British court orders isps to block pirate bay — is the u.s. next? - Bottle Filling Machine Manufact

In2009, the site's founders were found guilty of promotingcopyright infringement by a Swedish court and sentenced to severalmonths in prison as well as multimillion dollar fines(Sweden's Supreme Court refused to hear their appeal in February 2012). And according tothe British Phonographic Industry ( via BBC News ), "Sites like The Pirate Bay destroy jobs in the UK andundermine investment in new British artists." ( OPINION: 5 Reasons the CISPA Cybersecurity Bill Should Be Tossed ) Debate over the whether file-sharing-related piracy actuallyimpacts jobs or roils investments is ongoing. Some have counter-argued that sales declines over the past decade, say in the U.S. musicindustry, have little if anything to do with piracy, and thatit's virtually impossible to find reliable correlationsbetween creative output and industry employability (that, andit's difficult to mobilize public support for anti-piracylegislation when, for instance, ticket returns for the most piratedmovies still break box office records). Then there's the question of who's responsible.Blocking a site like The Pirate Bay at the ISP level remainscontroversial because the site in principle hosts none of thecopyrighted information, instead allowing users to share links witheach other.

Once a user begins sharing (or downloading)information, that transaction occurs peer-to-peer, independent ofThe Pirate Bay's servers. The site acts more like adynamic map of who's sharing what and where to find it, afterwhich the transactions occur privately. File-sharing advocatesworry that government-mandated blocking of sites like The PirateBay amounts to censorship — that it's tantamount topunishing the vehicle instead of its driver. They argue thatit's a short walk from shutting down file-sharing sites tocensoring anything deemed offensive, say political speech. According to Open Rights Group executive director Jim Killock, theU.K.

High Court ruling "will fuel calls for further, widerand even more drastic calls for internet censorship of many kinds,from pornography to extremism." Killock adds that he believesInternet censorship is on the rise, but that it "never hasthe effect desired" and instead "turns criminals intoheroes." BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor doesn't see it in thoseterms, writing that the High Court's ruling confirms ThePirate Bay's culpability as a copyright infringer "on amassive scale." BPI had asked the ISPs to voluntarily blockaccess to The Pirate Bay last November, but the ISPs said theywould only do so if ordered to by the court. This isn't the first time The Pirate Bay's beenblocked. Over the past few years, courts in countries across Europe have ruled that ISPs block the site, resulting in IP and DNS basedfiltering. But since it's relatively simple to circumventsuch measures using proxy servers or other methods, opponents ofcourt-ordered filtering argue it's doubly problematic,sacrificing file-sharing principles while propagating defective,slippery-slope solutions.

How long before the issue's taken up by U.S. courts?We've already seen companies like Facebook and Microsoft block outgoing links to sites like The Pirate Bay, and Googlereportedly blocks autocomplete search returns on related terms(type "The Pirate Bay" into Google's search fieldand you'll get back virtually nothing — now add a spaceafter the term and see what happens), so there's alreadyprecedent for voluntary private action. With controversial billslike PIPA and SOPA ( though postponed ), as well as CISPA (which just passed the House last week ), expect the debate over whether the U.S. government shouldlegislate (or at the judicial level, officiate) the way theInternet works to reach a boiling point soon.

MORE: The Breakdown: Who Supports CISPA and Who Doesn t.

I am an expert from bottle-fillingmachine.com, while we provides the quality product, such as Bottle Filling Machine Manufacturer , China Water Filling Machines, Bottle Filling Machine,and more.

Related Articles - Bottle Filling Machine Manufacturer, China Water Filling Machines,

Email this Article to a Friend! Receive Articles like this one direct to your email box! Subscribe for free today!