Posted: 18 January 2012 at 5:16am | IP Logged | 5
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There are two prongs to that process:
1) The site in question has to be located on a server outside the US and 2) The stop order is brough to the court by the US Attorney General. Which means that it doesn't target piracy in the US, that's already a crime under the jurisdiction of the FBI. It only prevents Americans from accessing foreign sites with content that US law considers to be the property of US companies. For instance, if a legitimate comics site in the UK carried a comic strip with characters or content that are in the public domain in Europe, but not in the US, it could be blocked. It also means that in order to invoke the right to stop foreign pirates from stealing your work, you have to get ion the radar of the US Attorney General. Which primarily means that it is a "right" more accessible to big corporations than regular people. By the way it's done, it gives large US corporations the opportunity to dispose of foreign competition without having to legitimately prove that a crime has been committed. Just the appearance of impropriety is enough. After which the burden of proof (and the cost of litigation) is on the accused. It also legitimizes Chinese censorship and Iranian censorship et al. It means that the US cannot object to any other country limiting Internet access to material deemed to be in violation of their laws. It's a foolish measure. Just like Obama suggested that there should be international co-operation to eliminate Tax-shelters in micro-nations, there should be International Law-enforcement co-operation dealing with cybercrime rather than this type of one-sided blanket censorship. With commercial sites like Youtube, fines and penalties for copyright breach are more of an encouragement to improve their self-policing than the threat of a ban. Also, there is a provision in copyright and trademark law that someone has to actively and vigorously defend ones rights of risk forfeiting them into public domain. Which is why companies like Disney have to send cease and desist notices to kindergartens with unlicensed Donald Duck murals, for instance. Softening those requirements for copyright holders, so that ignoring minor non-profit infringement does not jeopardize their commercial rights to the copyrights and trademarks, might be a better fix.
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