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

[madtownidiot]

From PCmag.com
New Bill Would Require U.S. ISPs to Block Pirate Sites:

A bipartisan group of U.S. Senators were scheduled Monday to introduce an act that would crack down on sites that traffic in pirated intellectual property, whether or not those sites are housed in the United States.

The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act is sponsored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and senior Republican member Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), and co-sponsored by a number of Senate Democrats, including Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), plus others.

The bill takes the novel step of not only cracking down on domestic sites that illegally distribute copyrighted material, but also authorizes the Department of Justice to choke off access to foreign sites, including ordering domestic ISPs and payment providers to either block or stop doing business with the infringing sites.

Full article here:

I don't know what anyone else may think, but it looks like the US is about to get our own version of the Great Firewall Of China.

 

[pparks1]

I don't really have a problem with these measures. In my opinion, it's better if the people simply cannot get to things rather than go after the people after they already got something and they claim that they didn't know any better. And I don't make use of any of these types of sites, so it will have 0 impact on me at present.

 

[EchoX860]

This is ridiculous personally.

 

[Vertex]

Will they block sites like Piratebay?? Oh well I guess if they really cared about legal software, they should have done this long ago. Piracy has been going on for many years. But this won't stop people from trying to get illegal software anyway. Some of them may even see this as a challenge.

 

[yowanvista]

This won't stop hackers, there are always other ways to access pirate sites

 

[BCXtreme]

And this just after our president made a big speech to the U.N. condemning Internet censorship, vowing it will never be implemented in the U.S., and pledging to support efforts to end it overseas?! You've got to be kidding me...

 

[madtownidiot]

The simple fact is any site could host or have a link to another site that hosts illegal or pirated material at any given time. What people should be worried about is the huge potential for abuse this bill would provide. The judge would be given complete discretion in determining which sites can be blocked, with no firm criteria to protect legitimate sites from being censored.

 

[pparks1]

This won't stop hackers, there are always other ways to access pirate sites

You are correct...this won't stop hackers. Nothing will stop those determined enough. But some efforts could have an impact on the casual person who can almost accidentally stumble upon this stuff today.

I mean aside from getting pirated software, copyrighted movie downloads and such....what else do sites like The Pirate Bay really offer which would be a bummer if we lost? Or is it simply the access to stuff that "they" say, you "aren't supposed to download".

 

[Tews]

The problem with setting this type of precedent is that once it is established, then it becomes easy to censor other "suspect" content.. say websites that offer political dissent... and it all started out with the best of intentions... to curb piracy ... but the road to he*l is paved with good intentions...

 

[marsmimar]

The problem with setting this type of precedent is that once it is established, then it becomes easy to censor other "suspect" content.. say websites that offer political dissent... and it all started out with the best of intentions... to curb piracy ... but the road to he*l is paved with good intentions...

Well said.

 

[HQuest]

Banning pirate sites? Good luck trying to block Google.

 

[SledgeDG]

Good one, HQuest
Besides, you don't have to be a hacker to know how to use a proxy.
Any kind of censorship is BAD. Who are they to decide what I can read/see/think.
-DG

 

[pparks1]

The problem with setting this type of precedent is that once it is established, then it becomes easy to censor other "suspect" content.. say websites that offer political dissent... and it all started out with the best of intentions... to curb piracy ... but the road to he*l is paved with good intentions...

Yeah, I guess you are right...since it could be abused and used for other things and likely won't stop all hacking...we should absolutely not do anything.

Banning pirate sites? Good luck trying to block Google.

The thing is you could search google and you could find results, but when you tried to navigate some of the links and what not...you might have blocked routing that prevents you from accessing the IP address of the source server.

Good one, HQuest Besides, you don't have to be a hacker to know how to use a proxy.

True, some people don't know how to do it. So, therefore they would just think it doesn't work. And proxy access could also be regulated and like the google example above, even if a proxy gets you search results if the routers won't route your traffic to the destination it won't do you any good.

Clearly we all understand that nothing is perfect and there will be ways to work around it. But not everybody puts in the extra effort or knows how to do these things. And even if they find out, they might be too nervous to do it suspecting that somebody is watching.

 

[BCXtreme]

As a few others have said, the biggest concern here is the slippery slope. Give a man an inch, and right away he thinks he's a ruler.

Yeah, I guess you are right...since it could be abused and used for other things and likely won't stop all hacking...we should absolutely not do anything.

I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not, but it's correct that we shouldn't do this. The potential for abuse far outweighs any possible benefits.

 

[24c]

The problem with setting this type of precedent is that once it is established, then it becomes easy to censor other "suspect" content.. say websites that offer political dissent... and it all started out with the best of intentions... to curb piracy ... but the road to he*l is paved with good intentions...

Web sites that offer illegal software/activities for sale/distribution are not the same as websites that offer opinions. Opinions are not illegal, although I think many should be.

 

[BCXtreme]

The problem with setting this type of precedent is that once it is established, then it becomes easy to censor other "suspect" content.. say websites that offer political dissent... and it all started out with the best of intentions... to curb piracy ... but the road to he*l is paved with good intentions...

Web sites that offer illegal software/activities for sale/distribution are not the same as websites that offer opinions. Opinions are not illegal, although I think many should be.

And who's going to watchdog everything to make sure only true piracy sites are being blocked?

 

[24c]

The problem with setting this type of precedent is that once it is established, then it becomes easy to censor other "suspect" content.. say websites that offer political dissent... and it all started out with the best of intentions... to curb piracy ... but the road to he*l is paved with good intentions...

Web sites that offer illegal software/activities for sale/distribution are not the same as websites that offer opinions. Opinions are not illegal, although I think many should be.

And who's going to watchdog everything to make sure only true piracy sites are being blocked?

Tews, he's the one who tied the "illegal" and "opinion" sites together in a post.
Ban Tews!

 

[Product FRED]

Pirating is sharing files. So essentially, one would have to disable copy and paste, click and drag, uploading and downloading. Sidenote, torrenting is much more efficient than traditional downloading since it puts a small load on several clients rather than a large load on a single server.

 

[netdeveloper]

There goes the neighborhood!

 

[Layback Bear]

Blocking known sites that deal in illegal products doesn't bother me. It's about time. Many people use torrents to get something they don't want to pay for but they should pay for. Now some worry about the poor old server, Bull Droppings. I read it all and I didn't notice anything about blocking sites with opinions given. We protects banks not because everybody is a bank robber but rather because there are bank robbers. Putting locks on banks don't stop all bank robbers, just most of them. The same with blocking known illegal sites. It will stop most from using them but not all.