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SOPA / PROTECT IP Bill: Justice or Govt Intrusion and Censorship?

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IchorFigure

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I've only just learned about the SOPA / Protect IP bill being considered in Congress. You can read more about it here:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111115/15040016780/sopaprotect-ip-would-be-hideously-bad-video-gamers.shtml

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/at-web-censorship-hearing-congress-guns-for-pro-pirate-google.ars

This is another clash between new technology and applying the rights of life and property to them. Do you think the bill is proper or is it dangerous?

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I can't seem to find any info on this that comes from a nuetral stand - I support protection of intellectual property, but I can't help but resist giving the government this much power.

Unfortunately that's my experience so far too. There's surprisingly little info about it. There are a number of things about it that make me uneasy enough to not support it however. For example holding the hosts like ISP, the search engine company, or site host accountable for ensuring no protected content is placed without permission at all. As well as the government ordering the ISP's to try and obscure and deny access to "rogue" sites outside the U.S. that host pirated content. Law is quite difficult and complex to apply to concretes, but I don't think that would be the proper way to go about protecting IP rights. And it would only cause unintended consequences and give the government its foot in the door to telling ISP's what they can give access to.

Edited by IchorFigure
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Tech perspective:

SOPA breaks DNSSEC, and won’t work anyway: Sandia National Labs

Putting a man-in-the-middle into an end-to-end protocol is dumb

Thanks for that article. I'm not technically knowledgeable enough to understand 100% of how DNS works, but it sounds like the law would make the internet less safe in that regard, no surprise.

If anyone wants to read the bills themselves here they are. Just click the "show full text" button to see it. They're not too terribly long, and only a bit complex and full of qualifications:

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h112-3261

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s112-968

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