talkmagic.co.uk

Details in the attached link.
In short, a proposed law would give the US government sweeping powers to shut down websites for a whole host of reasons.
Sign the petition to show support for the members of congress who oppose it.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_intern ... mp;v=11161

Not meaning to sound naive, but why is this a bad thing? If the site's illegal for whatever reason then surely it should be closed down?

I wonder if Gary Glitter has signed this?

Sort of what I was thinking, Freddie. The majority of naughty things on the internet are piracy, child porn and organising terrorist attacks. I'm all for shutting anything to do with that down.

Very true. But then again, with these things on-line it may make it easier to track and arrest terrorists, nonces, etc and maybe if the sites were declared illegal then it would drive them further underground and harder to trace...

Terrorism doesn't come into this. For one - it's a red herring and nothing like as bad as our governments make out. Even despite the wars we're waging in the middle east and the ease of communication the internet gives to terrorists, global terrorism is at its lowest rate in about 35 years. For another - I don't believe for a nanosecond that the internet plays much of a role in promoting or planning terrorism. It's done face to face, by phone, post and email where it's MUCH harder to trace... and is STILL incredibly rare.


Lord Freddie
Where does Garry Glitter come into this?
This has nothing to do with child pornography - there's already extensive legislation, powers and policing in place to combat that. This has been put forwards by the recording and movie industries.


Lady of Mystery
Where to start?

Firstly - a letter strongly opposing the legislation has been co-signed by:
AOL, eBay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yahoo! and Zynga (makers of online social games like FarmVille).

Goodle's chairman has labelled it "draconian".

It isn't about illegal sites, it's about hosting or linking to illegal copyright material (not the same thing as being an illegal site by a country mile) and about policing.

If you use a forum (not just this one) with a .com web address or hardware kept in a US juristiction (or one friendly to it, like the UK) and someone posted a link to copyright-dodgy content - even if nobody knew about it, or if it was a really old link from the dark days when moderating wasn't so on point... the entire site can be shut down.

If someone posts copyright material or links to pirated material on a site like Facebook - the act allows for Facebook to be closed down entirely. It removes any protection (which exists under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) Facebook currently has from closure if it removes illegal content in good faith when it finds it. To spell that out... some random kid you've never met sends a friend a link to an illegally shared mp3 via Facebook and before you know it all your photos vanish and you lose your way of communicating with (or finding) your long-lost Aunt Petunia (or your boyfriend/husband serving in Iraq/Afghanistan/other oil-rich arab country - or working on the other side of the world) or arranging a cleanup in town after the next teenage-riots kick off.
Someone posts links to illegally shared copyright material on Blogger, Wordpress or similar - and YOUR blog on the same service can vanish along with it because the site itself didn't do enough to police it.

Just consider the impact on the internet if every website that allows 3rd party content (this one, for example) had to go through the process of moderating every single post that went up before allowing it to go live just to make sure nobody was "stealing" the latest cookie-cutter mindless pop tripe churned out by a record label.

The act also targets sites that "simply don't do enough to track and police infringement" can be taken down... so in short - even if nothing illegal has been posted - simply by not actively policing everything to the satisfaction of the US government (or to groups like RIAA - who seem to have almost the full weight of government coercion behind them now) a site can be shut down.

Implementing the bill would require search providers (Yahoo, Google and so on) and payment providers (as I understand it, those who pay sites their ad revenue) to block access to sites - this would mean installing infrastructure and software akin to that used to censor the internet in China.



If any of this sounds extreme - consider this.
What I'm talking above is letter-of-the-law stuff. Consider how our government (through the police) have used legislation passed to combat terrorism to allow wholesale stop and search of law-abiding people without any reasonable suspicion of criminal activity or any connection whatsoever to terrorism. Governments ALWAYS overstep the bounds of the legislation they pass when it comes to enforcement.


Putting aside any debate about copyright and taking all the entertainment industry's claims about it at face value - there's nothing good in this legislation.
There already exists legislation to deal with copyright material being posted online and, with some nod to due process, it works without taking out too many sites that should NOT be closed down.



With apologies for the long post... I've not even scratched the surface though.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jesperander ... iracy-act/
Legal software designed for legal use produced by a legitimate business. Read to see what they have to say about the act and the effect it would have on them.



Another point I forgot to mention above.
The proposed legislation doesn't just shut down sites with dodgy (copyright infringing - again - not child abuse or terrorism) links or content - it allows their domain name to be seized.
So following my previous example... kid posts link on Facebook, Facebook closes down, facebook.com is seized and treated effectively as a criminal asset, Facebook then has to start from scratch as an entirely new brand which most of its users won't know.
I don't even LIKE Facebook and I can see the problem with this.

http://vimeo.com/31100268" target="_blank

ProtectIP is a related bill which is MUCH better than the one currently under discussion in the and still terrible - watch this video to see how THAT one is bad and imagine how much worse the current one is.



EDIT
When you've watched that, click the link to see Biden talking about this issue.

Hopefully they would introduce a warning system... 3 strikes and your out.
Most site owners will make changes if they are given a warning and sufficient time to improve their practices.

Governments don't have the time or money to shut down all the small players.
Surely It is the large volume traffic sites with illegal content, and persistent offenders that they would target with this bill.

There's nothing in the legislation to provide for 3 strikes.
As things currently exist the RIAA goes to the court to argue that a site is breaking the law and gets the authority to have it shut down. More often than not the site in question does not have the opportunity to defend itself to the court.
Many sites have already had their domain seized for this.

The new legislation makes things a whole lot worse.

It's not just about governments though - it's about the RIAA and similar groups. Let's assume it's only the big players though...
...how would you feel if you woke up tomorrow and Facebook, YouTube, Blogger, Wordpress, Flickr, StumbleUpon, Digg, Tumblr, MySpace and Twitter were just gone?
They are large volume traffic sites where legal content has illegal content mixed in with it and are exactly the kind of services which stand to be closed under this legislation.

Considering how strongly the recording industry have fought against innovation (printing, wax cylinders, radio, cassettes, CDs, mp3s, mp3 players, online sales and so on) there's no justification whatsoever for believing they won't go after tech innovators or the "small guy".

BigShot wrote:Lord Freddie
Where does Garry Glitter come into this?

Because someone told me somewhere that someone said on a tweet that was copied from someone's blog that was taken off a forum which was quoted on a website that magicians take themselves far too seriously and have no sense of humour whatsoever and are are so far upthemselves that they are either armchair political commentators or would be psychologists. I hope this isn't true.

Plus there is all sorts of web scaremongering. Does this link have any basis in reality or is it another one of those polls designed to spark debate and wind people up? There have been so many false ones in the past.

Regarding copyright infringement, isn't that a good thing really?
Regarding paedo stuff and the like, you dismiss this as if it's not really important. I think a few videos being taken off of You Tube is not as bad as stuff like this. People's priorities really astonish me sometimes...

Not sure what bit you on the backside about Glitter. I asked how he comes into it as I was confused about his relevance to a discussion about internet censorship at the whim of the recording industry. I'd have been just as confused if you'd said you wonder if Paul Daniels had signed it.


Preventing copyright infringement may be a good thing - but wholesale closure of entire websites because of a single link (which is what it permits) is a cure worse than the disease. There's a reason senators have publicly opposed the legislation and tech giants are standing against it. Is it scaremongering? Depends how you see things. Have a look at some of the links I've posted above and decide for yourself. I'm inclined to think not.

I don't dismiss paedo stuff at all - I'm simply saying that the legislation I've posted about has nothing new to bring on that subject. It is legislation for censorship which deals with copyright material. Unless you feel it is necessary to discuss unrelated issues like paedophilia when people discuss things like congestion charging, carbon taxation, smoking bans and so on I fail to see what use it is discussing it in a thread about copyright and censorship.

Again - this is NOT a child abuse issue. It's an issue about the entertainment industry being given a carte blanche to censor the internet and restrict tech progress.

I just fail to see the point of discussing a completely and utterly unrelated issue... especially when authorities also have the power to shut down anything with child porn on it and throw everyone involved in prison.

BigShot wrote:Not sure what bit you on the backside about Glitter. I asked how he comes into it as I was confused about his relevance to a discussion about internet censorship at the whim of the recording industry. I'd have been just as confused if you'd said you wonder if Paul Daniels had signed it.


Preventing copyright infringement may be a good thing - but wholesale closure of entire websites because of a single link (which is what it permits) is a cure worse than the disease. There's a reason senators have publicly opposed the legislation and tech giants are standing against it. Is it scaremongering? Depends how you see things. Have a look at some of the links I've posted above and decide for yourself. I'm inclined to think not.

I don't dismiss paedo stuff at all - I'm simply saying that the legislation I've posted about has nothing new to bring on that subject. It is legislation for censorship which deals with copyright material. Unless you feel it is necessary to discuss unrelated issues like paedophilia when people discuss things like congestion charging, carbon taxation, smoking bans and so on I fail to see what use it is discussing it in a thread about copyright and censorship.

Again - this is NOT a child abuse issue. It's an issue about the entertainment industry being given a carte blanche to censor the internet and restrict tech progress.

I just fail to see the point of discussing a completely and utterly unrelated issue... especially when authorities also have the power to shut down anything with child porn on it and throw everyone involved in prison.

If you don't get the fact that someone like Glitter would be completely against internet censorship then I won't bother to explain it. Surely it's glaringly obvious....

I’m involved in several campaigns in the UK and, so far, they’ve been very successful in amending or stopping daft Government plans on various topics. However, just to throw a spanner in the works if the problem is that it's the US Government which is proposing these powers, and if the firms they use them against are in the US then there's not a great deal anyone outside the US can do.

However the firms themselves can do a lot, just as many service providers, banks, building societies, call centres etc have done – they could move, or at least threaten to move, their whole operation out of US territory and relocate in Asia or the Far East. Not only would this make it more difficult to censor or take action, it would cause a great wave of unemployment and unrest in the US – something which any Government would find hard to justify.