«

[Red Fortress]

Will all Abandonware sites be blocked?

For a couple years a bill has been raised in the US Senate, which would greatly increase the ability to the US government, as well as private corporations in removing access to sites on the internet.
Last year it was called COICA in its current incarnation its called the PROTECT IP Act, its contents are summed up in its wiki article:

Edited on 01/11/11: New Info on Laws!!!

The original bills COICA & PROTECT IP have been twice held up in the Senate by Senator Ron Wyden.

So, now its been raised in Congress after being rename "SOPA".

It's basically the same bill only with even more overbroad wording, plus they slipped in parts of the Streaming Criminalization Bill S.978

The whole point of this law is to block off access to all "Foreign Sites", which are beyond the reach of US Copyright Law.

They want mass IP Blocking + Search Result Censoring powers to use on offshore Websites by all US ISP & Search Providers.

Also the power to issue injunctions to US Payment Processing Companies (PayPal, etc...), to stop all money going to those sites.

Edit: 02/11/11
Apparently, websites that offer ways or tools to bypass blocks are also to be blocked off...

Websites in the USA are already vulnerable to being seized under current laws (see Operation In Our Sites).

However these new powers would also no doubt be used against domestic sites as well...

Old Info: Still Relevant to the held up Bills in the Senate.

The bill focuses on websites that have no significant use other than to facilitate copyright infringement, the hacking copyrighted works, or trademark counterfeiting; or are designed, operated, or marketed by their operator, and facts or circumstances suggest are used, primarily for counterfeiting, copyright infringement, or hacking copyrighted works. The bill does not alter existing substantive trademark or copyright law. It provides enhanced remedies against websites “dedicated to infringing acitivities” that are not registered in the U.S., and would give the United States Department of Justice the power to seek a court order against those websites. The bill requires the Attorney General to follow existing federal court procedures, including providing notice to the defendant. Once the court issue an order, it could then be served on financial transaction providers, Internet advertising services, Internet service providers, and information location tools to require them to stop financial transactions with the rogue site and stop linking to it. Some have described the bill as including a “blacklist” but that is inaccurate. Only a court order specifically addressing a particular domain name triggers the requirement to cut off activity with it(once multiple court orders are in effect a list will form). The term "information location tool" is borrowed from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and is understood to refer to search engines, but could cover other sites that link to content.

“ The Protect IP Act says that an "information location tool shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures, as expeditiously as possible, to remove or disable access to the Internet site associated with the domain name set forth in the order". In addition, it must delete all hyperlinks to the offending "Internet site". ”
At a technical level, nonauthoritative domain name servers would be ordered to take technically feasible and reasonable steps to prevent the domain name from resolving to the IP address of a website that have been found by the court to be “dedicated to infringing activities.” Although this would allow a website to remain accessible by numerical IP address, hyperlinks relying solely on the website’s domain name would not resolve. Also search engines—such as the already protesting Google—would be ordered to “(i) remove or disable access to the Internet site associated with the domain name set forth in the [court] order; or (ii) not serve a hypertext link to such Internet site.” Furthermore, trademark and copyright holders who have been harmed by the activities of a website dedicated to infringing activities themselves would be able to apply for a court injunction against the domain name to compel financial transaction providers and Internet advertising services to stop processing transactions to and placing ads on the website, but would not be able to obtain the domain name remedies available to the Attorney General.

This is the spolier Tag

The Entertainment Software Association stated on their website that they supports the bill: link

While the main attention is likely sites that host current gen games, ESA has stated on numerous occasion their negative opinion of Abandonware.

If they have an easy tool to block "infringing sites" from the US altogether, why not block Hotud & Abandonia while they're at it.

Edited on 02/11/11
This may turn out bigger then I thought...

Considering the "Shoot first, ask questions later" attitude of the Copyright Industry, they could well try to make Internet in the USA into their own private Intranet...

[Eagle of Fire]

You now owe me 1¢...

[Red Fortress]

Originally Posted by Eagle of Fire

You now owe me 1¢...

What the do's that mean!?!

If you think that the stuff I brought up in the OP is of no concern, please elaborate why...

[Eagle of Fire]

Because if I had gotten 1¢ every time someone posted something supposedly alarming... I'd be filthy rich by now.

[Japo]

True that governments everywhere are looking at harsher and more intrusive copyright laws every day, however since ever Abandonia will stop hosting any game if we only received a letter from the copyright owner, with no need for any legal procedure. So we're not one of the defiant websites that are likely to be targeted by this--although I haven't read any of it. We don't offer any contend and we have remained in the abandonware business all this time precisely because abandonware is abandoned, that is nobody cares.

Funny that you're more alarmed about private corporations than the government (without a court warrant), specially since this is a purely legal matter and corporations would be powerless without the government's enforcing this privilege for them.

[Red Fortress]

Funny that you're more alarmed about private corporations than the government (without a court warrant), specially since this is a purely legal matter and corporations would be powerless without the government's enforcing this privilege for them.

The reason behind my concern is the power that Corporations and their Trade Associations hold over parts of the US Government through techniques such us Lobbying Groups and the Revolving Door.

I'm afraid that this law will turn into a “We Aim, You Shoot” kind of deal, with Companies using the Government to take down loads of Sites that they dislike.

True that governments everywhere are looking at harsher and more intrusive copyright laws every day, however since ever Abandonia will stop hosting any game if we only received a letter from the copyright owner, with no need for any legal procedure. So we're not one of the defiant websites that are likely to be targeted by this--although I haven't read any of it. We don't offer any contend and we have remained in the abandonware business all this time precisely because abandonware is abandoned, that is nobody cares.

Under the new law they don't have to show that the site is "defiant", only that its main purpose is "infringing activities".

That is pretty vague, and can be stretched to cover all sorts of stuff...

Read this on the ESA's Site: Link

Plus this article From gamepolitics.com:
ESA Altered Wikipedia Entries on Mod Chips, Abandonware

That sound like they think abandonware should not exsist at all ...

If they were to get a "kill switch", whats to stop them using it on us?

[hunvagy]

Not to sound rude, but the internet is not the US. This site is certainly not hosted in the US. And unless they can get the ones they want to sue to US soil, the US laws don't apply. So they can take their draconian rules and show it up their collective asses, as soon as they cross the ocean.

[Lulu_Jane]

It's still a nasty, grubby little policy regardless of whether or not it affects this site. Besides who wants something like that as a precedent? Yuck.

[Eagle of Fire]

Not to sound rude, but the internet is not the US.

Yes, that. Hungavy beat me to it.

I'm not from the USA either. Beside, laws like this try to pass every year/two years in the US. There is a reason why it doesn't: they don't really make sense.

[Japo]

I agree with Lulu, and this kind of thing is showing its face ever more often lately. And they say that if you start smoking weed you may end up smoking crack cocaine, but if they start restricting Internet access for these reasons, I wonder where they might end up.

Originally Posted by hunvagy

Not to sound rude, but the internet is not the US. This site is certainly not hosted in the US. And unless they can get the ones they want to sue to US soil, the US laws don't apply. So they can take their draconian rules and show it up their collective asses, as soon as they cross the ocean.

They can't get it, in principle, as things are right now--don't forget there are international conventions about copyrights.

But what little I read about this, I understood it's not about shutting down sites--what they can already do, and another recent US law widened the government's discretionary and executive powers to do so, and disposed of any bothersome judicial procedures. I think it's about denying US citizens access to infringing content, even if it's hosted abroad and continues to be online elsewhere.

They don't seem to have gone as far as the Great Firewall of China (for all the anti-American talk, probably the USA will be the last country to implement country-wide WAN firewalling, I think several "democracies" were considering it--or had any already made it... Australia? But depending on what is decided, it could mean just that. They plan to require all services within their jurisdiction (hosted in the US?) to remove any access to the infringing content (even if their servers remain online), and these services may include search sites (Google...) and even DNS servers (good luck with that, as if pirates would mind typing a numeric IP address instead of an alpha-numeric domain name, LOL).

Again the legal framework will be different in your country, freer or harsher, but this is about affecting the content US citizens are allowed to see. And we're allowed to care about them. And once these laws are acceptable in one "democratic" country, they're automatically up for consideration in every other one.

Originally Posted by Red Fortress

The reason behind my concern is the power that Corporations and their Trade Associations hold over parts of the US Government through techniques such us Lobbying Groups and the Revolving Door.

I'm afraid that this law will turn into a “We Aim, You Shoot” kind of deal, with Companies using the Government to take down loads of Sites that they dislike.

I totally agree, however it's your point of view that the government is on the collar side of the business's leash, and not the other way around. The only objective truth is that their relationship is clearly symbiotic.

Under the new law they don't have to show that the site is "defiant", only that its main purpose is "infringing activities".

That is pretty vague, and can be stretched to cover all sorts of stuff...

Read this on the ESA's Site: Link

Plus this article From gamepolitics.com:
ESA Altered Wikipedia Entries on Mod Chips, Abandonware

That sound like they think abandonware should not exsist at all ...

If they were to get a "kill switch", whats to stop them using it on us?

What I meant is that they could have acted against us, with the weapons already existing at their disposal, if they cared. We're still alive, or at least we haven't received any scare since Tom's ESA deal, because they don't care about us. In short, nobody has prevented them to act against us so far, but they haven't.