L: Vague wording would allow the government to 'overreach' its original intentions. This puts a lot of websites in jeopardy of being shut down.
L: So, with some wording modification this bill is great?
T: "The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who requests the court orders, the actions could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators such as PayPal from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for 10 such infringements within six months. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement…" So you're saying a 15 year old child posting a song to Facebook to share with their friends should be jailed for not fully understanding a law?
L: But, if the companies voluntarily self police against the websites offering the free content, the 15 year old shouldn't have to worry. Unless he creates his own website to host a song. In which case they would be responsible
T: Yeah, the COMPANIES, not the government.
L: So they stop PayPal from doing business with companies that sell rouge software. Shouldn't PayPal have he ethics to stop that themselves? The companies aren't doing enough. If cars or drugs were available that weren't being regulated or safe shouldn't the government step in there? I would hope so!
T: "Prohibited Transactions. You agree that you will not use PayPal to accept payment for illegal products or services, including but not limited to materials that infringe the intellectual property rights of third parties. You will not use the Service, the PayPal website or any of the services offered therein for any unlawful or fraudulent activity. If PayPal (or Wells Fargo, in connection with processing credit card transactions) has reason to believe that you may be engaging in or have engaged in fraudulent, unlawful, or improper activity, including without limitation any violation of any terms and conditions of this Agreement, your access to the Service may be suspended or terminated. Further, if such behavior involved a MasterCard or VISA credit card transaction, it may result in you/your business being prevented from registering for payment acceptance through any payment provider or directly with any bank acquirer operating under license to either the MasterCard or VISA card associations." Pay Pal TOS. So yes, Pay Pal DOES have the ethics to stop, but they don't monitor every purchase. A purchase may be under suspicion or review once reported by another user. Only once a report is made, or the money flow is suspiciously high, will a user go under review. "PayPal is not a bank and the Service is a payment processing service rather than a banking service," Pay Pal is strictly a service in which payment is received and distributed. In the case that Pay Pal actually loaned money to these individuals selling money, then there would be an issue. As for the companies, you are right, they aren't doing enough. Cars are regulated through the Department of Transportation, Drugs through Department of T & F, but what department should copyright infringement be regulated through other than the FCC?
L: So your saying take SOPA a step further and create a division to monitor online activities?
T: The government already does that anyways, so why throw more tax money at them to created a department?
L: Then lets Stop spending money to regulate drugs and cars and liquidate those departments
T: Which is more detrimental to humans, Car/drugs/alcohol or the illegal downloading of music? The regulations are in place to protect human life.
L: I agree that another department isn't really a fiscally reasonable option but this should be controlled. Sites like zamzar and freetovid that actively allow the theft of intellectual property to happen should be removed from the Internet. Hell that as proved when napster got shut down
T: Napster was shut down, but KaZaa, iMesh, LimeWire, FrostWire, Ares, and many more P2P search-built-in torrents spawned in it's place. You take one step forward and two steps back in a matter like this. The IRS gave up years ago when piracy first started getting out of hand. If more pressure was cracked down early on, then the entire infrastructure of the internet would be different and there wouldn't be the debate, but now that "piracy" has taken on an entirely different meaning to congress. In passing this bill, you will be (again) changing the infrastructure of the internet, but with greater repercussions than what it would have been if the problem was addressed properly years ago.
L: I think the biggest reason this is gaining so much attention is because big companies like Google and yahoo are going to have to restructure their sites, hire more people to help monitor, and cut into large profits they make. By throwing around "this violates the first amendment" enough they have created a smokescreen to keep,their profits high. Hindsight is 20/20. Now we should just leave it because it wasn't fixed right the first time?
B: The real problem here is that yet again the government is sticking its noes into places that it school not, people are saying that our government is to large and this is mostly coming from the republican side, and yet this bill was introduced and supported by this very same side. Government needs to be smaller and stop regulating every damn thing.
T: This bill will also allow gov. to shut down any site for any given reason, not just monetary reasons. Suppose someone posts something that the gov. doesn't entirely agree with (not just pertaining to piracy), they can just shut it down and ...that would be that. It's not that they shouldn't fix the problem, but the way they are doing it is how they should have originally addressed the problem in the first place, before the entire internet became a seemingly "living creature." Trying to pass the bill, in it's current state, would kill the internet.The internet was intended to be an open forum for ANYTHING. Since music, videos, and other media became available on a digital format, the moment it is posted then deems this forum to share with the rest. In the great words of Elmo, "Sharing is caring."
L: I'm all for a smaller government. But, if the government doesn't regulate this who will? Some companies like Comcast do a great job for helping stop piracy. But others, like google, are actively dragging their feet to help stop piracy right now. We must question what are their motives for not supporting piracy? The fact that the government puts I this bill the idea of voluntarily self monitoring to actively halt piracy is a great thing. So who is going to regulate? It's gotta come from somewhere. Let's be honest, if left up to the general population nothing will be done (it would possibly even go the opposite way). And sharing is caring. But only share your own toys. What gives them the right to share my content and Hirt my profits??
B: That is the companies responsibility to provide a good business. if people do not like the business then they should stop using that company. This is how the businesses should be run. boycott the company if you do not like it. this is not a place for the government to be stepping it foot into.
T: That's why we let the companies take care of their own problems, as I stated above, it's not our government's problem if the entertainment industry is missing out on money. They have no one to blame but themselves for not putting on strong countermeasures to their digitally released items.
E: I agree to be against piracy and intellectual theft, but I don't think these bills are going about it the right way. Some may think that bigwig sites like Wikipedia and Google are freaking out because they're guilty of what the bills are targeting (which I'm not denying), but I think a big part of it has to do with the vagueness in the structure of the bills. I'm sure that there is a more thought out and specific way to structure the want to ban piracy and intellectual theft without putting sites that do not target to do this in jeopardy.
T: Sure, it would be more time consuming, but if they are so concerned about their property, they need to quit crying and take action. They could develop a new file type with several different encryption that randomize after each play, so someone developing a stand alone media player couldn't copy the code, or for people bringing in cameras to movie theaters, either develop a filter that would severely blur the image on any camera device or place stronger camera checks in the theaters.
L: E- I think I agree with what your saying. I think your near my thoughts on this. I fully support rewording the bill to clear any vague or loose ends. Wow.... So stricter camera checks at the movie theater. Basically a TSA strip search to watch a new movie? No thanks!
T: But stripping down the internet to it's bare bones is ok? I'll pass as well
E: It's a viscous circle. Movie theaters don't control the price of tickets at the box office. Ticket prices rise so people don't go to theaters as often. Instead, they find pirated copies online. The more people do this, the higher the box office prices become so the less people go to movies. I work at a movie theater in Indianapolis and we can't even check bags for outside food and drinks let alone a full search for cameras.
T: I'll admit, the camera check was a little extreme, but it shows how defensive you got over being physically "monitored." but if they can do it online, behind another computer screen, unseen, does that make it any different?
L: But, by being a law abiding citizen who does not commit piracy behind the screen efforts wouldn't affect me nearly as much. Would I be opposed to websites that I don't use or support being shut down to benefit industries and creative property? Not one bit
E: Have you never shared a CD or music download with someone? Used more than 30 seconds of a song in a presentation of sorts? Grabbed a picture off Google images without seeing if it was public domain or not? Yes these are extremely small scale and cannot compare to downloading full albums or movies, but this is where lines blur with the current bills. And somewhere in these blurred lines, I can see YouTube being found guilty in a lot of what is laid out in these bills, which is something that millions of people use daily, even if they don't commit piracy in any other way.
L: The best solution? Every Internet user in America to delete all pirated content they have and vow to not, under any circumstance use pirated content. The second best solution is for companies like Google to take actions that companies like Comcast does and ban those who display pirated content at either a distributor end or a consumer end. But, the most realistic option is for the government to step in and place regulations in place.
T: By doing this, the companies are not going make back as much money as they lost. They lose marketing opportunities. For example, someone starts streaming footage from a game they are playing. People watching may go out and buy the game. BOOM! Money. In the case that they torrent, if they are dedicated to gaming and support the industry (which these people DO exist, I've done this myself) they will go out and buy the game. Music; not every album leaked was leaked on accident. These albums were leaked in the event that a website or magazine would put out a positive review, thus resulting in profit. Piracy does take money away from the industry, but at the same time, it provides some fuel that keels it going. The problem is banning is that they can ban a domain name, but not an IP address. Sure, it won't show up in search, but if people post the site's IP address, piracy continues.
L: E-solid points. +1 for the valid argument. Again, refining what exactly what piracy is needs to be a large part of any bill trying to regulate. Maybe pirated material is in some form a marketing tool. However, it is not a conventional tool which industries can rely on to gain profits.
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