Posted on 03/20/2012 6:22:31 AM PDT by Mad Dawgg
Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, Time Warner Cable and other Internet service providers (ISPs) in the United States will soon launch new programs to police their networks in an effort to catch digital pirates and stop illegal file-sharing.
Major ISPs announced last summer that they had agreed to take new measures in an effort to prevent subscribers from illegally downloading copyrighted material, but the specifics surrounding the imminent antipiracy measures were not made available. Now, RIAA chief executive Cary Sherman has said that ISPs are ready to begin their efforts to curtail illegal movie, music and software downloads on July 12.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Don't cha just love a country where you can buy any law you want and get it put on the books?
Well, with the sole exception of a legal warrant, nothing you can do about those.
I am deeply disturbed by this news.
You can make all sorts of causes to shutdown Free Republic and like minded sites if you use the: "Well an Article On Free Republic Linked to a site that hosts Copyright infringed Media, we must shut them off and remove them from the net for their offenses!" argument.
This is gonna get real bad, real quick my friend.
I fear we are seeing the last days of this Republic.
Get a VPN.
Sounds interesting , tell me more but could you translate your explanation into "Mad Dawgg Dummy Talk" sometimes my mind can become "Internet Tech" challenged.
Jim, I for one am pretty loose with linking via a = h r e f or posting a pic via i m g s r c ... Should we (or me/I) be given a refresher course ?
“I got a feeling this will be used to crush opposition to the FedGov (both the R’s and the D’s)..”
BINGO!!!!!
Oh well...guess I’ll stick to downloading public domain recipes from now on. Anyone have a good (non-copyrighted) tapioca pudding recipe?
Tor (http://www.torproject.org) can be used to fight traffic analysis by ISPs.
Suppose you wanted to visit FreeRepublic discreetly. First, your web traffic gets encrypted. Then, it gets bounced around a worldwide network of Tor “nodes,” staying encrypted throughout, until it arrives at an “exit node” where it pops out. To Free Republic, it looks like your web traffic came from the exit node. To your ISP, you’re connected to the Tor network, but that’s the extent of what they can tell.
There’s a lot more to it than that, but that should be enough to get you started.
Just run it through several proxy servers, They will not be able to tell what kind of site your connected to except for the proxy!
Let's make sure we fight the right battles here. The liberal advocates of censoring hate speech and unpopular opinions need to be blasted — correctly so — as modern-day censors who are unworthy of the liberal heritage of the ACLU. Go call them hypocrites for a change!
However, there's a big difference between censorship and enforcing copyright law. We as a conservatives need to stand up in defense of the Constitutional protection of the First Amendment as well as the Constitutional protection of private property rights.
The First Amendment to the Constitution was written in an environment where formal censorship of books and publications was standard or had only recently been eliminated in much of the Western world, both for political and moral reasons. Here's just one example of how the German liberal writer Heinrich Heine managed to evade censorship laws in Germany, but finally had to move to France to get his works printed, and his works were then put under bans in various German states once printed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Heine#Julius_Campe_and_first_literary_successes
Here's how bad it can get: “(Publisher Julius) Campe was a liberal who published as many dissident authors as he could. He had developed various techniques for evading the authorities. The laws of the time stated that any book under 320 pages had to be submitted to censorship (the authorities thought long books would cause little trouble as they were unpopular). One way round censorship was to publish dissident works in large print to increase the number of pages beyond 320. The censorship in Hamburg was relatively lax but Campe had to worry about Prussia, the largest German state which had the largest market for books (it was estimated that one-third of the German readership was Prussian). Initially, any book which had passed the censor in a German state was able to be sold in any of the other states but in 1834 this loophole was closed. Campe was reluctant to publish uncensored books as he had bad experience of print runs being confiscated. Heine resisted all censorship. So this issue became a bone of contention between the two.”
While lots of conservatives like to attack abuses of the First Amendment, we sometimes forget what it was established to prevent. The United States created a political system in which anybody could say virtually anything about anyone in office or running for office, or advocate for or against virtually any political issue, so long as they owned a printing press or could pay for someone else to print things.
That is a good system, and it came close to being wrecked by the development of federal control over radio and television licensing rights. The Federal Communications Commission, with regulation of the airwaves, created serious threats to free speech. Go spend some time Googling Carl McIntyre, to my knowledge the only person who was ever successfully driven off the air by the Fairness Doctrine, and you'll see the potential threat of federal regulation. Rush Limbaugh, FOX News, and similar political advocates simply would not have been possible under the old rules intended to regulate the limited available broadcast spectrum for the benefit of the so-called public interest.
**HOWEVER** — and this is a big caveat — it has never been legal for people to print and distribute copyrighted material. The people downloading music and movies for free without consent of the copyright owners are committing crimes. That has been the case for the entire history of American copyright law, dating back two centuries.
The constitutional principle boils down to the truth that freedom of the press belongs to those who own a press. We can't force internet providers to allow their customers to access any particular websites, especially ones which are violating copyright law by illegally posting movies or songs.
I don't like SOPA law at all, and I agree with Newt Gingrich's longstanding concerns about government regulation of the internet. However, I'm a lot less uncomfortable with privately owned companies blocking access to websites that allow downloading of illegally pirated content than the government mandating it. That's especially true because people who still want to download pirated movies, music or other software will be able to find ISPs that allow such downloads, even if they have to access them through other countries, so all this will do is reduce illegal piracy rather than eliminate it.
Considering the problems inherent in the developing state of copyright law as it applies to the internet, a refresher course is always a good idea.
I have repeatedly had to deal with potential nightmares in my own business life and I've had conversations running many hours with the webmaster of my “sister operation,” a moderated discussion board, on these issues.
Lawsuits are not fun.
As I understand it, a VPN would still have to ‘connect’ through an ISP, possibly at both ends of the connection.
It would be at that point where one’s local ISP would monitor, wouldn’t it?
Another question would be exactly what they are monitoring: file size? questionable source (such as Usenet, torrent traffic, megadownloadwebsites)? frequency of big downloads? etc.
Many ISPs dropped Usenet several years ago, but one can still connect to a Usenet provider — via the local ISP. Similarly, bit torrent data is transferred via individual connections, but the initial connections are with the local ISP.
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I have a feeling this law will result in rampant ‘righthaven’ types of actions that will be overly aggressive at first. Then some major lawsuits. If the ISPs lose a few of those, they will lighten up.
This kind of stuff has been going on since the first tape and cassette and VCR recorders. It continued with advent of CD and DVD recorders.
Ahh Sorry but the RIAA and MPAA BOUGHT the latest copyright law that is in effect.
They are now trying to gain control of the Internet because someone MIGHT infringe a Law they bought and paid for.
This is the RIGHT BATTLE, once you give these associations the Right to control the flow of Internet Traffic then they own it!
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