COICA law - say goodbye to internet freedom

Originally posted by ZodiakZero
OMG Limewire really is down! Could this be a result of COICA?? I mean, they were in legal battles over music sharing and copywriting infringement for years, but as soon as you hear about COICA- BAM!
Man, they're not screwing around anymore.
One of my buddies mentioned that dude on Youtube whose IP address was traced back to him after downloading music online and got slammed with a lawsuit and huge fine. What's next? Are they gonna start fining everyone using Bearshare, Kazaa, etc?

Considering they haven't actually passed this bill it's impossible for it to have had an effect on Limewire.
Your friend who heard of some guy on you tube is beyond hearsay and not even close to reliable. Limewire was ordered closed by a judge in NY. Linky It was a completely unrelated issue.

..Ex

Here in the US we've got an election coming up, and if it's one thing that gets those b@stards attention, it's getting re-elected.

Email and call your "representatives" NOW. Tell them that if they vote for this travesty you will vote for whoever the hell is running against the bums.

Personally, I can't see how this could withstand a SCOTUS challenge.

I'm sorry folks, my stance on stolen materials is firm. (But read everything I have written before you judge me) And, I've got pirated music of my own. I've watched pirated movies. But, the only real justification for theft is if you have a good and just purpose in doing it. I knew I was wrong when I downloaded those files and watched those movies. It eats at me when I have done it. If I'm an artist, my intent likely is to sell CDs. I like to eat like everyone else. If I wanted to give them away, then I would. No artist should have to give their works away, unless they freely choose to do so. I mean, I could use free CDs to promote my concerts, which I charge money for. Or, I could give you a free concert, and ask you if you want to purchase my CDs. Or, I can charge for both, or charge for neither.

The truth is, this isn't a world where you can live without money, or some sort of exchange. In terms of music and movies, the most honest thing to do is buy it, if the artist is selling their works. I have no problem with people getting rich. Now, I don't like people getting rich by taking advantage of people or hurting them. That's different, and that's criminal.

I believe in the American dream, and if people want to advance ahead of their peers, then I feel it is their right to do so.

That being said, if I were a big artist like Eminem, I'm not going to chase you down for pirating my music. I know enough people will purchase my music. I wish the pirate would purchase my music, but I am happy that you are a fan. Hopefully in the future, you will purchase my music, like you are supposed to.

Here's where copying can be ok for an artist. Giving a copy to a friend could be good advertisement, however, as long as you aren't abusing the copy thing. I don't see this as all that bad, given that if I was an artist. So, yeah, give a copy to a friend, but don't copy my entire CD collection and give it away to everyone; that means that these folks can own all my songs without actually having to pay for them. How is that fair? So, a copy can be free advertisement, but don't abuse it. I want people to buy my products, not steal them. McDonald's and Wendy's don't give their food away normally, do they? But, they might give away a burger with a coupon, to get you as a customer, though.

So, yes, pirating probably doesn't really make an artist poor, but that doesn't really make it right.

What would you think if I stole your patented invention, and sold it as my own? The money you thought was going to be there for you, no longer is. As a slick billionaire, I stole the invention, hired expensive advertisers, and made you, the real inventor, a thing of the past. All the sales come to me, because "I" claim to be the inventor. And, no one was there to defended your patent. Extreme example, but it does demonstrate a point.

But, anyway, back to the topic. No, I can't say that I trust this new law, because a lot of laws coming out are suspect simply because of the corruption that is already going on in this country. Sometimes there is a just reason to steal content. Sometimes you gotta expose the truth. You might have damning footage that is owned by NBC, that is imperative for people to see, and NBC is withholding it. What do you do? You don't hold something like that back, you get that footage out there. It's for the greater good, so I don't feel normal law applies in this case. I don't want the freedom of valuable information to stop on the internet.

Troy

Troy

reply to post by cybertroy


Let me start by saying I agree with you 100%.
(I know it says I'm replying to you cybertroy, but only because I'm mentioning a scenario that you brought up, but I didn't want to quote such a large portion. All further comments I make are generalized and are only directed at the idiocy of this bill and our politicians).

The problem I see with the current copyright stance is that people and companies are getting extremely "Copyright Happy". Yes, that's a made up term, copyright LordZero (c) 2010.....just kidding! But seriously, it seems like EVERYTHING is copyrighted these days, just from POSSESSION, not creation. For example, your analogy of the NBC owned footage. NBC isn't an "artist" that created the film. They used a commercial camera to film a real world event (as opposed to a theatrical work, such as a movie, which WOULD be created and thus make them artists), and I personally think that real world events should not be copyrighted. But at the end of the footage or somewhere on a web page there's a claim that it's copyright NBC, no? Ownership is one thing, and they should say this is property of NBC, but in most cases similar to this the common word that's thrown around is "copyright".

Everyone wants to "copyright" everything they get their hands on. I agree that honest artists shouldn't have their work stolen. But this bill is NOT addressing issues of the Music or any other specific industry, it's addressing this long distorted version of "Copyright Infringement". In this day and age, copyright infringement is a lot more than just claiming that I wrote "Ring of Fire". Which is what Infringement is, is claiming a work as my own.

Piracy, is stealing (and even that in itself is debatable, not to be discussed now *don't flame please I don't want to derail thread*). NOT claiming it's yours. Now, ISPs, Politicians and the like would beg to differ, it's "Infringement". I'm sorry Senators, but this is just not the case. If you're going to make a bill, at LEAST use precision of language relative to the subject at hand.

And this, my friends, is why this bill is messed up. It's not about the piracy, its not about music. Those are separate issues that needs to be addressed differently. This is about suppressing a global system, messing up the DNS network that SHOULD be kept the way it is, as opposed to sharding off the US from the rest of the world, in the name of a concept that has lost it's original legal meaning. Will this hit the internet very hard, at first? Maybe not. Should we all just stop whining about it? No. This is going to set a very gloomy precedent for the future, for anything that is blocked under infringement now, will be used as a rule of thumb to define "infringement" later, and it's very much possible that eventually this will violate every aspect of Free Speech, and Due Process.

For example, many websites exist as an LLC or Inc. That means that as far as legal issues are concerned, the business is a legal entity(to a degree, also, not sure about non-US countries on this one). Since the attorney general can just add a domain to the list, without notification or due process, would this bill not be breaking several laws and rights of a legal entity? I'm not sure, as I'm not a business lawyer. But it would be interesting to look into. Overall, this bill is bad.

God help us all.

people.... lets get something straight right now.

duplicating and stealing are 2 completely different things.

if you have an apple, and i have some magic way to turn it into 2 apples, and i keep 1....YOU STILL HAVE YOUR APPLE.

STEALING, is when you have only 1 apple, and i take it. now i have the apple and you have nothing.


what 99% of the internet is doing is duplicating. copying. the only thing lost is the IDEA of potential profit, which is highly subjective.


if you throw a piece of garbage off a cliff, and in my mind i could have sold that garbage for a trillion dollars, that does not mean you have stolen a trillion dollars from me.

Originally posted by RelentlessLurker
people.... lets get something straight right now.
duplicating and stealing are 2 completely different things.
if you have an apple, and i have some magic way to turn it into 2 apples, and i keep 1....YOU STILL HAVE YOUR APPLE.
STEALING, is when you have only 1 apple, and i take it. now i have the apple and you have nothing.

what 99% of the internet is doing is duplicating. copying. the only thing lost is the IDEA of potential profit, which is highly subjective.

if you throw a piece of garbage off a cliff, and in my mind i could have sold that garbage for a trillion dollars, that does not mean you have stolen a trillion dollars from me.

Lets take this a step further. I build a webpage. By the nature of you visiting that webpage your system has created a copy of my work. You have just pirated my work by rote of visiting said webpage (there is now a copy of that web page complete with graphics etc in your systems cache). It is not an excuse that I put the webpage on the public internet as I may not have put that webpage on the internet for you.

This bill would effectively make a pirate out of any person on the internet even if they don't know they made a copy of that copy-written work. This is just a real world example of why laws like this are inane. The excuse you didn't know that you made a copy when you visited a webpage is not a defense.

..Ex

I really find the "potential sales" excuse to be REALLY lame. Just a while ago a really popular manga site (not gonna link cause I'm not sure about the T & C) got shut down by lobbyists from the anime and manga industry. The claim was that by providing unofficial translations of manga it was violating the publishers copyright on the work. A number of people also call it "stealing" and that it hurts the manga artist/anime artist when people freely watch/read it.

Here's why I feel that's bunk:

Never once did they claim all the manga was *their* works. So that's not infringement in the strict sense.

The artists get paid way before each individual chapter goes into print. So they aren't starving if we don't buy the paper bound version.

Stealing? Hell half the time it isn't even available to Americans at all, and we end up spending money on merchandise if we like the series, so they STILL get money from us. And since the only way for Americans to buy Japanese "Jump" is to either live there or pay a friend to pick it up and fed ex it, it really puts a hamper on our exposure to new titles. What's that? How can we buy something we don't know about? Hmm....so much for those "potential sales" you lost. If it wasn't even for scanlations the American Manga market would suck. I mean, have you guys ever /read/ a licensed title? It's horrible. The jokes are butchered, the references left out, and the quirks of the characters changed, and some publishers will even go as far as cutting scenes from the "American version", IF it even reaches us. How are we supposed to buy something we can't, or steal something that isn't available? It isn't possible.

Seems to me like people are just way too sue-happy.

reply to post by LordZero


i found this particular angle to be very funny.

"how can we steal if its not even available?"

hahaha

reply to post by v3_exceed


this really puts it into perspective.

it seems like the bill was designed to put the fault at the user end, when its clearly the providers job to secure anything he/she feels is theirs.

reply to post by v3_exceed


The cache issue goes further than copyrighted material, too. Almost any illegal content could be put in it's place.
For example, child p*** could be mixed in a site with regular images, lets just assume its a Google image search. you weren't explicitly LOOKING for CP, but your cache saved it during your search, even though I was searching for pictures of tulips. Next thing you know your ISP reports you and you have the feds busting down your door. Is this fair? I would think not. Can it happen? Yes. Numerous times people have been charged with crimes they unintentionally committed.

We need better laws surrounding internet use as evidence, or at least better clarify what can and can't be used in a court room if it's digital in nature.

--Z

Originally posted by LordZero
reply to post by v3_exceed

 

The cache issue goes further than copyrighted material, too. Almost any illegal content could be put in it's place.
For example, child p*** could be mixed in a site with regular images, lets just assume its a Google image search. you weren't explicitly LOOKING for CP, but your cache saved it during your search, even though I was searching for pictures of tulips. Next thing you know you ISP reports you and you have the feds busting down your door. Is this fair? I would think not. Can it happen? Yes. Numerous times people have been charged with crimes they unintentionally committed.

We need better laws surrounding internet use as evidence, or at least better clarify what can and can't be used in a court room id it's digital in nature.

--Z

Not to hijack the thread, but this example is much worse than people know. More than one person has been arrested, their entire lives torn apart for Child P**n. Only to find later that they were being used as a "Gibson" or patsy by some CP group. Some things are so horrific that we will quickly burn a person long before there is evidence of actual guilt.

What people also don't understand is that images can be hidden within images. Archives can be hidden within images. (I have the command string around here somewhere.. U2U me if you want more info on that) So if a person wanted to distribute anything..files..mp3's..video...this could easily be hidden within another file..posted on the internet and any visitor would have these additional files. Writing laws like the one suggested without understanding what they are limiting, basing their judgment entirely on the lobby groups of the media companies is simply begging for problems.

At some point, even posts like this one, except for the TOS on ATS could result in a person suing for copyright infringement if that post were quoted or even viewed. Money isn't the root of all evil, the love of money is. And these media types, they have it bad....

..Ex

I was curious about the actual committee that was reviewing this bill, and I found something horrific:

COICA Bill
This is the link to the bill itself. It's being reviewed by the Judiciary Committee.

Judiciary Committee
This is the link to the Committee itself. Look at the members that proposed the Bill, then look at the Roster for the Judiciary Committee.

13 of 19 members already support this bill.

Yeah, we're all screwed.

--Z

reply to post by cybertroy

I'm sorry folks, my stance on stolen materials is firm.

Sorry cybertroy - but this law is NOT about pirated music or movies. That's just the cover story, a red herring distraction.

The real objective of this law is to expand the definition of "information" as Intellectual Property, and make virtually ALL information a "commodity." Like your unique individual genetic code, which trust me, you do NOT own, according to this law.

Interesting convergence:

Google's Online Operating System

How do cloud computing and COICA interplay? Anyone know? Any thoughts?

reply to post by soficrow


Seeing as how Google has a history of selling out under pressure, and the prospect of your entire machine and it's contents being run on the google cloud, I'd say it wouldn't be very good for very many people. Not to mention there'd be virtually no privacy, and the google admins could see everything you own and do with your PC. Oh, I bet there will also be a "obligatory notification" clause in the EULA so that any kind of illegal activity, or COICA violation will be told directly to law enforcement. Same as they do with Adsense/Adwords. Gotta love Big G, right?

--Z

Originally posted by 1Starman
For those in the U.S. you can always sign up for internet via satellite[affordable broadband internet via satellite)
Google for "satellite internet access" ...there are always ways to beat the system if you bother to look for it.
Good Luck to you ppl in the U.S

Except that HughesNet's NOC is in Maryland. The service connects you to a Maryland, US trunk. So it doesn't really help, ya know?

You have to admire Julian Assange for his huge balls. Whether Wikileaks makes a positive difference or not, I say damn any man who removes my right to be informed. I hope he keeps on hacking and exposing secrets.

Next move, outlaw guns.

reply to post by digitaldissent


i dont admire him for anything other than his big fat cia paycheck, and he is CERTAINLY not helping the cause of this thread.

Originally posted by RelentlessLurker
reply to post by digitaldissent

 

i dont admire him for anything other than his big fat cia paycheck, and he is CERTAINLY not helping the cause of this thread.

really? I didn't know that. Enlighten me, I am genuinely interested.

Yeh if only every artist cared more about the message they were spreading in their lyrics than greed, like this guy