[ILUG] Our version of SOPA

[David De La Harpe Golden]

On 19/12/11 18:21, Shane Quigley wrote:
>
> Just saw this on reddit. Its kinda scary and isn't be related to
> Linux but people might be interested considering we all used the
> internet and live in Ireland.
>
> http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2011/1219/1224309259318.html
>
> I'd love to hear your opinions on it.
>   		 	

Well, probably pretty stupid and wrong. Remains to be seen what it 
really says of course.

Just my own opinion (ILUG is not Pirate Party Ireland 2 after all), but 
we really should be abolishing or severely reforming copyright as per 
Pirate Parties etc., and certainly not censoring the internet to try to 
keep the sheer absurdity of current copyright afloat.

In that article they are presently still said to be requiring a court 
order, perhaps in contrast to those MAFIAA-beloved automagic censor 
upon-allegation guilty-until-and-even-despite-proven-innocent systems, 
though with some judges the difference may be slim, and it depends 
somewhat on the details: what if it's just one court order per ISP to 
force the introduction of such a system at the ISP? blargh...

It wouldn't stop or even slow "piracy" much anyway, of course, many 
people in Ireland can rapidly defeat measures they're likely to try, and 
happily teach and set things up for people who can't yet. I expect they 
know all that, of course, and just want as much legal power as they can 
grab to try to censor and attack the internet, and of course the 
politicians get to appear to be "doing something" about "piracy" 
regardless of actual effectiveness or lack thereof.

And in my (sometimes cynical) opinion, particularly in the US with SOPA, 
if you tell (as they have been told) some of the luddite idiots apparent 
in the recent congressional hearings that they're undermining the 
architecture of the internet, breaking DNSSEC etc., ...well, said idiots 
will just be thinking "More broked internets? Goodyeah!". Ensuring the 
Internet is unreliable, risky, fragmented and awkward (and criminalised) 
to use could be well be considered a feature by the backers of such 
legislation, not a bug, even if they won't come out and say that 
outright. They don't /like/ the Internet.