Technology investors urge US politicians to reject web-blocking law

re EvilGav1

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For reference, I don't download films, I buy them on blu-ray. I just don't like someone misrepresenting their argument whilst at the same time misrepresenting the counter argument.

Well good luck finding 'Ain't Misbehaving' (circa 1974, UK 18Cert London only) on Blu-ray. It is there in the interweb if you look hard enough. A lot of it is comprised of clips of silent porn films, some from pre WW1.

What is needed is some way for filme such as this and the huge numbers of classic silent films to be made freely available. It won't be very long before it is 100years since Charlie Chaplain appeared in front of a camera for the first time. This continual extension of copyright (I'm looking at you here Disney) is wrong. You have earned enough from Mickey M over the past 90years. Time to move on.

You can't keep renewing the copyright on dead tree publications can you? Why should Film & Music be different.

Anon cos the MPAA/RIAA are always watching you.

I don't know, but it sounds like bribery

I'll admit I don't actually know anything about the topic (I skim articles like this unless it's relevant to copyleft), but that sounds too close to anti-net-neutrality to be helpful. There wouldn't be any extra bandwidth if the download qualities and compression schemes were the same, but even so, that bandwidth is already paid for (by the end user on one end of the network and the user or server owner on the other end). Not to mention bandwidth independent of the amount of data transmitted; it would just take longer to download. This would enable ISPs to censor stuff, too, pretty much arbitrarily and make it acceptable for ISPs to take bribes.

Ideally you would want to shut down the source (which may be for profit) if possible. I don't support blacklisting sites because it's censorship, but it's less invasive to block communication to and from a certain place (supposedly) known to break the law than it is to throw money at independent ISPs to actively censor content or specific websites.

Someone with enough money and influence simply could simply make anything they find annoying to their business disappear (maybe print publishers don't like non-profit archives of public domain books). Or maybe instead of accepting money to account for the bandwidth, ISPs might force people to pay for for-profit content distribution tightly integrated and bundled with TV and internet services. ISPs might condone illegal activity the same way Google adsense and hosting companies do while still doing business with people wanting to prevent that activity, accepting cash from both sides while doing nothing to "fix" the problem and doing more harm to the consumer in the process.

Also, if a website is unjustly blocked, it would be easier to detect and easier to reverse if you only had to account for a single nationwide blacklist.