[Haskell-cafe] black Wikipedia

[John Meacham]

However the fallout is likely to destroy both open source and resale
on the internet.

For instance, the existence of this is enough to get hackage a
takedown under SOPA.
http://hackage.haskell.org/package/conjure

now, you might say we can just move hackage out of the US, but then
any site that _links_ to hackage from within the US will then be
subject to takedown from within the US, and any US based search engine
would be unable to index hackage or return results to it, until
hackage hired a lawyer to prove they don't fascilitate piracy. And I
am not even sure they would win, providing a bittorrent client is
fascilitting piracy because it can be used as a piratebay client.
supporting piracy is transitive under SOPA. think freshmeat.net,
slashdot.org, github, basically any site that links to user content
can be shut down. And haskell.org won't be able to link to it without
also falling prey to SOPA. it's transitive.

Not only that, but the proponents are not just hollywood, it is anyone
that feels they will have an advantage with the ability to bully
internet sites. For instance, monster cable is a huge supporter and
they have a history of suing any site that posts bad reviews of their
products or anyone that uses the words 'monster' or 'cable'. under
SOPA they could just get the sites they want shut down until they
capitulate. Silicon Valley need not fear this sort of thing too much
as they can bite back with lawyers of their own, but independent sites
will find themselves shut off or delisted and sites linking to them
shut down.

    John

On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 3:42 PM, Hans Aberg <haberg-1 at telia.com> wrote:
> Actually, it is a battle between the Hollywood and Silicon Valley industries.
>
> Hans
>
>
> On 19 Jan 2012, at 00:11, John Meacham wrote:
>
>> And such a thing can take months or years for the courts to figure
>> out, and unless your free site has a lawyer to fight for your side,
>> under SOPA/PIPA you can be down the entire time with little recourse.
>> For anyone hosting content lke hackage, github, etc. when you have
>> thousands of packages, someone somewhere is going to be upset by
>> something and will be able to take the site down. _regardless of the
>> merit of their case_ the site will go down as they figure it out. Not
>> only that, they would be able to take the site down if it contains a
>> link to an objectionable site. for instance, if one of the homepage
>> fields in some cabal file  somewhere pointed to a site that someone
>> took offense too on it. we would not only be obligated to patrol the
>> code uploaded, but the targets of any urls within said
>> code/description... and retroactively remove stuff if said links
>> change to contain objectional material. (for a very vauge definition
>> of objectionable). it is a really messed up law.
>>
>>    John
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 2:46 PM, Hans Aberg <haberg-1 at telia.com> wrote:
>>> On 18 Jan 2012, at 23:11, Brandon Allbery wrote:
>>>
>>>>> There is the Beastie Boys case, where the judge decided copyright protects what is creatively unique.
>>>>
>>>> But such judgments are rare, sadly.  And for every Beastie Boys case there's at least one The Verve case.
>>>
>>> I did not know that. But it was a UK case, wasn't it? - UK copyright laws are a lot more tight.
>>>
>>> Hans
>>>
>>>
>