Hacker News Reader

Comment by OoTheNigerian | Hacker News Reader

SOPA is a big deal and US will be worse off for it beacuse US based companies will be put at a disadvantage ab-inito.

However, I think the people campaigning for opposition have failed to use 'normal' words to explain how it will affect the masses. For us here that have startups and are interested in these things, words like 'infringe copyright', 'safe-habour' etc make sense.

All 90% of the masses need to know is this: If you paste that funny clip you saw on MTV on your Facebook, MTV can shut down Facebook or sue you.

If you put that image you Googled on your blog, ALL your adsense money can be seized. If you Tweet it, you Twitter account can be closed.

When 'the masses' hear this, it would make no sense cos it doesn't. We should "dumb down" the message to get it accross to the 'mainstream' populace

I just wonder why the US legislature would want to deliberately cripple US's strength on the web.

View on HN

Or better yet: If you paste that funny clip you saw on MTV on your Facebook, MTV can press criminal charges and send you to jail.

Only if you can clearly point out the section of the bill that would allow this to happen. Otherwise, FUD claims will kill all credibility and we'll have a Sarah Palin "Death Panels" situation.

Except, sadly, those death panels comments actually resonated with some folks. There is a place for serious statements, but also a place, again sadly, for soaring rhetoric.

This is not just a risk to the U.S. Europe, Australia and especially the U.K. look to the U.S. for precedent. If this passes it is likely that they would use it as a basis to extend this nonsense to their respective jurisdictions while justifying it as necessary for protective or economic reasons.

Then these countries will have less of a leg to stand on when criticizing less open countries; who will be able to say: actually you are no different to us, the only difference is that we are more honest about the fact that we prioritize other things above freedom and cultural advancement.

Looks like the EU has already come out against SOPA. https://torrentfreak.com/eu-adopts-resolution-against-us-dom...

Ah thanks. That is something positive at least.

cnn and msnbc don't appear to be following the story at all.

No surprises there since CNN is a content provider and MS is also believed to be pro-SOPA:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3249396

Following up, I asked my wife last night and she had heard nothing about it.

"I just wonder why the US legislature would want to deliberately cripple US's strength on the web."

I dunno, my guess is there must be a lot of money involved.

If you paste that funny clip you saw on MTV on your Facebook, MTV can shut down Facebook or sue you.

Video is an interesting case since much of it is explicitly embeddable; you can't encourage embedding and then call it copyright infringement.

YouTube provides the embedding; WB et al the content. It's easy to get into that situation.

The problem is that while one part of the corporation can encourage you to share that video, this does not prevent any another part of the same corporation to claim that this act is "infringement?

All they need to do is can claim "infringement" without having to prove anything, without any obligation of fairness, correctness, and no penalty when wrong. After that your website is taken offline, your income is frozen, your income disappears and only then you may sue to get it all back, without any possibility of being compensated for your time and expenses.

The problem is that there is no neutral, objective oversight before damage is done and no compensation of damages caused by wrongful enforcement, which leaves us without protection against overzealous, perhaps even full automated, enforcement.

What happens if there servers and legal entity is in another country?

Who cares is the OPs point. The general populace doesn't think or care where a server is located. The message needs to be framed in a way that mainstream people understand.

I understand that, I'm just curious from a personal point of view.

If a site uses a US based hosting company, domain name (e.g. .com), or payment processor, those services may still be cut off, even if the servers are out of the country.

I doubt they would have any legal basis for extraditing a non-US-citizen for a SOPA violation, but there have been attempts to pursue charges against foreign citizens for notable DMCA violations if they enter the US, so that could continue to be the case with SOPA. If a US citizen uses a foreign server, I doubt that would shield them from legal action.

I never understood why the US gets to own the .com TLD.

Because the US created it, along with the internet. Luckily it's no longer maintained by the Department of Defense.

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc920

No, no longer the DoD but Department of Commerce ...

According to http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6134/135/, IP addresses issued by American Registry for Internet Numbers (the US regional IP issuing agency) is under the SOPA's jurisdiction. The problem is that they give out the IPs for US, Canada, and a bunch of the Carribean.

ARIN assignments aren't enforced by any kind of automated means. If ARIN tells some Canadian company, "Sorry, SOPA says we have to kill your assignment", and the Canadian company says "Thanks, but we'll keep using 123.89.12.0/24 anyway", it's all up to the canadian company's routing peers whether they want to enforce ARIN's edict.

If these peers choose to ignore ARIN's edict, it raises a number of troubling questions, mind you - so we don't really want to go that route if we don't have to. But the point is, Canadian ISPs could very well take a stand against the US using ARIN to enforce SOPA overseas.

Interesting. I hadn't thought of that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com