The Protect IP Act

drndog · **Posted:** November 16th, 2011, 5:21 pm

If the Protect IP Act passes, the following sites could be blocked for US users :

Tumblr
Facebook
Livejournal
Twitter
The Pirate Bay
Megaupload
Megavideo
Mediafire
Wordpress
Almost any forum site

Please sign the bill now to protect our rights under the first amendment.

http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-the-internet-control-bill-now

Adbot · **Posted:** November 16th, 2011, 5:21 pm

Ablazin Scar · **Posted:** November 16th, 2011, 5:28 pm

Signed, even though I used an address that I lived at about 4 years ago.

Shane · **Posted:** November 16th, 2011, 6:10 pm

Here's some more information to read before you sign something based on a petition:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:S.968:
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-s968/show

Petitions usually only show one side of the story.

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-s968/show wrote:

Establishes a system for taking down websites that the Justice Department determines to be "dedicated to infringing activities." The DoJ or the copyright owner would be able to commence a legal action against the alleged infringer and the DoJ would be allowed to demand that search engines, social networking sites and domain name services block access to the targeted site. In some cases, action could be taken to block sites without first allowing the alleged infringer to defend themselves in court.

Place some trust in your government, they're elected. If worst comes to worst that's what elections are for. It's 2011, the internet should be the wild wild web. Though I wholly expect the majority of you to disregard this since the aforementioned websites are so crucial to your lives and you think with this bill they would just disappear. Personally I expect this would be used for websites with illegal activity (piracy) and yes YouTube already handles piracy, most of the time.

At the very least read what the Bill is supposed to do and think of what good it could bring... Shutting down piracy, shutting down child porn websites, shutting down websites of radical terrorist groups.

drndog · **Posted:** November 16th, 2011, 6:26 pm

The main goal of the act is to:

Quote:

To prevent online threats to economic creativity and theft of intellectual property, and for other purposes.

It all depends on the way that the final bill is worded because with enough ambiguity, the bill could be manipulated in many different ways to shut down any website with even one offence of copyright infringement. ie. A YouTube video being posted on a website.

And with the way that they have it worded now, they are mostly trying to prevent people from using sites which allow them to either view or download anything that is not "their" property. So, for example, the bill would allow the government to come after this Facebook because people post videos and pictures that are not technically theirs.

Shane · **Posted:** November 16th, 2011, 6:30 pm

drndog wrote:

The main goal of the act is to:

Quote:

To prevent online threats to economic creativity and theft of intellectual property, and for other purposes.

It all depends on the way that the final bill is worded because with enough ambiguity, the bill could be manipulated in many different ways to shut down any website with even one offence of copyright infringement. ie. A YouTube video being posted on a website.

And with the way that they have it worded now, they are mostly trying to prevent people from using sites which allow them to either view or download anything that is not "their" property. So, for example, the bill would allow the government to come after this Facebook because people post videos and pictures that are not technically theirs.

And what's wrong with that? If you have permission there should be no problem right? I don't think the government would come after Facebook because Joe User is posting something from one of his friends if that's what you're after. If Joe User is posting a video of something that he does not own, a copyrighted video, then this bill has served its purpose. It should be and is up to Facebook to remove such content. It would be Facebook's own fault if they don't comply and allow illegal material to be posted.

As a website owner myself having something like this is more incentive to run a completely legal operation.

hummerwar921 · **Posted:** November 16th, 2011, 7:40 pm

If this passes, the US government will show no restraint. Some people may think they will, and only use this power when it really needs to be used, but that won't be the case.

If this does passes, I give it 5 years at most before it gets abused and corrupted.

Adbot · **Posted:** November 16th, 2011, 7:40 pm

drndog · **Posted:** November 16th, 2011, 8:38 pm

Technically the government (if the bill is passed) could take down this site because of the pictures that people post in forums and use as their signatures because the people do not technically own them.

Duke Juker · RSBandB Donor since 07/01/2010

Despite the good intentions of this bill, it could be easily and frivolously abused. In a sense, it does more harm than good.

Aside from this, it's clearly unconstitutional. It won't take 5 years to go out of control. I guaranteed that if this passed, the first application of the law will bring a civil trial which will be appealed all the way to the top. It won't pass mustard in the Supreme Court. Easily thrown out on a unanimous or near unanimous decision. How about it Shane?

Pennstate315 · Runite Member 5-25-10

These things always look good on paper, but it's a slippery slope. What duke said about the Supreme Court is absolutely correct, theres no way this bill could make it's way through the court system.

Evelyn · **Posted:** November 19th, 2011, 3:09 pm

I don't see any good intentions of this bill unless people want the country to be "rule by the corporations, for the corporations"

Ring · **Posted:** November 27th, 2011, 6:24 pm

Stop the bill from passing at all cost.

Uncle Dano · **12 99's on 12/12/12!**

I tend to agree with Shane. Freedom of speech was never intended as a right to break the law. Copyright infringement, objectionable material, illegal activities, terrorism, etc... none of those should be accessible on the internet. That is not freedom of speech.

While it would be nice to fully trust your government, as we know here in Canada elections really do not work with a Parliamentary system. It's the party ethics that rule the day for the elected party, you are not really electing an individual. And, to put it bluntly, no political party has a perfect platform on all issues. As far as censoring the internet... I think the governments do have a role to ensure that the internet does not become a venue for proliferating illegal activity.

Killjoy · **Posted:** November 29th, 2011, 9:01 am

Shane wrote:

drndog wrote:

The main goal of the act is to:

Quote:

To prevent online threats to economic creativity and theft of intellectual property, and for other purposes.

It all depends on the way that the final bill is worded because with enough ambiguity, the bill could be manipulated in many different ways to shut down any website with even one offence of copyright infringement. ie. A YouTube video being posted on a website.

And with the way that they have it worded now, they are mostly trying to prevent people from using sites which allow them to either view or download anything that is not "their" property. So, for example, the bill would allow the government to come after this Facebook because people post videos and pictures that are not technically theirs.

And what's wrong with that? If you have permission there should be no problem right? I don't think the government would come after Facebook because Joe User is posting something from one of his friends if that's what you're after. If Joe User is posting a video of something that he does not own, a copyrighted video, then this bill has served its purpose. It should be and is up to Facebook to remove such content. It would be Facebook's own fault if they don't comply and allow illegal material to be posted.

As a website owner myself having something like this is more incentive to run a completely legal operation.

We all know that Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, and the like won't be shut down. They are too large and would cause way too much of a backlash. (Can you imagine all the 50 year old moms who won't be able to watch a viral video of a cat! The horror!)
The thing is that these websites are far too large to monitor the information being uploaded to them. YouTube alone has 35 hours of video uploaded EVERY MINUTE. For a company to watch that much information would be ridiculous. The thing that scares me is that if this bill was enacted when YouTube first started they most likely wouldn't be around. Small startup sites won't have a chance against this bill, while sites like YouTube won’t be affected.
Also you have to think about search engines. While sites like IsoHunt and the PirateBay are known for having links to torrents that contain copyrighted material, they also to have some use with downloading large files that are not copyrighted. (For example, I know a band that uses Torrents to spread their EP around the web and PirateBay is the main search engine that people use to find them.)

Ring · **Posted:** December 18th, 2011, 11:56 pm

Any bill that **** with DNSSEC should be attack by LULZSEC.

Yes, piracy is bad. No, censorship and regulation isn't the answer (the pirates will become smarter as the government becomes dumber).

Matt · **Posted:** January 18th, 2012, 10:45 pm

@Shane http://youtu.be/jkXtf_FZKbA

- Matt