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- Jun 17, 2000
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I don't know if anyone here has accessed Wikipedia this morning, but there's a proposal I've been following for a while now that I think everyone in here needs to know about because it could potentially have a bearing here at our site, and thousands of others.
The act is called SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) which, if made law, would expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property. I have no issue with the concept of what they're trying to achieve, but the problem is that the language in the proposed law is too broad and it could have a direct impact on sites like this which contains a lot of "user generated material" (ie: posts, threads, etc.)
As you know I've been active against having people copy/paste complete articles, etc. to make sure we stay within the necessary guidelines so that we're not infringing on any copyrights. I think for the most part we do a good job, but obviously it's not perfect and it's obviously hard to catch everything.
The problem is several of the provisions in SOPA will force ISPs hosting websites (ie: the company that hosts our servers) to potentially disconnect us from the Internet if there’s a claim - unsubstantiated or not - that we're infringing against copyright, regardless of if it has not been fully proved in court. The argument is that this would make it easy for someone to make false or weak claims against the site to take a us offline until we went to court.
That's a headache I'm not prepared to deal with. The number of threats I get each year via e-mail from angry members from other teams we remove are pretty unreal and obviously you guys don't see them, so giving any additional ammunition backed up by a law like this would be a potentially huge issue. I've been talking with other sites and it's a very real concern that we're all potentially going to be faced with if this goes through, unless it's rewritten to better target the sites that are really the ones they're looking to address.
Needless to say this is something serious enough that everyone should be aware of. I noticed Wikipedia went black this morning over it, and I just felt that everyone here should know about what's going on. Again, I'm not condoning piracy, infringement, etc. - that's not the point. The point is the language in the proposal unfortunately is too broad and isn't specific enough in achieving the desired results.
You can read more about it here:
Stop Online Piracy Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The act is called SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) which, if made law, would expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property. I have no issue with the concept of what they're trying to achieve, but the problem is that the language in the proposed law is too broad and it could have a direct impact on sites like this which contains a lot of "user generated material" (ie: posts, threads, etc.)
As you know I've been active against having people copy/paste complete articles, etc. to make sure we stay within the necessary guidelines so that we're not infringing on any copyrights. I think for the most part we do a good job, but obviously it's not perfect and it's obviously hard to catch everything.
The problem is several of the provisions in SOPA will force ISPs hosting websites (ie: the company that hosts our servers) to potentially disconnect us from the Internet if there’s a claim - unsubstantiated or not - that we're infringing against copyright, regardless of if it has not been fully proved in court. The argument is that this would make it easy for someone to make false or weak claims against the site to take a us offline until we went to court.
That's a headache I'm not prepared to deal with. The number of threats I get each year via e-mail from angry members from other teams we remove are pretty unreal and obviously you guys don't see them, so giving any additional ammunition backed up by a law like this would be a potentially huge issue. I've been talking with other sites and it's a very real concern that we're all potentially going to be faced with if this goes through, unless it's rewritten to better target the sites that are really the ones they're looking to address.
Needless to say this is something serious enough that everyone should be aware of. I noticed Wikipedia went black this morning over it, and I just felt that everyone here should know about what's going on. Again, I'm not condoning piracy, infringement, etc. - that's not the point. The point is the language in the proposal unfortunately is too broad and isn't specific enough in achieving the desired results.
You can read more about it here:
Stop Online Piracy Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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