Oxymoron of the day: Business Ethics
|
|
|
US wants to block profits from illegal websites
US GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS lobbied the US Congress to give law enforcement agencies more powers in its so-called war on 'piracy'.
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency could be granted the authority to request court orders to require payment processing firms such as Paypal to cease providing services to websites that it deems are engaged in illegal activity. Maria Pallante, the acting US Registrar of Copyrights told the House Judiciary Committee that the legislation could also stop US advertising networks from placing advertising on such websites.
Pallante claimed that search engines "routinely point to rogue websites" even in situations when the user is looking for a legitimate website. She added, "In fact, sometimes the illegitimate sites appear much higher in search results, displacing authorized sources of copyrighted content."
Not surprisingly, someone from the MAFIAA was on hand to back up these claims, with Frederick Huntsberry, COO of Paramount Pictures playing the patriotism card. "Every single film we distribute is promptly stolen and then illegally made available online without creating any jobs, without reinvesting any revenue in the creation of new films, without paying taxes, and without contributing to the US economy", Huntsberry told lawmakers. We're surprised that he didn't claim that stopping movie filesharing would wipe out the towering US national debt in one fell swoop.
Given that Pallante claimed that US firms such as Paypal, advertising networks and search engines either offer services to or point to "rogue websites", it's hard to see how Huntsberry's claim of these websites are not contributing to the US economy holds water. Still, you have to give him credit for spinning the same MAFIAA line in a slightly different way.
Pallante's claim that search engines point to and rank illegal websites higher could well raise the ire of the search engine operators. It might give rise to the law enforcement agencies telling firms like Google and Yahoo how to filter, rank and display results in their search algorithms.
Earlier this month, ICE took down thousands of websites while trying to take down a few websites that allegedly were involved in distributing child pornography. This example was used by David Sohn, senior policy counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology as a cautionary tale about ICE's approach.
Sohn told lawmakers that ICE "had not thoroughly ensured that the action it was taking was narrowly tailored to the criminal actors, and the result silenced protected speech and harmed the reputations of innocent parties".
While often high-handed and certainly very profitable companies such as Paypal deserve little in the way of public support, it will be interesting to see how they will fight the MAFIAA's desire to take away their business. µ
Tags: Google
Share this:
Share
The United States where you get the best government that business can buy!!As long as the US government is owned by business the taxpayer will never get a fair shake.Business interests run counter to the greater good serving only a select few ,this hasn't changed it is just easier to see now with the web and all things it has brought.Fight this with petitions,letters and civil disobedience it's your only hope!!
Piracy is a crime for which people are prosecuted all the time. This will not change nor should it. You can call it "infringement" instead of theft, but the reality is it's a crime and punishable by up to $10,000 per copy. Since every pirate knows it's a crime then I say fine them the maximum amount and throw them in jail to drive the point home.
Society and the judicial system are not going to allow piracy to go unpunished.
Let's begin, therefore, with this notion of "theft". It's BS; copyright infringement is *not* theft in the USA, as ruled by the Supreme Court (Dowling vs. United States, 1985). So, we have MAFIAA fallacy #1.
MAFIAA fallacy #2 is that becoming a police state is good for the country. It's not, of course. Like in any other civil case (which copyright infringement fundamentally is), the MAFIAA need to prove their case. That means having actual evidence, not just alleging.
I'm no fan of copyright infringement, since my friend's dad is a professional musician. Copyright infringement's illegal, and that's that. But the MAFIAA and their government thug buddy-pals want to disembowel civil liberties to protect their obviously failing business model, and that's way worse news for society than any so-called "benefit" to be gained from going Hitler-esque like they want to do. That's what I object to.
--SYG
Didn't England try a similar trick back in the days of pirate radio?
And here again the money will just move someplace else. Visa/MC/Paypal will just loose their 'cut'.
:-)
All civilized countries enforce copyright laws and prosecute pirates - not just the U.S. See The Pirate Bay boys as an example. Pirates will be prosecuted until Hell freezes over so those in denial had better get use to it.
USA HAS FUCKED UP THE WORLD TACKY LITTLE CUNTS, THE NET NEVER WAS TO MAKE MONEY SO MAKE IT FREE/SHARE WARE FOR SOCIAL ONLY, AS INTENDED AND STOP THIS TYPE OF SHIT WHICH WILL ALWAYS GO ON BECAUSE OF NASTY US CUNTS WITH NOTHING TO LIVE FOR EXCEPT MONEY!
I doubt PayPal will lose any sleep over not supporting illegal websites. All means should be used to stop piracy and prosecute those responsible.
Why defend the illegal distributers?
I have little sympathy for people who copy content and distribute it, but none at all they charge money for it!
""Every single film we distribute is promptly stolen and then illegally made available online without creating any jobs, without reinvesting any revenue in the creation of new films, without paying taxes"
With 'hollywood accounting' they dont pay much either. What they're saying is 'somebody else might be getting a tiny share of our greed'.