

SOPA sponsors break their own laws - kapitalx
http://torrentfreak.com/sopa-sponsors-break-their-own-law-111117/

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nl
Ars debunked this a couple of days ago:

 _But we're also a news site, so we contacted James Grimmelmann, a copyright
scholar at New York Law School, (and judging from his tweets, not a SOPA
supporter) to get his expert opinion.

He was skeptical. The new anti-streaming provisions would apply only to
willful infringement. "A good-faith belief that one's actions are legal is
sufficient to defeat a finding of willfulness," he told Ars. SOPA even
codifies this principle by excluding from liability those who have "a good
faith reasonable basis" to believe their conduct is not infringing.

"Even if the Representatives are infringing (and I think they have a good fair
use defense, and may well have licenses we don't know about), they're unlikely
to be willful infringers," he told Ars.

He also pointed out Smith and his colleagues would only be liable if the value
of the streaming performances exceeds $1,000, and it's not clear how valuable
a few short clips of local news broadcasts are._

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/on-
wednesday...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/on-wednesday-
reddit-which-like.ars)

~~~
DanBC
A member of the legislature should be held to higher standards than the
general public; don't just obey the letter of the law but obey the spirit of
the law. This isn't irrelevancies about a person's past or private life, it is
directly related to what they're pushing onto other people.

> _He also pointed out Smith and his colleagues would only be liable if the
> value of the streaming performances exceeds $1,000, and it's not clear how
> valuable a few short clips of local news broadcasts are._

Is the value for the owners, or for the use that the "infringer" gets from
them?

~~~
billpatrianakos
Yeah, I can see your point but this too feels like its really reaching for
something that's just not there. They should be held to a higher standard but
our strong opinions about SOPA seem to be blocking our ability to look at this
realistically.

The example in the post can be compared to any one of us embedding a video on
a personal site or blog. It's really obvious the guy isn't willfully
infringing. We can be technical and argue semantics all day but in the end
there really is a big difference between a representative supporting
legislation we disagree with possibly technically violating that same
legislation with a seemingly innocent video embed and a website that provides
a search feature allowing you to access hundreds of thousands of copyrighted
files. Big difference.

There is definitely a point to be made about the alleged hypocrisy but in the
end nit-picking little things like this and arguing semantics comes off as
petty to people and could really do more harm to the opponents of SOPA than
good.

~~~
DanBC
> _there really is a big difference between a representative supporting
> legislation we disagree with possibly technically violating that same
> legislation with a seemingly innocent video embed and a website that
> provides a search feature allowing you to access hundreds of thousands of
> copyrighted files. Big difference._

Existing law has been misused, as mentioned in other places in the thread.

There's nothing to say that this law will not be similarly misused.

See, for example, the fact that Google has digital-finger-printing to prevent
copyright material being used, even if it's legitimately being used under Fair
Use.

~~~
billpatrianakos
Yeah, I agree the law's been misused and SOPA will almost certainly be misused
to. My point is that this argument over the representative is kind of petty.
This shouldn't be about who's doing what and who's got some double standard.
Instead the discussion should just focus on the bill on its own and framing
the discussion like has been done in the post makes our side (yeah, _our_
side, for some reason people think I'm for SOPA) look petty or like we've run
out of good arguments.

~~~
DanBC
No.

Demonstrating that some people are willing to use weird law to enforce
copyright protection, and that some of those people do not understand existing
copyright law themselves, is a useful exercise.

The point is to use their language to show how daft the law could be. That's
maybe why it feels petty to you, because it is a stupid thing, but it's a
stupid thing that they could well end up criminalizing. The politicians talk
of "thieves" and "criminals" and "crooks". Using their language it is wrong
for someone to have stolen content on their homepage.

------
DanBC
I hope some American (preferably in the relevant geographical area for those
politicians) is writing short polite letters explaining what those politicians
have done, and explaining the consequences under SOPA.

I know that I'm hopelessly naïve for thinking that constituents writing
letters to politicians achieves anything. Maybe some satirist should do a
sketch on tv?

~~~
beagle3
I'm not a satirist, and this is not TV, but:

congressman: Good day, sheeple. With prompting by the content industry, we are
considering beheading everyone, because it has been shown that everyone
sometimes plays back a tune in their head without paying royalties. We've
tried to get you to admit and pay every time you do that, but that didn't
work, and we have to do something -- it seems only beheading would solve the
problem.

(people frantically writing letters)

congressman: Seems, from everyone's responses, we've gone too far. We've asked
our content industry overlords, and they will apparently be ok if we only cut
everyone's ears to start with, so that no infringing content can get into
people's heads. But if that doesn't work well for music, we're not just going
to take your eyes out to avoid infringing on videos -- we'll have to do the
full beheading thing then.

(people sighing with relief) Well, that's a reasonable measure.

\--

At least, that's my impression of the effectiveness of writing these letters.
Congress just keeps introducing horrible bills, and the people have to win
every time (which they hardly ever do), because every one of these bills
includes the cumulative effect of the previously failed-to-pass bills.

EDIT: prompted->prompting, out->eyes

------
teja1990
The same thing happened in Germany ,the legislator who spear headed the Piracy
Act's website itself had copyrighted images... I wish these people know what
they are doing.

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rick888
I don't agree with this law, but there seems to be this underlying sentiment
on HN and other communities that copyright holders don't have rights and that
there should be a free-for-all with their content.

~~~
nitrogen
No, the underlying sentiment is that copyright holders (especially the big
conglomerates) have gone _significantly_ too far with the rights granted to
them by the people.

~~~
rick888
If I release a proprietary software app and users start sharing copies of it
for free online, I should have some legal recourse.

I'm really tired of hearing the same old arguments about how somehow this is
helping me as a business by giving me "free advertising" and that "it doesn't
actually affect sales negatively". It's not and it does. My own stats over the
course of 10 years shows me that this is true. Big companies like Microsoft
and Adobe can handle it because they have billion dollar budgets. I can't.

The problem isn't necessarily that one copy that's taken. It's the fact that
when piracy isn't stopped, people start to first think that it's okay to get
your stuff for free..and then they start to expect it, potentially putting you
out of business.

Open source falls into a similar category. Except, it's your future job that's
getting cheapened. Why would someone hire a software engineer to build an app
when they can take a free one and hire much cheaper software mechanics? I've
seen it happen already. In 10 years when the current generation (which is used
to getting software free and is even more tech savvy than the previous
generation) starts taking over current businesses, tech job salaries will be
on the decline. I predict a developer union at some point.

I'm not going to take this and just let my business get ruined. I've converted
all of my software products to services. Customers essentially are paying per-
month for something they would have gotten for a flat-fee.

I don't mind, because it means I can more easily determine my profits for the
year and I will make more money in the long-run.

~~~
prodigal_erik
> Except, it's your future job that's getting cheapened.

That is the economically proper result, it just looks bad when comapred to how
developers and our employers have been ripping off software users for so long.
Every time two or more of us write essentially the same code when
implementations already existed but weren't freed, the industry has tacitly
coöperated to inflate demand for software developers and pass on the costs of
the wasted effort. The free software trend is not in my narrow interest, but I
still think it is what should happen.

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Tycho
The thing is, I'm so jaded by the piracy supporters' rhetoric at this point,
mainly their failure to admit that hundred of millions of people use
filesharing/streaming technology to blatantly rip off content-producers, that
I haven't even looked into what this latest bill is. They've cried wolf too
many times.

~~~
twir
While I see your point, I don't think it's fair to chalk up the opposition to
merely piracy supporters. There are a large number of people who fear the
broader ramifications, and a lot of organizations, who are against SOPA and
not necessarily pirates.

~~~
Tycho
Reading the description of the bill below, it does seem awful. But like I
said, up to this point I hadn't even read it, and the reason for that is
there's so much noise coming from the pro-torrenting lobby, I just tune out
the whole debate these days.

(i should note that i don't live in the USA, otherwise I probably would have
read about the bill itself by now)

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thenextcorner
Classic!

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drivebyacct2
Uh, rebuking "Fair Use" as a loop hole is damaging, to the criticism of SOPA,
is it not? Specifically the notion that SOPA is unaware of the difference
between Fair Use and infringement?

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billpatrianakos
Oh god... Reaching. Grasping for straws. They probably ar clueless but this
story is still a sorry excuse for a top story on HN. Did anyone except the OP
even read it before upvoting?

