Oh sure, they can (and probably eventually will) try to use it against politically inconvenient sites - perhaps even including this one.

The "good part" is that if they DO expand it, the ability to get around it will become more and more mainstream - and impossible to prevent from being circulated.

I don't fear this bill - it's just plain stupid.

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any domain name where counterfeit goods or copyrighted material are "central to the activity of the Internet site" could be blocked.

Wouldn't this allow them include any sort of encrypted proxy servers or "anonymizing" tools/services to this blacklist as well? You know, under the guise of "protecting copyrights". I mean, why would you need internet anonymity unless you were breaking the law?

I as well see this as a Trojan Horse.

Unfortunately, just as everyone else picked up on, this would only serve to hinder those not as technologically savvy. Iceland has already advertised to become a safe-haven for digital rights and online freedom...there are plenty of other nations (developed and otherwise) that currently offer services of the like. All you need is a good proxy IP address and you're as effectively 'free' as any other internet user in that country.

They are fighting an unwinnable war. The internet ended the era of absolute 'information control' by centralized authorities. The death throes will continue for quite some time...as we well know, governments do not cede power gracefully.

The problem with the chained systems like TOR is that you can't stop them that way.

Not in the biz so I don't know, but when I go to concerts of small-time singer/songwriter types they always seem pretty eager to sell CDs. These are the people who, after the concert, have to get back in their '89 Chevy van to drive to Buffalo for tomorrow night's gig. We're not talking Elton John or Tom Petty here. They did not beg the audience to take their CDs for free and hand them out to all their friends because that would be great advertising. But maybe somebody in the biz can speak up, what do I know.

Regardless, is it not just a bit ironic that a forum dedicated to eliminating theft in the financial industry manages to find all sorts of justifications why theft in the music industry is OK. I'm not anybody's mother, do whatever you want to do, and maybe sometimes you are helping the artists even if you are screwing the industry, but please don't go that step further and try to pretend it's not really theft.

A fraction internet users who are savvy enough to pirate stuff, but wouldn't be savvy enough to figure out how to circumvent this sort of thing (savvy is perhaps the wrong word, considering how easy both of those things are) no doubt exists.

However it's a small fraction, and easily outweighed by the number of people who would changed their votes some senators inconvenienced them like this.

EDIT: Karl I think he meant sites like "unblockmyspace.com" and not stuff like TOR. It's pretty common knowledge that blocking TOR and similar is impossible.

Any of you hoping to get fancy and bypass government Internet restrictions had better have a good grasp of federal law. If you don't, I'm sure USCYBER command will be glad to introduce themselves at your front door along with DHS and FBI agents. If you don't yet know who they are, you soon will.

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I'm not anybody's mother, do whatever you want to do, and maybe sometimes you are helping the artists even if you are screwing the industry, but please don't go that step further and try to pretend it's not really theft.

The age of manufactured scarcity is coming to a close. If you take nothing else away from this conversation, realize that the whole idea of "intellectual property" is defined by and dictated arbitrarily by the government's ability to grant and PROTECT monopolies on the intangible. Regardless of how you or anyone 'think' it should be, the ability of central authorities to effectively "protect" will continue to diminish. Industries will be forced to adapt. Perhaps, the chance to "hit the jackpot" and be set for life with a single act of creation will be a thing of the past...who knows. Besides, "Theft" is a term best reserved for zero-sum situations.

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The problem with the chained systems like TOR is that you can't stop them that way.

The problem with ANY distributed technology is liberty. Once the tools are in the hands of the population at large, control is inherently impossible, save for a massive police state.

Sondergaard wrote..

but please don't go that step further and try to pretend it's not really theft.

Read the law. It is not theft - it is infringement of a government-granted monopoly and the crime is committed by the person who distributes without permission, not by the person who receives the infringing materials.

There are plenty of good arguments for why the government should grant these monopolies as well as arguments for why these monopolies are a bad idea but clouding the issue by calling it theft instead of what it actually is doesn't advance anyone's understanding.

It's a "feel-good" law. I'm sure whoever was tasked with stringing together those pesky technical terms in the bill knew that the bill is a joke but it sure feels good to be able to say "I am responsible for putting a stop to piracy." Also it creates a chance to say "Why did he vote to protect pirates?" Always a good idea right before an election.

And it's a "foot in the door" for more laws controlling the internet at a later date.

How is this different from passing a law preventing pedophiles from joining facebook? (those laws were passed weren't they? I don't remember)

Sounds good, does nothing. Takes time away from more complicated or embarrassing issues.

I see the others above have answered the "theft" query, I should add that the flipside to government protection of copyright is the expiration and release into the public domain of copyrighted material after a set amount of time - which, in the original, was 25 years. A big problem is that that expiration and release has been taken away - companies routinely keep copyright on materials far older than 25 years.

So it's all well and good to complain about people violating copyrights, but one should not do so without also understanding that the public's rights under copyright law have been systematically undermined and violated as well - at the behest of the very same companies now trying to claim those rights.

I've also have circumvented DNS issues by just putting the IP address in the web browser. Of course this won't work for web sites that share the IP with other sites, but I have found few web sites like that. I've also "borrowed" other DNS servers many times when the one I'm supposed to use has gone***** up.

Do you think Senator Leahy or any of the others (or their aids) know about any of this? You don't have stupid people writing bills about internet protocols because they just don't understand the internet. You have smart people writing bills that look to someone half-informed that they don't know what they're talking about.

This bill is a tool for copyright "owners" and internet "providers" that you clearly don't understand. The RIAA/MPAA, Comcast, etc. want this bill for a reason. And if you think it's "to make the world a better place" or to "protect the children" you're pretty naive.

Next you'll be telling me the lobby to outlaw guns is just trying to make our streets safer, the anti-nuclear lobby wants peace on earth, and the anti-transfat lobby just wants your overweight sister to get a date to the prom.

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Read the law. It is not theft

Would you bring a CD ripper to a singer-songwriter's concert, and, during intermission, borrow one of his CD's to rip and then return it? Would you tell the singer-songwriter that he has no cause to be upset because no theft took place, and suggest his understanding would be clearer if he stopped clouding the issue?

I know a few artists as well, and they are the first ones to put their material on torrent sites. It gives them exposure.


They sell CD's at their concerts as well. People still buy them.


I used to have a large CD collection. Every genre, spent thousands on them. They were fun to collect. The LP, was replaced with the CD and suddenly I needed to get the whole pink floyd collection on disc. The change in media, made me pay for the rights to listen to the music multiple times. (It also looked cool to have tons of discs in front of your stereo).


Now it is all stupid to me... the CD's are scratched, some of them are made with a cheap resin that means they fade over time. I would rather not have the garbage, and plastic and pollution and resources spent to deliver and stamp the disc. I would rather do it myself.


So why is the price point for downloaded music still so friggin expensive? It seems to me that if the pricing represented the actual cost of delivery, than people would not be circumventing the system.


When lots of people are braking a law, the law becomes ambiguous at best. The model for payment needs to be upgraded, and reflect a lower distribution costs that we all have inherited due to avances in technology.



I am sure that writers in the past hated libraries. Imagine being able to borrow a book and read it. One book serving multiple individuals.

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Would you bring a CD ripper to a singer-songwriter's concert, and, during intermission, borrow one of his CD's to rip and then return it? Would you tell the singer-songwriter that he has no cause to be upset because no theft took place, and suggest his understanding would be clearer if he stopped clouding the issue?

People bring camcorders to concerts all the time. You can take the tape and watch the stage preformance from the comfort of your home. Never seen an artist complain about it once.

This is interesting, from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extension_m....

Am I understanding this correctly that this is basically a DOS counterattack?

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The introduction of EDNS made a type of Reflected Denial-of-Service attacks called DNS amplification feasible, since EDNS facilitates very large response packets compared to relatively small request packets.

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People bring camcorders to concerts all the time. You can take the tape and watch the stage preformance from the comfort of your home. Never seen an artist complain about it once.

Well like I said I'm not in the biz. If the artists are good with all this that's all I care about. The smaller names struggle an awful lot and I hate to see them deprived of what I would perceive as rightful income, but maybe it does work to their advantage in the long run and they are OK.

Tally, no, it was from my time running MCSNet.

As both a musician and a software programmer, I can tell you that it is only a problem for the creator if someone else is actually making money off your work and not passing a part of that through to you.

Well, youtube is filled with labels putting out their product to public acccess, its the new business model.


It is not about denying the rights anymore, becasue none of us go to music stores, so they are doing their best to promote their material wherever they can.


Here in Toronto we shoot a lot of film. You guys used to love filming up here, especially when our dollar was at 66 cents. I have lots of friends in the business, and can drop names, but that is irrelevant.

The point is that a lot of work on these films is done for credit. The stars get the millions, the distributors get millions, the studios get millions. The guy doing the makeup and sound, get zero. He gets a credit. He can say he worked on the "Mummy Returns" and hope that someone will pay him for his efforts next time arround.

That is why a lot of my friends laugh their asses off when they see the ads by the film industry showing the struggling sound guy not getting his due earning due to piracy. The truth is the sound guy never got any money in the boom times. In fact if you know anything about the film industry, you know that very few make money off the films. In most cases those involved lose money while the distributors are making a killing. Its easy to cook books in the film business.

This is why stars always want to get paid on GROSS. They don't trust the accountants either.

Once again, as with all these idiotic proposals, more work for me with zero pay increase. Someone needs to tell Congress that if they want ISPs to implement their lunacy, they need to pay us first.

@Wb6yyz: "I've also have circumvented DNS issues by just putting the IP address in the web browser."

Exactly - it's as simple as that. No fiddling with DNS settings required. Search engines could simply link directly to the IP addresses of the 'blocked' websites, or people would publish lists of banned sites that link to their IPs. Or, a banned site could simply change its domain name, or forward from another domain, and be unbanned.

eDNS = a different root server.

Not a damn thing they can do about it, especially if it shows up on "non-standard" ports.

The problem with ip address use is that it does work, but only if there is only one site on a given IP - there usually is for high-volume sites, but not shared hosting.

How does a MAC address work to identify someone attempting to access a site deemed 'illegal' by the government?