Black Raven Dragoons

[Zancarius]

This happened before Thanksgiving, so you've probably missed it. If you have, I'll catch you up. I had forgotten about this idiotic legislation until Trekk linked it to me. Then I remembered how infuriated I was about it. First, though, you should read this:

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/11/18/ ... l?from=rss

That's right. The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved the bill that would authorize the US government to shut down websites for infringing activities related to copyright. The best part? A number of law professors have argued that this is a clear violation of free speech. Since it was a 19-0 vote, here's a list of all the wonderful senators who voted for it:

• Patrick J. Leahy
• Herb Kohl
• Jeff Sessions
• Dianne Feinstein
• Orrin G. Hatch
• Russ Feingold
• Chuck Grassley
• Arlen Specter
• Jon Kyl
• Chuck Schumer
• Lindsey Graham
• Dick Durbin
• John Cornyn
• Benjamin L. Cardin
• Tom Coburn
• Sheldon Whitehouse
• Amy Klobuchar
• Al Franken
• Chris Coons

If you live in a state where one of these retards is a senator of yours, you probably ought to write them a letter congratulating them for laying down the framework necessary to turn us into yet another censored society akin to Australia or maybe even China.

Here's to hoping it'll die in the House, if it should make it that far given how close we are to the end of their session. Plus, a freedom-loving senator from Oregon, Mr. Ron Wyden plans on blocking this inane piece of legislation. I'm curious to see what's going to happen in the coming weeks, but unfortunately, the shear money backing this (hello, RIAA!) doesn't give me much hope. Imagine what'll happen if the government orders Google to pull the plug on Youtube for all the infringement going on there...

As I understand it, the proposed legislation would probably involve modifying the DNS root servers. All of the root servers are, conveniently, hosted here in the United States and direct traffic worldwide. In other words, when you type in google.com, the root servers are responsible for determining where that query is supposed to go. Your ISP's DNS then caches the response (or your own, if you run one) so that anyone else requesting google.com don't trigger another inquiry to the root servers. But, if the request is blocked at the root server level, there's not much that can be done. Plus, if the root servers aren't involved in this, then the burden would likely fall on ISPs which are already stretched pretty thin with the inane legislation that has been pushed through in previous years.

Inalienable human rights. It was fun while it lasted. Here's hoping more senators join Senator Wyden now that Thansgiving is over.

[Tirian]

Ugh. Amazing how this is one of the only things that gets a bipartisan action.

[Zancarius]

Ugh. Amazing how this is one of the only things that gets a bipartisan action.

Not really when you consider the money behind it.

[Gnomegrenade]

Techdirt has a good article on this. Well worth the read.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101121/23584311958/why-voting-coica-is-vote-censorship.shtml

I am "sort of" ib favor of this, but states already has laws along these lines. But I'm guessing big brother wants the final say so, as mentioned in this article.

[Zancarius]

states already has laws along these lines. But I'm guessing big brother wants the final say so, as mentioned in this article.

Oh yeah, you're absolutely right on the money. The Federal government can already take down sites that post infringing work under the auspices of the DMCA which was signed into law by President Clinton over ten years ago. We don't need another law on the books, and the DMCA was already bad enough because it was effectively a slap in the face to the Fair Use Act of the 1970s. The part of the article that most worries me is this particular quote:

Additionally, as argued by plaintiffs, the Act allows for an unconstitutional prior restraint because it prevents future content from being displayed at a URL based on the fact that the URL contained illegal content in the past.... Plaintiffs compare this burden to the permanent ban on the publication of a newspaper with a certain title, Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931), or a permanent injunction against showing films at a movie theater, Vance v. Universal Amusement Co., 445 U.S. 308 (1980). In Near, the Court examined a statute that provided for a permanent injunction against a "malicious, scandalous, and defamatory newspaper, magazine or other periodical." ....

(Emphasis mine.)

This means that if I posted the entire collective works of the Beatles (which I don't like, but for the sake of argument...) here on the 'goon site, the domain blackravendragoons.com would thus be rendered unusable to Turus, to the guild, and to anyone else. The domain would no longer have any resale value, and it would be required of ISPs to permanently block access to the domain. These block lists would thus continue to grow unbounded.

The real problem, though, is that the Internet is the antithesis of permanence. Nothing on the Internet is static, as we know from all the 404 errors that turn up from time to time, for anything longer than a few years. Information decay thus implies that any law permanently banning a given domain name from ever being used again is absurd. I can only surmise that the RIAA/MPAA didn't really like taking infringing sites (think Napster) and trying to do something useful with them, in spite prior name recognition. While it worked (?) for Napster, this legislation suggests that they want to follow a sort of scorched earth policy with regards to Internet names. Though, the argument counter to this act is a good one: It's akin to permanently banning newspaper titles. In fact, it's effectively identical.

I think the COICA is little more than blatant power grab by Big Media. The publishers you buy your movies and music from want permanent control over their content, because as far as they're concerned, you only have a limited license to use any given work. Remember: these are the same folks who concocted the idea of DVDs that would self destruct after a set number of uses. That's how much they really don't like the idea that someone can buy a product and continue using it ad infinitum. It must really suck to be in a position where the only way to continue making money is to perpetually leech off of new talent (which is questionable these days) rather than being able to indefinitely soak up royalties from old works (which they still do).

As a F/OSS developer (and commercial programmer), I believe the rights of content creators should be protected. Heck, I'm still thinking about writing a novel or two at some point in the future, and I don't like the idea of someone freeloading off of my labor anymore than the next guy. But I think it's time that Big Media receives a nice, fat reality check: No matter what measures they take, no matter what legislation they pass, there will always be someone, somewhere copying their products for free. Worse, "piracy" is difficult to measure precisely because there's no way to tell whether or not the individuals who pirated a work would have purchased it if they couldn't have obtained it for free. These corporate executives seem to feel that piracy will automatically translate into sales figures overnight if they could stop it; maybe that's true, but I suspect that most people would do without if they couldn't otherwise pirate.

Then again, there's also the argument that pirated works have value added. There's no obnoxious advertisements prior to a pirated movie, it can be copied numerous times if the original physical medium deteriorates without contending with stupid copy protection measures, and it may even be transcoded into a format that most devices are capable of playing.