“A piece of legislation backed by the MPAA was introduced in the House of Representatives this week and threatens to upend the way we use the Internet,” Nicholas Deleon reports for The Daily. “The E-Parasites Act, a contrived acronym for Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation, seeks to give the attorney general broad power to create a blacklist of websites that ‘induce’ copyright infringement. Service providers would then be legally compelled to block these websites.”
“Let’s say you’re using an online digital locker service like Dropbox to store your Microsoft Word files. Someone else on the site, however, is using it to house illegally downloaded MP3s. The record label finds out, approaches a judge and says, ‘“Dropbox is inducing its users to commit copyright infringement. We request you block it, or we’ll go to MasterCard — which handles Dropbox’s money matters — or the site’s advertisers and legally demand that they stop facilitating the site’s inducement of copyright infringement,'” Deleon reports. “The law can either shutter a website until it removes copyright-violating material or financially ruin it. In either scenario, your Word files are gone.”
“Should the E-Parasites bill become law, virtually every company on the Internet will be expected to constantly patrol their users for copyright infringement. It also effectively neutralizes the “safe harbor” part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, that protects companies from being prosecuted after copyright material has been uploaded to their websites,” Deleon reports. “‘This bill is a disaster,’ said Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Corynne McSherry. ‘It’s a jobs-killer that would hurt legitimate businesses. In this type of economic environment, we should be trying to create jobs, not destroy them.'”
Deleon reports, “In effect, the law would create a separate, ‘America-approved’ Internet, just like the kind found in China with its Great Firewall. The move would “send signals to oppressive regimes around the world that censoring the Internet is OK so long as it’s done in the name of intellectual property,” said McSherry.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) introduced the Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation Act (H.R. 3261).
H.R. 3261 is the House version of Senator Patrick Leahy’s (D-VT) PROTECT-IP Act.
H.R. 3261 also includes a House version of Senator Amy Klobuchar’s (D-MN) bill to make unauthorized web streaming of copyrighted content a felony with a possible penalty of up to 5 years in prison. The House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the bill on November 16.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Edward Weber” for the heads up.]
Here is the simple divide in US politics.
In the left corner are those who are kind and caring toward their fellow human beings. These are the REAL Christian acting people. That doesn’t mean they’re practical or immune for sucking up to our Corporate Oligarchy who have all the BIG BUCK$.
In the right corner are humans with various degrees of psychopathy and obsessions with game playing. ‘Winning’ at whatever is a 1º priority. Reality passes them by while they perpetrated as much HATE and DESTRUCTION, as fits their general personality, against their fellow human beings. These are the dumdums who invented, perpetrate and benefit from the form of mass murder called ‘WAR’. Thus their obsession with the game we call ‘The War Machine’.
Kind and caring (often demandingly so) versus hate and game obsessed (often demandingly so).
As Alice said to the buffoon royalty and aristocracy in ‘Alice In Wonderland’: “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!”
Personally: I’d rather be much too kind and caring to people than turn into a HATEFUL psychopathic destroyer. It always surprises me when some people choose to be the opposite. But I chatter to the air…
Let me revise that for you.
In the left corner are humans with various degrees of psychopathy and obsessions with game playing.
In the right corner are humans with various degrees of psychopathy and obsessions with game playing.
In the middle are the citizens of the United States getting beaten to a bloody pulp from both corners.
“But I chatter to the air…”
It’s safer that way. At least the air won’t remind you of what a dumbass you are: But I will.
A few years ago I purchased a newly released album by Delerium. I rushed home, excited to rip it onto my mp3 player, and to my horror I could not! I was faced with an error message and wanted that the cd was recorded with copy protection that prohibited me from making a copy. My blood boiled! I inspected the entire package carefully, and did not find a warning anywhere on the packaging. The cd was released by Sony ( of course) . I spent much too long trying to find WHO at SOny I could release my anger on, and after several hours I gave up and DOWNLOADED an illegal copy off a torrent.
What I had learned was that Sony violated my rights. I am entitled to (one) copy of any media I own, for personal use. Encrypting purchased cds violates not just my rights but law itself, only to suit Sony’s needs.
Lesson learned? Any movie or music album distributed by Sony has since then been downloaded by torrent. I refuse to buy anything labeled by them. They suck ass!
I am fair. I will purchase music and movies if I find the price to be fair market value. Over charged cd, forget it i will steal it instead and try to stop me! Not to mention, anyone who is an audiophile knows that most cps distributed are not duplicated with proper sound quality. Columbia House was ( probably still is) notorious for shipping music re-recorded at low bit rates. These money-hungry monsters deserve financial ruin, and I will always support music theft, rather then let them parasite over MY money.
That said, apple’s music store is different. The music is fairly priced, and the quality is great.
I recently had to use iCloud to redownload my purchased music.. I was amazed how much I have purchased from iTunes!
It goes to show… play fairly and you will be profitable.
Its typical of the great ol’ use to try to control people, but how come your great nation allows monsters like Sony to violate rights and laws? Oh yes, justice is blind ( to the innocent).
Proud to be Canadian. God Bless Canada.
Just a bit off topic. A general and overly simple statement . . .
The Democratic and Republican parties are two sides of the same coin. It is well known that the same big money interests corrupt both parties. Our whole political theater is good cop, bad cop.
“campaign contributions” “money equals free speech (thanks supreme court)” “lobbying” are all eupehmisms (cough-lies-cough) for flat out full on corruption. The Government of the USA is corrupt.
This is asinine. Perhaps in the case of national security threats, I could see this justified. But, to address potential copyright issues by comprehensive sanctioned denial of service shouldn’t be even be a consideration
So here’s a great chance for the American people to prove to the world that they aren’t merely clueless drones… if they can tear themselves away from their stupid sitcoms long enough to even notice that this terrible, terrible piece of legislation is breathing down their red necks, that is.
If you really want “Change” do not vote for any incumbent of any party… clean out the whole lot of them….