PROTECT IP Act and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)

It was a good day, probably not the last one either. I hated going a day without wikipedia and many other sites but I managed.

I watched some old movies today to fill the time gap, including one of my favorites:

Yes, I saw something about that last night.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16642369

Thing is a lot of people use Megaupload (and a lot of the other filesharing sites) for legitimate reasons. I know I've uploaded stuff to them before when they've been large files that I didn't want to host myself but had to send to someone else and was too big for email.

Also, I've seen MegaUpload remove files that are reported as copyright violations - as do the likes of Filesonic, FileServe and probably others that I currently can't remember the names of. I've occasionally done a search on behalf of an author friend to see if any of her books have been uploaded to these sites and when they are found and reported, these sites are fast to remove the files and put a "removed because of copyright violation" notice.

I knew about the work around since my phone still worked right off but I didn't use it for a day to honor the black out. Plus, it was nice to take a break from the wiki tree (I'm known to spend hours in those).

So I saw the megaupload thing, did anyone hear about the attack on the DoJ's, and RIAA's websites from "Anon"? Seems they were both under heavy DDOS attacks today. I guess both sides are throwing their initial punches. Grab some popcorn this will be interesting to watch.

You reminded me of this: http://xkcd.com/949/

They all follow the rules of the DMCA, that is, content is taken down at the request of the copyright holder. But you'd be surprised (okay maybe not) at the amount of illegal stuff megaupload hosted. There are entire forums dedicated to listing links to megaupload for video games, movies, applications, everything.

The thing is, I don't think you can hold megaupload accountable. If they're following the DMCA what wrong have they done? Anyone can upload anything to a webserver, and if those files are encrypted or hidden inside of an .rar archive with a password there is no way of knowing what data is really contained within them. Its not like they can magically know that fileid 1013934032083 is data that someone holds a copyright for. While I don't agree with all parts of the DMCA I think the bit about giving a host time to remove offending content is/was a good thing. Now it seems like it doesn't even matter.

So as an owner of a forum now I have to worry about every piece of content my users upload. Someone using Micky Mouse as an avatar can get me sued as quickly as someone uploading pirated movies. In either case I'm screwed since I'm not even given a grace period to review and remove the content, I'm just supposed to know somehow that random data on my server is illegal.

What kills me is they aren't going to stop it, they never will. They'll round up a few guys and try to put the scare into us, they'll shut down a few servers as well. But more will pop up, or we'll encrypt our data, or we will do any number of things to stay ahead of the curve. Just look at child porn, they started a major crack down on that and all they did was drive it over to Tor and freenet and all those other "black networks".

With music we have napster as a shining example; It relied on a central server and when that was taken offline we went to the peer-to-peer Kazaa/Limewire/E-Donkey type networks and when those were cracked down on things moved to bittorrent. When they started cracking down on torrents clients evolved to support full data encryption and a method was worked out so a central server (the tracker) was no longer required to connected and share. We're not a lone in this either, Japan has gone through its own evolution with p2p technology mostly driven by the desire to trade anime/manga and hentai. The latest networks run under full encryption and actually exclude IP addresses from outside of Japan (they don't take kindly to anyone else on the network, mainly because out internet is like dial-up compared to theirs).

Don't even get me started on alt.bin and IRC....those things have been around longer than I have and lemme check....yep....still loads of illegal stuff to be found!

I guess my point is this, we have to make a decision here. Do we want the internet/web to remain a place where you're free to say whatever you want? Or do we want to go to a system where you can only put something up after its been "approved" and deemed "legal" for everyone?

Personally, I like to do my own filtering. As someone who's had his work stolen/pirated in the past I can understand wanting to put a stop to all the file sharing. But I'd give away every dollar I ever made off that work to keep the internet free and open. When my work is pirated I chalk it up to free advertising, I figure I wasn't going to get a sale off that guy anyway and who knows maybe some day he'll pay up down the line. I know for a fact that all these teenaged Photoshop experts probably pirated that software, and the same goes for my buddies in their 20s that legally own it now. No 12 year old can afford Photoshop and Adobe knows it, but they also know that an 12 year old pirate today is a possible sale in 5-10 years because once you start working in the real world you must own a legit copy of the application.

Linky (do I dare even post that snippet? )

Well here is the thing, you have to keep a constant eye on them. They will sneak anything into a bill if they can, for all you know the next time they come up to vote on something called "The stop terrorism by stamping out child porn and keeping drugs off our streets" bill it could have everything that's included in these current bills hidden on page 1023 in fine print. Hopefully the media will be hyped up on something else by then so everyone will be looking the other way, at least, that's what they're betting on.

They just keep chipping away at our rights until eventually we won't have any left.

Just because you're not in the USA don't think our laws won't have an impact on the way you use the internet. We live in a world now where countries have agreements with each other over issues like copyrights. Just look at the megaupload guys, they don't even live in the states and they're likely to be punished under our laws.

Thank you for taking the time to explain all of that you are obviously more informed on the matter than I am. I thought it only went as far as linking to the content, you're right, it's a lot worse than most people think.

So where does this leave us small timers? Do we protest a long with the big name sites or are we going to just wait and see? I mean, there isn't much you can do outside of complaining. Like I said before its like we're just begin chipped away at, for the last 10 years its all been a downward slide.

I can't afford an attorney to advise me on matters like this, so I reckon I'll just be always at risk of having my server seized and my door busted in? Great, another thing to keep me up at night.....

Lets assume they manage to pass this, where does that leave us? Am I safe if I close shop or am I liable for the so called crimes I committed for the last 10 years? Do you think more folks will turn to the encrypted "dark networks" like freenet? After this step will they take another and set-up a "great firewall" like China?

I've always compared the internet to the wild west, we're the pioneers in a way. There isn't much law out there on the internet, and you can find all sorts of nastiness if you look hard enough. But the upside is every now and again someone says something important and it spreads like wildfire to every corner of the planet. Can we continue on in this way or will we allow it to be censored and regulated and filtered so we don't hurt ourselves (because we don't know any better ).

I'm not sure what scares me more.. SOPA.. or the video from Anonymous It's like something you'd see in a movie.