Stop SOPA 2014

[laurel1020]

It's back and Hollywood lobbyists have snuck it in for consideration before Congress. As it is currently written, it is broad enough that it would make illegal, and shut down, all fan based sites which host fanfiction, fan art, and fan vids. Those forms of media would no longer be allowed on the internet in the states. If you are in the states, we have a deadline of March 19 to get our protest petition enough signatures to go through the proper channels and get taken into consideration. Unfortunately,we only have half the signatures we need and a few days to get 50k more. It's time to rally the fan bases and get this thing signed (again), so they look at narrowing the definition of illegal internet piracy in this monstrosity.

It will only take a few minutes to sign the petition, it will want you to make an account, but it only requires name and email and location (not address). Let's be heard.

petitions.whitehouse.gov/stop-sopa-2014/q0Vkk0Zr

I had trouble with the link and can't get a different one. If you do too, just go to the whitehouse petition page, click on open petitions, sort by popular, and you'll find stop sopa 2014 in the first page of results. Make sure to click on sopa 2014, not sopa 2013.

[Pwolf]

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petiti ... 4/q0Vkk0Zr

[Qyot27]

There is no SOPA 2014. Nor was there one in 2013. It would be far more convincing if you pull out the Bill numbers themselves from Congress' website.

If it had been revived, the Electronic Frontier Foundation would not ignore it, and neither would all of the other actors involved in the blackout protest two years ago. Yet looking at results for 'SOPA' in 2014 brings up nothing about a revived bill on the EFF's website.

[Qyot27]

And now that I've done a bit more digging, the source of this only flaring up now seems to be this article on Slate:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense ... s_who.html

Which isn't talking about a revived SOPA at all, it's talking about Hollywood lobbyists doing what they always do: being slimy bastards that think they're above the law. The Congressional hearing referred to was adamantly against using legislation, and the lobbyists saying it could possibly be 'even more effective' if the agreements with payment processors and whatnot was done privately without the courts.

Obviously that part is concerning, but even if something like that were to coalesce, the EFF would be talking about it a lot more than it appears from looking about their headlines. So being vigilant, yes, but that petition does absolutely nothing because there is no legislation to be fought and even if there were, it wouldn't be under the same name.

[laurel1020]

You sound very knowledgable about this, and admittedly, I only became aware if the issue a few days ago. I was hiding under a rock when SOPA became an issue the first time around. Please help me to better understand the situation. It was my impression that what people were actually upset about was Section 512 of the DMCA, specifically the notice and takedown provisions, which people have been referring to as SOPA 2014, as they have interpreted them as just a rebranding of the previous legislation. Has anyone else taken a look into this and gotten a better idea of the issue?

[Qyot27]

Well, the thing is, that wasn't legislation (Section 512 has existed since the DMCA was passed into law in 1998). Calling it 'SOPA 2014' in a whitehouse.gov petition doesn't actually address the issue, because it's using a nickname and not the name of any pending legislation that would need to be vetoed. Even if it reached the signature limit, it gives such scant information about the situation that there's nothing the administration could do about it.

It came out of a larger Congressional hearing about how best to revise copyright treatment, and it was basically what I said above about Hollywood lobbyists getting the cold shoulder about additional legislation and coming back with the suggestion that doing private deals with content providers or IPs might be more effective than legislation. Essentially, it was Hollywood getting huffy and saying that maybe they'd ignore Section 512 entirely and engage in shadow tactics instead (a bit of vigilantism-of-the-privileged deal, which is why I did call it concerning). Section 512 actually provides for the safe harbour protection of websites so that they don't get held liable for something only a handful of their users do; it's that Hollywood was pushing to get that section weakened so that they could abuse Copyright law even more than they already have.

But legislation didn't come out of that hearing, at least not yet (and if it eventually does, it'll have full coverage from Consumers' Rights, and Civil and Privacy Rights groups). Basically, until something concrete actually manifests, take these things with a grain of salt if you can't find actual pending Bills listed on Congress' website. And of course, if/when such legislative measures do appear, expect the Internet to collectively flip its shit like happened last time.


BIG FAT STANDARD DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A LAWYER.