H.R. 3261 - SOPA Act - Keep The Web Open - Must Read!

[pokerprop]

^This dude is awesome!!

edit to add that opinion is based on this video only. I don't know of him otherwise.

[pokerprop]

Just watched his final point! I cancelled cable television in 2007 for political reasons which was no big sacrifice for me and made economical sense just the same. While in the shower just yesterday this idea crossed my mind, blacking out websites is neat and all but man setting a date and enrolling a huge group of people to just cancel their cable bill makes sense. LOL it's so viral too, could get people so into it telling their friends after the fact why they no longer have cable tv. From here exposing all sorts of media conflicts, such as how much influence spans on things like our elections etc. I decided though after a few minutes of thought, I'll keep my choice not to support them financially a personal one. I can't say for certain but I'm very much leaning on going dark in the next 10-years, getting involved in education and never touching the internet again. Right now that's plan A. Plan B is to become president of the United States at which point I'd probably need the internet.

[Michael Martinez]

SOPA sponsor has another Internet bill that records you 24/7 - SlashGear

So I guess it has become fashionable for all these red-flag wavers to NOT ACTUALLY READ THE LAWS ON THE BOOKs. Like the SOPA/PIPA fiasco, people who don't know what they are doing are trying to rouse the rabble over nothing.

The proposed amendment would clarify a minimum period of time that ISPs must keep records for legal use (a practice already required by the existing law which would be amended by the proposed bill).

Currently, ISPs can decide for themselves how long to hang on to your activity -- something that has been driving privacy advocates nuts because there is no uniformity.

The proposed legislation would set a minimum because that would give law enforcement officials enough time to go back and request the history of people who show up on their radar in the process of normal investigations -- thus SHORTENING the investigative process and, presumably, helping to bring these people to justice much sooner -- at the very least getting them out of the child pornography economy sooner.

[Michael Martinez]

Sorry, that's not my intention...

Like I said, I don't fully understand all the legal talk in the bill documents and may have misunderstood some of the stuff I'm reading...

I quoted information from SEC 102 not 103 and I didn't really dice it up I think I just misunderstood part of it... The copyright holder can't just shutdown any site, but the Attorney General can?

No. The FOREIGN sites MUST be engaged in the kind of illegal activities that are already prohibited for US-based Websites (which would be actionable under existing law).

Whatever a US site is doing now, if it's not being prosecuted or taken offline for that activity NOW, it would not be affected under SOPA/PIPA in any way -- and ONLY foreign sites that are doing the same thing as illegal US sites (that could be taken down NOW) would be affected by SOPA/PIPA.

This is why MegaUpload was taken down. They were breaking EXISTING law. SOPA/PIPA are just another layer added to EXISTING law.

[Pokeraddict]

The proposed amendment would clarify a minimum period of time that ISPs must keep records for legal use (a practice already required by the existing law which would be amended by the proposed bill).

Currently, ISPs can decide for themselves how long to hang on to your activity -- something that has been driving privacy advocates nuts because there is no uniformity.

The proposed legislation would set a minimum because that would give law enforcement officials enough time to go back and request the history of people who show up on their radar in the process of normal investigations -- thus SHORTENING the investigative process and, presumably, helping to bring these people to justice much sooner -- at the very least getting them out of the child pornography economy sooner.

Please link me to a law that states that ISPs hold your IP information for any longer than 24 hours or are forced to provide this info to law enforcement without a warrant. I track this stuff pretty closely and know of no law that says the feds can just barge into an ISP and demand IP address info on a user without a court order or that the ISPs are required by law to even have that info unless a court has agreed.

The article writer mentions financial tracking issues with this but they are not in the 2nd draft of the law.

[pokerprop]

All these new laws being introduced that don't actually change the law and rely solely on whatever happens to be on the books are dangerous. Questions to ask are: what will the laws be when we have all sorts of bills together? what will be on the books three years from now? How else might this new piece of legislation be used? Over and over and over and over again, we have new little clauses slipped in that give up some freedom, or make peaceful revolution less possible.As JFK said “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”. one way or another people will remain free. Each time it reaches 10% of the population to the point they can't stomach it anymore, people will be free.

[Michael Martinez]

Please link me to a law that states that ISPs hold your IP information for any longer than 24 hours or are forced to provide this info to law enforcement without a warrant. I track this stuff pretty closely and know of no law that says the feds can just barge into an ISP and demand IP address info on a user without a court order or that the ISPs are required by law to even have that info unless a court has agreed.

The article writer mentions financial tracking issues with this but they are not in the 2nd draft of the law.

That would be the point of the proposed law, however -- to set a minimum requirement for this law: "§ 2703. REQUIRED DISCLOSURE OF CUSTOMER COMMUNICATIONS OR RECORDS", which authorizes law enforcement to request customer communication records.

If it looked like I was implying that no court orders were required, that wasn't what I had in mind or intended at all. I was merely pointing they are trying to set a minimum period of time for which ISPs have to hang on to this data. Some ISPs have claimed they dump or anonymize data after 6 months, some after 18 months.

[Scott]

No. The FOREIGN sites MUST be engaged in the kind of illegal activities that are already prohibited for US-based Websites (which would be actionable under existing law).

Whatever a US site is doing now, if it's not being prosecuted or taken offline for that activity NOW, it would not be affected under SOPA/PIPA in any way -- and ONLY foreign sites that are doing the same thing as illegal US sites (that could be taken down NOW) would be affected by SOPA/PIPA.

This is why MegaUpload was taken down. They were breaking EXISTING law. SOPA/PIPA are just another layer added to EXISTING law.

That's where I seem to be getting confused...

(2) the owner or operator of such Internet site is committing or facilitating the commission of criminal violations punishable under section 2318, 2319, 2319A, 2319B, or 2320, or chapter 90, of title 18, United States Code;

Let's say I own a Canadian site (Foreign) and it has any material (Such as 1 video) that I don't own the copyright to... Would I be violating SEC 2319 Title 18 of the US Code and therefore risk having my site shutdown? (Also I'm not saying that would happen, but I just want to know if it could happen based on how the law is written up)

MegaUpload was shutdown for being a US registered site that was dedicated to piracy right? Under Sec 102 of SOPA do I need to have a foreign site dedicated to the violations listed above? If so where is that listed in Sec 102 of SOPA?

[Michael Martinez]

Simply using someone else's copyrighted material on your Website is not sufficient to classify your site as engaged in criminal behavior per the US Code Title 18 sections referred to above.

Cornell University Law School hyperlinks all these laws together so that tracking down the references is easier than just reading the legislation on the Library of Congress site.

The real defining section of the code is Title 17, Section 506 (and I know that wasn't even close to being obvious).

(a) Criminal Infringement.—
(1) In general.— Any person who willfully infringes a copyright shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, if the infringement was committed—
(A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain;
(B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180–day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or
(C) by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution.

(2) Evidence.— For purposes of this subsection, evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement of a copyright.
(3) Definition.— In this subsection, the term “work being prepared for commercial distribution” means—
(A) a computer program, a musical work, a motion picture or other audiovisual work, or a sound recording, if, at the time of unauthorized distribution—
(i) the copyright owner has a reasonable expectation of commercial distribution; and
(ii) the copies or phonorecords of the work have not been commercially distributed; or
(B) a motion picture, if, at the time of unauthorized distribution, the motion picture—
(i) has been made available for viewing in a motion picture exhibition facility; and
(ii) has not been made available in copies for sale to the general public in the United States in a format intended to permit viewing outside a motion picture exhibition facility.

This particular point of law was probably written back in the day when people were slipping recordings and movies to the public in advance of release (but even I don't have the patience to find out WHEN and WHY it was written -- it just feels that way to me). Think of disk jockeys who partnered with bootleggers to print advance copies of new records before they were officially released. The problem was so widespread at one point in the 1970s that the Hardy Boys TV show did an episode about it.

So one thing to keep in mind is that the Internet did not create these abuses -- it was simply a convenient channel for expanding the abuses.


Note, too, the circularity of the references. These code sections are written to refer to each other, presumably to help everyone to tie all the pieces of the puzzle together. Of course, that probably takes more time and effort than most people are really willing to invest in the process.

I've long wanted a better system for reading the laws that are actually on the books.