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The senators who say linking to certain sites should be a felony

184 points| d0ne | 15 years ago |techdirt.com | reply

90 comments

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[+] Jeema3000|15 years ago|reply
Let's take this speculative legislation down the slippery slope, shall we? Next stop: full-speed collision with the First Amendment!...

Putting the URL in question on a website... but it's not actually a hyperlink, just plain text? Felony or not?

Printing the URL on a t-shirt and selling them? Felony or not?

Passing out pamphlets that list the URL? Felony or not?

Mentioning the URL in a news publication? Felony or not?

Telling your friend the URL? Felony or not?

[+] abecedarius|15 years ago|reply
Has a legislator ever paid much of a political cost for passing unconstitutional legislation? It must have happened, but I'm not aware myself of any serious pain for any of them.
[+] edanm|15 years ago|reply
Let's substitute one criminal activity for another. Let's say instead of linking to a site that allows you to download copyrighted material, we were talking about linking to a site that allowed you to order a hit on your wife/husband. Or a site that allowed you to order custom-made child pornography. (1)

I'm pretty sure that, if that were the site in question, many of your rhetorical questions won't seem quite as ridiculous. In fact, I'm pretty sure even the last question you pose, telling a friend the URL, can in some cases be construed as illegal, and certainly immoral. Again, not all cases, but some cases.

And if we forget the slippery slope fallacy and focus on just the linking, how would you feel if a news website actually linked to a site that allows people to download child pornography? Or allows people to order a hit on someone?

1 - I'm not saying copyright infringement is anywhere near the level of wrong I'm talking about. It's just that using something that is clearly considered wrong to all people, is a great way to clear up, in your own mind, whether what you're objecting to is the text of the bill, or the fact that it's talking about copyright infringement. I'm guessing most people here would be all for a law that banned passing out the URL of a site that solicited murders, etc. But when talking about copyright infringement, your preconceived notion that copyright infringement is OK gets in the way.

EDIT: Minor fixes.

[+] jamesaguilar|15 years ago|reply
What about a link to this list of urls you're not allowed to link to.
[+] pbhjpbhj|15 years ago|reply
Printing the QR code for the URL?
[+] AndrewMoffat|15 years ago|reply
The fact that these legislators don't see those immediately-relevant cases you mentioned as being enough gray area to put doubt in their mind as to the effectiveness of the legislation really doesn't speak well to their comprehension of how the internet works. It's really sad.
[+] kgermino|15 years ago|reply
Once again, these are not the senators who think linking to a website should be a felony, these are the senators who have no idea what they are doing and are supporting bills handed to them by the copyright lobby.

Not that that's any better.

[+] marshray|15 years ago|reply
Don't let them fool you, these people are not dumb. They know exactly what they're doing.
[+] lurchpop|15 years ago|reply
Senator's campaign contributions from entertainment lobby

* Diane Feinsten: $1,278,337

* Patrick Leahy: $897,666

* Al Franken: $802,573

* Charles E. Schumer $490,400

* Lindsey Graham: $224,161

* Sheldon Whitehouse $201,100

* Orrin Hatch: $143,826

* Chuck Grassley $116,650

* Amy Klobuchar: $171,514

* Chris Coons: $86,900

EDIT: numbers from OpenSecrets.org

[+] mikeknoop|15 years ago|reply
What amount do senators not on this list receive, for comparison?
[+] weaksauce|15 years ago|reply
Nothing bad can come from that bill...

We should make it mandatory that the legislators actually read the proposals and have pop quizes on them. If you cannot pass the quiz then you do not get to vote on it.

[+] pnathan|15 years ago|reply
Personally - and this may be optimistic of me - I look forward to the day when the Internet generation gets into Congress. I think - hope? - that maybe perhaps we will see slightly less ridiculous legislation.

Odds are that our generation will create just as asinine rules, but about something different.

[+] kijinbear|15 years ago|reply
Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a tech-savvy "Internet generation". Most of those kids who know how to use Facebook inside and out would be just as clueless as today's senators are, if they had to deal with anything remotely technical.
[+] abecedarius|15 years ago|reply
The example of the 60s generation and drug laws doesn't encourage me there.
[+] danssig|15 years ago|reply
I would agree with you, but keep in mind the kind of people who end up in congress. If you're a tech savvy nerd you're probably not going to be that interested in sitting around having stupid arguments about even stupider topics about people who don't understand any of the presented material.

I'm afraid positions of political power select for the exact kind of people who shouldn't have these positions.

[+] dodo53|15 years ago|reply
Yes, and due to accelerating change, the rate at which laws are generated/enforced by people ignorant of the subject matter will only go up.
[+] DanielBMarkham|15 years ago|reply
Interesting observation: for everybody who wishes that people could come together from all political sides to pass laws, your wish has been answered. This list includes characters from every part of the political spectrum.
[+] OstiaAntica|15 years ago|reply
As the saying goes, we have an evil party and a stupid party. Every once in awhile, they work together and produce public policy that is both evil and stupid.
[+] Vivtek|15 years ago|reply
I must admit, I expected better from Al Franken.
[+] chc|15 years ago|reply
You shouldn't. The man is in the IP lobby's pocket. This is why looking at things as politics and personalities instead of just practical concerns like "This would have undesirable effects" is not a good idea.
[+] AJ007|15 years ago|reply
Make no mistake, anyone who achieves an elected (or unelected for that matter) position has power as their number one motivation.

If you view any high ranking government official in any idealistic light, you have been tricked. These guys are marketers of the first order, and what they market is idealism.

[+] pjkundert|15 years ago|reply
Since presenting a link to such a site is illegal, wouldn't it be difficult for the government agency to communicate the information within it's own agency?

If they decide that certain means of communicating the information do not form a criminal act, then what would prevent the arbitrary individual from forming the same means, and giving a link to that, instead?

Or, are law makers and their proxies inherently immune from their own laws?

[+] SeoxyS|15 years ago|reply
Alternate headline: Senators do not understand the first amendment, and should be fired.
[+] bane|15 years ago|reply
aaaaand this is why we have a Supreme Court that decides the constitutionality of laws our ridiculous congress passes.
[+] CWuestefeld|15 years ago|reply
Except that (a) they've found a way of passing laws recently that remove their subject matter from the purview of the courts; and (b) the courts have removed themselves from some areas, as with their refusal to judge the merit of blight declarations in takings "for public use".
[+] zcid|15 years ago|reply
You must be joking.
[+] hugh3|15 years ago|reply
Interesting. Is there real-world precedent for this kind of thing?

For instance, if I know a real-world address where you can go in order to participate in some criminal activity X, is it illegal for me to tell you that address? For any value of X?

[+] waterlesscloud|15 years ago|reply
It can be.

I had jury duty for a case that involved an undercover cop asking a man on the street where he could buy crack, the man asked for money, the cop gave him some, and then the man pointed to another man down the street. The original man was on trial for conspiracy to distribute drugs, even though he wasn't actively in league with the actual dealer.

[+] eli|15 years ago|reply
Well, it wasn't all that long ago that it was illegal to "export" cryptographic algorithms from the US without a license. There was a popular T-Shirt that had RSA implemented in Perl printed on the front.

And I'm not sure, but I believe it is currently against US law to transmit recipes for making crystal meth to someone else.

[+] Tangaroa|15 years ago|reply
If your intent is to encourage the criminal activity, yes. That's what they got Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on.
[+] NHQ|15 years ago|reply
The full title of the bill is: "Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011"

Why do they want to prevent threats to theft of intellectual property?

[+] chc|15 years ago|reply
It should be parsed as "(Preventing ((Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity) and (Theft of Intellectual Property))) Act". The threats are to econonic creativity; the theft is a separate object.
[+] Andrew_Quentin|15 years ago|reply
I like the emphasis of the "real" online threats, as opposed to what they might have thought we could imagine were "perceived" or imaginary" threats.
[+] gubatron|15 years ago|reply
Wonder how google would stay in business if this passed. How to stop the engine from knowing that it's indexing an illegal website?
[+] bediger|15 years ago|reply
How does any non-corporate website stay legal in this case? It looks like you can't link to something not under your control without a substantial risk of committing a crime. Without "blogrolls" it's hard to find related blogs. Without links to actual news articles, it's hard to write commentary worth reading. If some copyright troll can link to Most Sacred and Holy "IP" in the comments, you can't really have comments on articles.

This particular bill seems like an attempt to unring the Internet bill, to stuff the genie of disintermediation back in the bottle, to put gatekeepers/editors back in place.

[+] tzs|15 years ago|reply
The law has no trouble distinguishing between something that happens as a side effect and something that is intended.
[+] eurohacker|15 years ago|reply
be thankful that uncle Rockefeller has allowed you yo use internet so far, he said internet should have never existed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct9xzXUQLuY

[+] torkins|15 years ago|reply
If you'd bother to watch the video you linked, you might notice he doesn't actually say that... in fact he says that is a stupid thing to say.