@maxwell97 The link you posted doesn't work for me. But in any case, SOPA is an umbrella term for two separate pieces of U.S. legislation: S.968 PROTECT IP Act (which makes it possible for the DOJ or copyright holder to demand that search engines, payment services, and the domain name system block allegedly infringing sites) and S.978 Commercial Felony Streaming Act (which makes it a felony punishable by up to 5 years imprisonment to stream a performance of a copyrighted work).
PIPA: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-s968/show
CFSA: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-s978/show

"The US Constitution gives Congress the power "o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries". So, it's well within the authority of Congress to treat unauthorized use of IP as "theft"; no "tangible object" is required."
Sorry, you just made a giant leap there. The Constitution gives authors exclusive right to their writings. That does not make it "theft". We ARE talking about the semantics of "theft" -- you are saying "I don't want to talk about the semantics of whether it is or isn't theft, what matters is that it should be illegal" -- fine, but you're the one that brought up quotes about stealing from the back of a truck. You can't claim IP infringement is theft, and then say "it may not be theft but it should be illegal." That's like saying "IP infringement is just like stabbing an old lady in her house. And I don't want to argue about the semantics of murder, what's important is that it should be illegal." NO. IP infringement has very different properties to theft (specifically, that the person whose IP was infringed was not deprived of the object), and so it is deliberately confusing the issue to call it theft. Copyright holders want you to think of it as theft because theft is clearly wrong, whereas IP infringement is a much murkier topic.

Having said that, I do agree with you that IP infringement should be illegal. But we need to have very clear boundaries on what "IP infringement" entails. In my opinion, posting a video of a kid singing a pop song on YouTube should not be illegal. My problem with these laws is not that they are anti-piracy laws. It's that they push the boundaries so far that they break all boundaries of common sense. They impose insane penalties for trivial acts that are arguable whether they should be illegal at all. They often allow rights holders to impose these penalties without due process (you would need a judge to shut down a website AFAIK, but that is not due process because it doesn't involve a full court case with a conviction). These laws have a jurisdiction far beyond the borders of the United States. And they have lots of other unforeseen consequences that have nothing to do with piracy at all -- such as the fact that these laws would make DNSSEC illegal (a security protocol that prevents website spoofing) because DNSSEC makes it impossible for the government to break the domain name system.

This is a very very bad law for the free Internet, written by powerful copyright holders who not only have control of the politicians through lobbying, but also have a very powerful influence on your mind -- they have, over decades and decades of advertising, convinced you that a) "there IS an urgent need to protect IP" (as opposed to other far more basic things that need protecting, like free speech), and b) that copyright infringement is theft (when really it shares very little of the characteristics of theft).

(By the way, if you are caught shoplifting a CD in the U.S., that is nearly always a misdemeanor and punishable by a fine of a few hundred dollars. If you are caught streaming a CD illegally online, you can be sued for in some cases around $400,000, losing your entire livelihood. They want you to think that copyright infringement is theft, but they sure don't have the same penalties.)

@Fomalhaut30

First reference: That text seems to require ISP's in the United States to prevent their users from accessing an offending website. I don't see how that requires removal of the DNS registration or would impact users outside the US.

Second reference: So, if you post $1,000 worth of material in a six-month period, you're in violation of the law. Sounds reasonable. It sure wouldn't apply to posting a video "with your kids singing any copyrighted song," the example cited previously.

And we're agreed that using someone's work without their approval is infringing on their rights. As to when it goes into public domain, that's up to Congress. To borrow your colorful metaphor, you should give two sh*ts about it because the material is theirs, not yours, and decent people don't use other people's stuff without asking.



Sorry, didn't see your edit. Hey, if you don't want to have a discussion, that's fine, but it's not going to help your cause to assume that anyone who disagrees with you has "drunk the beverage" and isn't worth trying to convince. I'm sure it's frustrating that you're so OBVIOUSLY right and other people are just too dumb to see it...

@crazy_dave Fair point. But the text on the White House page still reads with this fundamental attitude of "Copyrights must be protected, first and foremost. But we'll try not to infringe upon free speech or break the Internet." That attitude generally leads to Bad Things, because these politicians genuinely have no idea how the Internet works, or how important it is in enabling free speech.

Their attitude is, "the Internet is broken, and we'll fix it without affecting free speech," but what they don't realise is that the Internet isn't broken -- it is the most powerful general-purpose communications tool in history, and when you have a general-purpose communications tool, by definition, people are going to be able to communicate any information they like. Therefore, by definition, any attempt to limit what information people are allowed to communicate privately between one another is going to break that general-purpose communications tool in some way.

Particularly disturbing is this straight-out-of-Hollywood rhetoric: "We expect and encourage all private parties, including both content creators and Internet platform providers working together, to adopt voluntary measures and best practices to reduce online piracy." Why? Just because copyright infringement is a problem for content holders, why should Internet platform providers be expected to a) spend their own resources, and b) weaken the utility of the product they are providing? That is like saying "there are lots of people sending pirated CDs through the mail, so we expect the post office to work with us to go through everyone's mail and stop this piracy." Why should the post office have to go to that expense, and the rest of us who do nothing wrong have our mail violated? An ISP is the same as a post office -- they are merely providing a communication tool. It is quite sad to see this familiar "stop piracy at all costs" rhetoric making it all the way to the white house.

@maxwell97 "So, if you post $1,000 worth of material in a six-month period, you're in violation of the law. Sounds reasonable. It sure wouldn't apply to posting a video "with your kids singing any copyrighted song," the example cited previously."
I don't think you understand the game these people play. See, you and I think of "$1,000 worth of material" as some serious stuff -- maybe a whole box full of CDs or similar "professional" piracy. We think "$1,000" and instantly our minds detach it from "average person". Again, that's exactly what they want you to think -- they want you to read "$1,000" and think "oh good, that only applies to serious criminals, not everyday people on YouTube."

WRONG. Music and movie companies have argued time and time again that the value of an individual pirated copy of a song is on the order of several thousand dollars, and shockingly, these arguments HAVE CONSISTENTLY BEEN HELD UP BY U.S. COURTS. Look at Jammie Thomas -- a court ruled that the individual value of a song, for the purposes of calculating damages, was $62,500. Federal law allows for an individual song to be valued at $150,000 for a wilful infringement. With this terminally insane logic, it isn't hard to see that they could argue to a judge that a kid singing a Britney Spears song on YouTube went viral and was seen by a thousand people, and if each of those had paid $1 for the song rather than "pirating" it off YouTube, they would have made $1000, so that one performance is valued at $1000 and hence it is a felony. You may think I am making it up, but go and google for "riaa damages" or similar and you will see that this is exactly the sort of logic that is applied in U.S. courts all the time. The system is fully out of control. The game is rigged by these people. Just because you took a cursory look at the law they wrote and it seems okay to you does not mean this law will not be used to ruin the livelihoods of innocent people. Don't be an RIAA/MPAA pawn.

Full DNS blocking has been removed under pressure, but both bills would still damage DNS and secure DNS. The whitehouse is also in agreement on this point, as are the congressmen heading up the committee on internet security, and leading tech magnets (http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57344028-281/vint-cerf-sopa-means-unprecedented-censorship-of-the-web/?tag=mncol;txt,http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57326956-281/sandia-labs-sopa-will-negatively-impact-u.s-cybersecurity/?tag=mncol;txt,http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57327341-281/opendns-sopa-will-be-extremely-disruptive-to-the-internet/?tag=mncol;txt)

If Congress were not so clearly influenced by lobbyists at the expense of everyone else, it might seem reasonable to say that copyright laws are fair with respect to the public domain. Unfortunately they are clearly influenced (http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57343367-281/meet-sopa-author-lamar-smith-hollywoods-favorite-republican/?tag=mncol;txt). In this fight the media companies for PIPA and SOPA have massively outspent tech companies on both lobbying and campaign contributions (will look for citation). And this has been going on for thirty years, hence why copyright which used to last 28 years with a possible 14 year extension, now last until 70 years after the holder's death and 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication of a companies' copyrighted material. And so on and so forth. Is this an excuse for pirating the brand new game that came out last year or pirating in general? No. But let's not act like Congress has been particularly good shepherds of the public domain. They haven't been.

@mgiuca: Sounds like something the courts SHOULD decide, though, doesn't it? Sure, they can argue to a judge that some kid singing a song amounts to $1,000 worth of content, and any decent lawyer on the opposing side would argue that the Thomas case doesn't apply, because a kid singing a song isn't going to be a substitute for a retail copy. Two arguments, a judge decides - don't see a problem. Actually, I'm completely okay with the damage calculations up to this point. If you don't want to get nailed for damages, don't give away stuff that belongs to somebody else.

To be honest, that is expected and to be fair they aren't going to "stop piracy at all costs" - then they'd be supporting SOPA/PIPA :). As for the rest, Hollywood, the MPAA, and RIAA are extremely powerful lobbyists. To be honest, I'll just be "glad" if OPEN passes rather than PIPA/SOPA. On the other hand, while I don't like the copyright holders, I don't like pirates or piracy either. I'm not sure what the best solution is, but I know SOPA/PIPA is the amongst the worst possible solutions. :/

@crazy_dave: That's a fair point, but really the responsibility of Congress is to protect the rights of individual citizens. Nobody has a RIGHT to have something go into the public domain.

Anyway, at this point I'm trying to respond to three different people, so I'll let my points stand where they are for now. Just for the record, I'm not trying to convince people to support SOPA; being opposed to it is perfectly reasonable. I'm only trying to combat some of the ridiculous rhetoric that's been flying around, and make the folks who are frothing over it examine the arguments a little bit more critically, instead of just jumping on the anti-SOPA bandwagon. "There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist."

@maxwell97 Let me put it to you this way. Once SOPA passes, would you be comfortable uploading such a video (kid singing copyrighted song -- perhaps "Happy Birthday To You"?) to YouTube? Or would you be just a bit worried?

Are you willing to put the next 5 years of your life where your mouth is? Are you so sure that, in an age where judges routinely rule that a single CD worth of streamed music is worth someone's entire life savings and their house, that such a performance would be not be judged as having a value greater than or equal to $1000? I myself would be deathly scared of uploading any such video. Of course, they won't take everyone. They'll just take random people here and there, as examples. That doesn't make you any more safe -- it just means you might be unlucky.

If you are, after considering all of this, still in support of SOPA, then I congratulate you for managing to live in pure blissful ignorance of the way your country is run. I suppose, after all, one could be happier believing that Hollywood are those nice people who make films about chipmunks, and ignore the countless lives they have destroyed in their war on piracy.

Don't forget the thousands of dollars it would take to defend yourself in a court of law where even if you are in the right, you are still out a significant amount of money (not so much to the guys suing you, that's couch cushion money or pocket change to them).

And if you're scared of uploading the video, think about tech innovations. Who is going to offer startup money to anyone that supports user-generated content if there's the chance they'll get shut down by false takedown notices and on the hook for massive monetary penalties? The next Youtube or Google will never happen in such a scenario.

Actually quite the opposite. The purpose of copyright law was indeed two-fold: one, protect the rights of the people who created IP; two: to limit the time those rights can be held for in order to protect the right of individuals in the public access to those works (i.e. the public domain). Both are necessary to foster innovation and growth in IP. Effectively growing the duration of copyright beyond all reasonable bounds (70 years after someone dies) with no guarantees of no further extensions essentially eliminates the rights of the public domain. Historically in legal interpretation the rights of the public outweighed the rights of the copyright holder.

I understand your position. I don't like piracy either, but SOPA/PIPA isn't the answer and the copyright holders have been abusing the system.

Man is inherently sinful. Romans 3:10 "As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:" Romans 3:23 "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;" Regardless of the motive behind the bill, if it is passed it WILL be used to stifle free speech and censor the Internet of things that the government doesn't like, because the government is made of men and men are inherently abusers of power. That is all there is to it. Romans 6:23 "For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

SOPA/PIPA goes beyond the bounds of reason in that even if it is only used as intended it allows the government to punish people who haven't committed a crime.

SOPA allows the government to shut down an entire website for copyright infringement, even if the offending material is uploaded by a user without the knowledge of the site administrator and against the site's terms of service.

In other words, if I upload an episode of Smurfs to YouTube, a clear violation to the terms of service I agreed to when I set up my account, Dupuis Publishing can petition to have the entire site taken down. In short, YouTube can be punished for MY criminal act!

Can you imagine the opportunity this offers to competitors that might want to put a social site like YouTube or FaceBook out of business?

To be clear... Shutting down a website is effectively shutting down a business. You cannot shut down a business and put an innocent business owner and an entire staff into the unemployment lines because one of their customers violated their service agreement and broke the law.

It's illegal, it's immoral, and it's an utterly unAmerican violation of basic Constitutional and free market principles.

As someone outside of the US, I have utter dread as to what a country's decision will do to utterly decimate the Internet.

But I am thankful that I've been able to read reasonable voices here who're able to point out people's mislead views of the bill and its workings.

I'm uncertain how to proceed as an Australian to fight for my rights in a country I have no citizenship.

I must say, that the banter on this site is far and away better then that which I have seen anywhere else on the subject. It is impossible to speculate what may or may not happen if this gets passed. The problem is the human condition. We fight to survive, to feed our families, and provide for those in need. It is very conceivable that the U.S. Government, aided by companies far wealthier than you or I, will continue to push the envelope much further than talked about here. This is why this needs to be fought. Laws do not protect anything, they simply punish those who violate. In this way, the government claims it will be making headway at taking down groups of well oiled piracy and copy-write infringing groups....which is a ridiculous claim. What will likely happen, is major corporations will pin "damages" on anyone they can, which will effectively be the kid singing to Brittany Spears on YouTube. Furthermore, the people "stealing" in this equation are not more likely to buy the items "stolen" if there is a more serious criminal component installed. There is a reason why the post office in the U.S. is overlooked for the UPS, FedEx and DHL. There is a reason why people complain about Communism, Unified Healthcare, and a military draft. Ideas never equal their true implementation, as there are always pitfalls that will take as much time to fix as the initial idea took to pass. Therefore, since this is about control and money, and the controlled would be the simple user, and we as people have nothing to gain from this...WHY WOULD WE WANT THIS PASSED????