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> Opponents of the Stop Online Piracy Act, the bill that threatens to block large swathes of foreign websites for alleged copyright infringement, have complaine
by tmcw 15y ago
> Opponents of the Stop Online Piracy Act, the bill that threatens to block large swathes of foreign websites for alleged copyright infringement, have complained that Congress has yet to hear their voice.
Foreign websites? This, combined with the fact that they're referred to once as 'haters' and twice as 'nerds', makes me think that Forbes is worthless at writing about anything except how rich blue-chip CEOs are.
- citadrianne 15y agoNot defending Forbes, but the bill was amended to only apply to sites outside US jurisdiction. "Lamar’s amendments also clarify that sites ending in .com, .org and .net are not covered by the bill. Only foreign sites fall under SOPA’s wrath." http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/sopa-watered-down-amendment/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/sopa-watered-down-a...
- nextparadigms 15y agoSo co.uk sites are a go. Please explain what gives US the right to do that? Especially without due process.
- skymt 15y agoWhy wouldn't they have the right? The DNS servers in question are physically in US territory. And due process is part of the bill: in the current version a domain takedown requires a court order. Weak protection to be sure, given the army of lawyers the MPAA has lined up and the tendency of some judges to rubber-stamp legitimate-seeming orders, but not strictly speaking a due-process issue.
- gergles 15y agoA domain takedown, sure, but not a payment-processing and ad-serving ban, which may as well be a takedown for 99+% of sites.
- marshray 15y agoWhy wouldn't they have the right? The DNS servers in question are physically in US territory. Well in the US we have this thing called "constitutional rights" which say, among other things, that Congress shall make no law "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press". Laws blocking results returned from a DNS server is just about the closest thing imaginable to "abridging a press" in the 21 century.
- sp332 15y agoIANA is only under (US-based) ICANN control because of the grudging agreement of the rest of the world. There have been arguments to remove control over the DNS root from US jurisdiction, but each time the US Government and ICANN have promised not to do something like SOPA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_zone_file#Root_server_supervision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_zone_file#Root_server_sup... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Corporation_for_Assigned_Names_and_Numbers#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Corporation_for_Assig... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Assigned_Numbers_Authority#Oversight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Assigned_Numbers_Auth...
- scrod 15y agoThat actually comes far closer the censorship measures currently being considered across the middle-east, not to mention China's Great Firewall.
- skymt 15y agoIt's not a coincidence that the amendment only exempts domains that the US can already censor via ICE. Hardly a concession at all, really. http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/1011/101129washington.htm http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/1011/101129washington.htm