We are winning...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/16/te....html?_r=1&hpw

... for now. Let's not be naïve and believe that postponing internet censorship is an everlasting victory for us. This is a world-wide problem, just as is American politics messing with other countries issues (just research on the recent "Ley Sinde" in Spain). I wish I could help, but I don't see myself able to do so in any way right now.

Indeed it is a world wide problem. See this article:
http://endoftheamericandream.com/arc...site-shut-down

For the pro-"intellectual property" crowd, giving-up on SOPA/PIPA was a strategic pause. Once the Presidential election has been decided, SOPA/PIPA plus ACTA will be be resurrected. It really won't matter who wins. Both Romney and Obama favor strong protections of so-called "intellectual property" which will diminish civil liberties and the rule-of-law. Romney has been absolutely livid that the US must take aggressive action against Chinese piracy. Unfortunately few seem to realize that fighting piracy, not to mention terrorism and drugs, means continued diminution of civil liberties. Depressing.

Oh, they realize it very well. What's depressing is that we, the people, don't realize it and many other things.

Sounds as if it will always have the same name; you won't be surprised if you find the same legal development under different names, will you?
I totally agree, if you don't mean that litterally. Just look at European data retention laws: How many terrorists have been stopped by this? Did the EU win people's trust by not dimishing their privacy rights?
In case you wonder why I put SOPA/PIPA/ACTA together with those EU laws: Politics and media don't officially relate them; I said enough.

I am very much in support of taking aggressive action against pirates, anywhere.

But SOPA/PIPA is not that.

I'm even more against usurping the rule of law, civil protection, and upholding the US Constitution. Any and every law should specifically be designed in every way to ensure that there is absolutely zero collateral damage to the rights of anyone who is not genuinely violating the laws. What we need are more laws to protect people from the abuses of big corporations.

Unfortunately, people like Ron Paul who are certainly against SOPA/PIPA are not being consistent with people's rights to not be abused, by taking the position of reducing protections. His failing is that he does not understand that big corporations are as much a danger as the government, if not more so. If he would ever become consistent along those lines, then maybe I could support him.

For example, every takedown should be signed off by a licensed attorney. No robo-signing allowed. No takedowns should go beyond the actual infringing content unless the site itself refuses to perform the takedown (given sufficient time to accomplish it). Additionally, no hosting company should block site owner access to fulfill the content takedown, even though they block the site. That means, ssh/ftp access must be preserved so the owner can still belatedly perform the takedown of the exact infringing content to get the main site back up.

And finally, anyone who formally disputes a takedown through a court (ex-parte court order is sufficient to get the ball rolling) can get the content restored in the same length of time the original takedown took place. Then the next step is a judge hears both sides to determine whether the content should stay up or be taken back down.

So much of the content industry just wants total control. They've had total control over what content we get ... until the internet made it possible for new content makers to bypass them. And while their motivations involving piracy are legitimate (just as is ours), they are still in the "we control everything" mentality. That needs to be shaken out of them. That's why they are asking Congress for more powers to bypass people's rights so they can just take down anything they want (the fact that they have taken down content from the contents owner's own sites many times shows what their real intentions are).

And thus our legal system gets entangled in this mess when it should be focusing on real piracy.

An issue with the whole piracy debate beyond the simple protection of civil liberties, is that the content industry is undertaking a massive "Land-Grab". Piracy can be reduced, return the copyright law to its original intent and scope.

Wikipedia has a nice chart showing how the copyright privilege has been extended and extended and extended here: Copyright Term Extension Act. Each of these extensions could be considered a "theft" of content that should be in the public domain.

As part of the massive land-grab, the content industry is also homesteading (creating) rights that deprive the consumer of their property rights to use the devices/content that they have paid for. I will say that it is the content industry that is creating piracy by making formally legal activities illegal.

The proverbial hardbound books serves as a good example. You can take the book anywhere and read it, you can resell it when done, you can read it at anytime. In today's digital world, the content industry has established region codes for DVD to restrict your use of the content, they are attempting to make it illegal to resell the content, and they have attempted to prohibit the viewing of time-shifted content.

In fact, the content industry is even attempting to eliminate the "concept-of-sale". What this means is that they can reach into your device, remove content, and even "brick" your device at their whim. Amazon Erases Orwell Books From Kindle

Piracy makes for an excellent populist sound byte that evokes images of theft. After all, everyone in their right mind would be against "theft". Unfortunately, it is the people who have access to the media (Newspapers/TV) that are perpetuating the concept that they are the victims of vile evil people, when it is they that are creating piracy by criminalizing formally legal activities.

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Since posting I ran across this TechDirt post: "Summit Entertainment Claims To Own The Date November 20, 2009; Issues Takedown On Art Created On That Day"
Mike Masnick wrote: "Summit Entertainment, the movie studio behind the Twilight films, is no stranger to ridiculous-to-insane overreaches of intellectual property law. In fact, the studio seems to make a habit out of it. The company has sued Zazzle because some of its users made fan art inspired by Twilight. It's shut down a Twilight fanzine. It's said that only it can make a documentary about the real town where the fictional Twilight story is based. It's sued to stop a fashion designer from factually stating that a character in one of the movies wore its jacket. It shut down a silly 8-bit YouTube game. It issued a takedown on a song that was written years before the Twilight movies. It went after Bath & Bodyworks for daring to to sell a body lotion called Twilight Woods, which had nothing to do with the movies. It aggressively sued a fan and pressed criminal charges for tweeting some behind the scenes photos of a Twilight movie. It also sued the guy who registered twilight.com back in 1994."

Very well put Steve R., that's exactly what they are doing and in more than one field. It's a land and power grab on a massive scale ... and what do the sheepies do ? They plunge the dagger they are given into their own hearts, and tell others that it is good and right as it says on TV. They would destroy their freedom and themselves with it, so that some money laundering, evil CEO can make some more cash off of them. Oh, what good and loyal sheepies.

Oh, wait, and they also claim "freedom isn't free". Well, you know what sheepies, freedom isn't freedom.