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I know this has been discussed quite a bit over the last year or so, but I feel this is very important and must be continuously discussed. This may (or may not) be a bill that will define/change our future as a society.
I was recently researching the recent bill(s) that is in Congress that would allow widespread net censorship (i.e. http://americancensorship.org ). First thing that came to my mind was the threat of losing a big aspect of the freedom. I have studied in a previous couple courses different social and other aspects of network censoring taking place in countries like Iran and China (North Korea and Thailand). First, it started with small umbrella censorships before it expanded and expanded further to encompass other aspects of life. This is a threat to everything that this country stands for.
As new technology is released/improved/created, the technicians of the regime alter aspects of it to make sure it fits under the censorship laws set by the higher-ups. One of the things I point to is google as I'm sure most people know how that ended up. When Google first expanded to China, they noticed that results were being altered or blacked out. Emails were being hacked and edited (which google was someback able to backtrack to mainland China). China comes out and blames google for technical issues on their end (technical issues? and google? LOL). In response, google was going to pull out of China. Issues are continuing to mount over that search engine issue. Google cannot dictate what they can and can't do since ultimately, the Chinese government has jurisdiction over there.
In around that same time, the bill(s) was growing in US Congress. Companies like Nintendo, EA and Sony are just three of the companies that were trying to push Congress. I have been hearing contradictions of that bill(s) in recent times. Some people I know are saying that the bill(s) has been passed while others are saying the bill(s) is close to passing. After some quick research, it seems like the bill(s) has yet to pass (i.e. http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/11/sopa-protectip.html )..
What happens if that similar issue of congress/government censoring information starts up in USA too? Not to sound paranoid, but what if it has already started? You don't know what you don't know. For example, people living their entire life in China with a computer may never know what happened at Tiananmen Square. They may NEVER see it, hear about it or know about it. How do we know it isn't already happening in this country? Furthermore, Google is based right here in California; will google be forced to move their mainbase to some other country like Switzerland? Sure, the bills will probably stop piracy in this country since the federal and state governments would have control over what is and isn't allowed over the net, but under what terms? Do the ends justify the means? Is Piracy THAT bad that the government must do widespread censorship?
Here's some stats and just other random quotes/facts:
1) Piracy rate was at 20% in the USA in 2007 - 107th overall in the world (The piracy rate is "the total number of units of pirated software deployed in 2007 divided by the total units of software installed.")
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_sof_pir_rat-crime-software-piracy-rate
2) "Three widely cited U.S. government estimates of economic losses resulting from counterfeiting cannot be substantiated due to the absence of underlying studies. Generally, the illicit nature of counterfeiting and piracy makes estimating the economic impact of IP infringements extremely difficult, so assumptions must be used to offset the lack of data. Efforts to estimate losses involve assumptions such as the rate at which consumers would substitute counterfeit for legitimate products, which can have enormous impacts on the resulting estimates. Because of the significant differences in types of counterfeited and pirated goods and industries involved, no single method can be used to develop estimates. Each method has limitations, and most experts observed that it is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify the economy-wide impacts."
-U.S. Government Accountability Office, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-423
3) "The percentage of the U.S. Internet population using a P2P file-sharing service to download music has decreased from 16% (28 million users) at the end of 2007, to 9% (16 million users) in the fourth quarter of 2010 — the very quarter that LimeWire was forced to shut down its file-sharing service. In the previous quarter , a federal judge ruled against LimeWire in a copyright infringement case versus the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)."
-Mashable Business, http://mashable.com/2011/03/25/internet-music-piracy-study/
4) "According to NPD's "Music Acquisition Monitor," Limewire was used by 56 percent of those using P2P services to download music in Q3 2010, but fell to just 32 percent in Q4 2010, since the P2P service was only available through October in Q4; however, other P2P site usage rose. Frostwire was used by just 10 percent of those sharing music files via P2P in Q3 2010, increasing to 21 percent in Q4 2010; Bittorrent client u-Torrent increased from 8 percent to 12 percent in the same time period.
"Limewire was so popular for music file trading, and for so long, that its closure has had a powerful and immediate effect on the number of people downloading music files from peer-to-peer services and curtailed the amount being swapped," said Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for NPD. "In the past, we've noted that hard-core peer-to-peer users would quickly move to other Web sites that offered illegal music file sharing. It will be interesting to see if services like Frostwire and Bittorrent take up the slack left by Limewire, or if peer-to-peer music downloaders instead move on to other modes of acquiring or listening to music.""
-NPD, https://www.npd.com/press/releases/press_110323.html
I ask this: Instead of censoring the entire network in this country (including google possibly?) while blocking incoming international websites and handing out 5 year felony charges for streaming or downloading any copyrighted material that would cost over $2,500 to copyright, why not spend that equivalent amount of focus on gaming protections and creating more advanced algorithms on encrypting copyrighted stuff?
I feel like there are too many uneducated older people in Congress and government as a whole that do not understand how simple algorithms or security protections work. It makes me sick that there would even be a bill circulating that would threaten everything that this country was build upon when there are simpler ways/methods to damage piracy. It makes me sick that people are making networking decisions without the competency to backup or understand exactly what the decision includes. Piracy has almost become an excuse to circumvent the principle that we call freedom.
Thoughts? Opinions?
I was recently researching the recent bill(s) that is in Congress that would allow widespread net censorship (i.e. http://americancensorship.org ). First thing that came to my mind was the threat of losing a big aspect of the freedom. I have studied in a previous couple courses different social and other aspects of network censoring taking place in countries like Iran and China (North Korea and Thailand). First, it started with small umbrella censorships before it expanded and expanded further to encompass other aspects of life. This is a threat to everything that this country stands for.
As new technology is released/improved/created, the technicians of the regime alter aspects of it to make sure it fits under the censorship laws set by the higher-ups. One of the things I point to is google as I'm sure most people know how that ended up. When Google first expanded to China, they noticed that results were being altered or blacked out. Emails were being hacked and edited (which google was someback able to backtrack to mainland China). China comes out and blames google for technical issues on their end (technical issues? and google? LOL). In response, google was going to pull out of China. Issues are continuing to mount over that search engine issue. Google cannot dictate what they can and can't do since ultimately, the Chinese government has jurisdiction over there.
In around that same time, the bill(s) was growing in US Congress. Companies like Nintendo, EA and Sony are just three of the companies that were trying to push Congress. I have been hearing contradictions of that bill(s) in recent times. Some people I know are saying that the bill(s) has been passed while others are saying the bill(s) is close to passing. After some quick research, it seems like the bill(s) has yet to pass (i.e. http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/11/sopa-protectip.html )..
What happens if that similar issue of congress/government censoring information starts up in USA too? Not to sound paranoid, but what if it has already started? You don't know what you don't know. For example, people living their entire life in China with a computer may never know what happened at Tiananmen Square. They may NEVER see it, hear about it or know about it. How do we know it isn't already happening in this country? Furthermore, Google is based right here in California; will google be forced to move their mainbase to some other country like Switzerland? Sure, the bills will probably stop piracy in this country since the federal and state governments would have control over what is and isn't allowed over the net, but under what terms? Do the ends justify the means? Is Piracy THAT bad that the government must do widespread censorship?
Here's some stats and just other random quotes/facts:
1) Piracy rate was at 20% in the USA in 2007 - 107th overall in the world (The piracy rate is "the total number of units of pirated software deployed in 2007 divided by the total units of software installed.")
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_sof_pir_rat-crime-software-piracy-rate
2) "Three widely cited U.S. government estimates of economic losses resulting from counterfeiting cannot be substantiated due to the absence of underlying studies. Generally, the illicit nature of counterfeiting and piracy makes estimating the economic impact of IP infringements extremely difficult, so assumptions must be used to offset the lack of data. Efforts to estimate losses involve assumptions such as the rate at which consumers would substitute counterfeit for legitimate products, which can have enormous impacts on the resulting estimates. Because of the significant differences in types of counterfeited and pirated goods and industries involved, no single method can be used to develop estimates. Each method has limitations, and most experts observed that it is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify the economy-wide impacts."
-U.S. Government Accountability Office, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-423
3) "The percentage of the U.S. Internet population using a P2P file-sharing service to download music has decreased from 16% (28 million users) at the end of 2007, to 9% (16 million users) in the fourth quarter of 2010 — the very quarter that LimeWire was forced to shut down its file-sharing service. In the previous quarter , a federal judge ruled against LimeWire in a copyright infringement case versus the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)."
-Mashable Business, http://mashable.com/2011/03/25/internet-music-piracy-study/
4) "According to NPD's "Music Acquisition Monitor," Limewire was used by 56 percent of those using P2P services to download music in Q3 2010, but fell to just 32 percent in Q4 2010, since the P2P service was only available through October in Q4; however, other P2P site usage rose. Frostwire was used by just 10 percent of those sharing music files via P2P in Q3 2010, increasing to 21 percent in Q4 2010; Bittorrent client u-Torrent increased from 8 percent to 12 percent in the same time period.
"Limewire was so popular for music file trading, and for so long, that its closure has had a powerful and immediate effect on the number of people downloading music files from peer-to-peer services and curtailed the amount being swapped," said Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for NPD. "In the past, we've noted that hard-core peer-to-peer users would quickly move to other Web sites that offered illegal music file sharing. It will be interesting to see if services like Frostwire and Bittorrent take up the slack left by Limewire, or if peer-to-peer music downloaders instead move on to other modes of acquiring or listening to music.""
-NPD, https://www.npd.com/press/releases/press_110323.html
I ask this: Instead of censoring the entire network in this country (including google possibly?) while blocking incoming international websites and handing out 5 year felony charges for streaming or downloading any copyrighted material that would cost over $2,500 to copyright, why not spend that equivalent amount of focus on gaming protections and creating more advanced algorithms on encrypting copyrighted stuff?
I feel like there are too many uneducated older people in Congress and government as a whole that do not understand how simple algorithms or security protections work. It makes me sick that there would even be a bill circulating that would threaten everything that this country was build upon when there are simpler ways/methods to damage piracy. It makes me sick that people are making networking decisions without the competency to backup or understand exactly what the decision includes. Piracy has almost become an excuse to circumvent the principle that we call freedom.
Thoughts? Opinions?
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