Could Congress be crippling the Internet?

[Uncle Joe]

http://current.com/groups/news-blog/93542130_could-congress-be-crippling-the-internet.htm

The bills, backed by major players like the MPAA and RIAA, are set to be passed before Christmas, against the objections of tech advocacy groups and major tech companies, including Google.

PROTECT IP and SOPA
The threat facing the Internet comes in the form of two bills -- the Senate version known as PROTECT IP (SB 968) and the House version of SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), HR 3261. Both pieces of legislation accomplish the same goal: Passing sweeping provisions that give governments and corporations the legal cover to take down sites for not doing enough to protect copyright holders.

(snip)

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, passed in 1998, is an important piece of legislation that helped allow the growth of the tech industry and the expansion of user-generated content online. How? By updating copyright laws, and providing legal protection for sites that host content provided by users. While companies are required to pull down infringing content uploaded by a user when notified, it's up to the copyright holder to request it. That means sites don't need to staff up to proactively monitor all content.

This and other protections afforded by DMCA are part of what allowed companies like Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to flourish. Protected from excessive litigation, companies could grow and expand, supporting user-generated content and coming up with innovations that give us the online landscape we have today.

Much more on link

[sakabatou]

1. Those bills could seriously harm the internet

[orpupilofnature57]

2. Information is becoming an exclusive ,esoteric , Goo ol' boy Privelege...

And people wonder how 1% could imprison 99%.

[Lint Head]

3. Modern technology is helping to facilitate the mental imprisonment of the majority of the world

population. It is not hyperbole or overreacting. This is 'in your face' how it is. We are presented with the choices in our lives that the corporations allow and nothing more. Our choices of mass art and media must be corporately blessed by our corporate guards before it can be truly accepted. One example is a diploma. If you do not have a diploma from a recognized corporate institution of learning you are basically are not considered as very intelligent.

[MedleyMisty]

7. Actually modern technology is freeing the world

And that's why they want to control it.

I hear you on the diploma thing though. I've been fighting that battle for years - pointing out to people how it's basically saying that money = intelligence, because it costs a lot of money to get that piece of paper that says "I have been through four years of corporate obedience training."

I was identified as gifted when I was little. Was reading at college level and above in fifth grade, took the SAT in 7th grade and scored high enough to go to Duke's TIP program, etc. I have a two year associate's degree, because fuck this fucking system. I'm not going to jump through their fascist hoops, and I can get a much better education from the library and the used bookstore and the internet.

When I bring up the gifted thing in mixed company, people go completely freaking insane. And it took me a while, but I figured it out.

Americans have this weird little secret equation in their heads. It goes: Intelligence = Education = Money = Worth. That's why people get their panties in a wad at the idea of giftedness, because they associate it with money and they associate money with personal worth. So if I say I'm gifted to someone who has that equation in their head, they hear me saying "I'm rich and therefore I'm better than you."

I think hatred of intelligence is really a display of class resentment - just an especially self-defeating and confused and colonized mind one. It's like they buy into the whole money = personal worth shit, but somewhere underneath they are upset about it. And that resentment finds a scapegoat in intelligent people.

[Lint Head]

10. Technology can be freeing but it is being gamed my Microsoft, Apple and other

software and hardware corporations in partnership with the financial and government powers in control of our lives. Technology is not free and until it is accessible by the people that cannot afford a computer, cell phone, Ipad, Kindle whatever it will be gamed by the people that create the technology. That is just the system.

[EFerrari]

4. This is the big issue today.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. Ah yes, predictable

and predicted

[MedleyMisty]

6. The other day on Twitter I read this list of corporations who were against it

Google, Ebay, etc.

We should set up a bribe fund that they and us can all contribute to, so then they can get lobbyists to go to Congress with counter offers and larger bribes than the ones they got from the RIAA and MPAA.

[Octafish]

8. Any chance someone in authority will stand up for the First Amendment over profit?

Nah. Don't think so.

Thanks for the heads-up, Uncle Joe! What country are we in, again?

[FiveGoodMen]

9. If it's evil, they're doing their best to make it unstoppable.

Never a bigger group of traitors in history.

[Uncle Joe]

11. Thanks to everyone that posted.

:hi:

[Tim FarTbowner]

12. more information

if i'm not mistaken this will effectively set up a blacklist of addresses that all ISP's will be required to use.

also I can't see how payment processors like VISA will be able to process,investigate, and allow for counter-claims all within 5 days, things are going to slip through and innocent people may have funds shut down.

[mmonk]

13. Yes.

It lost control of it.

[suffragette]

14. Scary stuff

http://current.com/groups/news-blog/93542130_could-congress-be-crippling-the-internet.htm

Under the new proposals, the copyright holder could instead force payment processors, ad services and search engines to choke off support for the entire site, not just the offending video. Also, even if the claim is disputed there's nothing requiring that those services have to be turned back on.


K&R

[Hutzpa]

15. Republicans are never for anything good

the big corporations are loosing to the smaller companies like google and facebook, their alternative is to
go after them, big mistake and it is something they will come to regret.

[DainBramaged]

16. Been posting about it for a while, no one gives a shit

Yesterday was a perfect example, three replies.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2320732


Charlie Sheen scratching his nuts is more important here.

[Uncle Joe]

17. I didn't see your thread, DainBramaged.

but perhaps the word "SOPA" was too obscure to engender more comment?

I also believe some issues take a little repetition to sink in for maximum effect.

I believe over the coming weeks more threads on this subject will increase the number of responses as the people become more aware of what's at stake.