Copyright Activism

[John C]

For those who are interested in this sort of thing, the "PROTECT IP Act" (S968) is being looked at by the US Senate.  The capsule version is that it'd give Washington the right to force search engines, DNS servers, and possibly a whole lot of other stuff like browser and operating system developers to "unperson" any site suspected of carrying copyrighted materials, acting like they don't exist.

Plus, it's badly written and doesn't have anything resembling a check on power.  So, there are assorted apocalyptic censorship implications if one wants to head down the tinfoil hat road.

The EFF has a decent writeup along with a low-impact way to poke your Congresspeoples:

https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=487

This may also be of interest, for those who'd like to be a little angrier:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/06/western-governments-mount-major-push-for-internet-rules-of-the-road.ars

[Yoc]

wow, this is kinda scary when you think about it.
course with so many search engines and more all the time could anyone completely disappear online?

[John C]

DNS is the primary target, which is what your software (browser, FTP, etc.) uses to map, say, "digitalcomicmuseum.com" to a numeric IP Address, even though there are ways around it.  If you can't find the address, the search engine won't help much except to show you that the information does exist somewhere.

(The bill refers to "mechanisms" to deal with this resolution, which arguably means that you could be forced to destroy paper that has an IP Address written on it.  Morons...)

But you're right, and that's the worst part of the law, in my eyes.  It's just going to push people to the shadier parts of the Internet to "route around the damage," where (for lack of a better word) black market DNS servers, browsers, and search engines will be happy to get you where you're going while even more happily installing malware on your machine.

[Yoc]

Jez John!
You trying to give me nightmares now??

[JonTheScanner]

For those who are interested in this sort of thing, the "PROTECT IP Act" (S968) is being looked at by the US Senate.  The capsule version is that it'd give Washington the right to force search engines, DNS servers, and possibly a whole lot of other stuff like browser and operating system developers to "unperson" any site suspected of carrying copyrighted materials, acting like they don't exist.

Gee if suspicion is enough, can I suspect all the Senators' re-election websites of having copyrighted materials?

[Yoc]

And their TV commercials?  Can we 'suspect' them off the air??
 

[John C]

That's the dream, but they're probably exempt.  After all, the deal made with copyright (even though I don't believe any administration has given it any thought) is that, in exchange for the distribution monopoly, the government automatically has a license.

(Which is a problem I have with automatic copyrights, since you're being forced to accept all those terms on expressing an idea with no obvious "opt-out," but that's another discussion entirely.)

It's probably worth giving a try if it passes, though...