STOP PIPA, call your legislators today!

[wordspeak2]

CALL YOUR LEGISLATORS TODAY
(I just called mine. I told Scott Brown's voicemail I didn't know if I was voted for him or Warren, so he'd better vote against PIPA)

Tell them to vote no on PIPA, the "stop online piracy act," that would give the government the ability to shut down sites like craigslist. go to CL or wikipedia or any sites that are shut down today in unified protest of this evil bill to get the info for calling your congresspeople.

http://sopa.boldprogressives.org/call/c ... e=act&rd=1

[NeonLX]

Yeah. Hope they'll listen.

[leobloom23]

..emailed my rep and 2 senators. Rep replied he was against (repub) nothing from the senators yet.

[wordspeak2]

http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/19/tech/sopa ... defined,0_
Lawmakers withdraw support of anti-piracy bills after online protest
By the CNN Wire Staff

SOPA pits Hollywood vs. Silicon Valley

(CNN) -- Some lawmakers are rethinking their support of controversial anti-piracy bills that led to some websites shutting down in protest.
The protest was in response to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill, a piece of proposed legislation that is working its way through Congress. A Senate committee approved a similar bill in May called the Protect IP Act (PIPA), which is now pending before the full Senate.
The protest seemed to change the minds of lawmakers, including those that had strongly backed the bills in the past.
"We can find a solution that will protect lawful content. But this bill is flawed & that's why I'm withdrawing my support. #SOPA #PIPA," Republican Sen. Roy Blunt wrote on his official Twitter page.
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who was an initial co-sponsor of PIPA, reversed his position.
Dodd: SOPA will save American jobs Paramount CEO wants SOPA to pass Explain it to me: SOPA
"I have decided to withdraw my support for the Protect IP Act. Furthermore, I encourage Senator Reid to abandon his plan to rush the bill to the floor. Instead, we should take more time to address the concerns raised by all sides, and come up with new legislation that addresses Internet piracy while protecting free and open access to the Internet," Rubio wrote on a Facebook post.
Rep Lee Terry (R-Neb.), an original co-sponsor of SOPA, also said he had changed his view.
"Thank you for your concern about #SOPA. I have asked to have my name removed from the bill. However, the economic impact of IP theft is real and a solution is needed," Terry wrote on Facebook.
Wikipedia, one of the websites that shut down on Wednesday, returned Thursday with the message: "Thank you for protecting Wikipedia. We're not done yet."
Clicking on that message takes a Wikipedia viewer to a thank you letter and instructions on how to continue fighting against anti-piracy bills that critics say could amount to censorship.
"Your voice was loud and strong," the message said. "Millions of people have spoken in defense of a free and open Internet." Why Wikipedia went down at midnight
On Wednesday, instead of the usual encyclopedia articles, visitors to Wikipedia's English-language site were greeted by a message about the decision to black out its Web page for an entire day. However, users were able to access its mobile site on some smartphones.
Boing Boing, a blog that took part in Wednesday's online protest but returned on Thursday, said the U.S. Senate was considering legislation that would "certainly kill us forever. The legislation ... would put us in legal jeopardy if we linked to a site anywhere online that had any links to copyright infringement."
"In the past, the media industry has often gone after particular infringers -- people who have downloaded stuff off the Internet and sharing it. And now they're going after websites that link to these things," Rob Beschizza, Boing Boing's managing editor, said Wednesday. "The bill is supposed to let copyright holders get court orders against them, and there's all sorts of various measures for getting sites blacklisted or blocked.
"The problem is that the measures are so wide-ranging and so open to abuse that we're worried that sites like ours could be brought down by frivolous claims," he said.
SOPA legislation 'far too overreaching' Battle over anti-piracy legislation Wikipedia founder: SOPA bad for Internet
While not blacking out its home page, search giant Google joined the cause by covering its famous logo with a black rectangle and urging visitors, "Tell Congress: Please don't censor the web!"
SOPA's supporters -- including CNN's parent company, Time Warner, and groups such as the MPAA -- say that online piracy leads to U.S. job losses because it deprives content creators of income.
The bill's supporters dismiss accusations of censorship, saying the legislation is meant to revamp a broken system that doesn't adequately prevent criminal behavior.
But SOPA critics say the bill's backers don't understand the Internet's architecture, and therefore don't appreciate the implications of the legislation they're considering.
The controversy over SOPA and PIPA has turned into an all-out war between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Media companies have united in favor of the bills, while tech's power players are throwing their might into opposing them. Hundreds turn out for SOPA protest in New York
"Both SOPA and PIPA are threats not just to the U.S. economy, and not just to all the jobs that this tech sector creates, but if they had existed, Steve Huffman and I could have never founded Reddit," said Alexis Ohanian, who co-founded the site. Millions visit Reddit to submit interesting links from websites, discuss them and vote on them, he said, calling it "sort of a democratic front page of the web." Reddit also went dark Wednesday morning and was back Thursday.
One member of Congress, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-California, who opposes the bills, said the unprecedented blackouts had "turned the tide against a backroom lobbying effort by interests that aren't used to being told no."
Issa is pushing for consideration of his own plan, the OPEN Act, addressing the matter. (OPEN Act: An experiment in digital democracy)

[Stephen Morgan]

SOPA is back from the dead, I see.

[wordspeak2]

What do you mean? I thought it's looking dead.

[ninakat]

Chris Dodd’s paid SOPA crusading
By Glenn Greenwald
Wednesday, Jan 18, 2012

. . . In the face of pervasive, sleazy conduct like this, it’s not only tempting to be jaded about partisan activism: it’s rational. Watching Chris Dodd and Pat Leahy join equally compromised Republicans in crusading for an Internet censorship bill — not even out of sincerely held authoritarian impulses but just base, corrupted subservience to industry — reveals most of what one needs to know about how the political class functions and who owns and controls it. . . .

[eyeno]

Rep Lee Terry (R-Neb.), an original co-sponsor of SOPA, also said he had changed his view.
"Thank you for your concern about #SOPA. I have asked to have my name removed from the bill. However, the economic impact of IP theft is real and a solution is needed," Terry wrote on Facebook.

Hmmm...typo or another moron that never read the legislation and really has no clue what its all about?

[Project Willow]

Anonymous takes down Department of Justice and Universal Music

After a Department of Justice-executed raid today on the file sharing site Megaupload, hackers aligned with the online collective Anonymous have shut down the websites for both the DoJ and Universal Music Group, the largest record company in America.

http://rt.com/usa/news/anonymous-doj-universal-sopa-235/

[Wombaticus Rex]

The Megaupload takedown makes it clear that the military entertainment complex (just look at the major stockholders) is going to make this happen one way or another. FBI is trying to get a precedent to do everything in SOPA and then some with this case. "Parallel structures" has always been the corptocracy game -- every angle at once.

[Project Willow]

^^ Yah, two things at once too.

Not sure where to put this but it's related.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/supreme-court-rules-congress-can-re-copyright-public-domain-works.ars?&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social-media&utm_campaign=addtoany

Supreme Court rules Congress can re-copyright public domain works
By David Kravets, wired.com | Published about 9 hours ago

Congress may take books, musical compositions and other works out of the public domain, where they can be freely used and adapted, and grant them copyright status again, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

In a 6-2 ruling, the court ruled that just because material enters the public domain, it is not “territory that works may never exit.” (PDF)

The top court was ruling on a petition by a group of orchestra conductors, educators, performers, publishers and film archivists who urged the justices to reverse an appellate court that ruled against the group, which has relied on artistic works in the public domain for their livelihoods.

They claimed that re-copyrighting public works would breach the speech rights of those who are now using those works without needing a license. There are millions of decades-old works at issue. Some of the well-known ones include H.G. Wells’ Things to Come; Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and the musical compositions of Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky.

The court, however, was sympathetic to the plaintiffs’ argument. Writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Ginsburg said “some restriction on expression is the inherent and intended effect of every grant of copyright.” But the top court, with Justice Elena Kagan recused, said Congress’ move to re-copyright the works to comport with an international treaty was more important.

For a variety of reasons, the works at issue, which are foreign and produced decades ago, became part of the public domain in the United States but were still copyrighted overseas. In 1994, Congress adopted legislation to move the works back into copyright, so U.S. policy would comport with an international copyright treaty known as the Berne Convention.

In dissent, Justices Stephen Breyer and Samuel Alito said the legislation goes against the theory of copyright and “does not encourage anyone to produce a single new work.” Copyright, they noted, was part of the Constitution to promote the arts and sciences.

The legislation, Breyer wrote, “bestows monetary rewards only on owners of old works in the American public domain. At the same time, the statute inhibits the dissemination of those works, foreign works published abroad after 1923, of which there are many millions, including films, works of art, innumerable photographs, and, of course, books — books that (in the absence of the statute) would assume their rightful places in computer-accessible databases, spreading knowledge throughout the world.”

Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at Stanford University and a plaintiff’s lawyer in the case, called the decision “unfortunate” and said it “suggests Congress is not required to pay particularly close attention to the interests of the public when it passes copyright laws.”

The majority, however, rebuffed charges that a decision in favor of Congress’ move would amount to affording lawmakers the right to legislate perpetual copyright terms.

“In aligning the United States with other nations bound by the Berne Convention, and thereby according equitable treatment to once disfavored foreign authors, Congress can hardly be charged with a design to move stealthily toward a regime of perpetual copyrights,” Ginsburg wrote.

It’s not the first time the Supreme Court has approved the extension of copyrights. The last time was in 2002, when it upheld Congress’ move to extend copyright from the life of an author plus 50 years after death to 70 years after death.

The lead plaintiff in the case, Lawrence Golan, told the high court that it will not longer be able to perform Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony and Peter and the Wolf, or Shostakovich’s Symphony 14, Cello Concerto because of licensing fees.

[wordspeak2]

The Megaupload takedown makes it clear that the military entertainment complex (just look at the major stockholders) is going to make this happen one way or another. FBI is trying to get a precedent to do everything in SOPA and then some with this case. "Parallel structures" has always been the corptocracy game -- every angle at once.

Mm, interesting. Can you say anything more about how they're doing it legally? I don't know anything about Megaupload. Where is it based?

Shutting down FBI and DOJ sites is pretty impressive. They say they're after the White House now.

[Allegro]

.
I've spent most of my study during the last few hours looking over and bookmarking materials and videos wrt re-copyright. Digital formats appearing on global Internets are part of the glitch, and you might keep that in mind while reading the syllabus. I'll post a vid or two, later.

Here's the syllabus pdf noted in Willow's post, above. The first three paragraphs of the syllabus follow; bold and link are mine.

_________________

OCTOBER TERM, 2011
Syllabus

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.

See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Syllabus

GOLAN ET AL. v. HOLDER, ATTORNEY GENERAL, ET AL.
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT
No. 10–545. Argued October 5, 2011—Decided January 18, 2012


The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (Berne), which took effect in 1886, is the principal accord governing international copyright relations. Berne’s 164 member states agree to provide a minimum level of copyright protection and to treat authors from other member countries as well as they treat their own. Of central importance in this case, Article 18 of Berne requires countries to protect the works of other member states unless the works’ copyright term has expired in either the country where protection is claimed or the country of origin. A different system of transnational copyright protection long prevailed in this country. Throughout most of the 20th century, the only foreign authors eligible for Copyright Act protection were those whose countries granted reciprocal rights to American authors and whose works were printed in the United States. Despite Article 18, when the United States joined Berne in 1989, it did not protect any foreign works lodged in the U. S. public domain, many of them works never protected here. In 1994, however, the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights mandated implementation of Berne’s first 21 articles, on pain of enforcement by the World Trade Organization.

In response, Congress applied the term of protection available to U. S. works to preexisting works from Berne member countries. Section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) grants copyright protection to works protected in their country of origin, but lacking protection in the United States for any of three reasons: The United States did not protect works from the country of origin at the time of publication; the United States did not protect sound recordings fixed before 1972; or the author had not complied with certain U. S. statutory formalities. Works encompassed by §514 are granted the protection they would have enjoyed had the United States maintained copyright relations with the author’s country or removed formalities incompatible with Berne. As a consequence of the barriers to U. S. copyright protection prior to §514’s enactment, foreign works “restored” to protection by the measure had entered the public domain in this country. To cushion the impact of their placement in protected status, §514 provides ameliorating accommodations for parties who had exploited affected works before the URAA was enacted.

Petitioners are orchestra conductors, musicians, publishers, and others who formerly enjoyed free access to works §514 removed from the public domain. They maintain that Congress, in passing §514, exceeded its authority under the Copyright Clause and transgressed First Amendment limitations. The District Court granted the Attorney General’s motion for summary judgment. Affirming in part, the Tenth Circuit agreed that Congress had not offended the Copyright Clause, but concluded that §514 required further First Amendment inspection in light of Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U. S. 186. On remand, the District Court granted summary judgment to petitioners on the First Amendment claim, holding that §514’s constriction of the public domain was not justified by any of the asserted federal interests. The Tenth Circuit reversed, ruling that §514 was narrowly tailored to fit the important government aim of protecting U. S. copyright holders’ interests abroad.

[eyeno]

Mm, interesting. Can you say anything more about how they're doing it legally? I don't know anything about Megaupload. Where is it based?

Shutting down FBI and DOJ sites is pretty impressive. They say they're after the White House now.

You're on the right track, if you're on the track that I think you're on. What is the anagram for anonymous? Don't use all the letters. "sound it out" as they used to say in grade school.

I'd say it out loud but but I would get laughed at. (pm me if you want to know.)

Suffice to say that "anonymous" isn't what it seems. It is its opposite. And thats enough for most folk around here.

[Stephen Morgan]

http://boingboing.net/2012/01/19/big-co ... speak.html

Leo Hindery, a major Democratic donor whose New York media private equity firm owns cable channels, said Obama might have reason to worry about his entertainment industry fundraising base. “[The bill] is an issue that has no business being decided politically – by anybody on one side or the other – and the fact that it might be becoming a political issue is unfair to the content producers,” said Hindery, who’s contributed more than $3 million to Democratic candidates and groups.