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Old 01-23-2012, 06:11 PM
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CharlieC CharlieC is offline
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Looking at the SOPA/PIPA affair from outside the US it seems that you have a legislature which is, at least partially, under the control of corporate copyright owners. The provisions in the proposed law to attack overseas hosted websites to my eyes is just a legalisation of organised standover scams - as in "pay me $xxx or I'll issue a SOPA order to take down your website and the only way to object is to (expensively) take the case to a US court". I run a couple of websites which rely on public domain and out of copyright images and text which could easily be attacked by this legislation.

The whole issue of copyright in the US seems to be approaching a level of idiocy that makes most people just shake their heads. The recent US Supreme Court decisions to allow Congress to arbitrarily extend copyright length and to bring material in the public domain under copyright makes one think that Thomas Jefferson (remember him - one of the signers of the US Constitution) was right in opposing copyright in any form because he believed it would restrict trade and hinder the spread of knowledge.

To imagine that taking down a few file sharing websites is going to materially affect the volume of pirated material around the Internet probably says more about declining education standards and a failure of critical thinking in the US rather than being grounded in any reality. As endless examples have shown - technology beats law every time.

One can forsee a possible end point to all of this with a new "great firewall" to keep the US out of the Internet and let the rest of the world get on with business.

Regards,

Charlie
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