[edanm]

Let's substitute one criminal activity for another. Let's say instead of linking to a site that allows you to download copyrighted material, we were talking about linking to a site that allowed you to order a hit on your wife/husband. Or a site that allowed you to order custom-made child pornography. (1)

I'm pretty sure that, if that were the site in question, many of your rhetorical questions won't seem quite as ridiculous. In fact, I'm pretty sure even the last question you pose, telling a friend the URL, can in some cases be construed as illegal, and certainly immoral. Again, not all cases, but some cases.

And if we forget the slippery slope fallacy and focus on just the linking, how would you feel if a news website actually linked to a site that allows people to download child pornography? Or allows people to order a hit on someone?

1 - I'm not saying copyright infringement is anywhere near the level of wrong I'm talking about. It's just that using something that is clearly considered wrong to all people, is a great way to clear up, in your own mind, whether what you're objecting to is the text of the bill, or the fact that it's talking about copyright infringement. I'm guessing most people here would be all for a law that banned passing out the URL of a site that solicited murders, etc. But when talking about copyright infringement, your preconceived notion that copyright infringement is OK gets in the way.

EDIT: Minor fixes.

[jrockway]

Let's say instead of linking to a site that allows you to download copyrighted material, we were talking about linking to a site that allowed you to order a hit on your wife/husband.

These sites don't need any special laws about linking: once law enforcement gets wind of them, they will be gone instantly. All an investigator needs to do is order a hit and then arrest the dude that shows up to execute it. That's the end of that business.

Copyright infringement is hard to enforce because it's peer-to-peer and can happen outside the US' jurisdiction (see TPB). This makes it hard to build a case against someone: uploading 10MB of a movie to someone on the swarm is hardly massive copyright infringement, and if they're outside of the US, you can't do anything anyway. So making linking illegal is their last hope: maybe people won't find the tracker sites and P2P will die.

Not bloodly likely. The links will just move out of the US too.

[edanm]

"These sites don't need any special laws about linking: once law enforcement gets wind of them, they will be gone instantly."

But you said it yourself in the next sentence - what if the sites are operating outside the United States, in a country over which the US has no control at all?

Let's say I can order a hit from a site in Country X, and the US can't stop the site. Should I be allowed to spread a link to that site around? In fact, if I were to tell someone the link and he went and ordered a hit, I'm pretty sure I could be jailed as an accomplice.

IANAL by any means - am I wrong? Would love a lawyer to weigh in here.

[jrockway]

Yes, you should be able to spread the link around. Hits happening outside of the US' jurisdiction is not the US' problem.

[edanm]

To clarify, I'm talking about hits happening in the US, but ordered from a website outside the US, over which the US has no jurisdiction, and therefore can't take down.

(Look at my other comment in this thread for another example).

[jrockway]

You should still be able to link to the site. Censorship is censorship.

If the site is outside of the US but is designed for people in the US to use, it's going to need to accept payment from people in the US. The way you make this site go away is by stopping the flow of money, not by telling people not to tell other people about it. The first way works. The second way does not.

To bring this back to P2P, the reason they can't go after the money is there is no money. That's what annoys the governments so much; people are trading movies for free. This makes it not-very-illegal and very hard to stop.

[darklajid]

I have to take the hit for this..

Really? Think of the children? Why do discussions about censorship always lead to

a) child pornography

b) family matters (imagine your children / your wife)

I may very well be stupid, but I cannot understand how these kinds of arguments make any sense. First of all I agree with other commenters: I think your examples are not helping to convice me that this bill makes sense. There's no harm sharing/printing even the kind of links you point out.

Second I fail to understand how this artifical sample helps justifying the bill. If you think that there are ~some~ edge cases where your moral value supports this bill, then it should be restricted to these specific areas. Get a law that bans child pornography. I'm suprised you don't have one yet...

And last but not least: Reducing a discussion to this kind of dilemma ('Are you supporting the bill or supporting child pornography') is very irritating and a somewhat annoying trend.

[edanm]

"I think your examples are not helping to convice me that this bill makes sense. "

I think I was pretty unclear with my original post.

My point wasn't to defend the bill. I think the bill is ridiculous.

My point (which I guess I made very poorly) was that the parent's arguments only sound silly because people here already disagreed with the bill. I was trying to say, "If the topic were something that isn't already a contested issue, then the parent's arguments wouldn't work. They only work because people already agree". I was worried about bringing up murder and child pornography, which is why I added the footnote stating these were not equivalent.

I'll answer the only thing in your post which wasn't about the bill (since I wasn't talking about it): "There's no harm sharing/printing even the kind of links you point out." I disagree. As others have pointed out, it's probably already illegal to some degree (e.g., if I give you the phone number of a hitman, knowing that you plan to use his services, I can probably be arrested as an accomplice. This is the same thing).

"And last but not least: Reducing a discussion to this kind of dilemma ('Are you supporting the bill or supporting child pornography') is very irritating and a somewhat annoying trend"

I hate this as well, but I wasn't doing that in the least. Sorry it came off that way.

[gburt]

I don't think most people would be for a law that bans passing out a URL that solicits murders. We may not agree with the site, but sharing the URL of it should not be a crime.

If you gave someone -- say a reporter -- the contact information of a murderer to interview for a story, should that be a crime?

[edanm]

"If you gave someone -- say a reporter -- the contact information of a murderer to interview for a story, should that be a crime?"

No.

Which is why I said about sharing the URL: "Again, not all cases [should be illegal], but some cases."

But as I said in another comment, if I gave someone the URL to a site from which he could order a hit on his wife, knowing he was planning on doing so, and then he went ahead and did it, could I be arrested as an accomplice?

Let's remove computers entirely to see where we stand. If I gave someone the phone number of a hitman, would I be an accomplice?

I don't know the answer for sure, but I suspect that I could be seen as an accomplice. So why is this different?

[jerf]

"Which is why I said about sharing the URL: 'Again, not all cases [should be illegal], but some cases.'"

But if you took the time to properly expand that, you would probably discover that those "some cases" are already illegal. Conspiracy is already illegal. Racketeering is already illegal. A number of other such things are already illegal. If you can't come up with an example of something not already illegal that should be illegal that this law would make illegal, then you're not actually arguing in favor of it.

I'm really unconvinced there's some massive hole in the current system as is. The current legal code is already so massive that the government can pretty much imprison anybody they want for as long as they want. What legit social purpose does this law actually serve?

[edanm]

I'm not arguing in favor of the law.

I'm arguing against rhetoric slippery slope arguments that hide the actual issues. It's easy to talk about how ridiculous it is to ban linking, because "for God's sake it's just a link". I'm trying to give the perspective that sometimes, even "just giving out a link" is illegal.

[user24]

> could I be arrested as an accomplice?

yes, possibly. So there's already a law that covers that situation and no need to introduce another law.

[danssig]

>I'm pretty sure that, if that were the site in question, many of your rhetorical questions won't seem quite as ridiculous.

No, they still sound ridiculous. Completely and utterly ridiculous. Arresting someone for reporting? Providing a link to a child porn site isn't and shouldn't be a crime. Actually downloading the content is a crime.

Creating things you can't say is always a bad idea. And slippery slope isn't always a fallacy. We're watching it happen with the patriot act right now.