Evo said:
How are the artists, writers, designers, developers, etc... going to make a living if their work is stolen? That's their work. That's how they make their living. What makes stealing their work right?
No one is saying that artists et. al. should not be paid for their work. The problem is when regulations or actions taken to protect one group negatively affect the other. The "content industry" has long abused their power, whether suing dead people[1], people identified only by IP address[2], or directly putting malware on peoples' computers[3]. Had you or I done this last step to protect any of our intellectual property, we would be imprisoned. (If you are interested in computers and security, [3] is an excellent read.)
The Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act, while in some ways not as extreme as directly putting malware on consumers' computers*, continues the same trend. Though the supporters claim that the bill only targets foreign sites, the bill is written vaguely such that a "foreign site" is only one which was not registered by a US company[4]. Thus, actual sites operated by foreign entities would be considered domestic if the site was registered by a US registrar, and US sites with foreign registered domain names (e.g. bit.ly) would be "foreign sites" under the language of the bill. The Pirate Bay (thepiratebay.org), a Swedish-hosted site that provides trackers for torrenting, would not be a "foreign site" as defined in SOPA/PIPA.
The scary part of the bills (removed as of this time from SOPA, but still in PIPA) is the censoring of the internet using Domain Name Service filtering. This would break DNSSEC, an important technology for preventing DNS hijacking (i.e. rogue DNS redirecting a DNS query to a rogue/malware site)[5]. The attorney general is given the power to block sites using DNS filtering, which is also a dangerous precedent. Considered that the chairman of the MPAA, former Sen. Chris Dodd, claimed that the US should be more like China in terms of censoring the Internet[6].
The fact is that it is impossible to prevent works in a digital format from being shared. If Alice shares a file with Bob, she can't take steps to protect it, but as long as Bob can access the file in plaintext there is nothing that can be done to stop sharing. As the infosec saying goes, "Information wants to be free".
The other issue is that we shouldn't use legislation to protect a dying business model**. This only stifles innovation. It's possible to make plenty of revenue, even if copyright infringement is as prevalent as is claimed. Steam, Amazon MP3, and iTunes are massively profitable. Steam is even in essence a DRM platform. The difference is that it is a DRM platform that provides benefits to the consumer, and not one that arbitrarily punishes all users because a few pirate.
*Others would say, and I would be inclined to agree, that any bill threatening to censor the internet would be worse then a rootkit.
**Let's face it, regardless of what happens with SOPA/PIPA, the "CD store" is effectively a relic of the past.
References:
[1] Orlowski, Andrew, "RIAA sues the dead," 5 Feb. 2005,
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/05/riaa_sues_the_dead/
[2] Gaither, Chris, "Recording industry withdraws suit", 24 Sept. 2003,
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2003/09/24/recording_industry_withdraws_suit/
[3] Russinovich, Mark, "Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far", 31 Oct. 2005,
http://blogs.technet.com/b/markruss...d-digital-rights-management-gone-too-far.aspx
[4] H.R. 3261, Title I, § 101, Para 3 – Definition of a domestic domain name
[5] Mohan, Ram, "DNSSEC's Time Is Here, But SOPA Presents Challenges", 10 Jan. 2012,
http://www.securityweek.com/dnssecs-time-here-sopa-presents-challenges
[6] Johnson, Ted, "Dodd slams Google over legislatoin (sic)", 8 Dec. 2011,
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118047080
