Movie industry loves bill that would force ISPs to block piracy websites

Proposed US law slammed as "censorious" and an "Internet kill switch."

See full article...

 

[SirOmega]

The petitioner has attested under penalty of perjury to the accuracy of its claims and has a substantial interest in enforcing its rights.

Because that works so well for DMCA copyright notices, right? /s

 

[lasertekk]

Hollywood should be using its immense global outreach, running a certain PR campaign against a certain regime.

Damn right. Stop playing the nice guy, because they aren’t.

 

[Koga Onutalepo]

Copyright maximalism is a brain disease just as much as Republicanism is.

 

[Tonkaman]

I'm going to be curious if the blackouts and protests against SOPA/PIPA from way back would have the same traction in the present internet, or if those same tech companies that participated would even do so again.

It wouldn't. See congress' reaction to TikTok doing that same tactic.

"The horror! Young people are calling my office. It must be the political propaganda from the Chinese! Ban it!" - Average congressman

 

[snoopy.369]

"US Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) today didn't notice that they have actual important work to do, but instead proposed some crap that won't work, and even if it did, would only benefit rich corporations at the expense of average citizens."

To be fair, she's a Democrat in the initial weeks of the Trump administration with a fully Republican controlled congress. She probably doesn't have anything actually productive to do right now... so why not score some points with the Hollywood donors back home?

 

[mozumder]

At this point in history, I feel like maybe there are more important evils for Dems to be fighting against than... (checks notes)... movie piracy.

It's either this or figure out ways to send more money to Israel so that Jews can live-stream themselves killing thousands of Muslim children to steal their land.

BTW you'll notice the same Democrats support both. Democrats really need to purge their party of these right-wing extremists.

 

[jezra]

Zoe Lofgren is completely wrong on this. The entertainment industry is just fine and doesn’t need this help at the expense of the public danger of civil censorship. Imagine the whole internet with the issues we see on YouTube with DMCA claims. Entities with money to spare could easily shut down any content they don’t like with frivolous claims.

There is tons of illicit content on the internet to allow some folks to watch pirated copies of anything but the vast majority of people simply pay for access through legitimate distribution. It’s easier (generally) and safer. I suppose if media companies drove up prices too much some larger minority of consumers would seek out alternative sources but how about they don’t drive people into buying entertainment off the street.

right or wrong is irrelevant. Lofgren is simply doing what her corporate sponsors funded her to do.

 

[dark-star]

This proposal is going nowhere except right in the shredder.

 

[Dusfud]

Imagine losing the election and deciding to take on a different losing battle that's as old as high speed internet.

You're so wrong - this battle was 100% around before high speed Internet .

Now, granted, you're 100% right about everything else....

 

[graylshaped]

There’s bigger fish to fry, Zoe.

Really dumb to be pushing this right now, if ever.

 

[adamsc]

To be fair, she's a Democrat in the initial weeks of the Trump administration with a fully Republican controlled congress. She probably doesn't have anything actually productive to do right now... so why not score some points with the Hollywood donors back home?

She could be talking to every reporter she knows about the destruction of the federal government is causing problems for her constituents, and making it harder for businesses in her district.

She could be involved in the legal efforts to push back against the illegal acts, especially where the president is attempting to take powers which belong to Congress.

She could be rallying voters to volunteer for upcoming elections trying to win in areas which aren’t reliably blue.

 

[aaronheck]

I haven't downloaded a single torrent in my life, but I thought piracy was passe with most content readily available for streaming. Laziness always wins, and legally available content seems easier.

It's much trickier with content they refuse to make available. For example, there's no legal way to watch My Name Is Earl in Europe.

I think a word is missing between "for" and "streaming" in your statement - "economical". Feels like every streaming provider keeps upping their rates, or adds in new service tiers with limited content, or changes service agreements by putting in things like ads, or (insert annoying change here). That frustrates the audience, creates new pirates, and brings old pirates out of retirement.

 

[jezra]

There’s bigger fish to fry, Zoe.

Really dumb to be pushing this right now, if ever.

When a trained animal does what its master commands, we usually say the animal is "smart".

 

[LeftCoastRusty]

Hey Hollywood….i’d be more inclined to pay theater prices for a movie if you actually made good movies instead of _____ part 6, or yet another reinterpretation of (insert random comic book title here).

 

[BurntToShreds]

It wouldn't. See congress' reaction to TikTok doing that same tactic.

"The horror! Young people are calling my office. It must be the political propaganda from the Chinese! Ban it!" - Average congressman

The kids were calling in to the offices with a mix of threatening to take their own lives, and sending death threats to the Congressfolk. It was a hilarious own-goal on ByteDance’s part.

 

[BilTheGalacticHero]

Yeah, this is B.S. Want something blocked? Go to court.

 

[SugarMaple]

Canadian here. I'm not sure what she's talking about regarding our laws. Pirating stuff here has always been trivially simple and perfectly safe from law enforcement. If, say, Disney complains to my ISP provider that I've downloaded something, the ISP is required to send me a message that the complaint has been lodged. BUT, in the same message, the ISP reassures me that they are NOT required to reveal my identity to Disney, and will not do so in regards to this complaint. Over the past ~15 years, I've received only 5 or 6 such messages. Each time, I just deleted them and went on with my day.

 

[jdawgnoonan]

I wish these lawmakers would fight for important things, like maybe privacy rights for US citizens, instead of wasting their seats fighting for unenforceable laws to protect Hollywood interests. Then Democrats wonder why normal citizens have lost faith in them.

 

[aurelius rex]

The bill has exemptions for VPN services and "similar services that encrypt and route user traffic through intermediary servers"; DNS providers that offer service "exclusively through encrypted DNS protocols"; and operators of premises that provide Internet access, like coffee shops, bookstores, airlines, and universities.

So VPNs are exempt (which is the smart/safe way to torrent…) as are DNS over TLS/HTTPS services.

The safety-minded pirate will not be affected whatsoever. It will be the rest of society that suffers from corporate-directed censorship.

 

[SteveBigandTall]

If any national Dems are listening. THIS IS ONE of the reasons you don't get votes. If I wanted GOP-Lite I'd just vote for the GOP.
I'm sure Netflix etc are loving this. Pass this bill. Start enforcing it and then get rid of the 'cancel anytime' clause and boom, it's early retirement for VPs all over!

 

[krysan]

just build a great firewall already. america is the next china lol.

 

[Mechjaz]

The fascists are in power.

A highly connected pseudo-governmental individual is throwing literal, actual, gas chamber & concentration camp Nazi salutes to celebrate the inauguration.

Zoe Lofgren peeks up from building a gravy moat for her mashed potato castle, a year in the making, and says she has a great plan for protecting the poor old down and out MPAA.*

So anyway, the fascists are in power...

* Are they just the MPA now? Did I miss something?

 

[jasonmicron]

US Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) today proposed a law that would let copyright owners obtain court orders requiring Internet service providers to block access to foreign piracy websites. The bill would also force DNS providers to block sites.

#1 - This representative doesn't represent a district where the MPAA or RIAA reside. They went representative-shopping

#2 - In other news, VPNs are a thing. But keep chasing that dragon, MPAA and RIAA! I'm absolutely convinced their lawyers just want job security. They know this will go nowhere

#3 - People engaging in such acts obviously know how to change their DNS settings to a Cloudflare or Google provider in a region of the world that doesn't give two shits about USA law, just like users in Italy.

The bill has exemptions for VPN services and "similar services that encrypt and route user traffic through intermediary servers"; DNS providers that offer service "exclusively through encrypted DNS protocols"

#4 - this is even more hilarious. What is the endgame, exactly, for this bill? Because it doesn't really seem to do much of anything to those they claim to be targeting.

 

[Pishaw]

So after losing to a low IQ habitually lying felon, THIS is the 'New Democrats'? This is the comeback?

While I am not in favor of stealing, I do NOT want my ISP to raise my bill to protect the fucking trash that Hollywood and the streaming services produce. That will be the only result of this if it becomes law. It would do absolutely nothing to prevent piracy, and give the ISPs an excuse to raise rates.

DO BETTER, Democrats. Everything you do right now is wrong. You need to clean fucking house and start from scratch.

Sorry. Edit mistake.

 

[bthylafh]

At this point in history, I feel like maybe there are more important evils for Dems to be fighting against than... (checks notes)... movie piracy.

Follow the money.

 

[RickVS]

I think a word is missing between "for" and "streaming" in your statement - "economical". Feels like every streaming provider keeps upping their rates, or adds in new service tiers with limited content, or changes service agreements by putting in things like ads, or (insert annoying change here). That frustrates the audience, creates new pirates, and brings old pirates out of retirement.

Remember when music piracy was a thing? Apple addressed it with the ability to EASILY and AFFORDABLY acquire music. Music piracy plummeted. If Hollywood suits would provide content easily and affordably, piracy would largely go away. Unfortunately, in the service of shareholders, we'll never get back to the simplistic system of just having affordable ad-free Netflix for original content and affordable ad-free Hulu for everything else for $20/month. Greed is killing the golden goose.

 

[Ildatch]

Brick by brick the United States is building a panopticon for censorship and government oppression with "good intentions" to stop the nasty pirates and save the children from the pedos and something something terrorism.

 

[brad0]

transmission of a work through a foreign website

So, sites which only host torrent links and do not themselves transmit the "work" wouldn't be affected, right?

 

[TheHokieCoder]

Hey Hollywood….i’d be more inclined to pay theater prices for a movie if you actually made good movies instead of _____ part 6, or yet another reinterpretation of (insert random comic book title here).

And if it wasn’t nearly $20 for the ticket plus another $47.50 for a drink and bucket of popcorn.

 

[LostFate]

Yeah, that's what Dems need to focus on right now... Putting infra in place to simplify and streamline censoring content. Making the tools of their destruction, super big brain.

Fuck, we're doomed.

 

[byrningman]

Lofgren said in a press release that she "work[ed] for over a year with the tech, film, and television industries" on "a proposal that has a remedy for copyright infringers located overseas that does not disrupt the free Internet except for the infringers."

Translation: “the industry lobbyists that paid for me to hold this office handed me the text of this bill and told me that this is now my top (and sole) priority”.

 

[terrydactyl]

With all the issues the country is facing her focus is... An industry that's doing just fine.

 

[S3D fan]

In practice this law would just serve as a reminder to fire up your VPN.

”My torrent index is blocked? Whoops, my VPN is down, glad they reminded me to fix that”.

These restrictions would be expensive to maintain, entirely ineffective, and serve as an educational tool on proper VPN use. I’m not sure that is what they actually want.

Always use the permanent kill switch provided by your VPN app, you don't want your real IP address harvested those seconds your VPN is down before it reconnects.

 

[Pat_Murph]

Dems and Cons never have a problem working together to make rich people even richer while fucking the rest of us.

 

[redbike]

Public Knowledge described the bill as a "censorious site-blocking" measure

pedant alert:

The meaning of the word 'censorious' is related to 'censure', not 'censor'.

That is all.

 

[that guy strife]

As a Brit, I can reassure Americans that if the proposal works anything like our system does - which is to say it doesn't - then you will likely never even notice it's existence.

Edit: this isn't a subjective statement that such measures shouldn't be resisted from being implemented, it's an objective statement that a similar system in the UK achieves, to all practical intents, fuck all.

hahaha same, I read Canada on the list of countries having implemented similar tools and went ''uh ?'' I've been illegally downloading since Limewire in Canada and uh ... never noticed any kind of implementation of any tool ? I know some people who got letters from their ISP for torrenting a single movie, while I never got anything while torrenting all kinds of games, shows, movies, programs, music ... Which leads me to think ISPs just don't give a shit. They give you a warning sometimes maybe, but if you do it a lot they seem to just ... shrug it off.

 

[Anonymous_Coward]

The petitioner has attested under penalty of perjury to the accuracy of its claims

Yeah, this part works great with DMCA takedowns. Needs a 10% of company profits penalty for false takedowns.

 

[mpfaff]

Remember when music piracy was a thing? Apple addressed it with the ability to EASILY and AFFORDABLY acquire music. Music piracy plummeted. If Hollywood suits would provide content easily and affordably, piracy would largely go away. Unfortunately, in the service of shareholders, we'll never get back to the simplistic system of just having affordable ad-free Netflix for original content and affordable ad-free Hulu for everything else for $20/month. Greed is killing the golden goose.

Netflix was both why I stopped pirating movies and TV shows and also the reason why I started again more recently.

 

[sleepyox]

This means that one court can cut off access to a website globally

I have a great problem with fucking things that is outside of this court's jurisdiction.

Imagine they issue that order to 8.8.8.8
This will further fragment the Internet, increase costs and complexity of anycast DNS implementations, without any useful results.

I would say just block those DNS resolutions to ONLY to those copyright holders and their lawyers while the rest of the world tries to come t9gether than break apart further.

Most state DNS censorship orders has a high bar ( ie. direct harm to persons ).
This just lowers the bar so any potential harm to one oligarch's PROFITS can trigger censorship to OTHER countries is beyond what is acceptable.

Maybe people should start integrating namecoin resolutions to keep global name service operational in case cartels starts gang wars on the global DNS infrastructure.

 

[jtwrenn]

":The bill has exemptions for VPN services and "similar services that encrypt and route user traffic through intermediary servers"; DNS providers that offer service "exclusively through encrypted DNS protocols"; and operators of premises that provide Internet access, like coffee shops, bookstores, airlines, and universities.:"

For people who already do this regularly it will do next to nothing because of this portion. People use vpns for this stuff.

So this is a bill just to get more vpn sign ups? Cause that is all it would do.