My Congressman co-sponsored SOPA and issued the press release below without explanation. I am trying to formulate a letter to him and I'm trying to become better informed. What is DNS blocking??
"For Immediate Release
Contact: Kathryn Rexrode 202.225.5431
GOODLATTE APPLAUDS REMOVAL OF DNS BLOCKING
Congressman Bob Goodlatte (VA-R), Chairman of the Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet Subcommittee released this statement following the announcement that the DNS blocking provision would be stripped from the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA):
“I applaud Chairman Smith for announcing he is taking out the DNS blocking from SOPA. Based on extensive conversations I have had with him and with tech leaders on this issue, it has become clear that more discussion with tech industry leaders and engineers about how best to approach this issue needs to take place."
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That link is not a violation. If I were to copy the entire article and post it here, that would probably be a copyright violation - but not a SOPA violation, since the Open Roads Forum is a US website.
DNS is the mechanism that translates a host name (e.g. rv.net) to an IP address (e.g. 216.112.198.39). Computers use IP addresses to make connections, but humans use host names. If a DNS entry is blocked by a legal challenge as is written in SOPA currently, that translation won't take place. In affect, it's creating a blacklist of places that can't be accessed via DNS. It would also make DNS circumvention tools illegal. There are many reasons why this is bad. The US has historically been a very strong proponent of dissident communities in places like the former Soviet Union, China, Iran, Iraq, etc. where free speech is actively curtailed. Ironically, the US State Department has supported software called Tor (which allows people behind state-sponsored firewalls like SOPA proposes to communicate with the rest of the world) for this exact purpose which will presumably now be illegal under SOPA. I guess the MPAA will shut down the State Department and arrest Hillary Clinton.
That link is not a violation. If I were to copy the entire article and post it here, that would probably be a copyright violation - but not a SOPA violation, since the Open Roads Forum is a US website.
Tom
I agree that straight copyrights are probably not going to run afoul of SOPA. But in instances of "suspected piracy" it's very applicable because sites with links to "foreign" websites deemed to be in violation are subject to SOPA requirements. The content in question may be "foreign based", but any site linking to it must remove those links. This is DMCA on steroids and will rewrite DMCA and alter the definition of fair use.
I put foreign in quotes because the bill's definition of foreign and domestic doesn't have much basis in reality and highlights the challenge of applying one country's laws to a borderless concept like the Internet.
The problem is that the pirates will use another mechanism to resolve sites to IPs and bypass DNS altogether. This was done with BitTorrent when The Pirate Bay went from hosting torrent files to using magnet links.
All these bills will do is cause problems with legit site owners. The people that these laws were supposed to stop won't be affected.
And if I link to a movie that is still in theaters that has been pirated? Or how about a Baseball game, suppose that I have the last year’s World Series as a video file, it is hosted offshore, who is going to be blocked, first they are going after the link, on this forum. I will only lose my ability to read Rv.Net, there are other forums to read. And yet this forum did nothing illegal. I can give you my newspaper to read, but I cannot copy an article to give to you, I can buy as many papers as I want to give out. The end result is the same x amount of people read said article it is just that the IP holder gets more money with more papers sold. And that is the real root of the issue, money for nothing.
these "bills" would give the 'media industry and the government the right to block access or bring legal action against any website the deemed/suspected of violation
no court hearings no due process as we now know it,
the writing is to vague, they could block access to a usa website like craigslist or others just because of some filed complaint
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