

Senate bill amounts to death penalty for Web sites - grellas
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20062398-281.html

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anonymous
This bill will be used to censor any form of information and data on the
internet. Whether it be legal or not. It will be used as a tool to threaten
and intimidate people, organizations and corportaions. It will be used by
government agencies against other organizations/corps and people. Think of
this as the "watchlist" currently used by the TSA. This bill is not harmless.
America is no longer the symbol of freedom and truth it once stood for.
Americans are not free any more.

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madmaze
This is certainly a way to go about taking websites off of the most commonly
used web. And cutting off ad funding is like strangling them. But this power
can very well be misused and used to quiet organizations. I dont believe the
government should have the power to dictate who is allowed to do business with
who. Also filtering DNS is only a precursor of what is to come with internet
censorship.

~~~
wccrawford
Could you imagine if corporations were required to blacklist all companies
that had done anything illegal? Everything would crumble. This is such a
ridiculous idea.

~~~
CWuestefeld
Good question, I never thought about it this way. Why does IP get such special
protections? Why not blacklist companies that cheat on their taxes, or violate
EPA regs?

~~~
Natsu
> Why does IP get such special protections?

A lot of expensive lobbyists.

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jim-greer
Here's EFF's take on the bill: [http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/05/protect-
ip-act-coica-re...](http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/05/protect-ip-act-coica-
redux)

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nostromo
I don't see how this is constitutional under the first amendment. Even if it
passes, it will probably be overturned after wasting vast amounts of taxpayer
and non-profit (ACLU, EFF) dollars.

~~~
hvs
I'm not sure how most of the DMCA is constitutional but there it is.

I agree with you, except for the part about "it will probably be overturned".
I'm much more pessimistic.

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brudgers
Based on what happened to the gambling sites recently, I expect it to be used
as a tool against adult content on the web because the politics are so easy.

~~~
madmaze
yes that is a very valid point. In general non conforming content is
endangered along with freedom of speech and press. See a couple of posts above

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gallipoli
Implement vague and capricious laws that criminalize large swaths of the
target population. Enforce them only against your enemies and use the threat
of prosecution to eliminate dissent.

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pg
Except this death penalty we can fix by creating new protocols.

~~~
pdenya
Good point as far as DNS access goes but new protocols won't get the sites
advertising money or search engine views.

~~~
marshray
That's a secondary issue in the grand scheme of free speech.

It's also the kind of thing that the market is good at solving. E.g., the ad
revenue business will simply leave the US like many others.

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sawyer
Is it time to build the darknet yet?

~~~
frewsxcv
Already exists. It's just waiting for population <http://www.i2p2.de/>

~~~
mangala
The site's not showing up...

~~~
jerfelix
so the darknet is working then?

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brudgers
[Warning: Snark] Will Google be forced to block youtube and remove
advertising?

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makeramen
so people will just have to bookmark IP addresses if it comes down to it? and
then someone will come up with an alternative to DNS that will help people
remember these IP addressees... and then we'll have that new updated
infrastructure for DNS we all wanted anyway?

it seems to be attacking everything but ISPs, so as long as the sites still
have internet access, people will find a way around it.

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pygy_
I'd love to hear grellas' input on this (thanks for submitting the link btw).

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cageface
In the longer run it seems likely to me that inexpensive subscription services
are inevitable, and this will wind up being largely moot.

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heyimfromreddit
This is scary.

I run a popular forum on which users sometimes post links to copyrighted
materials – despite the fact that it's explicitly against the rules. Because
of this I occasionally receive DCMA takedown notices regarding links that were
posted 3-5 months prior (even though the links are often expired by that
time). The last time it happened my hosting company was involved and
threatened to suspend my account in less than 48 hours if I did not comply
(harsh).

How easily could this bill result in an innocent site (such as mine) being
taken down? Obviously the bill describes "steps" that have to be taken up to
that point, but considering I was less than 48 hours away from my site being
suspended for a 3 month old expired link to a video, I don't have much faith
in the people entrusted to make these decisions.

Besides, isn't the DMCA enough?

~~~
suking
You were given 48 hours notice because that is what the DMCA dictates, not
because your webhost were being dicks... They legally have to give you 48 hrs.

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rorrr
Isn't it awesome that the "democracy" can be bought by bribing a small number
of politicians in charge. Whoever set that system up, didn't think it through.

~~~
tokenadult
This is a well known result of public choice theory.

<http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PublicChoice.html>

Well, maybe this is not well known enough, because school civics lessons
usually don't teach this. I'll refrain from speculating about what interest
groups might be influencing the school curriculum.

As Winston Churchill said, "Many forms of Government have been tried and will
be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is
perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form
of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to
time."

<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill>

Or as James Madison put it, "But what is government itself, but the greatest
of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be
necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal
controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to
be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must
first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place
oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the
primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the
necessity of auxiliary precautions."

<http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa51.htm>

If it really becomes impossible for people to operate legitimate, opinion-
promoting websites (as contrasted with copyright-infringing websites, which I
don't operate), then the way out of the problem is the same as it has always
been, people power.

<http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations98ce.html>

~~~
rorrr
Well, there are many truly democratic systems that nobody has tried yet. For
instance a system where any citizen can vote on any issue. To prevent the
tyranny of the majority, there can be rules set up. A system where people
decide where their taxes go, how much to spend on healthcare, science,
education, warfare.

~~~
tokenadult
Initiative and referendum

[http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Initiative_and_referen...](http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Initiative_and_referendum)

are old ideas of the Progressive movement of a century ago, and they are
blamed by some observers for the mess that California is now in.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2489519>

~~~
narrator
Illinois is in an even worse mess and they don't have initiatives.

~~~
lutorm
absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

