Internet Laws

So, what was yesterday, January 18, 2012, all about?

The US House of Representatives is proposing the Stop Online Privacy Act - HR 3261 (the Senate has a comparable bill SB968 - PIPA) that would shut down an online domain if any copyright material was obtained online without the permission of the material’s owner. I previously stated the Act is described by Stephen Colbert as “The worst proposed internet law in American history”, Wikipedia calls the bill an “Internet Blacklist Bill” and Nancy Pelosi says – they (Congress) need to do something but this is not it. 

In addition to holding the actual individual who posted or obtained the information liable, the Act would, for example, hold Yahoo liable if the song, movie or whatever was posted on Yahoo and subsequently shut Yahoo down. On December 24, 2011 it was reported that movie ticket sales were down 4% ($500 million) and if Christmas movies didn’t fare well the loss may reach 5% making it the largest drop in 16 years. I believe this was a part of the reason for the Act’s origin.

Do you want the government to become the eyes and ears of the internet? Do we (the US) let our people continue to hear and see everything and decide for themselves (freedom of speech) if they want to believe what they hear or see or do we want our government to do what China does and ban items with certain content?

I just learned that most of the piracy on movies comes because Hollywood and others release their movies in other countries before they are released here in the US. The movies are placed on the internet by individuals in the other countries and US individuals watch them off the website instead of going to the movies. I think this is a business problem and Hollywood should help itself by not releasing films, DVDs, or whatever in other countries before they hit the theaters here. The US people or the internet media should not have our government taking drastic measures to try and stop piracy on the receiving end. I believe this is the lobbyists paying off your representative because the companies can’t think of alternative solutions by themselves.

I don’t like that bombers get information off the internet, that Americans are recruited for Al Qaeda over the internet or that hackers are running rampant. I believe that bombers would continue to get their information in another way and many people are foolish enough to listen to Al Qaeda, the Taliban, White Supremacy and more. I also believe the people actually committing a crime should be punished. We currently punish the bomber, the traitor, etc. for their part in a crime and I think this is the way piracy should be handled; punish the offender, the one who put the information out there instead of the group that is obtaining the movie or song for free or the domain the criminal chose to use.

Apparently piracy has become as common as jaywalking. If an American puts the pirated information online and is caught, he/she is punished via US law. But, the internet problem is bigger than piracy. On January 16 we heard that online retailer Zappos.com said hackers may have accessed 24 million accounts and have the passwords which could jeopardize other accounts of their customers. And, a recent survey found that 90% of all companies said they’ve been hacked at one time or other.

Hackers and illegal piracy are just part of the internet crime ring. People are using the internet to commit other crimes such as human trafficking, child pornography and more that we have laws against and all of these should be punished. The real problem is that the US has no authority over what people from outside the US are doing so to protect the pirated business they want to punish the domain and therefore all Americans.

We have world organizations of many kinds and perhaps we should initiate a world group that allows for those committing the actual piracy or other crime via the internet to be punished in their country via world internet law.