Will The SOPA Bill Kill The Porn Industry?

[ianlester]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

This is some very scary legislation from the USA that will effect the DNS system & internet as a whole. I'm surprised more people aren't talking about this.

This law is so fucking scary that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales (the guy who doesn't show ads on Wikipedia) is considering blocking all US Wikipedia visitors in protest.

This law gives the US government the right to block/ban website root DNS queries generally without any recourse.

This law isn't about piracy, this is about censorship and 1 government will now basically decide for the world what is "allowed" online (since the US generally controls the root DNS servers).

This is some scary shit.

-Ian

[xNetworx]

It wont pass

[Serge Litehead]

any ideas who will be their first targets? wikileaks is obvious. who else? whole adult industry? first of all i see no reason, secondly how could they possibly word their argument in industry's relation to piracy?

[ianlester]

Originally Posted by StripperCash

It wont pass

Hoping so, but that's what they said about the DMCA & 2257.

[Serge Litehead]

if big brother's intention was to clean up internet from abundance of free porn, they could simply pass a new law prohibiting free porn on any domains else you lose your domain - that would instantly solve such an issue and would make the industry flourish again

[topnotch, standup guy]

It's rather more likely that it'll save the porn industry.

Illegal tubes and file sharing forums are what's killing the industry







.

[ianlester]

Originally Posted by holograph

any ideas who will be their first targets? wikileaks is obvious. who else? whole adult industry? first of all i see no reason, secondly how could they possibly word their argument in industry's relation to piracy?

It will for sure start with torrent sites (pirates bay being #1) then the http file hosters (megaupload, filesonic, dropbox etc).

Then once the lawyers have a taste of 100% USA approved justice/money the lawsuits & bans will target anyone publisher who has any user contributed content.

-Ian

[topnotch, standup guy]

Originally Posted by holograph

if big brother's intention was to clean up internet from abundance of free porn, they could simply pass a new law prohibiting free porn on any domains else you lose your domain - that would instantly solve such an issue and would make the industry flourish again

Any law specifically targeting free porn would be unenforceable overseas and therefore completely useless.

The way they're doing it is infact the only way it can be extended worldwide.

This law worries me too, but the status quo worries me more... a lot more.


.

[Zebra]

Originally Posted by StripperCash

It wont pass

Did you watch the live feed of the hearing today? They are going to ram it through tomorrow and there really isn't anyone who is going to stop them. Several members of the panel put up some resistance and offered quite a few amendments trying to limit what this bill could do and every time they were horribly outvoted. Some of the statements made during the hearing were scary as fuck. A few of the main backers of this bill specifically pointed out that they wanted the protection of porn copyright holders to be the absolute last thing that was defended with taxpayer money.

[ianlester]

Originally Posted by topnotch, standup guy

It's rather more likely that it'll save the porn industry.

Illegal tubes and file sharing forums are what's killing the industry
.

LOL, ummmm if 1 government can now decide what sites are "illegal" across the entire internet don't you think they will eventually start banning porn? How long until they deem your "legal" site illegal?

Rather hoping on the "I hate tubes" bandwagon. How about you hop along with the "I hate censorship" train because as an industry in a whole I think that's something we all agree upon.

-Ian

[ianlester]

Originally Posted by topnotch, standup guy

Any law specifically targeting free porn would be unenforceable overseas and therefore completely useless.

The way they're doing it is infact the only way it can be extended worldwide.

This law worries me too, but the status quo worries me more... a lot more.


.

The USA controls the root DNS servers . It doesn't matter if your oversees we alll use the same DNS systems currently.

The site will basically be un-resolvable across the world

[ianlester]

Originally Posted by Zebra

Did you watch the live feed of the hearing today? They are going to ram it through tomorrow and there really isn't anyone who is going to stop them. Several members of the panel put up some resistance and offered quite a few amendments trying to limit what this bill could do and every time they were horribly outvoted. Some of the statements made during the hearing were scary as fuck. A few of the main backers of this bill specifically pointed out that they wanted the protection of porn copyright holders to be the absolute last thing that was defended with taxpayer money.

I'm glad someone else notices & you're right it's a fucking slippery slope & we're 100% not at the top end of this law.

[Rochard]

I haven't been paying attention to this, but.....

The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a felony.

Wouldn't that be a good thing for our industry?

[topnotch, standup guy]

Originally Posted by Zebra

Did you watch the live feed of the hearing today? They are going to ram it through tomorrow and there really isn't anyone who is going to stop them. Several members of the panel put up some resistance and offered quite a few amendments trying to limit what this bill could do and every time they were horribly outvoted. Some of the statements made during the hearing were scary as fuck.

I watched the hearings too and my take was quite different. Most of the bill's opponents repeatably cited existing DMCA laws as being quite adequate.

Huh???

As soon as I heard that I knew they were full of shit.

Originally Posted by Zebra

A few of the main backers of this bill specifically pointed out that they wanted the protection of porn copyright holders to be the absolute last thing that was defended with taxpayer money.

I wouldn't worry too much about that.

An amendment that would have directed the Attorney Generals office not to enforce SOPA provisions to protect the copyright of pornographers was voted down 18 to 9

.

[ianlester]

Originally Posted by Rochard

I haven't been paying attention to this, but.....

Wouldn't that be a good thing for our industry?

This isn't a piracy bill this is a censorship bill in sheep's clothing and it censors the entire internet currently.

-Ian

[topnotch, standup guy]

Originally Posted by ianlester

LOL, ummmm if 1 government can now decide what sites are "illegal" across the entire internet don't you think they will eventually start banning porn? How long until they deem your "legal" site illegal?

Common sense screams out from the rooftops that sites consisting of stolen content are by their very nature fraudulent.

As for one government (i.e. the USA government) deeming porn to be illegal, that's not likely to happen unless the Republicans take the White House back next year. And even were that to happen, the Supreme Court would almost certainly stop them in their tracks.

Outlawing theft is a lot easier than legislating morality.

Originally Posted by ianlester

Rather hoping on the "I hate tubes" bandwagon. How about you hop along with the "I hate censorship" train because as an industry in a whole I think that's something we all agree upon.

Do you realize just how many honest webmasters and content producers that the thieves have driven out of business these past few years?

Survival is all about keeping your priorities in order.

.

[ianlester]

Originally Posted by topnotch, standup guy

Do you realize just how many honest webmasters and content producers that the thieves have driven out of business these past few years?

Survival is all about keeping your priorities in order.

.

Even in high school we learned about the impact of "PEST" on an industry & business model. I really don't understand how you think the adult industry is immune?

Political:
Government type and stability.
Freedom of press, rule of law and levels of bureaucracy and corruption.
Regulation and de-regulation trends.
Social and employment legislation.
Tax policy, and trade and tariff controls.
Environmental and consumer-protection legislation.
Likely changes in the political environment .

Economic:
Stage of business cycle.
Current and projected economic growth, inflation and interest rates.
Unemployment and labor supply.
Labor costs.
Levels of disposable income and income distribution.
Impact of globalization.
Likely impact of technological or other change on the economy.
Likely changes in the economic environment.

Socio-Cultural:
Population growth rate and age profile.
Population health, education and social mobility, and attitudes to these.
Population employment patterns, job market freedom and attitudes to work.
Press attitudes, public opinion, social attitudes and social taboos.
Lifestyle choices and attitudes to these.
Socio-cultural changes.

Technological Environment:
Impact of emerging technologies.
Impact of Internet, reduction in communications costs and increased remote working.
Research & Development activity.
Impact of technology transfer.

( ^ From http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_09.htm)

-Ian

[stocktrader23]

Good luck Ian, the shortsightedness of those in this industry has gotten worse, not better.

[Captain Kawaii]

I believe, SOPA is more about sites like Ian's that seem/appear/might be built upon stolen content. There are tax revenues in legitimate business, even if it is adult.

http: //m.vidsod.com /

I see a DMCA at the bottom and full length videos. And the site is selling premium memberships... Hmmmm...just theft right for monetary gain?

If I were the tube thieves reading SOPA I'd be crapping a gerbil too.

[Failed]

Illegal tubes get shut down, awesome! Then, legal tubes, blogs, and other sites get shut down by having a user submit a random trigger comment, or by posting a hosted flv with some solo girl dancing to whatever auto tuned rapper is hot this week, or by using the wrong wording in the write up text.

And how are you going to fight it then, when it's legislation and they just hit a button to make your website go poof? Call customer service at the justice department?

[u-Bob]

I'll quote myself:

Originally Posted by u-Bob

As a student of history, I know power always corrupts. An overly broad law that gives a lot of power to the accuser and throws the presumption of innocence completely out of the windows is, imo, a recipe for disaster.

As an internet user, I worry about the impact this bill will have on a lot of products I use; ssh (could be used to hide the fact you're transferring pirated content), truecrypt (could be used to hide pirated content), icq (could be used to transfer pirated content), wget/curl (could be used to pirate content),...

As someone who does business online, I take note when Google, the Mozilla dev team, Kaspersky Labs, Zynga, Facebook, wikipedia, Twitter, human rights activists, civil liberties groups, people who built the internet like Paul Vixie (BIND) , Jim Gettys (HTTP 1.1) and Mark Andreessen (Netscape), the Electronic Frontier Foundation, AOL, eBay, PayPal, the European Parliament, LinkedIn,... all take the time and make the effort to speak out AGAINST SOPA.

Could go on, but it's late and i need some sleep. I'll be back tomorrow

[u-Bob]

Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details...
from the copyright-as-censorship dept

Imagine if the US government, with no notice or warning, raided a small but popular magazine's offices over a Thanksgiving weekend, seized the company's printing presses, and told the world that the magazine was a criminal enterprise with a giant banner on their building. Then imagine that it never arrested anyone, never let a trial happen, and filed everything about the case under seal, not even letting the magazine's lawyers talk to the judge presiding over the case. And it continued to deny any due process at all for over a year, before finally just handing everything back to the magazine and pretending nothing happened. I expect most people would be outraged. I expect that nearly all of you would say that's a classic case of prior restraint, a massive First Amendment violation, and exactly the kind of thing that does not, or should not, happen in the United States.

But, in a story that's been in the making for over a year, and which we're exposing to the public for the first time now, this is exactly the scenario that has played out over the past year -- with the only difference being that, rather than "a printing press" and a "magazine," the story involved "a domain" and a "blog."

full story: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...-details.shtml

[AdultEUhost]

Originally Posted by u-Bob

Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details...
from the copyright-as-censorship dept

Imagine if the US government, with no notice or warning, raided a small but popular magazine's offices over a Thanksgiving weekend, seized the company's printing presses, and told the world that the magazine was a criminal enterprise with a giant banner on their building. Then imagine that it never arrested anyone, never let a trial happen, and filed everything about the case under seal, not even letting the magazine's lawyers talk to the judge presiding over the case. And it continued to deny any due process at all for over a year, before finally just handing everything back to the magazine and pretending nothing happened. I expect most people would be outraged. I expect that nearly all of you would say that's a classic case of prior restraint, a massive First Amendment violation, and exactly the kind of thing that does not, or should not, happen in the United States.

But, in a story that's been in the making for over a year, and which we're exposing to the public for the first time now, this is exactly the scenario that has played out over the past year -- with the only difference being that, rather than "a printing press" and a "magazine," the story involved "a domain" and a "blog."

full story: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...-details.shtml

that pretty much sums it up indeed

[marlboroack]

Anonymous will not let that happen. The 1% will not over power the world on this one...

[scottybuzz]

Originally Posted by Captain Kawaii

I believe, SOPA is more about sites like Ian's that seem/appear/might be built upon stolen content. There are tax revenues in legitimate business, even if it is adult.

http: //m.vidsod.com /

I see a DMCA at the bottom and full length videos. And the site is selling premium memberships... Hmmmm...just theft right for monetary gain?

If I were the tube thieves reading SOPA I'd be crapping a gerbil too.

i own no stolen content sites, nothing like that, i hate piracy but if you cant see past the fact that in the long run this would hurt more than help online porn then you need to check a lot slower and a lot closer.

[arock10]

Originally Posted by u-Bob

Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details...
from the copyright-as-censorship dept

Imagine if the US government, with no notice or warning, raided a small but popular magazine's offices over a Thanksgiving weekend, seized the company's printing presses, and told the world that the magazine was a criminal enterprise with a giant banner on their building. Then imagine that it never arrested anyone, never let a trial happen, and filed everything about the case under seal, not even letting the magazine's lawyers talk to the judge presiding over the case. And it continued to deny any due process at all for over a year, before finally just handing everything back to the magazine and pretending nothing happened. I expect most people would be outraged. I expect that nearly all of you would say that's a classic case of prior restraint, a massive First Amendment violation, and exactly the kind of thing that does not, or should not, happen in the United States.

But, in a story that's been in the making for over a year, and which we're exposing to the public for the first time now, this is exactly the scenario that has played out over the past year -- with the only difference being that, rather than "a printing press" and a "magazine," the story involved "a domain" and a "blog."

full story: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...-details.shtml

And this is pre-sopa... so I guess they can just do it already. But it will occur waaaay more with sopa

[tony286]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michae...36.html?ref=tw
Stop Protecting Criminal Behavior: Why the Critics Are Wrong About the Stop Online Piracy Act

A pretty good read

[tony286]

here it is for those who dont feel like clicking


Stop Protecting Criminal Behavior: Why the Critics Are Wrong About the Stop Online Piracy Act
Posted: 12/15/11 09:29 AM ET

Criticism of the Stop Online Piracy Act usually falls under four major categories. When compared to the facts, these charges just do not hold up.

Charge: Breaks the internet

The Facts: The Stop Online Piracy Act targets foreign criminal websites. There is nothing new about the methods used to target criminals in the Stop Online Piracy Act. They are currently used to protect consumers and combat all kinds of harmful behavior including spam, phishing, malware, viruses, copyright infringement and other forms of Internet crime. And this is happening without claims of harm to the Internet.

Google makes more decisions about website blocking than any other company or country in the world. They block websites every day, including in the United States.

Daniel Castro of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation addressed many of these claims in a report. He wrote:

Many inaccurate claims have been made about PIPA/SOPA by opponents of the legislation. The most serious of these claims to date is that the proposed countermeasures in PIPA/SOPA, particularly the DNS filtering obligation, would 'break the Internet' or otherwise harm users. This claim, which has been used by critics to rally the public, media and lawmakers to their cause, is completely unfounded and without merit." [ITIF, 12/5/11]
Charge: Promotes censorship

The Facts: Stealing is not free speech. The Stop Online Piracy Act upholds free speech and the First Amendment. Just as the First Amendment defends Americans' right to create, Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the Constitution, the Copyright Clause, guarantees Americans the ability to protect their creations from those who would steal them.

First Amendment expert Floyd Abrams wrote the following in an op-ed in the Washington Post:

Yet when legislation is introduced to put teeth in the effort to prevent rampant and unconstrained theft of copyrighted creative efforts, it has been denounced as creating 'walled gardens patrolled by government censors.' Or derided as imparting 'major features' of 'China's Great Firewall' to America. And accused of being 'potentially politically repressive.' This is not serious criticism. The proposition that efforts to enforce the Copyright Act on the Internet amount to some sort of censorship, let alone Chinese-level censorship, is not merely fanciful. It trivializes the pain inflicted by actual censorship that occurs in repressive states throughout the world. Chinese dissidents do not yearn for freedom in order to download pirated movies. [Washington Post, op-ed, 12/9/11]

Charge: Stifles innovation by targeting legitimate companies

The Facts: Piracy puts Americans' jobs at risk; the Stop Online Piracy Act encourages innovation and investment. Protecting intellectual property encourages economic growth. Under the bill, only the Justice Department can seek an injunction against a foreign website for which the primary purpose is illegal and infringing activity. It does nothing to add to the burden of companies that are engaged in legal activity.

What the technology companies aren't discussing is that their sector of the economy relies on content protection laws to grow. Consumers want content such as movies and TV shows. The tech sector creates products and websites that distribute the content from the creative industries. Inventors and investors have an incentive to invest time and money in content only if it will be protected.

Charge: Overly broad reach

The Facts: The Stop Online Piracy Act specifically targets foreign websites primarily dedicated to illegal activity or foreign websites that market themselves as such. The bill targets online criminals who profit from stolen American content and counterfeit goods and are a danger to American consumers.

As with all criminal activity, the courts, not "the government" will make the final decision. The Stop Online Piracy Act targets criminals who are currently violating copyrights but beyond the reach of current law. It follows established due process in our federal courts that already consider copyright infringement cases. In fact, foreign websites are afforded the same due process as Americans are.

It does not force social networks to monitor their sites and does not provide any authority for a judge to serve an order on social network sites. The bill also upholds the safe harbor protections under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Copyright protection is pro-Internet. It has given us the Internet today, alive with commerce, free speech and innovation.

[CIVMatt]

I think the biggest problem is the vague language it's writtin in, would easily allow the government to do more then what they claim whenever they wanted, if they wanted.

[maxxtro]

It will kill the internet..so glad I`m not American..

[Serge Litehead]

i think complete censorship of the internet is impossible in this day and age
if anything like that will start happening en mass, think people won't take notice of it? people will rise, start talking about it, protesting, if it goes into extreme - fighting and revolting.
if censorship becomes a reality, there will be developed new decentralized ways to communicate and share information, private networks, new decentralized dns systems, etc..

the real issue is excessive government power, it dictates what it thinks is right for people purely based on legitimately corrupt lobbying system to protect special interests.
Want to take that away from them? so gov would listen to people's concerns, wishes and desires and not do what it wants? - take away their privilege of creating and controlling money supply, embrace alternatives like Bitcoin.

[Joshua G]

arguments about the law shutting down sites on misguided reasons. that will likely happen. just like jonny law puts innocents on death row. it happens. But mistakes enforcing a law is not a justification to have no law at all.

we actually trust the government with very important aspects of our lives. most importantly protecting our freedoms. despite numerous attempts by the government to censor people, the federal courts have consistently protected first amendment freedoms, regardless of political winds. Even the obscenity law, as close to censorship as the SC got, had trouble defining what is criminal speech, & left it vague & very hard to enforce. Fact is, the US produces some really extreme porn & virtually every producer is free to do it. They tried to get stagliano, look how that turned out. a handful who made borderline rape/assault videos (Max Hardcore & Rob Black), did some time. I would like to live in a perfect world & SOPA will only shut down pirates. It won't happen, but i will accept a small chance of losing my site so the pirates are chased into the darkest corners of the web.

[blackmonsters]

Originally Posted by Zebra

A few of the main backers of this bill specifically pointed out that they wanted the protection of porn copyright holders to be the absolute last thing that was defended with taxpayer money.

And they say that because porn is a "bad thing" they don't want to spread; yet porn
spreads and proliferates the largest through copyright infringement.



People get straight up stupid when they preach from the SOPA box.

Using the law to enforce copyright of porn would actually mean shutting down a
shit load of porn sites.

So maybe what they are really saying is they want to keep getting free porn.
Because strict enforcement of copyrights of porn would push most of it back to
where is was meant to be; in a members area requiring a credit card to get access.

[Barry-xlovecam]

No, SOPA won't kill the porn industry but what makes you think that SOPA will become law and if it does, survive court challenges?

However, this bill makes the worst scenario of a .xxx ghetto easier to enforce by its precedent. If SOPA makes the alteration of the DNS system subject to legislation that is a very dangerous precedent for the porn industry.

[magicmike]

Isn't there a lot more money for people, like everyone on here when something becomes more banned and regulated / prohibited by the gov't, short of a total ban?

The entire drug selling / dealer / crackheads economy has more sense than the adult internet economy.

[Sophie Delancey]

This is really horrifying. I don't know how the fuck these things pass.

[blackmonsters]

Originally Posted by Sophie Delancey

This is really horrifying. I don't know how the fuck these things pass.

You have been misguided by people who spun the issue because they are going to
be shut down.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.3261:

Go read the law, you are not affected, you are not "Dedicated to Theft".
The law only goes after those websites and this is nothing new since it's been
going on for a long time anyway for music sites and warez sites.
This bill just only clarifies to the courts what is already happening.
ICE has shut down plenty of websites already before this bill even had a life.

Read here : (posted Nov 2010)

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscente... olations.html

[Wizzo]

There's a lot more in that law then going after porn pirates in fact that's the least of its intended purpose. Pharmacy sites, Music Downloads, WikiLeaks, Fake designer clothes, handbags, colones, etc. The scary part is those industries have a lot of lobbyists that I'm sure are pushing for passage.

Personally, I don't know that we really need to grow the government anymore then it's already bloated out of proportion self, so not really a fan of adding more employees all over the world to enforce this law.

I think there's parts that work but as overall piece of legislation its overkill and it will have unintended consequences.

Here's the entire bill for those that want to read it: http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/...0HR%203261.pdf

[blackmonsters]

Originally Posted by Wizzo

There's a lot more in that law then going after porn pirates in fact that's the least of its intended purpose. Pharmacy sites, Music Downloads, WikiLeaks, Fake designer clothes, handbags, colones, etc. The scary part is those industries have a lot of lobbyists that I'm sure are pushing for passage.

Personally, I don't know that we really need to grow the government anymore then it's already bloated out of proportion self, so not really a fan of adding more employees all over the world to enforce this law.

I think there's parts that work but as overall piece of legislation its overkill and it will have unintended consequences.

Here's the entire bill for those that want to read it: http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/...0HR%203261.pdf

You say the scary part is that sites that break laws that have nothing to do with
free speech are going to get what they deserve?

Wikileaks broke all kinds of laws dude. There is a thing called the "Freedom of information
act", that is the process wikileaks was supposed to go through to get the information
it wanted to post. You'd think differently if you had helped catch a terrorist and wikileaks
published your picture, name and address for you to be burnt alive by terrorist seeking
revenge.

Please stop regurgitating emotional spin from idiots who fear everything.

[bronco67]

Originally Posted by topnotch, standup guy

Common sense screams out from the rooftops that sites consisting of stolen content are by their very nature fraudulent.

As for one government (i.e. the USA government) deeming porn to be illegal, that's not likely to happen unless the Republicans take the White House back next year. And even were that to happen, the Supreme Court would almost certainly stop them in their tracks.

Outlawing theft is a lot easier than legislating morality.




Do you realize just how many honest webmasters and content producers that the thieves have driven out of business these past few years?

Survival is all about keeping your priorities in order.

.

What man would ever make porn illegal? I'm just asking this, because EVERY man -- 100% of them -- love porn. Even uptight old white men in the government.

[CyberHustler]

Everything is the "end of this industry"...

[JosephFM]

Originally Posted by bronco67

Even uptight old white men in the government.

Specially gay porn.

[Dirty Dane]

If courts decide porn itself is suddenly illegal, then yes. Otherwise, no.

[JP-pornshooter]

look at it from this perspective..

in general the interwebs are stealing.

before the internet we had to pay for music, pay for video, pay for porn, pay for maps, pay for book, encyclopedias and the list goes on.
yes i know you kids are too young to remember those days, but nothing was free.
and guess what, the people making albums, movies, books etc are still producing the creative content and they all deserve to get paid, actually some should get rich as they are extremely talented.

google and others are hugely profiting by promoting this theft by marketing and directing potential consumers to websites with free content.

THIS HAS TO END, THE STEALING HAS TO STOP.
NOT JUST THE ADULT INDUSTRY, IT IS ALL OVER.

[The Porn Nerd]

Too many "legitimate" people make (and hide) their money n porn for porn to ever "die".