SOPA, PIPA & ACTA - Let's Raise Awareness throughout SL!

[Ann Otoole]

SOPA/PIPA is now dead. http://news.yahoo.com/reid-postpones-vote-anti-piracy-bill-144213479.html

 

Internet wins. And internet just schooled congress about who really controls their political careers. And Dodd can go suck a rotten egg and get lost.

[Rene Erlanger]

Very good posts Toysoldier...and very eloquent too! :matte-motes-smile:

WADE I understand where you are coming from....but these tri-law proposals are not the solutions....in will do more damage than good in the long run, possibly reducing the amount of venues you can sell your products in..

 

[Medhue Simoni]

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

Plus... all this Congressman did was violate a copyright of a lame little IMAGE.... surely that is not covered by SOPA.... the intent of SOPA was to protect the big budget movies, music, and TV shows that the lobbyists wanted protection for.  There was no intent or care about protecting copyrighted content from liitle guys like us photographers and artists.  They are too small to worry about.

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Yeah, on the surface, you would think it does not cover such things. But that IMAGE is covered by the DMCA. See, here is the thing. This is not just for the music and movie industry. SOPA and PIPA are really about censorship, whether that is by the corporations or the government. Every1 says it's people like Sony and Warner Bros that are paying off officials, but news agencies also have a major interest in this issue themselves. They create way more content than the music or movie industry. The news agencies control what the general public think, and they are loosing viewers daily to independent news on the internet. Plus, they lose massive advertising dollars, and massive amounts of viewers to their boring mindless reality shows. This is exactly why Secondlife can't make it to the mainstream. If people are in Secondlife, they are not sitting infront of their TV getting spoon fed BS.

The bottom line is that no bill will protect you and me. We are protected by the morality of people and our own skills. We don't make 1 thing and try to make a million dollars on that. We make a million items and try to make a dollar off each, lol.

[Medhue Simoni]

I completely understand where you are coming from, and I pretty much agree with you, which is why I'm against most government regulation. See, the gov aint for us creators, it is for the corporations to force us to work for them, so they will own our work. Musicians are a prime example of this. If they could see thru the smoke and mirrors, they would understand that they are the product, and they don't need people like Sony to sell music. Generally, people understand that if they don't support an artist financially, then they won't get anymore of that great music. Without the handcuffs of the music industry, these artist could make money in so many difference ways, it is kind of mindblowing.

You know, we sit here and admire movies like Avatar. Well, who the heck gets all the praise for Avatar? Did Cameron make any of it, except the storyline and controling production, I think not. Most of what wow's in that movie has to do with all those awesome artists. Cameron brought the money, but he can only do this because the movie industry controls everything. They can only do this because of government regulations.

[WADE1 Jya]

Interesting viewpoint Medhue, although we are in agreement on these points.... I take kind of the complete opposite stance on my overall conclusions in the end... I am very aware of how corrupt & corporate-serving all world governments are.... lobbbyists & plutocracy controls all... it is really bad... but corporations want zero regulation when it limits their business. I want solid strict regulation of most things, not just internet. If not regulated, corporations tend to do very very nasty things. They are often driven by profit and that is the only motivation, it is really that simple... and it leads to them being quite evil if left unsupervised.

Regulation is all that guards against our food being poison, helps keep our medicines real, safe vehicles, provides us truth in advertising & more. Poorly regulated industries like Big Oil and Big Pharma show the problems with a deregulated system lacking effective enforcement, and they are always lobbying for more lax regulations to save themselves money or increase profit at all costs. They do not care if their business literally kills people, as long as money keeps growing. Sometimes laws are actually good and there to protect people. When people speak up in unison intelligently we can bend laws to favor the people, not to serve corporations. I still think google & facebook pulled the wool over everyones eyes with this one to protect their own business models.

These big web corporations could take some responsibility. How hard would it be for Google to include a "Report Copyright Infringement" in google search.... the same way there is a "Report Spam" option in gmail. Instead they insist to do nothing to help honest people. Often piracy sites are so blatently obvious it just takes one human to look at it and it could just be blocked so simple because it is purely an infested rats nest of open theivery, not a matter of fixing a few links.

I would provide a link to a real big obvious one based in Russia here that I have been fighting with as example of why in my opinion some sort of revised improved SOPA/PIPA/ACTA is needed, but for obvious reasons I won't link to this offensive material Google will never block these type of bad sites unless forced to, and Google themselves must also protected 100% against liabilities or they would never take action to block pirated materials. Assuming Google wished to help us (I think they do not want to help the creative person), they too need a nice set of robust governement regulations to begin to take action against pirates.... regulations thus far lacking & nonexistent.

Well that's my opinion anyways.... what do you think?

 

[Toysoldier Thor]

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WADE1 Jya wrote:

Interesting viewpoint Medhue, although we are in agreement on these points.... I take kind of the complete opposite stance on my overall conclusions in the end... I am very aware of how corrupt & corporate-serving all world governments are.... lobbbyists & plutocracy controls all... it is really bad... but corporations want zero regulation when it limits their business. I want solid strict regulation of most things, not just internet. If not regulated, corporations tend to do very very nasty things. They are often driven by profit and that is the only motivation, it is really that simple... and it leads to them being quite evil if left unsupervised.

Regulation is all that guards against our food being poison, helps keep our medicines real, safe vehicles, provides us truth in advertising & more. Poorly regulated industries like Big Oil and Big Pharma show the problems with a deregulated system lacking effective enforcement, and they are always lobbying for more lax regulations to save themselves money or increase profit at all costs. They do not care if their business literally kills people, as long as money keeps growing. Sometimes laws are actually good and there to protect people. When people speak up in unison intelligently we can bend laws to favor the people, not to serve corporations. I still think google & facebook pulled the wool over everyones eyes with this one to protect their own business models.

These big web corporations could take some responsibility. How hard would it be for Google to include a "Report Copyright Infringement" in google search.... the same way there is a "Report Spam" option in gmail. Instead they insist to do nothing to help honest people. Often piracy sites are so blatently obvious it just takes one human to look at it and it could just be blocked so simple because it is purely an infested rats nest of open theivery, not a matter of fixing a few links.

I would provide a link to a real big obvious one based in Russia here that I have been fighting with as example of why in my opinion some sort of revised improved SOPA/PIPA/ACTA is needed, but for obvious reasons I won't link to this offensive material

Google will never block these type of bad sites unless forced to, and Google themselves must also protected 100% against liabilities or they would never take action to block pirated materials. Assuming Google wished to help us (I think they do not want to help the creative person), they too need a nice set of robust governement regulations to begin to take action against pirates.... regulations thus far lacking & nonexistent.

Well that's my opinion anyways.... what do you think?

 

---

WADE, I know you understand the corporate corruption as do most of us... as you agree that the corporate corruption and/or pure effort to generate every penny of profits by any means (legal, immoral, unethical, illegal) to help their bottom line.

SOPA was this industries attempt to get the government to force others to become directly responsible to protect and enforce the "rights holder" copyright material.  They have the laws on the books now to do their jobs while the Internet still remains free and un-censored. 

In their extreme goal to enforce their copyrights and squeeze every drop from content that others created for them AND to do it at as low a cost and effort as possible, they figured they would bamboozle / payoff politicians and brainwash the weak minded that SOPA was needed to protect creators.  In actual fact, it was an ANY COST to enyone else.  Sony, Disney, etc. dont care if the Internet is censored in the process or that other corporations or individuals would have to take on these cost burdens or lose their profitability to enforce their interests by deploying SOPA.

So.... lets respond to your "WHY DOESNT GOOGLE..."  idea.  I know because of the side you have taken on SOPA that some of the details to your idea have not been thought through but let me do that thinking for you...

 

1. So.... you want Google and all other Search Engine service providers on the Internet to be forced by regulation to spend development time and effort to come up with a technology and process and added infrastructure to drive a "copyright infringement reporting / blocking" system?  Do I have to go on with this thought?  I will. 

    

   So WADE, are you willing to put YOUR MONEY into a fund that will pay all these search providers to build and run this system that only benefits YOU?  Since it is 100% your responsibility to protect your copyright, it is your responsibility to pay all costs associated for this protection.  Since Google and the dozens of other search providers gains NO BENEFIT in deploying this solution that only benefits you, why should they deploy it with no compensation to them.  In fact - at a huge cost to them.

    

2. Secondly, since Search Engine providers like Google make actual money (its Google's largest stream of income) in selling ads on websites all over the world, not only will filter and reduceing traffic to these suspect illegal sites be a pain to filter but your are asking them to take a major hit on their main revenue streams.  So lets ask you the next question WADE... since its established that YOU are responsible for protecting your copyrights and those costs are diectly your responsibility, will you be willing to pay a portion of all of Google's and every other search engine's lost profits by protecting you ??  Be ready to be paying more in protecting your copyright then its worth if you say YES.

    

3. Now lets talk about the technical feasibility of monitoring, reporting, filtering/blocking copyright violating content.  Biggest question...  WHOS CONTENT?  What list does Google use to know that ANY website around the world contains content that is violating someone's copyright?  If its fair, it should ANYONE's for ANY VIOLATION.  So that would mean that if this was even possible, Google and all other search providers would have blocked the website of the actual website of the US congressman that introduced SOPA as a bill (since he used copyright violating image on his site).

    

   In actuality WADE, you just want google to block websites that those with the money to take a site to court want blocked.  So you want Google to block all sites and content that HOLLYWOOD deems blockable.  How do I get my photoart protected against all those that illegally copied my photoart?  Specially when the violators can and likely doe simply change the name of the content?

    

   Let me finish this point by saying, the technical feasibility to FAIRLY monitor, report, block sites using or publishing copyright violating content is so far from impossible that it makes me laugh to think how it would be done.  But you already know that what you want Google to enforce is the select list of sites that HOLLYWOOD would demand blocked - very simple and complely not a fair system.

    

4. Finally, forget about economics and costs, what you are suggesting in your simplistic view of the solution that Censorship and filtering of content being search is OK.  This is where I fundamentally am so much against SOPA and where you are clearly OK with this - as long as it benefits your personal interests. 

    

   So if SOPA would have forced Google and all other search providers to arbitrarily block copyright violating content.  Based on who's determination?  Unless you have connections with the big industry hollywood mega corps, your content will not be on any list.  But worse yet, slippery slope of Censorship.  If Hollywood would have had SOPA to force all the Internet providers to block sites that THEY thought were illegal, then what? 

    

   Lets ask Google to block sites that the Government (US or other countries) are not in the best interest of their policies.  Why?  Well its in the best interests of the citizens that these sites be censored.  And if the supposedly the most free country in the world (cough cough - most outside USA dont believe it but lets run with this) is allowed to enforce a law that censors Internet content for something so vain as copyright violating search results, why not something far more important like protecting the soverign interests of a country like China, Arab states, etc. where searching for content that might open the population's mind to new ideas and cause lost control on their power??

So WADE... there is your simple solution fully discussed and analyzed.  Still think its a good idea to impose your copyright protection responsibilities onto other parties like Google?  If you say YES... then you now fully know what I labeled you as GREEDY.  Your profits at ALL COSTS.

 

[Medhue Simoni]

Wow! Where do I start? I'll try to keep this short.

Of course, I used to think exactly as you do. I'll be 40 in a month, and for most of my life I've had that view. Now, I see the eloquent beauty of the free market. See, when regulations are created, they are created by the very corporations that are being regulated. The regulations are a perfect opportunity to write a law that gives them even greater control over their market. The big dogs can easily pay to keep the competition out, based on the fear of the people.

Lets bring this down to a more managable level to examine what happens. Lets use plumbing as an example. Plumbers need to be licensed, yet just about any1 can learn to be a plumber in like a few months. Same goes for a basic electrician. I know cause I can do both, so can my father, and my brothers. None of us are licensed tho, so we can't do or even get a license cause that is controlled by people in those industries. Are there guidelines for proper plumbing techiniques, of course there is and people follow them to be safe, not just cause the law says to. Do some people not follow these guidelines, well of course, but this is because they don't have the knowledge, nor the money to pay the licensed plumber. The prices for plumbing services are artificially high because of the licensing. You could easy just have each person pass a simple test to get a license, but that will never happen because the plumbers union won't allow that to happen. Now, expand this line of thinking to large corporations.

You should really look much closer at the food industry. Look at the labeling on your food. Why is Monosodium Glutamate(MSG) added to your food? People have already complained about this, and there is no reason to add it to anything. Yet, there it is, and if you look closely and have not paid attention to it, you will see it in almost every preserved type of food, even tho it serves no purpose. What is does do, it f_up your whole chemistry and is not safe at all.

Lets look at another major poison in our food. Donald Rumsfield was the Ceo of the corporation that lobbied to get Aspartame thru the EPA. This is now in all diet drinks and just about anything labeled sugarfree or low calorie items. I won't go into how bad it is for your body.

Most cities in the US add flouride to their water, on the basis that it can help your teeth. Now there is lots of evidence it doesn't help your teeth at all, but what does ingesting flouride do to your body. It's an industrial waste. Most of Europe now bans flouride from their water supply.

Vaccine manufacturers add Thimerisol to their vaccines. It's a preservative. It is also a form of mercury. Over much outcry, the manufacturers were forced to remove it from many vaccines. Notice, it was not a law that got it removed. It is still in many other vaccines and always in your flu shot.

I really could go on and on and on and on with this stuff. See regulations don't keep us safe. They just make it so that the people that want to poison us only need to pay off people to do it.

Corporations, or even just groups of companies within a market will always try to lean things in their favor. They can only do this by creating regulations for the industry. We see these kinds of things within SL. The established merchants could very easily get together and push the smaller merchants out, but we don't really have that 1 person to pay off, and every1 else can easily speak out against it.

Although some regulations within limited scopes can be warranted, the best way to keep the public safe, is to inform them, and allow them to speak freely without prosecution. On the face of SOPA and like regulations, why do I care if Sony loses money? Why do I care of their business model is so bad that people can easily steal their crap? This is Sony's and other problem, which could easily be handled in other ways, plus there are already rules against pirating. I personally don't think this is really all about pirating.

Of course i could go on, but I do have other things to do. I hope you go and investigate some of what I talked about here. And please don't investigate halfassedly. Not that you would.

 

 

[Nalates Urriah]

Interestingly, since the 18th's strike I have been seeing television commercials in California for SOPA. 

The current copyright laws and fair use concepts are under assult. The new laws will change who and how copyright law will be handled. In many ways it changes from innocent until proved guilty to guilty until you prove you are innocent.

Also, it removes the burden of enforcements from the copyright holder and places it on the tax payer.

The bills as currently written are bad for individuals and good for politicians and media companies.

[Josh Susanto]

>Also, it removes the burden of enforcements from the copyright holder and places it on the tax payer.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In other words, it mostly just turns the US Federal Government  into a tax-subsidized police force to protect the intellectual property of people and organizations who already have their own legal budgets for doing just that.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The cultural implication is that corporate IP is so societally valuable that people should have to pay to protect it not only with additional purchase costs as consumers, but also as workers, regardless of what they personally consider to be worth protecting. I can't agree with that; at least not while the property remains under nonpublic control, producing nonpublic revenues (stock being publicly traded is a different use of the word "public" here; please don't fail to understand that; the stock is publicly traded but not publicly owned).-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If the likenesses of Disney characters (for example) are really that societally valuable, then why are they privately owned in the first place? If the federal government is going to take on the responsibility of protecting such things on such basis, shouldn't such things first be seized (and compensated) under eminent domain, and the profits from subsequent licensing be used to pay for other federal administrative costs? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If IP doesn't belong to The People of the United States of America, it's fine with me if a person to whom it does belong wants to use the existing tax-funded civil court system to defend copyright. But under these new laws, we will effectively be told that IP is everyone's culture when they have to pay for it, but only one person's when they receive the payment. These laws effectively socialize marketing costs by defraying the cost of marketing-contingent infringement exposures, and yet keep the resultant profits privatized. This is philosophically and ethically inconsistent. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If something belongs to everyone, everyone should be able to use it.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If something does not belong to everyone, then everyone shouldn't have to pay to protect it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Corporations need to be told they can't have it both ways. 

[Toysoldier Thor]

Josh....

YOU ARE 100% CORRECT....

And this is one of the fundamental flaws to the SOPA PIPA ACTA....

Those that promote and support these acts - they simply want the tax payer and ALL OTHER coorporations and individuals to take on their responsibility of enforcing they copyrights but do not want anyone to share the profits that come from these rights.  Saying it again.... GREEDY & LAZY and even SOCIALLY IRRESPONSIBLE.

Although they failed to get these laws passed this time - you can rest assure that the power, $, and influence of the media / rights holders lobbyists will attempt again to pay off and bamboozle politicians to pass a similar law. 

[Josh Susanto]

I'm actually not all that worried about it.

The fact is that both the US government and the corporations that have infiltrated it continue to operate as they do only at the whim of the global community of hackers; probably because the real concensus among hackers is that they actually support things like democracy and market capitalism in principle.

If PIPA or some similarly over-reaching law should pass, I should then expect that we would see an enprecedented global wave of hacking and cracking that will make Julian Assange look like a kid who found a Playboy magazine in his dad's golf bag.

Media companies will have a hard time getting the US government to enforce copyright for them when a lot of the electronic records start showing that cartoon characters suddenly all belong to people who were already on the FBI's most wanted list anyway (for example).

[Chelsea Malibu]

I'm not going to jump into any long winded debate on this as being an attorney in the internet business, I know the repercussions of such an act and see where there are many, many people posting responses here that are far from accurate.

However, AngelRed is spot on and it IS our voices that make change.  We have seen this time and time again.  Those who don't think their voice is heard may be because the don't speak.

Thanks for the post AngelRed though it may be little more than throwing pearls to swine, it needed to be posted.

[JoJo Aurelia]

ACTA was signed under an executive order by Obama. It bypassed our judical system.

This is all in the guise of copyright infrindgement but it's really another way to limit our freedoms. In the past year we've seen the loss of privacy and freedoms in this country at an such an excelerated rate. They chip away at our rights with most of us totally unaware. ACTA was an example of that.

"The agreement was signed on 1 October 2011 by Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the United States. In January 2012, the European Union and 22 of its member states signed as well, bringing the total number of signatories to 31. After ratification by 6 states, the convention will come into force." Wikpedia

[Rene Erlanger]

How will it impact the Internet in general and Second Life?

[Toysoldier Thor]

From reading... seems like ACTA and all the Government signatories of ACTA have sworn to secrecy about the details of the act that they have signed onto to.  Several attempts have been made to release the details of ACTA but all have failed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement

So how can an act to protect against supposedly criminal activity be so secret that it cant be openly revealed and scrutinized by the public?  From the wiki publication linked above, here is what happened when the US Government was challenged to release the ACTA details...

 

United States

Both the Bush administration and the Obama administration had rejected requests to make the text of ACTA public, with the White House saying that disclosure would cause "damage to the national security."[94] In 2009, Knowledge Ecology International filed a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request in the United States, but their entire request was denied. The Office of the United States Trade Representative's Freedom of Information office stated the request was withheld for being material "properly classified in the interest of national security."[95] US Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) penned a letter on 23 November 2009, asking the United States Trade Representative to make the text of the ACTA public.

So Rene.... how does ACTA affect the Internet and SecondLife?  Who knows if you dont know the details of the act.

[Madeliefste Oh]

[Toysoldier Thor]

Thanks Made for posting the video.  It was very informative.

Also explains why the ACTA that was created by the Music and Movie industry and secretly rammed into Governement hands to get signed in laws is being hidden from public inspection.  they know full well that the outcry would be overwhelming like it was with SOPA.

Thansk again Made

[Anaiya Arnold]

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

It was also said that if people would read the details of SOPA they would see that its fair and sites cannot be shut down without a fair hearing.... COUGH COUGH... yeah right!  WAKE UP!  The second this law comes into place, HOLLYWOOD Billion $ movie and music companies will use this huge hammer they bamboozled US Politicians to create for them and start swinging it.  Courts in the US will start blocking sites... illegal and legal but not favored by these companies... and if because many of these targeted sites are not American.... how do you think these small site owners will have any $ or means to travel to the US to fight their blockage.  It simply will not be feasible and Hollywood will also stand by the ready with truckloads of their $ to challenge anyone through the courts into submission.

1. To dismiss the abuse and misuse of SOPA & PIPA & even ACTA as "ohh sure there will be some abuse of the law but generally these laws will be used fairly and Hollywood $ wont have any influence" is utterly naive.

 

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Very true.  They (the mega-media, mega-corps) already abuse the limited scope of the DMCA process, including in at least one instance to shut down a(n internet) news broadcast that did not include any of the DMCA claimant's copyright whatsoever, but which just happened to be about that Mega-Upload promo video which was also illegally removed from U-Tube, repeatedly, by a mega-media mega-corp abusing the DMCA arrangements they have with U-Tube.

 

If they cannot be trusted to not removed content under DMCA that they hold no copyright in (much less trusted to not get content used under "fair use" removed), there is no  way they are fit to be trusted with the level of discretion, power, and complete lack of accountability they are now pushing for.  They've become a rogue industry and are about as fit to be trusted with power as a common patent troll.

[Anaiya Arnold]

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WADE1 Jya wrote:

I'm not even trying to argue with anybody or anything, and thanks for lots of assumptions and insults, but I just think original content by artist or musicians should be protected against some non-creative theves. I am an artist. I paint, I draw, I create lots and lots of things, I'm not lazy, nor greedy. FYI. Apply this logic to any other industry that it is okay to theive them and you will see the argument doesn't make any sense.

 

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Actually if we apply this argument to shoplifters, we will soon see that shop owners do not have rights to summarily take punitive actions that could ruin entire businesses, all on the mere suspicion or someone's say-so of shoplifting and in a manner that removes any accountability for the accuser and basically hands them a "ruin a competitor instantly" card.

 

No other business has  "protections" in place that essentially revoke the rights of all other interested parties.  We already make big concessions for this particular type of business.  You want to compare businesses?  If I buy a table, do I have to pay a licensing fee if I use it to seat patrons in my restaurant?  Does this apply to the media industry's products?

 

Just how many special concessions must we give the big-wigs of this one industry (because frankly the chances of ordinary creators like most of us getting a website shut down and essentially out of business on our say-so, without the backing of big-wig "contacts" is somewhere around nill) while it still wants to roll out the tired old "apply this logic to any other business".  Apply the logic of paying for the physical material and a right to listen to (but not broadcast) media content with the fact that if I ruin the physical medium my media is on, I cannot get a reduced price replacement that only charges me for the physical medium since I already own a license to play the media itself.  I have to buy the media divorced from the physical medium if it is available to buy in such a format, or repay for the media in order to re-obtain the medium.

 

The media big-wigs just want to have their cake, eat it, sell it, license it out, and then revoke everyone else's right to so much as look in the direction of a recipe book.