New Bill Would Require U.S. ISPs to Block Pirate Sites

AS has been stated many times here (but still demands repeating) the threat here is not access to legal/illegal torrents and pirated software, it is the ever-growing tendency of government to expand its authority over the activity of its citizens.

It is the natural tendency of government to seek greater and greater power. In America, our Founding Fathers were very much aware of this and sought to limit this as much as humanly possible. They wrote the Constitution with the specific intent of limiting what the federal government was authorized to do and what its specifically ennumerated powers were.

Since the day the Constitution was signed into existence, there have been those who have sought means of circumventing those limitations. The Bill of Rights was conceived of as a necessary protection of individual rights, but setting further limits on what the government was permitted to do, but as Alexander Hamilton foresaw, it has since been used as a license to encroach on individual rights and liberties.

In Federalist Paper #84 Hamilton says that by stating exceptions to powers which are not granted to the federal government, you invite the question "If this power is not within the authority of the government, why would they make this exception?"

As Hamilton says, it gives "a colorable pretext to claim more [powers] than were granted."

Everytime a law like this is passed, the American people lose a little bit more of their liberty and it is very disturbing to see so many blithely acquiescing to this steady errosion.

This bill is bad because it allows the government more power to do something it has no constitutional authority to do.

"Give him an inch and he will think he's a ruler." "The thin end of the wedge." "The camel's nose under the tent." "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." These tired old saying exist because they recognize a fundamental truth about governments and the men who run them. Left-Right, it doesn't matter. The less power a government holds, the greater the individual's freedom.

What Benjamin Franklin said about security applies equally to all such legislation.

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty."

Though the aim of this legislation may be noble and the intentions of those legislators backing it may be of the utmost honor (which I doubt), the price paid is too great.

Catswold said:

AS has been stated many times here (but still demands repeating) the threat here is not access to legal/illegal torrents and pirated software, it is the ever-growing tendency of government to expand its authority over the activity of its citizens.

It is the natural tendency of government to seek greater and greater power. In America, our Founding Fathers were very much aware of this and sought to limit this as much as humanly possible. They wrote the Constitution with the specific intent of limiting what the federal government was authorized to do and what its specifically ennumerated powers were.

Since the day the Constitution was signed into existence, there have been those who have sought means of circumventing those limitations. The Bill of Rights was conceived of as a necessary protection of individual rights, but setting further limits on what the government was permitted to do, but as Alexander Hamilton foresaw, it has since been used as a license to encroach on individual rights and liberties.

In Federalist Paper #84 Hamilton says that by stating exceptions to powers which are not granted to the federal government, you invite the question "If this power is not within the authority of the government, why would they make this exception?"

As Hamilton says, it gives "a colorable pretext to claim more [powers] than were granted."

Everytime a law like this is passed, the American people lose a little bit more of their liberty and it is very disturbing to see so many blithely acquiescing to this steady errosion.

This bill is bad because it allows the government more power to do something it has no constitutional authority to do.

"Give him an inch and he will think he's a ruler." "The thin end of the wedge." "The camel's nose under the tent." "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." These tired old saying exist because they recognize a fundamental truth about governments and the men who run them. Left-Right, it doesn't matter. The less power a government holds, the greater the individual's freedom.

What Benjamin Franklin said about security applies equally to all such legislation.

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty."

Though the aim of this legislation may be noble and the intentions of those legislators backing it may be of the utmost honor (which I doubt), the price paid is too great.

Triple A+

Section 8 - Powers of Congress
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Would not the Defence and general Welfare cover making laws to stop people from stealing property right over the internet. Why couldn't Congress make laws against stealing by use of a computer or internet. That would be covered under general welfare. I think the problems lies in weather they are constructed properly and used correctly. I do think that a good lawyer could find laws we already have to stop this kind of stealing using the internet.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is a federal law enforcement agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security charged with regulating and facilitating international trade, collecting import duties, and enforcing U.S. regulations, including trade, customs and immigration.[1] It has its headquarters in Washington, DC.[2]
While its primary mission is preventing terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering the United States, CBP is also responsible for apprehending individuals attempting to enter the United States illegally, stemming the flow of illegal drugs and other contraband, protecting United States agricultural and economic interests from harmful pests and diseases, and protecting American businesses from intellectual property theft. I think other contraband will cover contraband over the internet.

Unfortunately, the purpose of the bill is not necessarily about stopping piracy, it's about giving the government more power.

Layback Bear said:

Section 8 - Powers of Congress
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Would not the Defence and general Welfare cover making laws to stop people from stealing property right over the internet. Why couldn't Congress make laws against stealing by use of a computer or internet. That would be covered under general welfare. I think the problems lies in weather they are constructed properly and used correctly. I do think that a good lawyer could find laws we already have to stop this kind of stealing using the internet.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is a federal law enforcement agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security charged with regulating and facilitating international trade, collecting import duties, and enforcing U.S. regulations, including trade, customs and immigration.[1] It has its headquarters in Washington, DC.[2]
While its primary mission is preventing terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering the United States, CBP is also responsible for apprehending individuals attempting to enter the United States illegally, stemming the flow of illegal drugs and other contraband, protecting United States agricultural and economic interests from harmful pests and diseases, and protecting American businesses from intellectual property theft. I think other contraband will cover contraband over the internet.

try the defense and welfare of the people, not corporations. stop reaching.

Quadruple F-

Hm, this sounds like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, watch the trailer. It's surprising at how similar this situation is.

Under General Welfare covers everybody and corporation.
More Government more control is also worry some to me but I don't know how else it can be done. If some one has a better way of stopping these thieves from using the internet to steal let us all know. Its the Federal Governments duty to protect our borders; which could very easily mean crossing our borders with the internets illegal products.
I'm not reaching any more than lawyers do in front of courts all the time. The abortion debate was used under the Commerce Clause 10 amendment. Many things have been done that way for over a 100 years. What the heck the Commerce Clause has to do with that subject I'm not sure.
We are saying the same thing. There has got to be laws on the books that can stop these thieves without creating new laws. That's what I am trying to show with all those examples. New laws not needed, new directions with the laws we already have.

Layback Bear said:

Under General Welfare covers everybody and corporation.
More Government more control is also worry some to me but I don't know how else it can be done. If some one has a better way of stopping these thieves from using the internet to steal let us all know. Its the Federal Governments duty to protect our borders; which could very easily mean crossing our borders with the internets illegal products.
I'm not reaching any more than lawyers do in front of courts all the time. The abortion debate was used under the Commerce Clause 10 amendment. Many things have been done that way for over a 100 years. What the heck the Commerce Clause has to do with that subject I'm not sure.
We are saying the same thing. There has got to be laws on the books that can stop these thieves without creating new laws. That's what I am trying to show with all those examples. New laws not needed, new directions with the laws we already have.

no it does not. those laws were put in place to protect the people, and only the people.

If you're going to use the Constitution to justify these laws, you would be better advised to use the portion, also under Section 8 of Article 1 (Paragraph 8) which states

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

and Paragraph 10

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies comitted on the high Seas, and Offenses agasing the Law of Nations.

Unfortunately, the internet is not the "high Seas" and copyright infringement is already against the law.

What this law and others like it are attempting to do is to regulate access, through the internet, to web sites and their offending content. The approach being used is another expansion of government power through the already grossly over expanded commerce clause.

The salient question is again, exactly how much of our liberty we are willing to surrender in the advance of the protection of property rights? We have already witnessed a tremendous expansion of the original charge contained in Paragraph 8 of the Constitution. The original authorization was "for a limited time." We have seen over the last century and expansion of that protection beyond the original protective laws.

The original copyright laws covered 14 years with an extension for an additional 14 years if the author survived the first 14 years. With the expansion of copyright coverage from books to all intellectual property, the term under international treaty was expanded to a minimum of 50 years from the date of creation.

So we see that these laws protecting property have been in existence a long time and were considered important as protections of personal property (a concept that was paramount in the minds of the Founding Fathers).

The problem arises not in these protection provisions, but in the means of enforcement which are now being considered. Once one begins to regulate the free traffic of ideas across the internet with the intent of protecting private property, then one has crossed from protecting intellectual property into restricting the free flow of information.

You cannot block access to Pirate Bay without blocking access to the ISP's which link to it. The only legitimate means available that I can see is in the direct prosecution of piraters themselves, meaning those who rip and distribute such material. Unfortunately, with the advent of modern technology, there is no easy solution to this problem.

The use of strong Digital Rights Management and the vigorous prosecution of all who engage in actions intended to defeat DRM seems to be the most legitimate means, but again with advancing technology, even that becomes difficult when so many people are sufficiently technically proficient and capable of circumventing DRM protection.

It seems to me that the best solution would be one similar to that provided by the Itunes paradigm in which all intellectual property becomes available for download at a reasonably affordable cost. In all probability, to be successful, the record companies and film companies would have to settle for pennies on the dollar profits rather than dollars on the dollar profits.

There would also have to be some sort of perpetuity protection under this paradigm so that, should your computer crash or you buy a new system, you would not lose all of the programming material you had purchased.

Too many times DRM has been the source of immense frustration for those who suffer a disk crash or purchase an entirely new system and lose all of the legally downloaded material. Such occurrences inevitably lead to anger and frustration and piracy of intellectual property.

Ther never will be a perfect system, so the primary question remains, the extent to which you are willing to surrender your access rights to protect your property rights.


BTW This is pure opinion and speculation on my part, I AIN'T NO CONSTUTIONAL LAWYER (but then, I did sleep at a Holiday Inn once ).