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[Mongrel]

OKAY.

Hooooooo boy this turned out to be a real clusterfuck. More reading and nattering discussion this afternoon produced several things.

First, the actual text of the bill:

So sites that:

(a) Definition- For purposes of this section, an Internet site is ‘dedicated to infringing activities’ if such site--

‘(1) is otherwise subject to civil forfeiture to the United States Government under section 2323; or

‘(2) is--

‘(A) primarily designed, has no demonstrable, commercially significant purpose or use other than, or is marketed by its operator, or by a person acting in concert with the operator, to offer--

‘(i) goods or services in violation of title 17, United States Code, or enable or facilitate a violation of title 17, United States Code, including by offering or providing access to, without the authorization of the copyright owner or otherwise by operation of law, copies of, or public performance or display of, works protected by title 17, in complete or substantially complete form, by any means, including by means of download, transmission, or otherwise, including the provision of a link or aggregated links to other sites or Internet resources for obtaining such copies for accessing such performance or displays; or

‘(ii) to sell or distribute goods, services, or materials bearing a counterfeit mark, as that term is defined in section 34(d) of the Act entitled ‘An Act to provide for the registration and protection of trademarks used in commerce, to carry out the provisions of certain international conventions, and for other purposes’, approved July 5, 1946 (commonly referred to as the ‘Trademark Act of 1946’ or the ‘Lanham Act’; 15 U.S.C. 1116(d)); and

‘(B) engaged in the activities described in subparagraph (A), and when taken together, such activities are central to the activity of the Internet site or sites accessed through a specific domain name.

Can be punished by a court-issued:

a temporary restraining order, a preliminary injunction, or an injunction against the domain name used by an Internet site dedicated to infringing activities to cease and desist from undertaking any infringing activity in violation of this section, in accordance with rule 65 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure

And the Attorney General must:

‘(j) Internet Sites Alleged by the Department of Justice To Be Dedicated to Infringing Activities-

‘(1) IN GENERAL- The Attorney General shall maintain a public listing of domain names that, upon information and reasonable belief, the Department of Justice determines are dedicated to infringing activities but for which the Attorney General has not filed an action under this section.

‘(2) PROTECTION FOR UNDERTAKING CORRECTIVE MEASURES- If an entity described under subsection (e) takes any action specified in such subsection with respect to a domain name that appears on the list established under paragraph (1), then such entity shall receive the immunity protections described under subsection (e)(3).

‘(3) REMOVAL FROM LIST- The Attorney General shall establish and publish procedures for the owner or operator of a domain name appearing on the list established under paragraph (1) to petition the Attorney General to remove such domain name from the list based on any of the factors described under subsection (h)(1)(B).

‘(4) JUDICIAL REVIEW-

‘(A) IN GENERAL- After the Attorney General makes a final determination on a petition to remove a domain name appearing on the list established under paragraph (1) filed by an individual pursuant to the procedures referred to in paragraph (3), the individual may obtain judicial review of such determination in a civil action commenced not later than 90 days after notice of such decision, or such further time as the Attorney General may allow.

‘(B) JURISDICTION- A civil action for such judicial review shall be brought in the district court of the United States for the judicial district in which the plaintiff resides, or has a principal place of business, or, if the plaintiff does not reside or have a principal place of business within any such judicial district, in the District Court of the United States for the District of Columbia.

‘(C) ANSWER- As part of the Attorney General’s answer to a complaint for such judicial review, the Attorney General shall file a certified copy of the administrative record compiled pursuant to the petition to remove, including the evidence upon which the findings and decision complained of are based.

‘(D) JUDGMENT- The court shall have power to enter, upon the pleadings and transcript of the record, a judgment affirming or reversing the result of the Attorney General’s determination on the petition to remove, with or without remanding the cause for a rehearing.’.

This bill limits legal action to temporary injunctions and C&D letters. A foreign company is going to say "Oh hey, a C&D letter from the US Government."

And then throw it away.

Dave is a fellow I know who works in the bowels of DARPA. He's a gigantic douchebag, but he's good for raw information sometimes.

Anyway, after the text above went up, there was a pile of arguing over the exact parsing of the wording.

Either the law does not actually grant anything new other than a: Forcing the office of the Attorney General to maintain a list of suspected troublemaker sites and publicly publish that list, OR, the bill gives the Justice Department the power to use a civil action against accused pirate domain names, such that if the domain name resides in the U.S., the attorney general could then request that the court, persuant to that civil action, issue an order finding that the domain name in question is dedicated to infringing activities, then giving the Justice Department the authority to serve the accused site's U.S.-based registrar (and other folks, such as ISPs) with an order to shut down the site?

Either way, it looks like HuffPo and the EFF are being sensationalist assholes to grab pagecounts. Though I really don't blame the EFF for having a kneejerk "NO!" reaction to anything that smells of a national firewall.

HOWEVER. There was some good news.

Apparently the bill died on the floor because it wasn't passed before the cutoff for midterm elections are. I'd say NOTHING TO SEE HERE FOLKS, GO ON HOME. Only there are several promises to re-introduce the bill in the next session of Congress.

But for now it's all sound and fury. Ha!

...

Then there was a long discussion about "how many people do you know with a jailbroken iphone?" and this got stuck in my head:

AC⚡DC- '74 Jailbreak music video (Bon Scott 1976)

[Joxam]

Thin Lizzy-Jail Break better

[Mongrel]

I prefer AC/DC, because Bon Scott <3 <3 <3

BUT.

I don't have a copy of that Thin Lizzie song, so thanks for reminding me. 

[Joxam]

Best Ac/DC song with Bon is Whole Lotta Rosie live or Ride On... and I hate the other singer, so.

[Mongrel]

Oh, I am a gigantic AC/DC whore; they were basically that first band I bought lots of albums for. Brian Johnson is okay, but Bon Scott's voice is just so much goddamn fun.

Exhibit A:

AC/DC - It's a Long Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock N' Roll)

I mean, there's almost no other video I can think of where the band members are basically just showing off the fact that they're ridiculously happy to be all OMG WE'RE A REAL BAND HAHA FUCK YEAH! Bon maintains that gigantic shit-eating grin for pretty much the whole song.

[Thad]

Comcast wants to charge extra to stream Netflix video.

Because it's not like the Democrats have given them any reason to lie low until the heat dies down.  There's no heat.  The ISP's can do whatever the fuck they want.

[Brentai]

You know you've fucked up in the free market when your ISP customers start seriously contemplating a switch to AT&T.

[Royal☭]

Ha ha, that's funny, Brent.  "Switch"

[Brentai]

...oh.

[Saturn]

i seriously hope that this recent revelation puts some hurt on the NBC/COMCAST merger's chances

[Thad]

Yeah, well, you know what they say about hoping in one hand and shitting in the other.

Pretty much the only Democrat who seems to want to put up a fight against the merger is former NBC employee Al Franken.

[Rico]

Further confirming that Al Franken is the best Senator bar none.

[Thad]

So the FCC passed some bullshit they're calling "net neutrality" which adds a slight amount of regulation to wired Internet and explicitly states that wireless Internet doesn't have to be neutral.

Some highlights:

Ars: Franken says this version of net neutrality is so bad we would have been better off not doing anything at all.  (HT: GP)

GP again: "Time Warner Cable issued a statement yesterday in support of the Federal Communications Commission’s adoption of net neutrality rules."  Which is pretty much all you need to know.

Dan Gillmor at Salon lays out the general point without delving much into specifics, but here's the money shot:

Sometimes, when everyone hates what you've done, you've done the wrong thing.

[sei]

Not sure about that either, but that is a pretty relevant concern. I mean some enterprising pirate could just get a .ru or .cn site or whatever and continue to go nuts.

Further thoughts:

If national TLDs are controlled by US corporations and even a single site in another country is cut off by a US order, that can only renew the call to break the US dominance over control of the Internet. And this time the international community might even genuinely force change of some kind.

If national (or any other) TLDs are not controlled by US corporations, the law is essentially circumvented without any problems (by using a domain not under US control) and may cause a migration to non-US-controlled TLDs.

The latter scenario is less bad for the US than the former, since the latter would just increase the slow erosion of US influence, whereas the former has the capacity to possibly blow up right in the US's face. But they're still both bad for you guys. 

A little prophetic, here.

enigmax (TorrentFreak) on setting up sites outside the domain of US seizure. TL;DR: go foreign for: domain, registrar, and hosting. (Also pay attention to DMCA, but...)

[sei]

Not sure whether to put this here or in the Canadian news thread: Rogers was throttling WoW traffic.

[Mongrel]

So my employer was dancing with Hanlon's Razor?

Can't say as I'm surprised.

[Büge]

An open letter from Internet Engineers to US Congress

[Mothra]

On a side note, Get Your War On is back to raise awareness of the upcoming internet censorship bill.

[Mongrel]

Man, nothing shows how far we're falling than the return of the primal rage that is GYWO.

[Ziiro]

Here's a stream of the Committee meeting. Relevant upon posting, and they were planning to go pretty late. Not sure of an exact time.