Justin Bieber is pissed off and you should be, too.
What's made Bieber so angry? A bill in Congress that could rip apart the open fabric of the internet and let corporations censor free speech.
The "Stop Online Piracy Act," or SOPA, gives private entities the power to blacklist websites at will. And it violates the due process rights of the thousands of users who could see their sites disappear from the Internet for doing something as innocent as posting a video of them singing along to their favorite song.
Learning from China?
These are the sort of heavy-handed Web control you'd expect to see in China, not in the United States.
SOPA (HR 3261) not only lets companies silence websites, it also allows for banks to freeze financial deposits to the accounts of website owners, potentially forcing falsely accused Internet enterprises out of business.
The bill was intended to discourage illegal copyright violations, but it addresses this problem by giving corporations way too much authority over the way the Internet works. It deputizes the private sector with the power to disconnect the URLs of website that they believe to be behaving improperly.
It gives private entities unprecedented power to rewrite the Internet's domain name system (DNS), which translates your website request into an IP address in order to connect you to the correct location. After receiving a complaint from a company like Viacom or Sony Music, the government would force Internet providers and search engines to redirect users' attempts to reach the website that they chose.
The idea that SOPA would protect against online piracy and other web crimes is a Hollywood pipe dream. As a technical solution, DNS re-directing is virtually useless in stopping sophisticated online piracy, but it will have a strong deterrent effect on casual producers and consumers of Internet content.
As such the consequences for free speech are grave. Imagine if your kid sister creates a "fansite" featuring videos of her singing Taylor Swift songs into a hair brush. Not only does the bill give Swift's record label the authority to "disappear" your sister's site from the Web, it also could land her in jail facing severe penalties and a long prison term.
Bieber: Throw Congress in Cuffs
In a radio interview last week Bieber called SOPA "ridiculous." He added that "people need to have the freedom... to sing songs," and that any member of Congress who supports this bill "needs to be locked up -- put away in cuffs."
At the very least Congress should wise up and kill this bill.
A Senate version of SOPA, called the Protect IP Act, passed committee approval in the spring following a massive push by brazen film and music industry lobbyists. These lobbyists are back, but now Silicon Valley companies and venture capitalists have joined forces with civil liberties groups, independent musicians and free speech advocates to stop the bill.
We can't let corporations become the Internet's judge, jury and executioner. If SOPA is allowed to stand, we could see the private sector's police powers expand to a point that undermines the fundamental openness of the Internet. And that's bad news for Justin Bieber, your kid sister, and the rest of us.
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Remember when they went after Napster? Napster gone isn't it? they nipped that whole thing in the bud, didn't they? Thats right, it didn't do anything because we are entering a new age, and the corps are fighting it instead of finding a way to make it work for them.
What this is really about, is that massive numbers of people are ditching their cable. Look who's behind this, it's Viacom, NBC, Time Warner, and News Corp (FOX).
What people everywhere are realizing is that with the new digital media and the internet age, it's ridiculous what these companies charge for not even producing a physical product.
CD's used to be 10-15 bucks, a physically purchased CD, now, to download it it's still 10-15bucks....wtf? they're not even producing something physical, and to get it physically *you* have to purchase CD's. And the artist doesn't even make much if any money on that, they make it by touring.
Why don't these companies change how they operate instead? Make people WANT to buy their product.
Essentially cyber-lockers operate and profit as a pyramid scheme. They recruit "affiliates" and offer them cash-rewards for uploading content (not vetted for ownership btw).
Online forums act as the middle-men in this equation, offering an organized an easy to use catalogue of download links. The forums earn revenue by teaming up with the cyber-locker sites and sending new "affiliates" there way. Like a virus, the links are copied and spread to forum sites.
How does the cyber-locker earns its profits?They earn money through advertising (you know the ubiquitous AdSense type pop-up ads populate every site) and by enticing users to become "subscribers" for "high-speed" downloads. For $10 bucks a month one can download an entire feature film in 3 minutes as opposed to an hour.
Reasonable measures can be taken the protect consumers and content creators. If nothing is done, the quality and diversity of content available will suffer and jobs will be lost in increasing numbers.
Those that support this front operation include the Motion Picture Association of America, NBC Universal, Time Warner, Viacom and News Corp. Cara Duckworth who posted a similar comment in the thread is the spokesperson for RIAA, another group leading the lobbying for this Internet blacklist.
SOPA fails every standard of Internet freedom. And the idea that it would protect against online piracy and other web crimes is a Hollywood pipe dream. Even the technical solution proposed – using DNS blocking -- is so hackable that the more sophisticated piracy operations will render it virtually useless via workarounds.
The actual people who will get snared by this are those who innocently use material under fair use protections. If you don't believe me, look at the long history of RIAA and MPAA overreach when it comes to shutting down websites and falsely accusing people of copyright violations
Only by carefully crafting specific action against truly illegal websites can Congress effectively police against crimes like piracy. This heavy-handed regulation puts at risk the open Internet that is so important to millions of people. SOPA must be scrapped.
Everyone is aware of how much money the tech industry has made on the backs of content it didn't create.
And I'm sure no one noticed how you ignored the points raised by the person above you, which completely debunk your desperate fear-mongering.
Those that support this front operation include the Motion Picture Association of America, NBC Universal, Time Warner, Viacom and News Corp. Cara Duckworth who posted a similar comment in the thread is the spokesperson for RIAA, another group leading the lobbying for this Internet blacklist.
This is not a legal issue, it is a revolution issue.
Meanwhile, the Kardashian story elsewhere on this site has more than 1,100 comments.