
How does SOPA threaten Stack Overflow? - sathyabhat
http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/114005/133693
======
16s
I was once the registered DMCA agent for a large organization. All of the
registered agents are listed on the US Copyright's Office website so that
rights holders can look-up the names and addresses to send notices when an IP
address within that organization is found to have content that is thought to
be infringing (P2P, music, movies, etc).

Fewer than 1 in 10 came to me (the person registered to receive the notices).
Subcontractors working on behalf of rights holders would send notices to any
email address that they could find. Some went to retired employees,
transferred employees, etc. It got so bad that we put a comment in ARIN that
specified the agent's contact address to try and stop it. Didn't work.

The DMCA requires a proper notice be sent to the registered agent and grants
the organization safe-harbor. It is very well defined. Here is the official
list of registered agents (the one and only list... but DMCA subcontractors
don't read it):

<http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/list/a_agents.html>

~~~
devicenull
Most of them are bots, and I doubt your note in ARIN was even being read. They
seem to love to look up the abuse contact for an email address, and send their
notices there. A large number of them make no attempt to find the registered
agent. Sadly, this works for them, since I would imagine most ISP's just
forward on the notice to the registered contact.

I wonder what would happen if you ignored a DMCA notice sent to the wrong
contact. Would it be invalid?

~~~
16s
The entire purpose of the portion of the law (DMCA) requiring valid notices be
sent to registered agents is so that notice is given to the correct person at
the organization so that swift action may be taken to investigate and
potentially remedy the alleged copyright violation. How else do you think the
organization would know to respond?

Rights holders and their subcontractors can't just email anyone in your domain
(the janitor's office) and expect action to be taken. The law (DMCA) is very
explicit about this. Notice must be given to the registered agent (PERIOD).
However, you should ask your legal counsel what they which to do with invalid
notices. Some will want the organization to respond anyway, others won't. It
depends on whether or not they wish to waste money spending time following-up
on invalid notices. I can tell you this though, a notice sent to
janitor@domain.com is not going to stand up in court unless janitor@domain.com
is indeed the registered agent.

The point is that if they can't be bothered to obey the DMCA and take the time
to look-up the proper published registered agent, why should new laws be
considered that let them get away with even worse laziness and accusations?

------
alttag
I participated in the recent EFF push for contacting elected representatives
regarding SOPA. I customized their pre-packaged letter greatly, adding both my
experience and qualifications and expounding on the distrust from the tech
industry to SOPA.

The response from my (Republican) Congressman was a form letter telling me I
was wrong, and regurgitating a the pro-SOPA talking points.

I've been contemplating a rather severe letter in response, but I haven't
gotten to it as I don't believe anything I can say to him will be effective.

~~~
freehunter
Mr Congressman, you have lost my vote forever. Furthermore, I will be
campaigning on behalf of $OPPONENT who still believes in freedom and our
greatest liberties. The fact that we have great men like $OPPONENT proves
American democracy still works.

~~~
redthrowaway
"Lost my vote forever" is, I'm sure, the kind of meaningless spiel they hear
everyday. It would likely have the same effect on a congressman that saying
"meat is murder" has on me - instant tune-out.

A response informing the congressman of _why_ he's wrong, citing loss of jobs
and liberty while threatening innovation, all in the name of an ever-growing
government keen to erode our rights in the service of special interests, would
likely hit enough republican talking points to at least merit a moment's
consideration. Which, at the end of the day, is probably the best you could
hope for.

~~~
freehunter
That's assuming that this comgressman believes his talking points. I'm of the
opinion that many talking points are for _other_ people to believe, but the
ones saying them do not believe in them. The subject matter just doesn't
affect them. Why would a politician who has been bought by Big Media care
about innovation, loss of jobs/liberty, or erosion of rights?

Hit them where it hurts. Threaten _their_ job. If you lose your job due to
their legislation, they'll just blame their opponent and tell you to stop
begging for handouts.

~~~
bmelton
Threatening their job is one thing -- it's when you say that they've lost your
vote _forever_ that it becomes too far, as they might feel that they have no
choice for recompense to gain your vote back.

In short, it's going too far, and even if it isn't, certainly seems like an
idle threat.

Saying something more like "I cannot vote for any candidate who supports this
policy or any like it" is perhaps a more effective statement to make.

~~~
freehunter
A fair point. I like your wording.

------
bradleyland
Did anyone ever think we'd see the day where we were using DMCA as an example
of the preferrable alternative?

~~~
rmc
Yes, it's strange isn't it? But since the big media copyright lads want to go
further than the DMCA, that would imply it was OK. And the USA has the DMCA
now, how has the last 10 years been for internet freedom? Not too bad, so it
probably wasn't that bad.

~~~
quanticle
How much freer would the Internet have been if the DMCA had not been passed?
Think of all the hours YouTube alone spends in policing itself and handling
copyright takedown notices and imagine those hours spent improving YouTube or
coming up with new video sharing services.

The current copyright regime is tolerable. Tolerable and good are worlds
apart.

~~~
nknight
YouTube would not exist today without the safe-harbor provisions of the DMCA.
It would have been sued out of existence years ago.

The DMCA did not create copyright law, it modified it, and pre-DMCA, YouTube
would have had no protections.

~~~
1010100101
And without a fair use exception to copyright, search engines like Google
could not show matching web site excerpts in their results.

Imagine search engine results that consisted only of URL's.

------
ghurlman
Thanksgiving was the cutesy (but needed) Upgrade Your Parents' Browser Day.

$winter_holiday_of_choice should include a Explain SOPA To Your Parents Lunch
or something - we need to get as many level-headed against SOPA as possible.

~~~
BoppreH
Funny how people use "$winter_holiday_of_choice" to avoid religious bias, but
end up ignoring the literal half of the planet where the holiday happens
during summer. Not complaining, just pointing out the futility of the
exercise.

It would have made sense if SOPA was an American problem, but as it stands it
threatens the internet for the whole world because of hosting locations and
origin of technology companies.

~~~
roc
> _"Not complaining, just pointing out the futility of the exercise."_

So you're saying we should go with $solstice_holiday_of_choice ?

Just because they didn't abstract sufficiently doesn't mean that abstraction
is _necessarily_ futile.

~~~
ghurlman
$december_reason_to_see_the_parents then. :P

~~~
roc
Ahh, but then you're still excluding any culture not using the Gregorian
calendar... ;)

------
ilaksh
The fact that its even possible for this law to be considered should give
people another hint at how dangerous and negligent our "representatives" are.
Other obvious hints are apparent also, such as the Patriot Act and about 100
other things I won't mention.

People just need to face reality. Its a corrupt system. The government is full
of fraudsters and even mass murderers. I know its hard to accept that, but
that's the truth.

The other problem is that its the very structure of our government and society
that creates these outcomes over and over again.

We need to do some agile engineering on society, starting from base premises.

~~~
brown9-2
What would you change about the representative form of government?

Any government consisting of representatives of the people will end up
proposing and debating laws that certain segments of the population sees as
"bad" at times.

It's a test of how well the government works if the people can voice their
opinion and have an effect on Congress's debate. If this happens and curtails
the law, then government is working.

~~~
CamperBob
_What would you change about the representative form of government?_

At this point, I'd probably ditch it as unworkable, and replace it with a more
meritocratic, less corruptible form.

 _It's a test of how well the government works if the people can voice their
opinion and have an effect on Congress's debate. If this happens and curtails
the law, then government is working._

No, it isn't. SOPA is an obvious exercise in moving the Overton Window. The
bill(s) that follow it -- including those that will eventually pass -- will
seem innocuous by comparison, regardless of their content.

------
jamesmoss
This is great but surely we need to be targeting a wider audience? SO is made
up of tech enthusiasts, I imagine a large percentage of them have heard of
SOPA and understand the issues. However they probably represent a tiny
fraction of the population.

Really we need the eBay's, AOL's and Craiglist's of this world to be running
campaigns like this, getting the message out to the more casual internet user.

~~~
jim-greer
Craigslist might actually do it... I doubt AOL or eBay ever would.

~~~
jim-greer
I tweeted to Craig Newmark and he answered positively - here's hoping:
<http://twitter.com/#!/craignewmark/status/141604875581657088>

------
smackfu
Odd they didn't do this on the day that every other site did. Or has it been
up since then?

~~~
spolsky
we're a little bit slow!

------
randymorris
The whole SOPA and PROTECT IP thing is a power play to leverage the Internet
community into a compromise which would allow the acceptance of a removal of
anonymous internet usage.

------
TomGullen
Very good, I already had a lot of respect for SO now I have a lot more!

------
maeon3
The global internet is quickly becoming a more powerful entity than all the
rulers in Congress. Congress will not stop trying to put a leash on it. The
more powerful the internet gets, the more you will see Congress trying
anything to establish control. Child pornography, digital rights, copyright,
Chinese hackers, national security, containing the terrorists, fud... Congress
will use military force if necessary if the global internet challenges its
supreme authority as global sovreign. Which one day it will.

~~~
bluekeybox
These kinds of comments may scare away large numbers of level-headed people
from standing up against SOPA. Do you honestly think that the emergence of a
global super-entity to serve as a niche to all kinds of low-lives is a good
thing? Because if you are, then a lot of people who are aware of your position
will be against whatever you stand, which of course means that you will lose
potentially valuable allies against SOPA.

Let's stand against SOPA, but let's not get too radical while doing it. The
Internet is not a savior of "the people" or a second coming of anything. No
one will save us but ourselves.

~~~
vectorpush
_Do you honestly think that the emergence of a global super-entity to serve as
a niche to all kinds of low-lives is a good thing?_

Tell us how you _really_ feel. Don't worry though, I'm confident that the
government will eventually find a way to expunge all the undesirable "low-
lives" from the net.

~~~
bluekeybox
Spreading paranoia about the government is a classic tactic of disaffected
"little" people, whether they are of the right or of the left.

There are plenty of things that are wrong with the government, but being
paranoid and bitter is not the way to fix them.

------
flyingyeti
I'm used to seeing a close button on these types of messages on Stack
Overflow. Kind of a nuisance to have it stuck there even after I've signed the
petition. Maybe if it were a different color, or I hadn't been trained to read
all of the yellow status messages on each SO page, it would be less annoying..

~~~
kvermeer
The system messages don't have a close button, they're usually used for
important site status updates such as "There will be a short network wide
outage starting on date at time for system maintenance".

The use of the tool for memorials to Steve Jobs or for political messages like
this is extremely rare.

It's a good thing that you read the status messages. Normally, they're
important.

~~~
gergles
The problem is that if they keep using them for politics or for other things
that aren't system messages, people will start ignoring them. "Ugh, that's
that bar that just shows dumb political messages."

~~~
phwd
Yes, system messages shouldn't be abused like this. They are supposed to be
the exception not norm. Even though the message gets to the front of your
attention on every single page, it would have been better if this was to be
placed as a community ad or a blog post.

Seeing that this is directed to the US users of Stack Overflow, I am not sure
what the rest of the world should be doing other than spreading the message.

To play devil's advocate, since SO has dumps of their data under CC, anyone
from another country can still get the content.

The community and the system of asking and answering questions are threatened,
the previous data will still be around.

