7 ms·
The senators who say linking to certain sites should be a felony
- kgermino 15y agoOnce again, these are not the senators who think linking to a website should be a felony, these are the senators who have no idea what they are doing and are supporting bills handed to them by the copyright lobby. Not that that's any better.
- marshray 15y agoDon't let them fool you, these people are not dumb. They know exactly what they're doing.
- pavel_lishin 15y agoIn that case, I don't understand their motivation.
- gallerytungsten 15y agoTheir motive is authoritarianism; an unfortunate disease which sadly afflicts most politicians.
- pyre 15y agomoney + power? campaign contributions?
- smokeyj 15y agoThey obey the name on the check, and yours isn't on it. http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?order=A http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?order=A
- Vivtek 15y agoYeah: ingratiating themselves to the people with money, and damn the consequences. They don't have to understand the consequences - they don't consider themselves to be affected. Only little people serve time, duh!
- weaksauce 15y agoNothing bad can come from that bill... We should make it mandatory that the legislators actually read the proposals and have pop quizes on them. If you cannot pass the quiz then you do not get to vote on it.
- Jeema3000 15y agoLet's take this speculative legislation down the slippery slope, shall we? Next stop: full-speed collision with the First Amendment!... Putting the URL in question on a website... but it's not actually a hyperlink, just plain text? Felony or not? Printing the URL on a t-shirt and selling them? Felony or not? Passing out pamphlets that list the URL? Felony or not? Mentioning the URL in a news publication? Felony or not? Telling your friend the URL? Felony or not?
- AndrewMoffat 15y agoThe fact that these legislators don't see those immediately-relevant cases you mentioned as being enough gray area to put doubt in their mind as to the effectiveness of the legislation really doesn't speak well to their comprehension of how the internet works. It's really sad.
- earl 15y agoI'm only aware of a handful of senators (maybe the macaca jackass, or perhaps santorum) that have been in any way hurt by not knowing how the internet works. I wish they were so incentivized, but they seem to be following the incentives they have.
- Tangaroa 15y agoMens Rea.
- CWuestefeld 15y agoYes, but (not having seen the text of the bill), the reporting implies that there is no requirement of mens rea. If they're removing safe harbor provisions that protect some kind of clearinghouse (like a message form) from being responsible for what member post, then it must necessarily have no requirement for mens rea.
- gburt 15y agoIn fact, what it would be doing is redefining "guilty". You'd be of guilty mind when the crime you intended to commit was sharing a URL.
- hugh3 15y agoInteresting. Is there real-world precedent for this kind of thing? For instance, if I know a real-world address where you can go in order to participate in some criminal activity X, is it illegal for me to tell you that address? For any value of X?
- waterlesscloud 15y agoIt can be. I had jury duty for a case that involved an undercover cop asking a man on the street where he could buy crack, the man asked for money, the cop gave him some, and then the man pointed to another man down the street. The original man was on trial for conspiracy to distribute drugs, even though he wasn't actively in league with the actual dealer.
- electromagnetic 15y agoHe was on trial because he solicited a fee. If he'd told there would be no conspiracy. His act constituted a "finders fee" for criminal activity. The irony here is that if the man actually was a front, he would have likely told the cop to fuck off as soon as the cop was willing to pay. Druggies don't have the cash to pay 'fees' to find dealers, most don't have the cash to pay for their drugs without stealing.
- sdkmvx 15y agoExcept copyright infringement is a civil matter. Drug usage is (unfortunately) a criminal offense. I'm not aware of any precedent that would make it illegal (in a criminal sense) for one to do something which might cause a third party to sue. Then again, IANAL.
- tzs 15y ago> Except copyright infringement is a civil matter. Copyright infringement is a felony if: 1. it is for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain by the reproduction or distribution during any 180-day period of 1 or more copies of 1 or more copyrighted works which have a total retail value of more than $1000; or 2. it is the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if the person making it available knew or should have known the work was intended for commercial distribution.
- Vivtek 15y agoI must admit, I expected better from Al Franken.
- chc 15y agoYou shouldn't. The man is in the IP lobby's pocket. This is why looking at things as politics and personalities instead of just practical concerns like "This would have undesirable effects" is not a good idea.
- jbuzbee 15y agoGood 'ol Franken is also a big fan of Internet censorship: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110301/01385813308/senator-franken-defends-censoring-internet-because-he-doesnt-think-hollywood-should-have-to-change-biz-models.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110301/01385813308/senato...
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- AJ007 15y agoMake no mistake, anyone who achieves an elected (or unelected for that matter) position has power as their number one motivation. If you view any high ranking government official in any idealistic light, you have been tricked. These guys are marketers of the first order, and what they market is idealism.
- Vivtek 15y agowhat they market is idealism I am so going to steal that phrase every chance I get.
- SeoxyS 15y agoAlternate headline: Senators do not understand the first amendment, and should be fired.
- eurohacker 15y agobe thankful that uncle Rockefeller has allowed you yo use internet so far, he said internet should have never existed http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct9xzXUQLuY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct9xzXUQLuY
- torkins 15y agoIf you'd bother to watch the video you linked, you might notice he doesn't actually say that... in fact he says that is a stupid thing to say.
- bane 15y agoaaaaand this is why we have a Supreme Court that decides the constitutionality of laws our ridiculous congress passes.
- CWuestefeld 15y agoExcept that (a) they've found a way of passing laws recently that remove their subject matter from the purview of the courts; and (b) the courts have removed themselves from some areas, as with their refusal to judge the merit of blight declarations in takings "for public use".
- evgen 15y agoArticle III, section 2 of the U.S. Constitution is not exactly "recent" and if you want explicit examplea of Congress removing appellate jurisdiction for a specific law you need look no further than Ex parte McCardle (1868).
- zcid 15y agoYou must be joking.
- pnathan 15y agoPersonally - and this may be optimistic of me - I look forward to the day when the Internet generation gets into Congress. I think - hope? - that maybe perhaps we will see slightly less ridiculous legislation. Odds are that our generation will create just as asinine rules, but about something different.
- kijinbear 15y agoUnfortunately, there is no such thing as a tech-savvy "Internet generation". Most of those kids who know how to use Facebook inside and out would be just as clueless as today's senators are, if they had to deal with anything remotely technical.
- pnathan 15y agoThat's very true. But at least they won't be in the situation of having their wife look stuff up for them[1]. I don't think it's a far stretch to expect that today's facebook-ites have an intuitive idea of what a 'link' is. [1] http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/08/13/john_mccain_technology/ http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/08/13/john_mccain_tec...
- cookiecaper 15y agoI would think that there are certain ideological verities that differ between the generations. A group that is intimately familiar with a new ability to create millions of perfect digital copies of almost any intellectual property will have a somewhat different perspective as to what constitutes legitimate copyright protections in an age where such extensive abilities exist. Most of our current Congresspeople know little to nothing about it, they just know they need a website for their campaign, that the design firm charges a lot of money, and that the Google can tell them the side effects of their drugs.
- dodo53 15y agoYes, and due to accelerating change, the rate at which laws are generated/enforced by people ignorant of the subject matter will only go up.
- 15y ago
- NHQ 15y agoThe full title of the bill is: "Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011" Why do they want to prevent threats to theft of intellectual property?
- chc 15y agoIt should be parsed as "(Preventing ((Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity) and (Theft of Intellectual Property))) Act". The threats are to econonic creativity; the theft is a separate object.
- Andrew_Quentin 15y agoI like the emphasis of the "real" online threats, as opposed to what they might have thought we could imagine were "perceived" or imaginary" threats.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- gubatron 15y agoWonder how google would stay in business if this passed. How to stop the engine from knowing that it's indexing an illegal website?
- tzs 15y agoThe law has no trouble distinguishing between something that happens as a side effect and something that is intended.
- bediger 15y agoI don't believe you in the slightest. The people who wrote the bill in question either didn't think of what happens to Google, or they want it to happen to Google, or they consider it something like "you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs".
- bediger 15y agoHow does any non-corporate website stay legal in this case? It looks like you can't link to something not under your control without a substantial risk of committing a crime. Without "blogrolls" it's hard to find related blogs. Without links to actual news articles, it's hard to write commentary worth reading. If some copyright troll can link to Most Sacred and Holy "IP" in the comments, you can't really have comments on articles. This particular bill seems like an attempt to unring the Internet bill, to stuff the genie of disintermediation back in the bottle, to put gatekeepers/editors back in place.
- chaosfox 15y agogoogle would start removing sites from the results -- like it already does: http://www.tsurupeta.info/content/google-removes-lolicon-site-from-search-results http://www.tsurupeta.info/content/google-removes-lolicon-sit...
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- DanielBMarkham 15y agoInteresting observation: for everybody who wishes that people could come together from all political sides to pass laws, your wish has been answered. This list includes characters from every part of the political spectrum.
- OstiaAntica 15y agoAs the saying goes, we have an evil party and a stupid party. Every once in awhile, they work together and produce public policy that is both evil and stupid.
- DanielBMarkham 15y agoI like this because it accurately reflects the customers -- voters -- views, yet it is also completely non-partisan. My party is always the stupid one, the other party is always the evil one. In this case, several of the folks are prominent representatives of their party. Guys we might see on TV explaining to us why policy X is good and policy Y is bad. Paying for laws is done this way -- buying off the prominent members -- so that the status quo is maintained, i.e., I still keep thinking my guys are acting stupid and the other ones evil and you keep thinking the other way. If it had only been lesser members sponsoring, it wouldn't work that way.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- lurchpop 15y agoSenator's campaign contributions from entertainment lobby * Diane Feinsten: $1,278,337 * Patrick Leahy: $897,666 * Al Franken: $802,573 * Charles E. Schumer $490,400 * Lindsey Graham: $224,161 * Sheldon Whitehouse $201,100 * Orrin Hatch: $143,826 * Chuck Grassley $116,650 * Amy Klobuchar: $171,514 * Chris Coons: $86,900 EDIT: numbers from OpenSecrets.org
- mikeknoop 15y agoWhat amount do senators not on this list receive, for comparison?
- pjkundert 15y agoSince presenting a link to such a site is illegal, wouldn't it be difficult for the government agency to communicate the information within it's own agency? If they decide that certain means of communicating the information do not form a criminal act, then what would prevent the arbitrary individual from forming the same means, and giving a link to that, instead? Or, are law makers and their proxies inherently immune from their own laws?