The Internet Needs Laws

[AtheistConservative]

Frankly, I haven't heard ANYBODY in the anti-SOPA movement bring up any alternatives to the issue. And, really, until there is a viable alternative path, legislation is the go-to, quick-and-dirty 'solution' to the problem that will be presented.

Here are a couple of the problems.

1st. This isn't a solution. The people who essentially only pirate instead of buying, will easily get around this. Likewise truly dedicated pirating sites will find ways around this as well. Meanwhile the people who do get punished will be those that get in the way of big corporations.

2. There already exists fairly workable alternatives. Whether it's ads or a reasonably priced pay subscription, most people are willing legally get their entertainment. What most people have a problem with, is when the only legal way to get something is to pay absurd prices for it. Steam is another excellent example of how to do things right. An old game is not worth $20, but it might be worth $2.

 

[Eggbert]

By posting that link, under SOPA it would be possible to prosecute the owners of the escapist, and give them a considerable amount of jailtime.

(1) They didn't post the link.
(2) It's a short cover of a song that should fall under fair use.
(3) The US government could take down the escapist permanently, just for one link.

If you're still sticking to your guns, 0/10.

You are now my hero for coming up with the most succinct expression of why SOPA/PIPA are stupid.

Also, I'd prefer an anarchic internet, thank you very much.

 

[The_Echo]

Today, sites across the Internet are going on strike to protest SOPA and PIPA. Their aim is certainly noble, and it may stop these particular bills, but it's a delaying action at best; there is too much money being lost by people and companies for them not to keep fighting for some form of substantial copyright protection.

Too much money being lost? Is Justin Bieber going to have to sell one of his eight cars to support himself? Is Activision no longer capable of pumping out a new Call of Duty, which has a multi-million budget, every single year? Will James Patterson have to move out of his mansion in Palm Beach for something more humble? Will James Cameron's next film have to work around a budget akin to Paranormal Activity's?

No. The rich are still rich, and that's not going to change just because people who wouldn't pay aren't paying. They're hardly lost sales when people aren't looking to buy.

OT: The Internet already has laws. They seem to be working just fine to me.

 

[balanovich]

The internet has laws. The laws are also enforced.

I dont see what the hell you are on about.

The thing is, the laws as they are do not work, as is evidenced by the rampant and easy piracy of media. This leads to companies trying to protect their property by creating increasingly draconian measures to protect them. I'm not an expert in copyright law or other laws that govern media and free speech, so I want to know if anyone out there knows a better way to structure the laws of the internet rather than the "our way or no way" version proposed in SOPA and PIPA.

Laws entail a court system. These legislations will give the power to the companies themselves, rather than the judicial system, to decide if something is allowed or not.


Companies are in it for the profit, not for justice, they will abuse this power to make more money and in doing so censor everything.

So do you think we should make a deciding body, perhaps an organ of the UN charged with finding and maintaining a balance with copyright and free speech?

What right does the the UN have over countries who aren't part of it ? As much as I like the idea of having a general overseer of the net, though trusting it to be fair and uncorrupted is another thing, such an entity doesn't exist. (And remember how the effective the UN was at stopping US from invading Iraq.)

So we're left with countries building cybernetic walls around themselves. But build them to high and you'll create separate entities in the internet. The internet is like water. You can't stop it unless you stop it completely, but then you become a desert. Personally, I prefer a foggy marsh filled with venomous snakes, nasty parasite and creepy bugs.

I agree that the laws haven't been successful in stopping piracy, but it's impossible. The war on crime is never over. Not even in dictatorial regimes like China or worst, North Korea.

Piracy has existed for... at least 30 years. And the industries complaining now have nonetheless managed to grow bigger and bigger. So it's not and overwhelming plague that will kill gaming and Hollywood and the music industry.

I find it despicable that so much effort is put into that branch of crime fighting when not as much is put into fighting that branch of crime instead of more important ones...like drugs or prostitution or human trafficking.
I wonder why .... lets look at the victims.... Multimillion corporations versus drug addicts, whores and people who can't vote. So Sad.

 

[Ashannon Blackthorn]

Though, I do find it funny, when laws are enacted or used or even attempted (however badly) ot punish people who do profit from copyright infringement (aka that UK student the US wants extradited) there's always an uproar.

Taking the UK kid. Did his directly infringe? Nope. Not one iota. Is it legal to do what he did where he is? Yeppers.

But, do we all know that he was fucking around and circumventing laws? Yes, yes we do. I think someone said he made upwards of 200000 dollars from ads on his site. 200 grand...

So this wasn't small time peanuts.

As much as I detest the MPAA and their ilk, when you have people like that UL kid doing his stuff and no one stops it or is able to stop it...

well boys and girls, that's how SOPA' are made...

Nice combo of self entitlement, NIMBY-ism and rage against the "man"

(for the record, IMO the kid should not be extradited, the UK should have a look at if and how he's abusing the laws and fix that if need be)

 

[Kyr Knightbane]

I smell another pirating trap thread. Admins, can we lock this topic indefinitely due to possible flaming/legal contradictions?

 

[Smooth Operator]

Oh hey it's propaganda kid again, I see they are still paying you enough to keep this up.

I would repeat myself for the fifth time in your threads so how about you just start linking to those and we can all be better off.

 

[Not-here-anymore]

Laws are needed, sure. But laws that take into account the fact that the net works differently to the traditional media distribution forms that the entertainment industry is used to.

Also, I remain unconvinced that any single country should be able to pass legislation that will globally affect the internet. The web is a global community, and should be legislated as such. Maybe that means some kind of UN department of the internet, I don't know. But one country should not be able to enact poorly worded policy that will censor huge and global chunks of the internet under the assumption that everything with a .com or .org in it is American.

 

[Setch Dreskar]

From reading a little bit of this, and trying to stay on a neutral footing since this can get opinionated very fast it seems what you want are laws to stop piracy?

Well the problem is Piracy is not illegal, its a term that has been thrown around alot but it has no judicial merit, its why countries like the UK don't put someone to trial for piracy itself and why Torrent sites are a grey area. What Piracy is, is a breach of copyright which is not laybreaking but copyright infringement. Does it make it any better? Well no, but it isn't illegal, it is just morally wrong. However Copyright holders can choose to target those that threaten or damage their copyright, unfortunatly with Pirate Bays 'King Kong' defense this has largerly proved fruitless.

SOPA's intent is to allow the Copyright holder to target the company hosting the illegal content since they cannot target the users, or hold the company/orginization/person hosting it responsible for its users actions.

Unfortunatly what the bill gives to Copyright holders is so vague and broad it can be easily abused and yet still fall safely in the bill's supposed balances. We have all seen what Warner Music Group has done with Youtube, hell they almost got away with declaring a song they didn't own copyright infringement because it had a message they didn't like in it. (Actually I am glad Megaupload got them back for that)SOPA would give them much more power to stop this by using some other user as the scapegoat to punish the entire site.

The same can be said of PIPA though PIPA's only goal was to get passed quietly while everyone was upset with SOPA, but thankfully people caught on to it as well. But then again that's my opinion, I would personally hope that these bills and anything in the future like them would never pass. We have one true internet law and that one gets overused so much its absured, see the Warner Music Group vs Megaupload for a very good example of this. Though yes it was overturned the point was WMG thought they could get away with it in the first place.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

The internet already has laws in place, adding more vague draconian laws is not the answer.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Saying 'The internet' needs laws, would imply that there is a central point of control somehow.

Laws don't cover places, they cover people. If I steal something, it's not my country that punishes me, it's the people that somehow declared themselves (through one means or another) to own that country that punish me.

They define the laws, they define who judges, and who enforces those laws.

All well and good so far.

But for this to work on the internet, you'd have to define who 'owns' the internet. Which is very difficult, because the internet isn't structured in a way that allows it to be fenced off into easily recognisable regions.

You can't really keep people 'out of your territory', because everything on the internet is somehow outside of any obvious physical boundaries.

And since we don't really have an obvious group that 'owns' things not specifically claimed by any country, it is incredibly difficult to declare who has jurisdiction over anything online, and for what reason.

I'm typing this on the Escapist. I'm a citizen of two countries, and living in one of them. The Escapist is a corporation registered in the United States. The .com domain is apparently 'us property', by some bizarre ruling... Presumably the servers he escapist is on are physically located in the US.

However, since I'm physically in the UK, the message is actually routed through at least the UK and US. But, based on IP traces I've tested in the past, and the way the internet functions, it could quite likely also pass through France, Germany, the netherlands, and several other EU countries first...

So... For the simple task of me typing this message on this forum...

There are at least 2 legal jurisdictions that might apply... And it could easily be argued that there could be any of the following:

Legal Jurisdiction of Top Level domain; (US in this case)
Legal Jurisdiction of company/person owning website; (Also US here)
Legal Jurisdiction based on physical location of the web server; (US)
Legal Jurisdiction of physical location of Person using website; (UK)
Legal Jurisdiction based on citizenship of person using website; (UK & Australia)
Legal Jurisdiction of any of the countries the network traffic may be passing through; (US & UK at least. But could easily involve 6-7 or more intermediate countries)

That's anything from 6 to more than a dozen legal jurisdictions which might all have a claim on what I'm doing here, and may all have differing laws.

And that's without even considering the hypothetical case that the internet had it's own independent laws. (Even if it did, it wouldn't necessarily mean these other laws would no longer apply...)

Compare that to the case of breaking a law within the physical borders of a country... How many jurisdictions are there? Well, depending on the country's legal system, maybe 3 or 4. But these have well-established priorities based on physical location.
In practice it's really just whatever the local laws are. Which is easy to establish.

Jurisdiction on the internet is a nightmare to decide upon...

And that's the problem.

It's all well and good to say 'there should be laws on the internet', but without establishing ownership, the immediate question becomes 'Whose laws?'.

 

[dkeck]

As someone who actually works in the Film Industry (In Australia btw)
I do a few jobs generally as an on set camera technician and also more importantly to look after digital footage make sure that it is safe backed up and secure (we go though TBs a day in space). First of all like the majority of the people in the film industry I don't make much. Seconded of all lets say if footage leaked from my server I can't go shut-down the data centre for letting that happen I have to increase my security as that's my responsibly.
I'm very strong agaisnt piracy as it does end up effecting people down the bottom of the film Industry food chain such as myself, however something like that is not going to do anything at all to the pirating of films and the internet is INTERNATIONAL so therefore Individual countries and companies should not be able to put their own rules into place just like that. It's like saying that its ok for the US Navy to go and sit on the edge of international water and blow away every ship they suspect of piracy.

 

[TheVioletBandit]

Good people don't need laws and bad people don't follow them, so what good are they? Personally, I don't think we need governments and corporations policing every aspect of our lives. There are far to many stupid victimless laws already, we don't need more we need less.

 

[TorqueConverter]

There are laws for this stuff, it's simply companies that make millions on even failure movies/games want to make more money because they feel that any piracy number is a reasonable basis for saying we lost profit.

So if [game] was pirated 4.2 million times, they lost 4.2 million sales. How does that make sense? There's many things that could have factored into that, like people trying the game and there's no demo, or game isn't available where they are, or they had to download it a second or third time because the first download didn't work, etc etc.

Yes piracy sucks but saying we lost x amount because x amount of downloads happened is a shitty reason to give them the right to police the internet.

This bill would smash any little guy trying to make just a living while these corporate heads thumb through a magazine for their next yacht. This bill violates EVERY right we have in this country and anyone ANYONE supporting this is a brainwashed goon backing billion dollar corporations over the little guys: artists, musicians, writers, video creators, creative minds, small businesses, blogs.

I'm really not sorry these guys have piracy problems because they already make billions of dollars and they're actively attacking OUR rights because of the few that are doing bad. (I in no way condone piracy I'm merely making a point that I don't care what their problem is when their solution is to come out with a bill that attacks everyone's rights. )

There's a better way and they should be (strangled) ashamed for lobbying this anti-rights bullshit against us.

I believe rampant piracy to be a result of a service problem. If 4.2 million illegal digital downloads of a game were to occur, I would certainly believe that the game publishers are not providing a proper service. Rampant piracy occurs when the pirates simply offer a better service than the legal venues. Look at the digital music industry. The illegal downloading of pirated MP3s lead to the development of legal digital downloads of music, games and movies with services like steam and netflix.

I agree, this bill is bullshit and will do nothing but hurt the little guys. I don't think the corporations liked finding themselves in a position in which they had to provide digital downloads for media. I think they liked their old system. Ingenuity is the one and only thing I can give as praise to pirates.

 

[JesterRaiin]

I ask you, Escapists: Should the Internet have laws and some form of control? How should people and companies be allowed to protect their intellectual property?

You don't invent one kind of shoes for whole nation, you don't invent one set of rules for The Internet. Simple as that.

Also : Free flow of information. FTW.

 

[Prince Regent]

We don't need laws!
We already have rules. And I know that we at least have 34 of those.

 

[Jazoni89]

Complete and utter lawlessness is entirely preferable to even the slightest increment of government control.

What, and have paedophiles share naked pictures of children all over Facebook for example.

If that is what you are implying, no thanks...

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

It already has a number of laws. Law 34 is rigorously enforced. As is 35 and 36.

Laws 1 and 2 have become lax over the years though.