How can that harm innocent parties? One big loophole is UGC (User Generated Content).
But this is part of the problem. UGC consistently violates copyright/trademark laws and enforcement is hard/impossible (especially on foreign servers/foreign domains).
Youtube is the biggest infringer in the world. Google has methods to cut it down but they hide behind safe harbor laws in the US. Google consistently violates copyright laws behind "freedom of information". Freedom of information is not "free information".
Journalism is not cost free. Authorship deserves rewards in terms of ownership. The author can relinquish rights but most people don't respect those rights.
Seen advertising on NP for "article spinning" or "generated content".. yeah, most of it's technically stolen. Image rights? No one respects them (me included) and most of the time the rights were given away to the initial hosting site: Twitpic, Facebook, etc. UGC is part of a problem.
The question is in the term "innocent parties" - the USER is not innocent 99% of the time. The site hosting is usually protected by Safe Harbor.
Can you point to the Bill where it says I can get a site pulled without any form of court order and where that court order doesn't have a motion for relief by performing an action of removing said violating material?
The issue is that people take the SOPA and immediately expand it's use to the most heinous level of abuse possible and present that as a flaw. Take ANY law and you can do the same. Ever heard of someone labelled as a sex offender because they "mooned" someone? Gave their boyfriend a little fun when they were 18 and he was 16? (This is a true story - they got married, she's 30+ and still labelled a sex offender). Every law has abuse written into it. There are remedies. Same will be true for "victims" of a SOPA-like bill in the future.
SOPA needs OBVIOUS and SIMPLE cleanup and not to be rushed.. but there is a larger issue at stake that people don't look at because they're focused on this bill. Don't think that groups have an influence that way too. The existing status quo is very nice for a lot of businesses and political ideologies.
I'm not pro-piracy, but draconian measures like SOPA aren't the way to go. It stands to create a problem bigger than the one it's attempting to solve.
I agree with this; however, the problem is that to get a bill to successfully pass muster with lawyers, IP experts, is too hard. It will NEVER end review cycles.
The Right to Free Speech is in the first AMENDMENT and, in fact, opposition to the ratification of the Constitution was in part that the Constitution lacked adequate guarantees for civil liberties.
Can someone tell me why we need another bill of law to reinforce existing laws ?
Existing laws are based on ECMA circa 1986 (I'm guessing). There hasn't been a comprehensive overhaul of the digital laws in a long time in the US (I'm guessing - IANAL). Not saying that SOPA is this but it's trying to fill a void, albeit badly.
The domain industry is totally unregulated and has failed to regulate itself. Some say the internet is about no regulation/lack of oversight. A lot of people if asked would be surprised by what rules and laws don't apply online...
I mean, there are plenty of laws, tools, treaties and remedies available.
Ice didn't wait for Sopa to strike.
ICE didn't.. in part because the laws, treaties, tools and remedies need to be updated.
As usual politicians enact tons of pointless laws just to pretend there are doing something about 'it'.
Politicians just aren't the right people to author bills. They're too influenced by big pockets...
People are the right people because they're too shortsighted.
Lawyers aren't the right people because an)l retentive doesn't go far enough.
Let's just move to anarchy. It will be easier in the long run
---------- Post added at 12:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:08 PM ----------
By the way. I like to argue for fun and non-profit.