Second Lifers Should Support SOPA

Second Life creators and users should support the Stop Online Piracy Act. It's legislation that helps stop copybotting by ending the impunity for it; it's the policy on intellectual property you always wanted in Second Life instead of chasing DMCA takedown notices.

But not surprisingly, Mitch Kapor, CEO of the board of the the maker of Second Life, Linden Lab, through his Electronic Frontier Foundation and other geek networks, is fighting SOPA. Belatedly the dogs of war have been unleashed on SL, a small community compared to Reddit which is going to shut down in protest (the reverse of what the merchants did when they shut down to protest piracy).

That's been done through the usual EFF mouthpiece and geek copyleftist (who always wrote extremely unsympathetically about the copybot issues and protests), SL Hamlet ne Linden Au on his blog.

SOPA doesn't threaten Second Life in the slightest. Oh sure, piracy, supposedly to be especially likely with mesh, goes on in large quantities. But that's what we want to fight. This notion that entire sites are taken down when only some infringing content on them is absurd. Law-enforcers have to meet the test of the definitions in the law, and anticipate the defenses and remedies. That's why I've suggested, um, READING the law, which spells this out. You would have to prove that Linden Lab knowingly profited in large amounts (over $1000) for a period over more than 3 months, repeatedly and deliberately, and also failed to make its case that shutting down the site would be too technologically non-feasible or too hard (more applicable to SL servers). So even if someone somehow manages to show that the SLM pirated items sold taken as a whole on the SLM were knowingly and deliberately kept by LL there to make a profit from commissions or subscriptions or tier fees somehow, you'd have to show IP holders for $1000 worth of content and all the rest of it. It's not going to happen. OR if it should come to that, LL will remove the content. Hello! Like the do now, when a serious IP holder tells them to.

What SOPA would do would remove the endless seperate DMCA cases -- or at least many of them. Because as the law of the land, companies would have to stop looking the other way and move on their own internal complaints better.

Google said it had a whopping 5 million takedown notices in a year. 5 million! On Youtube and other properties. It took down an enormous 75 percent of them! that's how to look at it. That's millions. The 25 percent they didn't take down probably didn't have good lawyers. See how this works? 5 million items that they got to make ad money from. 5 million cases or multiple cases from IP holders like music companies, having to chase them to make them take it down. Yes, Google and others are going to have to change somewhat their criminal and negligible business model, and start licensing content and stop ignoring pleas to take it down until it comes to lawsuits.

The idea that Google was harming free speech when it took down 75 percent of 5 million items is preposterous. Free speech wasn't harmed a whit. Livelihoods were made safe and money wasn't lost for artists. Some of Google's ad revenue got dented a bit. Boo-hoo! That will teach you to stop stealing and making money off other people's content.

When Google removes millions of infringing youtubes constantly, they don't say the Internet is broken or that innovation is harmed. They comply. That's the law. This law codifies it better, instead of letting code-as-law rule.

SOPA's language specifically addresses the false claim that providers have to become "copyright police". They don't. The law says they do not have to become prior monitors. Read it! As one congressman put it acidly: they have to obey the TOS they already have. Good! Pity it takes Congress intervening on the Internet to do this, but that is what it takes. Or actually, not pity. Thank God, we have organic institutions that can control greedy geeks. It's our only hope of keeping our freedom.

Go to SOPA Opera to see where your congressmen is on this bill. And write him or her to ask him to supoprt it! Howard Berman, a champion of human rights, is thankfully supporting it. But Daryl Issa, the libertarian and Tea Party darling is putting in killer amendments -- Silicon Valley is in his district. So is Zoe Lofgren in Silicon Valley. That's why Cory Doctorow's shrill claims that technologists have no input are silly -- there are some very heavy hitters from Silicon Valley already turned on this. That's why we have to fight for it!

So many are still undecided! An easy way to write them is on their Facebook pages if they have them. Look at New York's, 4 only are supporting, 27 undecided. I've been writing them.

Oh, going to yammer on and on about how Congress is "in the 1 percent" (a stupid idea if I ever heard it) and "bought out" by lobbiests? Well, look at Zoe Loefgren. At least if that theory is true, she stays bought and true to the Silicon Valley industries of computer and Internet that paid her; the music industry just paid her a lot less.

I'm going to be watching Sen. Gillibrand in my state. She picks up a lot of the "progressive" causes. But TV/Movies interests gave her more campaign contributions than Computers/Internet, so she better support SOPA.BTW, I'm all for lobbying -- it's legal, and now you can see how transparent it is.

Ron Paul lolbertarians and Obama technocommunists are together on opposing the bill, and that's why the liberal center must hold.

One of the most deceptive aspects of all this is how geeks are screaming that this will "break" the Internet and hatrm the new DNSSEC planned security regime. Gosh, worried about security all of a sudden, i.e. their privacy, after telling us for 15 years that you can't encrypt content and DRM doesn't work. So now something new and special? And geeks block malware sites all the time; that doesn't break the Internet. Why can't they block pirate sites? And indeed, Tor will work around this, although Tor may be one of the circumvention technologies targeted if they show that they in fact have intent to allow pirating (and ideologically, of course, they do, though they dance around it.)

 

 

 

There is enough amount of hype, hypocrisy and hypotheticals around this, to quote the lobbyists of the RIAA. But long before any RIAA lobbyists said it, I said it for a different set of reasons.

I've written why Second Life resident should support SOPA and why Second Life actually shows how SOPA can work, and not harm innovation or censor speech, both chimeras that hysterical geeks have whipped up to try to scare Tumbling teens to screech about this everywhere.

My articles on this on Wired State:

 

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/intellectual-property/

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/2011/11/geeks-screaming-about-internet-censorship-ought-to-be-ashamed-of-themselves-and-ought-to-actually-re.html

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/2011/12/a-strange-piece-of-hate-mail-and-an-epiphany-about-sopa.html

 

Comments

[Omg]

Second Life would get taken down for all of the streaming music people use. Forget about who's uploading what for mesh. lol!

[ichabod Antfarm]

"You could not give a more convincing demonstration of why you're not qualified to comment."

Burnt any good books lately?

[Prokofy Neva]

thanks, ichabod.

The answer to my legitimate question and challenge to geeks to explain themselves isn't "you're stupid" because then my answer is "and assholes like you don't get to run my Internet or anything, and fuck you."

Indeed I do get to ask what the hell the difference is between encryption of DRM or content that they reject, and their other encryption that they are raising as so holy and vital for DNSSEX.

Indeed I do.

That's what normal people do in a democratic society -- they challenge those in power. The geeks and their tools are in power now and trying to overthrow Congress. So fuck, yeah, I get to ask these questions if we remain a democracy and a liberal one.

It doesn't matter if cryptographic signing and data shrouding "aren't the same thing". Again, duh, we get all that, having been in SL living in a goddamn computer server and its code all these years.

What matters is how geeks can justify their "can't be done" in one instance but not the other when the same PRINCIPLES and LOGIC remain as CONCEPTS even if this or that little nerdy thing is different about it.

What "prokofy said" wasn't a truth; I asked A QUESTION as you can see above, seeing some illogic and religious doctrines at work, not engineering -- that's a common problem with all the copyleftists.

So Rex is absolutely right about what makes these different things similar and provides a helpful commentary.

What Quanmer is so busy doing -- establishing that he's a superior asshole and that I'm ignorant -- isn't scientific and therefore not persuasive. It's just assholery.

It's so typical of the way technologists think of things with weeny little binary idiocy, and that's why they make poor conceptual thinkers and strategists and can't explain themselves. They need to be called up. You think you can encrypt one thing and not the other? Why? Who the hell are you? Explain yourselves.

As for Marx whose name describes him, the RIAA is acting in the interests of content owners and their clients with content, and that's ok. They get to do that. The Internet is not all yours. Paws off.

[Marx Dudek]

And not only that, but competing virtual worlds might make easy work of shutting Second Life down.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

The US Gov shut down megaupload.com today proving they do not need SOPA/PIPA at all and already have the power to shutter websites at will without trial. I know at least one SL creator that used megaupload.com to distribute legitimate content for SL thus proving the heavy ham hand of the US gov goes too far and must be forcibly constrained.

[Prokofy Neva]

Ann, that's great that they shut down a site devoted to piracy that commercially benefited from piracy. Your friend shouldn't select sites that are devoted to piracy that commercially benefit from piracy for her own works. That's all.

What needs to be forcibly restrained right now are Google and co.

[What a joke]

Do you have absolute proof that megaupload is "devoted to piracy" or that it "commercially benefits from piracy"?

No? Didn't think so Prokofy.

Don't spout off concerning that which you know nothing at all about.

[Alyson Zhukovsky]

TLDR.. Prok, protecting original content producers is always a valuable thing to do. The way the this law is worded will not achieve that objective and will only create more frivolous lawsuits that we the tax payers must pay for.

This I am sure would effect you. You're unable to think for yourself anyway and spill out whatever verbal diarrhoea you believe goes most against the grain. You plagiarise most of what you post without giving sources..

Just saying..

[Ann Otoole InSL]

More news: http://gizmodo.com/5877779/jailed-megaupload-employees-denied-bail

So why doesn't US Gov go after Pirate Bay. Like I said earlier there are cheaper and permanently effective solutions to lefty freaks that laugh at authority. The US needs to deal with these issues in a way that permanently eliminates the people that promote IP theft. Nobody would mourn them.

Now back to google and millions of take downs. Review the options available on youtube. I choose to use audioswap which means my videos have a link to buy the music from the IP owner and ads that pay the IP owners via ad views. It is really important to fully understand youtube's IP management model. However not all IP owners choose this option. Upload the IP of someone that bans it too many times and youtube deletes your account as required by DMCA law. Too bad LL doesn't obey the law this way.

[Micha Sass]

I think Ann has hit the nail on the head. Prokofy, your beef is with the potential revenue loss that is created by IP distribution on the net. YouTube has made a provision so that IP holders can actually make a revenue from having their IP included on the YouTube system. Megaupload was most likely wholesaling other peoples IP (along with the many legitimate up/downloads) with no provision for the IP holder to make any bread.

LL has an entirely different situation where IP is often owned by users of their system as opposed to a big media group. There is some small-scale IP issues (the take down of immitation 'Tazer' products for example) involving trademarks or virtual copies of RL products. Also there are the many unlicensed DJ's who are streaming music for a very small profit. LL could maybe tackle the two former issues by adding tools to SL in the way YouTube has added tools. This could allow a small revenue stream to go to the IP holders to keep them happy.

In-world copybotting is an eternal problem that neither DCMA or SOPA would attempt to tackle. Copybotted goods are originally made in SL, copied in SL and then distributed in SL. Copybotting is not a real world problem and will not be solved by real world laws.

If a rival VR world company wished to use SOPA to shut down SL they will focus on the unlicensed DJ's. SL could combat this by disabling the media stream URL.

[Xaan Allen]

Do you ever actually understand what you write about or do you pick out a few points and start another of your irrational pieces of crap.

I have read your blog once or twice a month for several years and have never commented until now.

Are you actually trying to achieve something meaningful with this blog or is it just so yu can launch attacks on issues you clearly do not understand or on people you dislike to the point of obsession.

In all the time I have read your blog you consistantly have been critical of Linden Labs. Why do you stay in SL when you consistantly complain about everything Linden Labs does.

The fact you stay in SL shows you love the drama and havoc you create and the attention it brings you as I do not believe you are silly enough to stay and run a business in a place you have complained about for years.

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

I tried to post some comments here, but TypePad ate them :) So I decided to write a whole article instead: http://gwynethllewelyn.net/2012/01/23/sopapipa-revisited/

I don't intend any "personal attack" with that; I've just got a different interpretation of the bill, and propose a few suggestions on how to combat piracy and make sure content creators get paid for their work.

[Prokofy Neva]

Gwyn,

There isn't anything "technologically" wrong. If you write a really long post, it sometimes goes in the spam file. I don't always have time or remember to fish it out.

It doesn't matter whether the case is criminal or civil, it's merely a matter of degree of severity. So your Fisking on that point is odd. $1000 is mentioned in the bill in its last version.

Providers should comply with their own TOS and remove material ANYWAY. If they become more keen on this, good! They all are too lax. They should follow their own TOS. Blaming SOPA for their need to police their own ranks is ridiculous. They have their own TOS!

I will try to read your long post later -- in general you should write your own blog instead of doing 3 long comments here.