US Senate Committee Passes PROTECT IP Act 338
angry tapir writes "A US Senate committee has unanimously approved a controversial bill that would allow the US Department of Justice to seek court orders requiring search engines and Internet service providers to stop sending traffic to websites accused of infringing copyright."
Instead of complaints, we need answers (Score:5, Interesting)
1) How do we route around this damage?
2) How do we protect our natural rights from a majority that votes them away?
Let's stop focusing on the distractions of greed and corruption and the psychopaths in positions of power and get to finding real solutions to render all of that irrelevant.
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The Rules say that the only thing you can do is to ceaselessly lobby your Senator and get your friends, relatives, and that weird guy who asks you for change for a dollar every time you go into Dunkin' Donuts to do the same.
See my comment below, as the damage has been halted by the same person that halted a similar bill last year, a Senator from Oregon. The only way to stop this is the raise money to buy off enough Senators to keep the bill stopped.
Re:Instead of complaints, we need answers (Score:4, Insightful)
Voting libertarian is not the answer. The libertarian party is only an experiment by the owning class to use the desire for freedom to disenfranchise the masses for personal gain. Government needs a certain amount of strength to protect people from economic predation and the return to a class based society where most people are virtual or actual slaves.
There are no parties that actually represent the people and seek to empower their freedom. We need a party that believes in personal liberty but also promotes policy to the benefit of the people instead of corporate entities that serve as the proxies of power for the elite ruling class. Democrats fail. Libertarians fail. Republicans OMG WTF fail. Greens fail just as hard as republicans, but in a different direction.
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I am not confusing them. I just believe that libertarians are pawns being groomed to aid in the path back to serfdom. You are seeking personal liberty by dismantling the social structures that limit the ability of the extremely wealthy from taking your liberty for profit.
We do need a strong central government (one that is also strongly constitutionally limited). The government needs to be BETTER, not larger or smaller. I agree with many libertarian ideals, but the agenda should not be to dismantle the gover
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The ammo box option only works if you have enough popular support. Otherwise, instead of a "freedom fighter", you're a "terrorist".
Look at the founding of the USA. Those people were basically terrorists. However, they had plenty of popular support for their cause (liberation from England), so they were able to achieve it, though they experienced significant losses in battle with the English troops and Hessian mercenaries.
A small number of disgruntled people with guns isn't sufficient to take down a gover
Re:Instead of complaints, we need answers (Score:5, Interesting)
Bye bye Google, hello search engines based outside of the US.
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Re:Instead of complaints, we need answers (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Instead of complaints, we need answers (Score:4, Interesting)
1) How do we route around this damage?
The same way we always have: proxies, tor, etc.
2) How do we protect our natural rights from a majority that votes them away?
That's the multimillion dollar question. Quite literally, since you need a huge amount of money to either lobby your representatives, or run against them. Otherwise, they just send you a nice boilerplate response letter to any of your inquiries, concerns, and so on.
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2) How do we protect our natural rights from a majority that votes them away?
That's the multimillion dollar question. Quite literally, since you need a huge amount of money to either lobby your representatives, or run against them. Otherwise, they just send you a nice boilerplate response letter to any of your inquiries, concerns, and so on.
So why didn't Google "make it rain"? It's not like they don't have resources to start a massive lobbying campaign of their own?
Maybe they were just too late to the ball?
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Google is a company first and foremost, and their own interests will always be the first priority. If opposing this would've been damaging to their business, they'll keep quiet.
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So why didn't Google "make it rain"? It's not like they don't have resources to start a massive lobbying campaign of their own?
There are lots of possibilities. Shall we play this game?
any more credible options?
You forgot one (Score:3)
Googe did. They have been opposed to this the whole way.
People don't want to believe that because it goes against their incorrect belief that corporation can buy any legislatation they want.
Had that been true, this would never have been passed.
"Several large corporations such as Google, Yahoo!, Ebay, American Express and Paypal have all opposed the bill. At an earlier hearing on the act, Google opposed the act saying that it will have very negative ramifications.'
http://broadbandbreakfast.com/2011/05/senate [broadbandbreakfast.com]
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Oh, no. It's a correct belief. It's just that corporate interests with better lobbyists (RIAA, MPAA, et al) won the day here.
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they are too busy paying their employees 6 figures
Those dirty commie bastards! How dare they not put all their money into CXO pay!
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Google is fighting it. Take 2 seconds to pull your head out of your ass and look around.
Also, Yahoo!, Ebay, American Express, and Paypal are aginst it.
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I wonder. Will it be illegal to start a group like Anonymous, near election time?
I mean declaring that we have had enough of this government and that come election, ALL of the group members vote for the specific list of guys(and against certain guys). The lobbyists have subverted the democracy anyways, so why not jump aboard? Get everyone, their grandma, cousins and who not to jump in. I mean mob flash events do work, don't they? So if we basically decided to collaborate over punishing certain guys at elect
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such a group would be a blip on the radar compared to the general mass of voters voting the same way they always do.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Official answer: thoughtcrime (Score:5, Interesting)
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It won't.. It will get to the point that if the ISP can't decipher your packets, they will simply be dropped.
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Well, search engines would need a list of sites known for copyright violation. So if you really wanted to go to one of those sites, just check the list. It would have to be public for all search engines to be able to comply. If only the large search engines are allowed access to the list, you can use lesser known search engines that still include those sites.
I don't mind so much them trying to block sites that intentionally infringe copyright, but the "accused of copyright infringement" bit is what worries
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Guess I missed the "internet service providers" bit. For that, you use something like TOR or some other encrypted proxy.
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There is no requirement to make anything you create public. You still technically have copyright on it even if nobody else knows it exists.
does that not imply that the copyrighted information is available from the source that copyrighted the information in the first place
There are cases such as old computer games that are still in copyright, but no longer on sale, where it's not possible to get the originals without breaking copyright. And again, nobody has to register for copyright anything, it's implicitly granted when you create a work. It's not like a patent.
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http://www.fixcongressfirst.org/ [fixcongressfirst.org]
Search engine over HTTPS without logs of any kind (Score:5, Insightful)
What surprises me here is that they want to block the "worst of the worst" and they haven't even mentioned the tired old kiddie porn angle... that is certainly worse than anything! The only way they could surprise me more is by being so honest as naming the future targets: all sites opposing corporations in any way and all sites that spread generic 'anti-american' messages (a.k.a. terrorists). Wikileaks will be one of the first of the sites we know that will be blocked like this... all such sites after that will not even be known to anyone when they are blocked, not listed in searches and not mentioned in media.
Doubleplus goodmove Minitrue!!!
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We do it economically. How many times yesterday did you give your money to the corporations that are behind this assault on our freedom? (Hint: it's a much bigger number than you think.)
We can absolutely "route around this damage" but it means changing our consumption habits, and reviewing the things which we consider "cool, must have, must see".
When you buy music at iTunes (or anywhere but directly from the musician), when you p
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Well, if it's just DNS then make another - when Denmark blocked it jesperbay.org and if they'd tried a game of whack-a-mole just use a URL redirection service to the IP. Want to take down bit.ly? Or perhaps starting to /dev/null traffic going to those IPs? This is like firing a pellet gun and declaring war on a fleet of battleships, good luck with that.
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1. Create a "pirate search engine," hosted outside the US and create/use an alternate DNS system.
2. Move away from the offending jurisdiction to a more desirable one.
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You'll also then discover that 250GB monthly caps are incredibly large.
Not if you use Netflix. And before you continue with "Stop consuming the content" in reference to Netflix. The point of supporting Netflix is supporting their model of freedom and all you can watch, legally. Services that the media companies should have provided long ago.
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Most ebook torrents that I've seen contain hundreds of books; people may well be "stealing" your book but it's likely that a) they wouldn't have bought it, even for $.99, and b) they'll probably never read it. I'm sure it's annoying for you, but it's just the way it is. And if your book is one of the few that's in demand enough that people are downloading it deliberately, then hopefully a fair number are also buying it. I remember having this discussion about mp3s 10+ years ago with a friend who is a profes
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Forking the Internet is the answer. The new Internet should be community-run, decentralized, actively resist censorship, selfishness and sabotage (karma system similar to what Bittorrent has), minimize the requirement for centralized authorities, and make any centralized authorities that are absolutely necessary (such as in the case of DNS) democratic online communities.
It can start with wireless mesh networks (look at HSMM-MESH) using TOR over corporate lines and progress from there until the entire infras
Fear Not, Citizens of The Free World! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fear Not, Citizens of The Free World! (Score:5, Insightful)
Apples and Oranges. In China the government decides who gets blocked. In the U.S., the government AND the corporations will decide.
So see, that's a lot better...right?
Re:Fear Not, Citizens of The Free World! (Score:5, Insightful)
New name for the USA? (Score:2)
Rubber stamp (Score:3)
Well, at least it requires a COURT ORDER, instead of just letting some department do whatever the hell they want.
But it still sounds ripe for abuse, and confusion, and possibly being expensive to implement and maintain.
Re:Rubber stamp (Score:5, Insightful)
It should require MORE than a court order. It should require a conviction in the traffic of copyrighted material in violation of the copyright act before a site can be black listed. Being accused of such should NOT be enough.
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Exactly, otherwise you've set aside the entire premises of "innocent until proven guilty."
Although there do have to be provisions to prevent harm while the decision is made by the courts (the whole idea behind setting bail or denying bail). The courts have decided that in the event that you'll do a runner or whack off another person, they can keep you in jail ("presumed innocent" of course...) until the jury hears the case out.
In the case of IP on the 'net: if you've got a new artist who's just had somethi
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Doesn't matter, you can argue against a restraining order and contest it, there is notification. In this case the DOJ can just get their court order without the knowledge of the person running the site and they have, effectively, no recourse.
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Well, at least it requires a COURT ORDER, instead of just letting some department do whatever the hell they want.
But it still sounds ripe for abuse, and confusion, and possibly being expensive to implement and maintain.
"Requires a court order" You're funny.
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Well, at least it requires a COURT ORDER, instead of just letting some department do whatever the hell they want.
Care to guess what the ratio of requested to granted is on those "court orders"? 100%. Well, guess we can finally add the Judicial Branch to the Executive and Legislative to the "bought off" list...sad.
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The corporations will just find a sympathetic (i.e. bribed) federal judge, and all their subsequent block requests will go to him--which he'll rubber stamp without even reading.
Bill Stuck In Senate Plumbing (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Bill Stuck In Senate Plumbing (Score:5, Funny)
A politician who acts based on common sense???
I get the feeling this 2012 armageddon stuff isn't completely bogus after all.
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A politician who acts based on common sense???
Hahahahaha. Good joke. Wyden supports something similar to what this bill does just in a more limited scope. If you thought he did this because he was against the whole idea you are sadly mistaken.
Re:Bill Stuck In Senate Plumbing (Score:5, Interesting)
Sadly, it'll probably just get paperclipped with a budget-related bill to bypass the filibuster like they did with the Patriot Act extensions.
It'd be nice if the rest of the Senate decides that it's actually a terrible bill and vote to kill it.
Re:Bill Stuck In Senate Plumbing (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd love to see this happen. It would force real compromise and talks. You couldn't buy votes with promises to send some $$$ to the senator/representative's district via a rider. (Thus, less pork.) You also couldn't try to torpedo a bill by adding an unreasonable rider that you know nobody would vote for. Instead, you would need to craft a bill that enough people would vote for. You would need to work *WITH* the minority and the excesses of each party could be counter-balanced.
If we can't do this, I'd at least like to see the President have the ability to line item veto things. So he could approve Very-Important-Spending-Bill without approving Rider-That-Restricts-Freedom-Of-Speech. To provide counterbalance, the vetoed riders could be individually voted on by Congress to override the line item veto. (Of course, if the rider has that much support, it should be its own bill, not a rider.)
Of course, none of this will ever happen because it would actually reduce Congress' power. No longer would they be able to funnel money to their districts by holding their votes for ransom and no longer would they be able to just stick any old text to a bill and have it pass because the bill *HAD* to be approved.
Re:Bill Stuck In Senate Plumbing (Score:5, Interesting)
Which is why I would like to introduce a bill with no provisions, which would make it illegal to piggyback bills. They are what they are, take it or leave it. No? Next subject.
If anyone needs me, I'll be hanging out in my own utopia.
Interesting historical fact: Section 9 of the Confederate States Constitution [civilwarhome.com]included exactly such a provision:
Every law or resolution having the force of law, shall relate to but one subject, and that shall be expressed in the title.
Personally, I'd also like to see something requiring that each new law or regulation passed for a period of 12 years require that two laws be repealed. That would perhaps clear out some of the old cruft...
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Wow, a Congressman doing the right thing. Have a good look kids, you're seeing something rarer than Haley's Comet.
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I'm not even American. I still want to give this man money and support.
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When is Ron Wyden up for reelection? I can't vote for him (I'm on the opposite coast) but we should let Slashdotters in Oregon know when they should vote to keep this guy in.
Also, who voted *FOR* this bill and when are they up for reelection so we can vote them out?
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Sponsor: Sen Leahy, Patrick J. [VT]
Co-Sponsors:
Sen Alexander, Lamar [TN]
Sen Blumenthal, Richard [CT]
Sen Blunt, Roy [MO]
Sen Coons, Christopher A. [DE]
Sen Feinstein, Dianne [CA]
Sen Franken, Al [MN] (Say it ain't so, Franky!)
Sen Gillibrand, Kirsten E. [NY]
Sen Graham, Lindsey [SC]
Sen Grassley, Chuck [IA]
Sen Hatch, Orrin G. [UT]
Sen Klobuchar, Amy [MN]
Sen Kohl, Herb [WI]
Sen Rubio, Marco [FL]
Sen Schumer, Charles E. [NY]
Sen Whitehouse, Sheldon [RI]
However, the vote was merely t
Re:Bill Stuck In Senate Plumbing (Score:4, Interesting)
Goodbye thepiratebay.org (Score:5, Informative)
I've said for a long time that a U.S. great firewall was coming. I'm frankly just surprised it took so long. Sadly, this will now begin a big chase game of "change our IP" "IP blocked, change it again" for all the torrent/controversial sites that the government doesn't like. No more typing "wikileaks.org" into our browsers' URL field. Now we have to find a (hopefully) updated IP address from some site that will probably itself be blocked shortly after it starts offering a list.
Re:Goodbye thepiratebay.org (Score:5, Informative)
There's a reason why we have addons like https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mafiaafire-redirector/ [mozilla.org] to automate that process.
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Considering the government has essentially turned over control of this to the corporations (they're the ones who get the right to petition for removal), it wouldn't surprise me if Sony runs to a judge and demands that they block mozilla.org.
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Easy. Just adapt this addon for Chrome, wait until they try to do the same to Google and don't forget to keep plenty of popcorn within reach.
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Shit, now I have to remember how to use all those damned Archie characters again for searching. Anyone remember which one was for searching gopher?
Re:Goodbye thepiratebay.org (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Goodbye thepiratebay.org (Score:4, Insightful)
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Aren't they just replacing the URL bar with another bar that handles URLs & other things besides URLs. Also, they are both open source so if it's a problem, they will get forked & life will go on.
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The government is already working on a "flux capacitor" to stop this.
Guilty without trial (Score:3, Insightful)
The sites merely have to be ACCUSED of being copyright infringers. Remember when Homeland Security yanked thousands of websites off the net, including several that were merely personal blogs or news sites?
This is no good. We have courts for a reason - to protect the citizenry from overzealous leaders assuming guilt and enacting punishment against innocent persons.
the internet and the govt (Score:5, Insightful)
The internet was better off before the legal and judicial systems were even aware of it.
The boffins at DARPA came up with it, and for decades, all was well - from the 70's up until the mid 90's at least. It succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams *because* no one was in control of it. It was an anarchy. If you don't want to see something, don't look, and if you do, then do.
It will die in practice because of people who, for one reason or another, think they have the right to tell other people what they can and cannot do.
Relax, the bill is on HOLD thanks to Senator Wyden (Score:2)
Upgrade network infrastructure (Score:4, Insightful)
The Invisible Internet Project is running (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.geti2p.net/ [geti2p.net]
I've been using it for over a year and it works very well. It has email, web sites, bittorrent, and emule among other things (they are working on bitcoin too). Your public key is the same as your address, and routing is highly decentralized (everyone internally routes for the network by default) so even blocking people by IP or their key address is not really possible.
Prohibition (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Prohibition (Score:5, Insightful)
It worked so well for drugs they decided to try it on personal freedom that you now get groped and you can't say shit.
This goes after online communications.
Soon they will be tapping every phone and steaming open every letter and parcel.
Re:Prohibition (Score:5, Interesting)
Does the government not remember how well prohibition went?
Went? We still have loads of it. And it's working exactly as designed... it keeps those privatized prisons for profit stuffed.
Possible missuse (Score:4, Informative)
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Oh the irony if a major political party's web servers were used to host a torrent tracker without their knowledge.
That'd be unlikely though, as someone would easily notice the sudden spike in traffic a tracker brings.
Only accused??? (Score:5, Interesting)
What happened to innocent til proven guilty?
Who will be doing the accusing?
No I did not read the article, but this is a fair reaction to the OP
I hope anonymous steps up! (Score:3)
Hopefully anonymous will DDOS these senators re-election sites off the web!
^^^^^^^ This! (Score:2)
Indirect actions that do not materially affect these guys' quest for power will be ignored.
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As if DDoSing their websites would have any effect on their election. Put up a bunch of attack ads on TV and you have something. Buy some ads in meatspace, and people will notice. Make phone calls. Pass out signs and bumper stickers. These things will make people notice. The loss of a website would affect only a small percentage of voters, and even so, it certainly wouldn't make those affected switch their vote in any way. After all, there are so many other avenues of "information" out there about their fav
Ridiculous (Score:2, Interesting)
I sense a Streisand effect in the making here...
How long will it be before we see bumper stickers and tshirts with open DNS ip addresses on them?
Not to mention the explosion in Eastern European based search engines?
Our elected officials are so freaking stupid...
Not a problem (Score:4, Interesting)
The bill would create a list of blocked Internet sites, added Ed Black, president and CEO of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, a tech trade group.
. Users who want content will find a way around this. There's already a firefox add-on [mozilla.org] to circumvent Department of Homeland Security seized domains like torrent-finder.com [torrent-finder.com]. Thanks to Streisand effect of government domain seizures I found some great torrent sites I never before knew existed [chrome].
What about pages that link to pages that link to.. (Score:2)
For once I'd like to see lobbyists... (Score:2)
This would definitely hurt the traffic of Google, Bing, and Yahoo to name a few.
Being based off of advertisements, I would think that Google would most definitely lobby against this, and quite heavily.
I'm not one for corporate lobbyists, but then again, 99/100 times it is something to screw over Joe Consumer. This may be the 1/100...
Protecting IP is like protecting Oil (Score:5, Interesting)
Here is what we have seen of the oil industry. We have seen the oil industry defended, protected, supported and subsidized in every way imaginable (including militarily) by the US government. We have known for a very long time that world oil supplies are not limitless and that the demand for it is still rising and the price of it is also ratcheting upwards. Although the efforts for alternatives to oil and other fossil fuels are only now seemingly becoming more aggressive (I'm not yet convinced that there is any effort that I would call a serious commitment on the part of the government) it is generally agreed that it is long over due and most would even say it is too late in coming as many actions have resulted in directly or indirectly suppressing any competing technologies to the use of fossil fuels for energy.
But the US recognizes that in a fairly short time [* in relative terms], the oil business will be dead. But how is this like intellectual property?
The US's shift in production economy has been shifting from agriculture to manufacturing to services and now to intellectual property. The US was a leader in each of these things in their day and over time, all of these have been reduced, minimalized and concentrated in ways that make these activities profitable for only a small group of companies and individuals where many of these things are actually sent over-seas. Intellectual property is just about the last thing the US has to export and in order to maintain its profitability, we have to ensure that all other world players honor our IP by adopting laws and policies which support the US desire to remain dominant.
Over the years, we have witnessed all sorts of measures and activities pushed by the US such as the DMCA, copyright police proposals, pressuring [bullying] other countries into creating draconian law [which doesn't yet exist here in the US because it would be amazingly unpopular] and even influencing other nations into violating their own laws and procedures to satisfy the agenda of the IP business interests here in the U.S. (You know, like the illegal seizure and take down of the piratebay.)
I expect to see much worse in the near future INCLUDING military action. Sure, it's hard to justify military action for copying music, music and more, but it's not hard to imagine... you know "funding terrorism," "being run by terrorists," or even "harboring known terrorists" as cause for sending in a SEAL team or something like that. But what is "wrong" with this?
Turns out that media wants to be free and increasingly, we are seeing independent artists and groups pushing their way to the front lines of popularity thanks to emerging technologies and media. This is resulting in "old media" and other IP industry struggling for ways to compete and they are resorting to bribing... err, I mean, influencing government into defending, protecting, supporting and subsidizing their business models in every way imaginable. In the end, it is easy to see how and why "old media" and other IP industry are going away and their their days are numbered. But since the rest of the US has essentially been sold out, it is the second to the last massive resource the US has going for it.
Yes, I said "second to the last." What's that last? In case you didn't guess, it's PEOPLE. Already we have seen massive privatization of the prison industry. It's not widely spoken of or even cared about because "criminals are bad people" and we don't care about them right? In these privatized prisons, there are massive labor and services being performed by prisoners at wages below "minimum wage" and under conditions which rival the sweatshops of the 18th and 19th century. And with the massive criminalization of just about everything imaginable, it's easy to see what's coming and for whom it comes... the non-citizens, ex-citizens and non-voting-felons of the US... a class of people which is accelerating and growing in ways that are simply being ignored by the media and others at the moment.
I kn
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IP licensing revenue is estimated between $100B and $200B annually
http://dcipattorney.com/2010/12/the-us173-4b-global-intellectual-property-marketplace/ [dcipattorney.com]
US Manufacturing was _Measured_ at just under 1.7T in 2009
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41349653/ns/business-us_business/t/despite-chinas-might-us-factories-maintain-edge/ [msn.com]
Sure IP is important, but by no means the last thing the US has to export.
IP just shows up disproportionately in the news because it is a sizable revenue stream based on an artificial scarcit
The best parts (Score:4, Interesting)
We can all sit and complain about it here, or we can contact the offices of our senators; and try to spread the word for others to do the same. (No, e-petitions don't count and form letters seem rarely to be effective. Take five minutes and at least compose an original email.) If you want this to get some more mainstream coverage that's in your power too - you will find that "letters to the editor" of your local newspaper still has a surprisingly high readership.
An improvement! (Score:3)
At least they'll need a freaking court order with this bill.
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Ah, wrong ACT, wrong article, going to get coffee, sorry to interrupt...
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Not really.. Both are grievous offenses against our rights, just in different areas. Resistance to both, and all the others that are on the books are equally important. The idea is to fight infringement by the authorities and make them ineffective.
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Reading helps.... the PROTECT IP act is *NOT* the PATRIOT act. Two different things entirely.
I beg to differ. From the standpoint of personal liberty and privacy, not so much.
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>Internet: 1993-
Nope. The phrase you are looking for is "world wide web", and even that is actually a few years older than Mosaic
Re:Funny (Score:4, Funny)
Sponsored by the Ministry of Truth (tm).