International Intellectual Property Protection and Enforcement Act of 2008
 

http://www.scmagazineus.com/US-intel...rticle/116555/

It allows the US to pressure other countries to enforce IP through trade restrictions.

No more hiding from US corporations in foreign countries with lesser IP laws.


So much for this business model :)

http://thepiratebay.org/legal.php

This is definitely a move in the right direction, but I see a couple of issues:

1) "legislation has been introduced" means that it still has a long way to go before it can actually become a law, if ever.

2) How do you deal with countries that won't, or more importantly, can't enforce this if it were to become a law? Particularly poor countries that have more important priorities and/or wholesale corruption?

I don't think the U.S. trying to enforce it's laws in other countries is going to work, or that it's even a good idea, there has to be a better way.

Who is going to lobby to oppose it? I think its a lock.


If international trade isn't important to said country than I guess this bill will not apply.

The content thieves can host and live in any third world country they want, but here in the civilized world we work for what we get. Stealing is not an option.


The US is ran by huge corporations. If someone hides within the grey area of the law those corporations will simply lobby to change the law. Its been this way for 150 years.

It was only a matter of time before reality caught up with the internet.

If I were a betting man, I'd bet that this legislation will never be passed for very obvious reasons; export industries are never going to allow their trade agreements to be affected in order to protect content producer's profits.

I'm not saying that addressing the issue isn't important, because it is. I'm just pointing out this is particular legislation isn't the right approach because it's unlikely to ever be enforced.

Its going to pass easy. Like I said its a lock.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...g-content.html

Update: the bill has since been approved on a 14-4 vote.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...g-content.html

The thing with that law is also that you're now paying tax dollars for IP enforcement cops. Not to mention the fact that seizing equipment is now fully legal, even if they end up going and grabbing some shared webserver because 1 guy on it has something copyrighted on there.

Let me know how you think that works out when they grab the server you happen to be hosted on.

In essence IP enforcement is good, on the other hand, think a bit more paranoid and see how this law can set a rather dangerous precedent as to what the govt. is allowed to get away with (a lot, already). A few wordage tweaks and presto, it's now an anti pornography bill.

I'll bet you $10 that some representative has already thought of that one, and soon something will come up targeting porn on the internet with some draconian rules.

Dedicated server. Besides they already have the power to take a server if someone else is doing something wrong with it. That is a risk already factored into virtual.


Something needs to be done to fix the internets rampant piracy problem and giving the nature of the offshore loophole there are limited ways to fix this.

You are right about the porn though. They can easily use this same platform to go after porn sites and internet porn has provided every reason to justify the cause.

There are alot of idiots doing some very stupid shit giving us all a bad name. A few will eventually wreck it for everybody.

Given the recent developments as far as internet related law in the US, this is again going to push a lot of people to start hosting in Europe. I've heard from a friend that works at a relatively big hoster in the Netherlands that they've already had about 10 inquiries from US customers, which has never happened before.

As far as that goes, it's a really bad development because it's pushing away innovation and technology, and not really helping it :)

Even if this legislation has passed the Senate, it still has a long way to go before it ever becomes a law.

It's going to be interesting to see how it plays out...