General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDon't Break The Internet! PROTECT IP & SOPA
The best breakdown and analysis of these bills I've seen.
http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/dont-break-internet (for a good overview of what SOPA really is, check out http://gizmodo.com/5868545/the-stop-online-piracy-act-and-you-a-primer?tag=sopa)
"Two bills now pending in Congressthe PROTECT IP Act of 2011 (Protect IP) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the Houserepresent the latest legislative attempts to address a serious global problem: large-scale online copyright and trademark infringement. Although the bills differ in certain respects, they share an underlying approach and an enforcement philosophy that pose grave constitutional problems and that could have potentially disastrous consequences for the stability and security of the Internets addressing system, for the principle of interconnectivity that has helped drive the Internets extraordinary growth, and for free expression.
To begin with, the bills represent an unprecedented, legally sanctioned assault on the Internets critical technical infrastructure. Based upon nothing more than an application by a federal prosecutor alleging that a foreign website is dedicated to infringing activities, Protect IP authorizes courts to order all U.S. Internet service providers, domain name registries, domain name registrars, and operators of domain name serversa category that includes hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses, colleges, universities, nonprofit organizations, and the liketo take steps to prevent the offending sites domain name from translating to the correct Internet protocol address. These orders can be issued even when the domains in question are located outside of the United States and registered in top-level domains (e.g., .fr, .de, or .jp) whose operators are themselves located outside the United States; indeed, some of the bills remedial provisions are directed solely at such domains.
....
These drastic consequences would be imposed against persons and organizations outside of the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts by virtue of the fiction that these prosecutorial actions are proceedings in rem, in which the defendant is not the operator of the site but the domain name itself. Both bills suggest that these remedies can be meted out by courts after nothing more than ex parte proceedingsproceedings at which only one side (the prosecutor or even a private plaintiff) need present evidence and the operator of the allegedly infringing site need not be present nor even made aware that the action was pending against his or her property.
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As serious as these infirmities are, SOPA, the Houses bill, builds upon them, enlarges them, and makes them worse. Under SOPA, IP rights holders can proceed vigilante-style against allegedly offending sites, without any court hearing or any judicial intervention or oversight whatsoever. For example, SOPA establishes a scheme under which an IP rights holder need only notify credit card companies of the facts supporting its good faith belief that an identified Internet site is primarily designed or operated for the purpose of infringement. The recipients of that notice will then have five days to cease doing business with the specified site by taking technically feasible and reasonable steps to prevent it from completing payment transactions with customers. And all of this occurs based upon a notice delivered by the rights holder, which no neutral third party has even looked at, let alone adjudicated on the merits. If they get the assistance of a court, IP owners can also prevent other companies from making available advertisements to the site, and the government can prevent search engines from pointing to that site."
http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/dont-break-internet
Seriously bad news! And, related to this, check out Gizmodos comprehensive list of all the companies supporting SOPA with contact information so you can make your opinions about this new, and vile, censorship known: http://gizmodo.com/5870241/all-the-companies-supporting-sopa-the-awful-internet-censorship-lawand-how-to-contact-them
GirlinContempt
(16,987 posts)RC
(25,592 posts)competency?
Or is that the idea?
GirlinContempt
(16,987 posts)The company gets to say you're in violation, and then action is taken. There isn't oversight, due process, review...
prepperdad
(103 posts)is about to come to America. This bill gives the government to arbitrarily shut down any site on the web. It must be stopped.
[url]http://www.survivingeconomiccollapse.net[/url]
GirlinContempt
(16,987 posts)This site has petitions, letters to congress, etc:
http://americancensorship.org/