
The senators who say linking to certain sites should be a felony - d0ne
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110513/11210514265/senators-who-say-merely-linking-to-certain-sites-should-be-felony.shtml
======
Jeema3000
Let's take this speculative legislation down the slippery slope, shall we?
Next stop: full-speed collision with the First Amendment!...

Putting the URL in question on a website... but it's not actually a hyperlink,
just plain text? Felony or not?

Printing the URL on a t-shirt and selling them? Felony or not?

Passing out pamphlets that list the URL? Felony or not?

Mentioning the URL in a news publication? Felony or not?

Telling your friend the URL? Felony or not?

~~~
edanm
Let's substitute one criminal activity for another. Let's say instead of
linking to a site that allows you to download copyrighted material, we were
talking about linking to a site that allowed you to order a hit on your
wife/husband. Or a site that allowed you to order custom-made child
pornography. (1)

I'm pretty sure that, if that were the site in question, many of your
rhetorical questions won't seem quite as ridiculous. In fact, I'm pretty sure
even the last question you pose, telling a friend the URL, can in some cases
be construed as illegal, and certainly immoral. Again, not all cases, but some
cases.

And if we forget the slippery slope fallacy and focus on just the linking, how
would you feel if a news website actually linked to a site that allows people
to download child pornography? Or allows people to order a hit on someone?

1 - I'm _not_ saying copyright infringement is anywhere near the level of
wrong I'm talking about. It's just that using something that is clearly
considered wrong to all people, is a great way to clear up, in your own mind,
whether what you're objecting to is the text of the bill, or the fact that
it's talking about copyright infringement. I'm guessing most people here would
be all for a law that banned passing out the URL of a site that solicited
murders, etc. But when talking about copyright infringement, your preconceived
notion that copyright infringement is OK gets in the way.

EDIT: Minor fixes.

~~~
jrockway
_Let's say instead of linking to a site that allows you to download
copyrighted material, we were talking about linking to a site that allowed you
to order a hit on your wife/husband._

These sites don't need any special laws about linking: once law enforcement
gets wind of them, they will be gone instantly. All an investigator needs to
do is order a hit and then arrest the dude that shows up to execute it. That's
the end of that business.

Copyright infringement is hard to enforce because it's peer-to-peer and can
happen outside the US' jurisdiction (see TPB). This makes it hard to build a
case against someone: uploading 10MB of a movie to someone on the swarm is
hardly massive copyright infringement, and if they're outside of the US, you
can't do anything anyway. So making linking illegal is their last hope: maybe
people won't find the tracker sites and P2P will die.

Not bloodly likely. The links will just move out of the US too.

~~~
edanm
"These sites don't need any special laws about linking: once law enforcement
gets wind of them, they will be gone instantly."

But you said it yourself in the next sentence - what if the sites are
operating outside the United States, in a country over which the US has no
control at all?

Let's say I can order a hit from a site in Country X, and the US can't stop
the site. Should I be allowed to spread a link to that site around? In fact,
if I were to tell someone the link and he went and ordered a hit, I'm pretty
sure I could be jailed as an accomplice.

IANAL by any means - am I wrong? Would love a lawyer to weigh in here.

~~~
jrockway
Yes, you should be able to spread the link around. Hits happening outside of
the US' jurisdiction is not the US' problem.

~~~
edanm
To clarify, I'm talking about hits happening in the US, but ordered from a
website outside the US, over which the US has no jurisdiction, and therefore
can't take down.

(Look at my other comment in this thread for another example).

~~~
jrockway
You should still be able to link to the site. Censorship is censorship.

If the site is outside of the US but is designed for people in the US to use,
it's going to need to accept payment from people in the US. The way you make
this site go away is by stopping the flow of money, not by telling people not
to tell other people about it. The first way works. The second way does not.

To bring this back to P2P, the reason they can't go after the money is there
is no money. That's what annoys the governments so much; people are trading
movies for free. This makes it not-very-illegal and very hard to stop.

------
kgermino
Once again, these are not the senators who think linking to a website should
be a felony, these are the senators who have no idea what they are doing and
are supporting bills handed to them by the copyright lobby.

Not that that's any better.

~~~
marshray
Don't let them fool you, these people are not dumb. They know exactly what
they're doing.

~~~
pavel_lishin
In that case, I don't understand their motivation.

~~~
smokeyj
They obey the name on the check, and yours isn't on it.
<http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?order=A>

------
lurchpop
Senator's campaign contributions from entertainment lobby

* Diane Feinsten: $1,278,337

* Patrick Leahy: $897,666

* Al Franken: $802,573

* Charles E. Schumer $490,400

* Lindsey Graham: $224,161

* Sheldon Whitehouse $201,100

* Orrin Hatch: $143,826

* Chuck Grassley $116,650

* Amy Klobuchar: $171,514

* Chris Coons: $86,900

EDIT: numbers from OpenSecrets.org

~~~
mikeknoop
What amount do senators not on this list receive, for comparison?

------
weaksauce
Nothing bad can come from that bill...

We should make it mandatory that the legislators actually read the proposals
and have pop quizes on them. If you cannot pass the quiz then you do not get
to vote on it.

~~~
bane
That's okay, they'll just ignore the rules as needed anyway

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IJDQCYMM-A>

------
pnathan
Personally - and this may be optimistic of me - I look forward to the day when
the Internet generation gets into Congress. I think - hope? - that maybe
perhaps we will see slightly less ridiculous legislation.

Odds are that our generation will create just as asinine rules, but _about
something different_.

~~~
kijinbear
Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a tech-savvy "Internet generation".
Most of those kids who know how to use Facebook inside and out would be just
as clueless as today's senators are, if they had to deal with anything
remotely technical.

~~~
pnathan
That's very true. But at least they won't be in the situation of having their
wife look stuff up for them[1]. I don't think it's a far stretch to expect
that today's facebook-ites have an intuitive idea of what a 'link' is.

[1]
[http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/08/13/john_mccain_tec...](http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/08/13/john_mccain_technology/)

------
DanielBMarkham
Interesting observation: for everybody who wishes that people could come
together from all political sides to pass laws, your wish has been answered.
This list includes characters from every part of the political spectrum.

~~~
OstiaAntica
As the saying goes, we have an evil party and a stupid party. Every once in
awhile, they work together and produce public policy that is both evil and
stupid.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I like this because it accurately reflects the customers -- voters -- views,
yet it is also completely non-partisan. My party is always the stupid one, the
other party is always the evil one.

In this case, several of the folks are prominent representatives of their
party. Guys we might see on TV explaining to us why policy X is good and
policy Y is bad.

Paying for laws is done this way -- buying off the prominent members -- so
that the status quo is maintained, i.e., I still keep thinking my guys are
acting stupid and the other ones evil and you keep thinking the other way. If
it had only been lesser members sponsoring, it wouldn't work that way.

------
Vivtek
I must admit, I expected better from Al Franken.

~~~
AJ007
Make no mistake, anyone who achieves an elected (or unelected for that matter)
position has power as their number one motivation.

If you view any high ranking government official in any idealistic light, you
have been tricked. These guys are marketers of the first order, and what they
market is idealism.

~~~
Vivtek
_what they market is idealism_

I am so going to steal that phrase every chance I get.

------
pjkundert
Since presenting a link to such a site is illegal, wouldn't it be difficult
for the government agency to communicate the information within it's own
agency?

If they decide that certain means of communicating the information do _not_
form a criminal act, then what would prevent the arbitrary individual from
forming the same means, and giving a link to that, instead?

Or, are law makers and their proxies inherently immune from their own laws?

------
SeoxyS
Alternate headline: Senators do not understand the first amendment, and should
be fired.

------
bane
aaaaand this is why we have a Supreme Court that decides the constitutionality
of laws our ridiculous congress passes.

~~~
CWuestefeld
Except that (a) they've found a way of passing laws recently that remove their
subject matter from the purview of the courts; and (b) the courts have removed
themselves from some areas, as with their refusal to judge the merit of blight
declarations in takings "for public use".

~~~
evgen
Article III, section 2 of the U.S. Constitution is not exactly "recent" and if
you want explicit examplea of Congress removing appellate jurisdiction for a
specific law you need look no further than Ex parte McCardle (1868).

------
hugh3
Interesting. Is there real-world precedent for this kind of thing?

For instance, if I know a real-world address where you can go in order to
participate in some criminal activity X, is it illegal for me to tell you that
address? For any value of X?

~~~
waterlesscloud
It can be.

I had jury duty for a case that involved an undercover cop asking a man on the
street where he could buy crack, the man asked for money, the cop gave him
some, and then the man pointed to another man down the street. The original
man was on trial for conspiracy to distribute drugs, even though he wasn't
actively in league with the actual dealer.

~~~
sdkmvx
Except copyright infringement is a civil matter. Drug usage is (unfortunately)
a criminal offense. I'm not aware of any precedent that would make it illegal
(in a criminal sense) for one to do something which might cause a third party
to sue.

Then again, IANAL.

~~~
tzs
> Except copyright infringement is a civil matter.

Copyright infringement is a felony if:

1\. it is for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain by
the reproduction or distribution during any 180-day period of 1 or more copies
of 1 or more copyrighted works which have a total retail value of more than
$1000; or

2\. it is the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial
distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to
members of the public, if the person making it available knew or should have
known the work was intended for commercial distribution.

~~~
Natsu
Adding to that, I think that the NET ("No Electronic Theft") Act made it so
that trading in copyright infringing works could be considered 'commercial' in
some circumstances, though I don't remember the details offhand. This would go
hand in hand with point #1.

------
NHQ
The full title of the bill is: "Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic
Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011"

Why do they want to prevent threats to theft of intellectual property?

~~~
chc
It should be parsed as "(Preventing ((Real Online Threats to Economic
Creativity) and (Theft of Intellectual Property))) Act". The threats are to
econonic creativity; the theft is a separate object.

------
gubatron
Wonder how google would stay in business if this passed. How to stop the
engine from knowing that it's indexing an illegal website?

~~~
tzs
The law has no trouble distinguishing between something that happens as a side
effect and something that is intended.

~~~
bediger
I don't believe you in the slightest. The people who wrote the bill in
question either didn't think of what happens to Google, or they want it to
happen to Google, or they consider it something like "you can't make an
omelette without breaking eggs".

------
eurohacker
be thankful that uncle Rockefeller has allowed you yo use internet so far, he
said internet should have never existed

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct9xzXUQLuY>

~~~
torkins
If you'd bother to watch the video you linked, you might notice he doesn't
actually say that... in fact he says that is a stupid thing to say.

