, we do agree on some regulation, it's just a debate over degrees. Maybe I'm closer to your side than you think. But you're not going to smarm me into agreement, I can assure you of that.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']Hardly. I'm not an extremist because I'm not completely, knee-jerk reactively against this law.

I'm not for it or against it; the idea has merit, the execution less than desirable.

Don't force a dichotomy on this when I'm quite frankly in the middle - ready for discussion and back-and-forth. Instead I get treated like I'm "I Can't Believe It's Not Mussolini!™" because I see the internet as something that deserves a modicum of regulation.

Which is rather silly, really, since we all agree on that. Otherwise we would defend distributors of child pornography. So, honestly, we do agree on some regulation, it's just a debate over degrees. Maybe I'm closer to your side than you think. But you're not going to smarm me into agreement, I can assure you of that.[/QUOTE]

You are not in the middle. There are already legal channels to get these sites down. What laws like these and other various blacklist systems do is bypass those channels for a more extreme, speedy and unchecked system. Instead of taking the various legal channels already in place, this allows them to just delete it.

Do you not comprehend how dangerous and ripe for abuse that is?

That if this law was in place five years ago, we would most likely have no YouTube or any streaming sites? That most of the awesome things that came from that pressure, which forced content publishers to get on board and innovate, wouldn't have happened? I mean, seriously, fucking think about that for a second.

The channels to get distributors of child pornography (and good job bringing that up, that's the wedge issue that allows any web censorship to get through because clearly, if you are against what they want to do, then you are a pedophile) and the people who infringe on copyright are already there. If it is too slow for their liking, too goddamn bad. They need to suck it up and deal with it. If they don't like it that Sweden doesn't agree 100% with our stance and that allows a site like The Pirate Bay to stay up...again, too goddamn bad. They have no right to put those sites on blacklists so Americans can't access them and delete the domain name (and any replacement name(s)) from the DNS.

- edit And let me again post and bold this section from that letter those 96 people sent in opposition of this bill.

These problems will be enough to ensure that alternative name-lookup infrastructures will come into widespread use, outside the control of US service providers but easily used by American citizens. Errors and divergences will appear between these new services and the current global DNS, and contradictory addresses will confuse browsers and frustrate the people using them. These problems will be widespread and will affect sites other than those blacklisted by the American government.

The US government has regularly claimed that it supports a free and open Internet, both domestically and abroad. We can't have a free and open Internet without a global domain name system that sits above the political concerns and objectives of any one government or industry. To date, the leading role the US has played in this infrastructure has been fairly uncontroversial because America is seen as a trustworthy arbiter and a neutral bastion of free expression. If the US suddenly begins to use its central position in the DNS for censorship that advances its political and economic agenda, the consequences will be far-reaching and destructive.
Click to expand...
 
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[quote name='Sporadic']You are not in the middle. There are already legal channels to get these sites down. What laws like these and other various blacklist systems do is bypass those channels for a more extreme, speedy and unchecked system. Instead of taking the various legal channels already in place, this allows them to just delete it.

Do you not comprehend how dangerous and ripe for abuse that is? [/QUOTE]

This is really the biggest problem I have with the law. The old system was hardly perfect, but at least websites could fight accusations that they thought were unfair. No more - now they will just get deleted right off the net as if they never existed.

I thought this was good:

On Thursday, President Obama gave a speech to the United Nations that (not surprisingly) covered a lot of ground. But the bit that caught my eye concerned his commitment to a free and open internet without censorship
...sounds good but it makes me wonder how the administration feels about the new "Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act" from Senators Leahy and Hatch, which set up a system that avoids due process to censor websites in a clear attempt to "undermine fair competition and create market share for preferred businesses."
Unfortunately, it seems likely that Obama and Locke are all for this kind of censorship. That's because the "preferred businesses" that are helped by the COICA are the ones who support Obama and Locke. After all, it was just a few weeks ago that Locke gave a speech where he completely sided with the entertainment industry on various copyright issues, highlighting bogus data and ignoring tons of evidence that contradicted the statements he was making.
Chances are we're going to see more hypocrisy in the government -- claiming to be against censorship designed to protect businesses in other countries, but all for it at home, when those businesses are the ones contributing campaign funds.
Click to expand...

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...ill-he-veto-leahy-hatch-censorship-bill.shtml
 
Politicians rarely understand technology or the impact laws can have on it. Take Clinton and the DMCA, you think he even understands what copy protection is? By signing that law he made criminals out of people just wanting to back something up.

They're right about the DNS servers too. If entries are deleted off domestic servers then foreign ones will pop up to allow access to blocked sites. Of coruse if you happened to know the IP of the site it wouldn't matter anyway.
 
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