Please defeat SOPA

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ScottL
Posts: 1122
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2011 11:26 pm

Post by ScottL »

YouTube which by design, cannot ever distribute full motion pictures, and Megaupload whose primary purpose is to do so
GTIThruster, this is false. 110% false and I'm willing to link you to several pirated films on Youtube right now, cept I wouldn't want Talk-Polywell taken down for my linking. Oh, what's this? The exact issue major tech companies, most internet viewers, and anyone capable of reading are complaining about?

MSimon is 110% correct, this is an industry vs market issue. They had to adjust when VHS and cassettes came out. They generated made up numbers to try to outlaw these very devices before coming around. They simply need to adapt to the market A LA netflix, amazon streaming, web stream, etc.

Hell I linked you and quoted you all of what I've said and this just blows my mind that you ignore it. Hell I'll link you to the bill next if it gets you to actually read it. I'm going to have to bow out of this argument as I believe a willfully ignorant person will not change their tune sadly.

GIThruster
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Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 8:17 pm

Post by GIThruster »

http://www.youtube.com/t/howto_copyright

I think it's great you don't want to post copyright infringement links here at T-P. Please don't. Please also recognize that YouTube is completely aware of the crime involved and liability incurred by publishing on the web, links to copyrighted material.

SOPA is not written to cope with these supposed aberrations at places like YouTube. In general, it's not written to address social networking sites. It's written to address "file sharing" sites.

You do understand the difference? YouTube, Facebook, Twitter--will all survive if we can get to the point that copyright infringement as an industry, DIES.

File sharing sites will certainly not survive if SOPA or some refined version goes into US law.

Just out of curiosity, I'd like to know if anyone here knows what's with the YouTube lengths. IIRC, originally, YouTube limited the vids uploaded to 10 minutes. Now it's 15 unless you have a special dispensation:

http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/a ... swer=71673

Seems to me, youTube has gone to necessary and sufficient lengths to insure complete motion pictures can't be loaded into their system. I'd expect any federal judge to agree, so any feature films on YouTube really ought to be considered aberrations that youTube has already tried to safeguard against, based upon their policy of thwarting copyright infringement.

I'm not here doubting that such aberrations exist, but I'm noting they are certainly not the norm.

And really, YouTube vids have pretty shitty support. I can't imagine trying to watch a feature film through YouTube. This is why "file sharing" sites exist--because YouTube does not support IP theft.

BTW Scott, if you do indeed know there are feature films on YouTube, I certainly hope you've notified them, or are you an accessory to such theft?

As to the charge that modern times make the concept of copyright outdated--that's just absurd. It's akin to saying that because 3D lithography makes it possible to back-engineer and duplicate any physical item, that patents shouldn't exist. It's a hopelessly confused and naive position that even elementary examination shows to be obviously and stupidly wrong. It makes me wonder how many people here think before they type. Holding such a position makes one sound like the Chinese--moral reprobates.

Which raises the obvious question: how many people in this thread, virtually everyone here apart from myself; who are arguing that personal property should not be protected, count yourselves Communists? That's the position you're supporting.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

Ivy Matt
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Post by Ivy Matt »

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Who's the Communist who wrote that?
Temperature, density, confinement time: pick any two.

Luzr
Posts: 269
Joined: Sun Nov 22, 2009 8:23 pm

Post by Luzr »

GIThruster wrote: File sharing sites will certainly not survive if SOPA or some refined version goes into US law.
File-sharing sites maybe, piracy no.

The only thing SOPA could achieve w.r.t. piracy is that some form of distributed DNS (and later complete dark-net) is developed somewhat sooner than without SOPA.

Skipjack
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Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 2:29 pm

Post by Skipjack »

You do understand the difference? YouTube, Facebook, Twitter--will all survive if we can get to the point that copyright infringement as an industry, DIES.
That wont work, since the companies complaining about copyright infringement are the oney making the most money of it.

ScottL
Posts: 1122
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2011 11:26 pm

Post by ScottL »

GTIThruster,

Unfortunately, the SOPA and PIPA bills specify search engines such as Google. Now, Google itself in a common-sense way, doesn't willfully try to link to sites that violate said bills, but since it can't monitor every site that it has links too, it becomes colladeral damage. I don't think the backers of these bills intended for this interpretation, but the bills were so poorly worded, that these are very real concerns. In actuality many tech companies were pro these bills until the actual wording came out.

As for this stopping piracy, fat chance. This won't even make a dent longer than a month. Here's why:

1. P2P isn't a 1 to 1 interaction any longer, it's a many to many relationship.
2. Torrents are now "trackerless" and as the #1 leading mechanism for piracy, it's hard to track something that is trackerless.
3. Because of #2 above, many sites such as ThePirateBay have shutdown their tracking servers which moves them further from the act of pirating material.
4. With the advent of distributed DNS and distributed trackerless systems, you get an impressively anonymous interaction which allows for piracy.
5. Other advances in distributive platforms such as DHT, Chord, Pastry, Koorde, and Tapestry, you're looking at truly distributive networks, all used for legit purposes as well as less than legit.

These are advances that will allow it to continue regardless of what bill passes to shutdown whatever website. It's technically unfeasible to stop piracy by method of shutdown, but it's reasonable to make a dent in it by providing services.

Borrowing Betruger's previously posted stats:
Image

As you can see, piracy has dropped in the U.S. due to the availability of Netflix which currently is not available in Europe. Provide a quality service at a reasonable price and you'll dwindle down piracy.

Betruger
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Joined: Tue May 06, 2008 11:54 am

Post by Betruger »

That's from an (iirc) Arstechnica article, if anyone wants to look up the data trail. Link's embedded in the picture I'd originally posted. Right-click etc.

Topic contribution:
Cent #1) I agree with GIT (strictly on this specific point: ) that there is no better alternative to ownership right now. Reward for creation. Even after post-scarcity, what'll be the incentive for creation? Reward as one of those social fame currencies where you earn/lose virtual money/personal worth for every good/bad thing you contribute. Karma of sorts.
Or something. Post-scarcity's a while from now and by then there could be unexpected paradigms shifts. In the mean time I haven't seen an alternative to "free" supply/demand market. The optimal arrangement is to maximize reward IE minimize profit leaks.

Cent #2) One of the points made in a video I linked above: digital data is only going to get easier to store and transfer. Regardless how "evil" the recent effective shift towards unchecked diffusion of IP, the slipperiness of data is a more fundamental quality than IP and Copyright, etc. IOW that slipperiness is a more sovereign than current Copyright scheme. It's a losing fight to cling to it as is.

krenshala
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Location: Austin, TX, NorAm, Sol III

Post by krenshala »

ScottL wrote:4. With the advent of distributed DNS and distributed trackerless systems, you get an impressively anonymous interaction which allows for piracy.
All DNS is distributed. What you meant was non-"official" DNS networks, such as Public-Root.com.

All it takes to bypass the "We will make DNS servers not pass traffic to you" part of SOPA is to take your DNS traffic to another DNS network. Unless your DNS network blocks the site you continue to get name resolution, even if others don't.

GIThruster
Posts: 4686
Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 8:17 pm

Post by GIThruster »

Ivy Matt wrote:
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Who's the Communist who wrote that?
Red herring. You can't patent, copyright or trademark an idea.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

Betruger
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Joined: Tue May 06, 2008 11:54 am

Post by Betruger »

GIT you must come up with a better alternative to the current scheme of things. Data will only get more slippery. Righteousness of maximum copyright protection is a moot point. It is adapt or die for the industry dinosaurs. Unless we get slapped with some truly draconian digital big brother measures. The same thing is happening or will happen to fast fabbing.

GIThruster
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Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 8:17 pm

Post by GIThruster »

ScottL wrote: Unfortunately, the SOPA and PIPA bills specify search engines such as Google.
Scott, SOPA and PIPA specify search engines such as google, not at targets whom could be blocked, but as the blocking agents that would be under the authority to perform as DoJ commands. Big difference.

About DNS, Torrents and Tracking, there are already three posts here that demonstrate this is a more complex issue than one would guess at first. I will admit, that the utility of the bill, in any future form; certainly impacts upon whether this is a good law. If the blocking ation is not effective, there's no point in the bill. Question is, "can it be effective?" Seems opinions are divided here. I am certainly not up on the technical details so I'll be a fly on the wall.

I willl note that I don't think we can conclude the advent of Netflix in the US has cut back the P2P file sharing here as compared to Europe. To make that conclusion you'd need the raw numbers per capita of file sharing, installed bandwidth, before and after Netflix, etc.; not % of bandwidth. If however you could draw this conclusion and simply say Netflix intends to go to Europe, you would still have the second half of the multi billion dollar theft problem, plus all the theft from the rest of the world which is no doubt growing in leaps and bounds.

Back on the ability to block issue though, I've never used Torrent or any other file sharing service. I understand it's a program you put into your own 'puter and the files then share direct between two parties. I had thought though, that this was all mediated by a central location--else how would you know who to get your stollen goods from, and how would you connect with anyone who wants a stollen copy of your goods? There must be some sort of centralized site that can be blocked and then the end users software is essentially useless, no?
Last edited by GIThruster on Mon Jan 23, 2012 10:02 pm, edited 4 times in total.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

GIThruster
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Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 8:17 pm

Post by GIThruster »

Betruger wrote:GIT you must come up with a better alternative to the current scheme of things. Data will only get more slippery. Righteousness of maximum copyright protection is a moot point. It is adapt or die for the industry dinosaurs. Unless we get slapped with some truly draconian digital big brother measures. The same thing is happening or will happen to fast fabbing.
'I'm not sure. Data is not protected now. People collect and sell it all the time. I don't see a change in life or any of these industries that demands a change in IP law that diminishes IP protection. To be candid about it, without the protections we have, we'd lose more than we know.

Think about another IP area for a moment. It is again the Communists who do not respect Trademark. They create $0.50 knock off's of Nike's and flood the market around the world with them. If the US had more common sense as regards free trade, we would demand China crack down against such piracy. We don't, and we even at times buy the knock-offs, so our trade deficit and ability to compete with the Chinese continually diminishes.

Were it up to me, I'd set very high standards for the Chinese to meet and sever all trade with them until they do. Then I'd set dozens or hundreds of hounds on the trail of Chinese theft of IP and publicize all findings to the world starting through the UN.

IP protection is a huge issue and intrinsic to free market capitalism. It is however antithetical to Communism, which is why the Chinese smirk every time they steal from us.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

ScottL
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Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2011 11:26 pm

Post by ScottL »

krenshala wrote:
ScottL wrote:4. With the advent of distributed DNS and distributed trackerless systems, you get an impressively anonymous interaction which allows for piracy.
All DNS is distributed. What you meant was non-"official" DNS networks, such as Public-Root.com.

All it takes to bypass the "We will make DNS servers not pass traffic to you" part of SOPA is to take your DNS traffic to another DNS network. Unless your DNS network blocks the site you continue to get name resolution, even if others don't.
Incorrect Krenshala, keyword bolded.
The Domain Name System is a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resource participating in the Internet. The top of that hierarchy is the root domain. The root domain does not have a formal name and its label in the DNS hierarchy is an empty string. All fully qualified domain names (FQDNs) on the Internet can be regarded as ending with this empty string for the root domain, and therefore ending in a full stop character (the label delimiter), e.g., www.example.com.. This is generally implied rather than explicit, as modern DNS software does not actually require that the terminating dot be included when attempting to translate a domain name to an IP address.

The root domain contains all top-level domains of the Internet. As of June 2009, there are 20 generic top-level domains (gTLDs) and 248 country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) in the root domain.[1] In addition, the ARPA domain is used for technical name spaces in the management of Internet addressing and other resources. A TEST domain is used for testing internationalized domain names.
What you are suggesting is the equivalent of moving your site to another server name, not circumventing DNS as a whole.
Last edited by ScottL on Tue Jan 24, 2012 1:54 am, edited 2 times in total.

ScottL
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Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2011 11:26 pm

Post by ScottL »

GIThruster wrote:
ScottL wrote: Unfortunately, the SOPA and PIPA bills specify search engines such as Google.
Scott, SOPA and PIPA specify search engines such as google, not at targets whom could be blocked, but as the blocking agents that would be under the authority to perform as DoJ commands. Big difference.
If this is the correct interpretation, this could and would lead to abuses of power by the search engines.
GIThruster wrote: About DNS, Torrents and Tracking, there are already three posts here that demonstrate this is a more complex issue than one would guess at first. I will admit, that the utility of the bill, in any future form; certainly impacts upon whether this is a good law. If the blocking ation is not effective, there's no point in the bill. Question is, "can it be effective?" Seems opinions are divided here. I am certainly not up on the technical details so I'll be a fly on the wall.
The effectiveness is in question and as I've pointed out, the volumes of data makes these issues largely unfeasible from a tech standpoint.
GIThruster wrote: I willl note that I don't think we can conclude the advent of Netflix in the US has cut back the P2P file sharing here as compared to Europe. To make that conclusion you'd need the raw numbers per capita of file sharing, installed bandwidth, before and after Netflix, etc.; not % of bandwidth. If however you could draw this conclusion and simply say Netflix intends to go to Europe, you would still have the second half of the multi billion dollar theft problem, plus all the theft from the rest of the world which is no doubt growing in leaps and bounds.
While not conclusive, I think it's reasonable to say Netflix has had a large impact on piracy in the U.S. and shortly in Europe. (They're opening shop there this year)
GIThruster wrote: Back on the ability to block issue though, I've never used Torrent or any other file sharing service. I understand it's a program you put into your own 'puter and the files then share direct between two parties. I had thought though, that this was all mediated by a central location--else how would you know who to get your stollen goods from, and how would you connect with anyone who wants a stollen copy of your goods? There must be some sort of centralized site that can be blocked and then the end users software is essentially useless, no?
Good questions and correct until about 12-15 years ago. The first iterations of torrenting and many filesharing mechanisms still required central repositories of hash tables containing data on protected material. What changed however; that is no longer the case.

Think of the nodes (formerly centralized servers) as phonebooks. They only track who is available in what they call the swarm. They don't keep any data on what is available or who is talking to whom. This is much the same as a phonebook in that the phonebook can tell you who is listed, but can't tell you anything about who is currently conversing and what they're conversing about.

If you add in the purposed Distributed DNS mechanisms suggested, you're looking at a whole new layer of obscurity. Actually you're looking at the bill being null and void as it simply wouldn't be possible to block any site. The idea behind D-DNS is to make impossible the abuses of blocking sites like many .gov have been doing as of late.

Helius
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Location: Syracuse, New York

Post by Helius »

GIThruster wrote: Scott, SOPA and PIPA specify search engines such as google, not at targets whom could be blocked, but as the blocking agents that would be under the authority to perform as DoJ commands. Big difference.
The same rent seekers that managed to slap us SOPA and PIPA will therefore have enormous power over search engines. Why can't you see? It follows from your very premise, doesn't it?
If these powerful rent seekers still see opportunity, and have the power to levy fines against a free Internet's search engines, they will further skew the environment in their favor, clearly. Then, it'd be a sure bet that the politicians themselves will get on the bandwagon; No one feels the need to control dialog more so than a politician trying to hold on to power.

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