White House Will Not Support SOPA

[sky otter]

i can't find the original post..sorry
but it sure makes me wonder if the whole thing was just fodder to make the pres look good in an election year....you decide...

maybe they just wanted to see who was paying attention or who would yell the loudest..you just never know anymore


White House Will Not Support SOPA, PIPA

Saturday marked a major victory for opponents of proposed anti-piracy legislation Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), which would target foreign-based websites violating U.S. copyrights.

House of Representatives bill SOPA and its Senate counterpart PIPA are designed to punish websites that make available, for example, free movies and music without the permission of the U.S. rights holders. Opponents of the bills, however, worry that the proposed laws would grant the Department of Justice too much regulatory power. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has called the measures "draconian." Other Internet giants who oppose the bill include Facebook, eBay, Mozilla, Twitter, and Huffington Post parent company AOL.

The White House on Saturday officially responded to two online petitions, "Stop the E-PARASITE Act" and "Veto the SOPA bill and any other future bills that threaten to diminish the free flow of information," urging the President to reject SOPA and PIPA.

The statement was drawn up by Victoria Espinel, Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator at Office of Management and Budget, Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Chief Technology Officer, and Howard Schmidt, Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator for National Security Staff. They made clear that the White House will not support legislation that disrupts the open standards of the Internet.

"While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet," the statement read in part.

The White House statement went on to say, however, that the Obama Administration believes "online piracy is a real problem that harms the American economy" and that 2012 should see the passage of narrower legislation that targets the source of foreign copyright infringement.

The letter also highlighted the following four points:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/14/white-house-sopa-pipa_n_1206347.html

   

[zorgon]

maybe they just wanted to see who was paying attention or who would yell the loudest..you just never know anymore

No  WE know

We don't just have to worry about SOPA. The internet is up against a large scale assault with the NDAA now in effect, the Internet Killswitch, not to mention the plan going forward with Internet v2.0.

You are correct... SOPA is failing due to protest so the FBI is going back to old methods and anti piracy laws that have been on the books for decades... But now they are ENFORCING THEM

7 People Charged in Connection to Megaupload Site

The federal authorities on Thursday announced that they had charged seven people connected to the Web site Megaupload, including its founder, with running an international criminal enterprise centered on copyright infringement on the Internet.

According to a grand jury indictment, Megaupload — one of the most popular "locker" services on the Internet, which lets users anonymously transfer large files — generated $175 million in income for its operators through subscription fees and advertising, while causing $500 million in damages to copyright holders.

New York Times

Megaupload means MegaVideo and MegaPorn will also be down.

Four of the seven people, including the site's founder Kim Dotcom, born Kim Schmitz, have been arrested in New Zealand, the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Thursday; the three others remain at large. The seven — who a grand jury indictment calls part of a "Mega Conspiracy" — have been charged with five counts of copyright infringement and conspiracy, the authorities said.

The charges, which the government agencies said represented "among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States," come at a charged time, a day after online protests against a pair of antipiracy bills being considered by Congress — the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, in the House, and the Protect I.P. Act, or PIPA, in the Senate.

The indictment was handed down by a grand jury in Virginia two weeks ago, but was unsealed on Thursday, and stems from a federal investigation that began two years ago.

New York Times

Its going to be a rough ride...

[zorgon]

This is why ATS is so strict about posts of News media and why we too had to make strict rules.

Problem is despite warnings when a site gets big like ATS it is impossible to catch it all and if you make any money at all from ads or donations etc, then you have to be real careful

I will likely need to shut down my website for a while and go through every page one by one to make sure there are no issues.

I had one a few days ago.. someone got mad at a photo I used... without credit (though I had the link to it clearly below the image)  When I checked why I missed that, turns out his original posting of the image had no name on it, copyright notice, nothing to ID it.  So I simply removed the image and left the link...

But it is easy to happen. We can post a photo from some site only to find out later that the site you got it from was not the original. Takes a lot of work to determine original source and status in some cases

The INTENT of these laws is to stop real piracy, which IS causing prices to skyrocket for consumers, but the effect will be to trickle down to all.

There are programs out there that seek out plagiarism, and lawyers out there seeking randomly to make money. It only takes ONE

My wife is taking an online business course. Her submissions need to pass a plagiarism test before they accept it. 

Copyright law was never to protect the artist... it was created to protect the publishers of books in England

I find it amusing (but sad) that people are saying copying videos, music etc is 'freedom of speech'

But here is what will happen soon... other sites like Scribd for example, will see the arrests and shut down, not wanting to face the charges. Scribd has a disclaimer telling uploaders NOT to upload stuff that is not free of copyright issues, but there are hundreds of works on scribd that clearly show they are copyrighted and NOT to be distributed

Now it is not hard to find out...

NASA, Military and Government sites are public domain and only ask courtesy to credit the source, but allow full copying and even sales (as in NASA photos)

Many alternative news sources clearly state that you may copy the ENTIRE article as long as its intact and clearly linked

News Media like the BBS have a 'Print document' option and that provides all links and source and I know BBC doesn't mind, but others do.

I usually write for permission to repost and very rarely get a no... and when I get a no, they usually say a section quote and link is acceptable

It is easy to write for permission... for every photo that is copyrighted there are 10 others out there taken by people who will let you use it ( in most cases ) Others allow a small web version with link to original. I usually avoid the ones where the photographer plasters a logo over the image... I know there is no point in asking for those

I am in the progress of going through my file database to make sure they are public domain... or have a link to the original source file instead... but I have over 6000 to go through. Most are public domain, but I need to make sure I don't miss one

Currently the rule of etiquette is if someone finds something they need to ask you to remove it immediately. But that will change. And if you know its copyrighted and post it anyway, you don't really have a leg to stand on.

Users are screaming that these sites are under attack and want to be able to keep downloading 'free' stuff, but they just want the goods, and don't care that the guy distributing the goods will go to jail.