Protect IP law, is this really a huge threat to sites like Milepoint?

What are your thoughts? If this is right, MP could legally get shut down under this proposed law if just one user posts one video that contains copyright material.

 

From the little that I've heard, the Senate bill (this one) is likely a done deal. The House bill (SOPA) on the other hand, is in trouble. They're seeing it increasingly as an election year liability. There's even been talk of a large Internet site "strike" the day of some hearings (next week?).

Suggestion: Post of a list of the sponsors of the Senate bill, particularly the ones who are up for election this year. That information is still unprotected from censorship. But, only "still."

 

Here's a link to a wikipedia article on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_O...ive_impact_on_websites_that_host_user_content

As a demonstration:
Among the criticisms of the ProtectIP Act or SOPA (it has multiple names right now, as its still separate bills in the Senate and House), are that "the bill would ban linking to sites deemed offending."

As wikipedia is a user-generated site, it is likely that a user may (inadvertently or not) post copyrighted material... and wikipedia would be an "offending site." Thus the link I posted above would also be a violation of the SOPA, and put MP at risk.

 

Is that video copyright-protected?

 

Lamar Smith's own website (this is the main guy in Senate pushing SOPA), which is far from wikipedia or a forum, is in violation of SOPA if it was already in power AND is in violation of current copyright laws. That's how easy it is to violate the smorgasbord of laws created to "protect" IP.

 

In protest of the SOPA/PIPA laws, wikipedia is going to shut down for 24 hours starting tomorrow:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/17/tech/web/wikipedia-sopa-blackout-qa/index.html

 

I was going to suggest that maybe only the US site should be shut down, but as I read through the interview, that (sort-of) seems to be the way it works -- the English language site is down, and the other languages get to decide (vote) on their own what they want to do.

 

Fyi, looks like several people are backing off their support of the bills, including a couple of co-sponsors.
https://mashable.com/2012/01/18/pipa-sopa-abandon-bill/

So yay for Rubio, Cornyn, Blunt, Boozman, and Hatch for dropping PIPA, and Quayle and Terry for dropping SOPA. Boo to Lamar Smith for being a mule. These bills are BAD news if you want any kind of freely distributed user-generated and fair-use content on the internet. Think of all the sites you frequent that would be damaged by this. We're not just talking message boards and blogs, but sites/services like YouTube, Facebook, Digg, Reddit, Google, and Yahoo!, not to mention corporate business websites could suffer severe adverse effects.

(note: I am not a lawyer, politics geek, internet freedom of speech geek, or anything like that. This is my complete layman's understanding of the potential repercussions of the proposed bills and, as someone who really likes the internet, hopes to see them go down in flames)

 

A graphic showing the shift in support after the strong Jan 18 Internet action by Wikipedia, Google and others.