BAD Internet Laws Heading Your Way

[seawasp]

Listen to this. This crap is bad from any sane person's point of view.

Originally posted by write_light at BAD Internet Laws Heading Your Way

From the flist: 



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Website Blocking

The government can order service providers to block websites for infringing links posted by any users.

Risk of Jail for Ordinary Users

It becomes a felony with a potential 5 year sentence to stream a copyrighted work that would cost more than $2,500 to license, even if you are a totally noncommercial user, e.g. singing a pop song on Facebook.

Chaos for the Internet

Thousands of sites that are legal under the DMCA would face new legal threats. People trying to keep the internet more secure wouldn't be able to rely on the integrity of the DNS system.

Read this analysis from boing-boing.net

Get on the phone and call your representative. Express your disapproval. Tell him or her exactly how you feel, and that you don't support this. Tell your friends to call their representatives, their Congressperson, and complain. Mention that you are a registered voter that takes your civic responsibility seriously and that you will use that vote to express your feelings about this.

http://www.rollcall.com/issues/57_60/Internet-Companies-Boost-Hill-Lobbying-210345-1.html?pos=olobh

“We support the bill’s stated goals — providing additional enforcement tools to combat foreign ‘rogue’ websites that are dedicated to copyright infringement or counterfeiting,” the Internet companies wrote in Tuesday’s letter. “Unfortunately, the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of action and technology mandates that would require monitoring of websites.”  The chamber-led coalition in support of the bill includes Walmart, Eli Lilly & Co. and Netflix.

Google and other opponents of the legislation argue that restricting the Internet in the U.S. sets a bad international precedent and that the language defines infringing too broadly.

Comments

[caper-est.livejournal.com]

Boosted. Even outside US borders, this is bad, bad news if it passes. On the bright side, if it passes, the "don't have to prove a thing before takedown" clauses for big content owners will doubtless result in the disappearance of most bad news from the public Web with almost miraculous rapidity. So everyone will be able to see that there haven't been any significant abuses in the event, and everything will turn out to have been all right after all!

[richardboustead.livejournal.com]

In New Zealand, we recently had the "Copyright Infringement and File Sharing Amendment" passed, known colloquially as the 'Skynet Law' after one of our politicians showed a shocking ignorance of the particulars of a) the law and b) the movies while on national TV.

The bill was passed under Urgency, which is a mechanism where a party can basically force a law through in a single setting. It's usually used for disasters, or to clear backlogs of legislation.

The law makes it that if an ISP gets a warning from a music publisher that an IP address was downloading a copyrighted work via file=sharing or P2P, then the holder of the account the IP belongs to is sent an infringement notice. After 3 notices, the Copyright Tribunal can fine you up to $15,000.

Astute readers may have noticed the part there about "Guilty until proven innocent". As the IP holder, it's up to you to prove you were not infringing copyright - which is kind of the opposite of how things normally work.

So far, the only infringement notices being sent out relate to Rihanna and Lady Gaga singles. So apparently the terrifying cybercriminals this law was rushed through to combat...are 14-18 year old teenagers with iPods.

Not a patch on what you're facing, but there are some similarities.

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