General Category > General Discussion
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:
--- Quote from: John C on June 09, 2011, 04:52:38 PM ---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.
--- End quote ---
Gee if suspicion is enough, can I suspect all the Senators' re-election websites of having copyrighted materials?
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