Author of SOPA is a copyright violator

[PeaceNikki]

US Congressman and poor-toupee-color-chooser Lamar Smith is the guy who authored the Stop Online Piracy Act. SOPA, as I'm sure you know, is the shady bill that will introduce way harsher penalties for companies and individuals caught violating copyright laws online (including making the unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime which you could actually go to jail for). If the bill passes, it will destroy the internet and, ultimately, turn the world into Mad Max (for more info, go here).

I decided to check that everything on Lamar's official campaign website was copyright-cleared and on the level. Lamar is using several stock images on his site, two of which I tracked back to the same photographic agency. I contacted the agency to make sure he was paying to use them, but was told that it's very difficult for them to actually check to see if someone has permission to use their images. (Great news, copyright violators!) However, seeing as they're both from the same agency and are unwatermarked, it seems fairly likely that he is the only person on the entire internet who is actually paying to use a stock image (and he'd be an idiot not to).

So I took a look back at an archived, pre-SOPA version of his site.

More here: http://www.vice.com/read/lamar-smith-sopa-copyright-whoops

[ddeclue]

1. Arrrrr!!!! n/t

[joshcryer]

2. That's so awesome. Nice find!

[WillyT]

3. K & R !!!

:kick:

[Electric Monk]

4. Awesome catch :) K&R

[Zorra]

5. Well, whaddaya know, a republican hypocrite.

Nikki, are you as totally shocked as I am?

[treestar]

6. This is just a personal attack, take the bill on its merits

I think we need more to prove that it would "destroy the internet." I see us all being manipulated, here. Has anyone quoted from the bill itself?

[PeaceNikki]

7. Didn't you read the EFF info on it? Wikimedia? Anything?

There's been a wealth of info in it and that's your takeaway?

weird

[treestar]

9. Curious, why is there no substantive argument whatsoever on DU?

Odd that there is no explanation here, like we are simply supposed to take it that we understand it.

http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/17/technology/sopa_explained/index.htm

Who supports SOPA, and who's against it? The controversial pair of bills, SOPA and PIPA, have sparked an all-out war between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. In general, media companies have united in favor of them, while tech's big names are throwing their might into opposing them.
SOPA's supporters -- which include CNNMoney parent company Time Warner (TWX, Fortune 500), plus groups such as the Motion Picture Association of America -- say that online piracy leads to U.S. job losses because it deprives content creators of income.
The bill's supporters dismiss accusations of censorship, saying that the legislation is meant to revamp a broken system that doesn't adequately prevent criminal behavior.
But SOPA's critics say the bill's backers don't understand the Internet's architecture, and therefore don't appreciate the implications of the legislation they're considering.

These are two opposing sides, both with interests. So far nothing that claims the government will censor anything. The Hollywood side naturally doesn't want its works pirated. The tech side naturally doesn't want enforcement of their rights to cost them more:

Sites like YouTube, which publishes millions of user-uploaded videos each week, are worried that they would be forced to more closely police that content to avoid running afoul of the new rules.
"YouTube would just go dark immediately," Google public policy director Bob Boorstin said at a conference last month. "It couldn't function."

No discussion or consideration allowed, I guess. Just go with the side you're told to go with. Lockstep, no questions asked.

[PeaceNikki]

11. Are you kidding me? Read the link you replied to

The US will effectively break the internet.

SOPA proposes the idea of using DNS-based filtering by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) as a means to remove U.S. support of a foreign infringing website.

While the bill doesn’t specifically define how the ISP should technically go about this, it does seem to indicate that an ISP should capture, redirect and modify DNS query / response pairs to ensure that a downstream user does not access the site. There’s a number of ways to “remove support” from a foreign infringing website at the DNS level, so we’ll take a look at the techniques that could be used at all the layers of the DNS and why some are more destructive than others.

I, and many others, have considered, researched and educated ourselves on the bill. And because you either don't get it or didn't, you accuse others of 'lockstep, no questions asked'?

Odd.

Very very odd.

[treestar]

14. Are you kidding me?

So it's me who is supposed to go in lockstep now? Because you "educated yourself" but haven't bothered to explain it. Yeah, the it will "break the internet." That kind of hyperbole brings out suspicion.

Consider me an ordinary ignorant voter you have not convinced. Why does Hollywood lose and the Tech side win here?

Of course the tech side can claim it will "break the internet" and that nobody else "understands the structure of the internet." Naturally most of us can't debate that point.

Or do the Hollywood creators of content have no rights here? Too bad? Why does this set of corporations lose to the other?

It's funny how something becomes the lockstep wisdom and you just cannot believe anyone would ask a question. How dare I?

[PeaceNikki]

16. You're extremely defensive while being shitty to others.

It's not your questioning I am shaking my head at, it's your accusations that those who agree are marching lockstep.

We're not. And the information on why this is a bad bill has been presented to you. If you don't understand that, that's your own shortcoming - so, remain skeptical/ignorant - whatever. But don't accuse others of marching lockstep when they are fully educated on the topic.

kthxbai

[Occulus]

23. "break the internet" is the literal, technical truth of the matter

See my post below.

The barely-suppressed panic- and it is barely-suppressed panic, as I've never ever seen from any technical field- over SOPA is completely and fully justified.

[Zorra]

22. "These are two opposing sides, both with interests."

Yep, for sure.

Side 1: The 1%

Side 2: The 99%

[PeaceNikki]

8. Also:

http://dyn.com/sopa-breaking-dns-parasite-stop-online-piracy/

[treestar]

10. I can see the tech industry has problems with it

That article is a little on the techie side for me to even understand, but I see it will cost money and create problems.

Ironically, it is government regulation - the tech side here is coming from the point of leave us alone and don't regulate us.

Which makes the entire question far more complex and interesting than it appears from the rah rah, just side with this set of corporations. Totally ironic on DU.

[PeaceNikki]

12. So, you don't get it and are accusing others of marching lockstep when they do?

weird.

Here's another good piece:

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2012/0118/Would-SOPA-and-PIPA-bills-break-Internet-Anti-piracy-measure-being-revised

The Internet, he explains, has a “phone book” – it's Domain Name System (or Service, called DNS) that automatically translates domain names into IP addresses. It's easy to remember Google.com – less easy to remember 74.125.225.18 – Google.com's Internet or IP address, where its website lives on the Internet.

What the legislation originally called for was giving the US attorney general the authority to order sites blocked – by rewriting the DNS. Technicians would have had to alter a straightforward system so it would in essence lie – telling an Internet user that an address such as Pirate Bay was not available when it really was. The result, Mr. Baker says, is that illegitimate workarounds – including using less reputable DNS systems in other countries – would pop up and put Internet users at great risk of unknowingly ending up on criminal scam websites.

In addition, critics said that the bill would put the US in the same category as Syria and China, whose authoritarian regimes impose a similar type of blocking – but for websites that contain information those governments don't like. Digital tools used by human rights activists and political dissidents around the world to evade government blacklists would also get hammered, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet rights advocacy group.

[treestar]

15. Hardly anyone here understands it

No one has looked into it.

LOL, when I understand something and others don't, I find that people don't want to believe me either. But I do have an open mind. But am not going to just say well, you understand it, that's all that is needed.

"in essence, lie?" "same category as Syria and China?" What does the bill really require? How much will it cost the tech companies?" Without hyperbole, please.

I think the issue here is really just a balance of the Hollywood side's rights to copyright in their content, versus enforcing their rights and how much that could cost the tech companies. Hyperbole like "shutting down the internet" is there to scare you.

[PeaceNikki]

17. lol

Have a lovely night.

[treestar]

18. Well now there's a substantive response!

[Occulus]

21. You've been pointed to several sources

each of which lay out their objections quite nicely. I understand all the terminology and how it's being used, I've been building PCs for over 15 years now, I was first online when NCSA Mosaic was "the thing"- please trust me when I say SOPA is a really, really bad law.

Let me put this into a context even Checkers could understand.

If SOPA had been in place during DU's dispute with Righthaven (or, more properly put, Righthaven's illegitimate dispute with DU), DU would have been:

* Gone for most members, "most" being those who don't know the DU IP address that resolves to democraticunderground.com

* Slow to respond, due to using an offshore nameserver

* Devoid of current content (see points #1 and #2)

This is because DU would have been put on "teh list" (sic) during the court case, blocked in the nameserver system your (and everyone else's) ISP uses to resolve addresses. Furthermore, those Google ads would have gone away completely, eliminating DU's revenue stream from that (under SOPA, IIRC, Google would have been forbidden from doing business with DU).

Given the above facts (as I understand SOPA), do you think DU would have still been around even though we won against Righthaven? I seriously doubt it. I think, had SOPA been in place as of even so little as a single year ago, there wouldn't be a DU anymore because of what Righthaven pulled.

I think malicious copyright claims against small-to-medium sized website operators is the purpose of SOPA. There are simply too many repressive aspects of this law (and other, similar laws) for it to be anything but that. Having said that, the phrase "never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence" might spring to mind. I would respond, "never excuse by incompetence that which can be better explained by greed". The supporters of this law are some of the same people who would scream infringement of Snow White when they're seeing an essay titled "Snow White".

To fully understand SOPA and why it is such a bad idea, you really need an understanding of the technical terms, what they mean, and how they're applied and used. The writers and backers of this bill are counting on it all being too technical for the layperson to grok. My strong advice to you and everyone else asking the questions you have is to try to understand those terms.

The internet as you know it really is hanging in the balance, here, and I'm being serious as a heart attack when I say it that way.

[PeaceNikki]

27. Thank you for explaining it (again) so well.

[Electric Monk]

24. Thank you for kicking this thread so much. nt

[REP]

26. No. YOU don't understand it.

It's okay to say that you don't understand it without assigning spurious motives to others.

[joshcryer]

19. It's a black list, think of it as reverse ignore, where you aren't allowed to see...

...what some sites put up.

And that reverse ignore is controlled by the government.

It has major freedom of speech implications, and can backfire very easily.

[PeaceNikki]

20. I love that Oatmeal graphic

And everything he does! :heart:

[LonePirate]

13. Hypocritical Republicans never fail to make me laugh.

[Bozita]

25. K&R for the sheer hypocricy