* He doesn't like the fact that SOPA doesn't defend the interests of non-US based authors, while at the same time deals with non-US infringers. That is, you can infringe the rights of non-Americans everywhere but American's interests must be obeyed everywhere.
* BSA didn't even talk with their members before stating their position.
* SOPA opens a way for lawyers to sue the hell out of every website.
* He doesn't defend pirates, but he would become one if the only way to acquire music and movies were to buy CD/DVD.
He quotes someone: "There's a movie in the torrents. If I download it, I'm a criminal, if not -- I'm an idiot." Laws like SOPA divide the world into criminals and idiots.
He then goes on to say that the old way of distributing things ("the age of vinyl records") is dying and defending businesses that try to keep their current business models ("dinosaurs with nut-sized brains") with SOPA-like laws is akin to taxing email in favor of postal services, pricing Skype calls at the level of long-distance phone calls, etc.
He's position is:
1. Kill SOPA.
2. Retire dinosaurs.
3. Distribute content using new ways:
- Low quality -- for free.
- Medium quality -- cheap and fast.
- High (professional) quality -- expensive.
Finally, he says that his antivirus is not a product, it's a service that provides antiviral base updates, and he doesn't care how a user acquires his software.
However, I'm a little dubious, given his previous comments against anonymity on the Internet:
- - QUOTE - -
"Everyone should and must have an identification, or internet passport," he was quoted as saying. "The internet was designed not for public use, but for American scientists and the US military. Then it was introduced to the public and it was wrong...to introduce it in the same way."
Kaspersky, whose comments are raising the eyebrows of some civil liberties advocates, went on to say such a system shouldn't be voluntary.
"I'd like to change the design of the internet by introducing regulation - internet passports, internet police and international agreement - about following internet standards," he continued. "And if some countries don't agree with or don't pay attention to the agreement, just cut them off."
At what point does a privately owned network connected to other privately owned networks become 'the Internet'?
My lack of political understanding coupled with a knowledge of how the 'Internet' actually exists and functions make it seem almost impossible for regulation to have any effect.
Think of the internet like the roads here in the US. Once you connect up "your" road to any of the other roads that are connected together, you can drive pretty much anywhere that also has a road.
At its core, "The Internet" is equal parts CenturyLink, Telecom Italia, Verizon, Sprint, TeliaSonera, NTT, Deutsche Telekom, Level 3, Tata, and AT&T. Following my above example, all of these companies have really big freeways that are all interconnected. If your road, or the bigger road you connected to, connects to one of these major freeways, you can be confident that you can reach any destination that also has a road. If Verizon were to disconnect its freeways from Sprint, the Internet would be "broken."
I think you misunderstand my lack of understanding. I'm very familiar with the Internet, peering (settlement free or otherwise), 'default free zone', etc.
What I'm asking is, given that there is NO public infrastructure (in the US at least, again, going back to my question), at what point does a private set of interconnected networks become 'the Internet' for regulatory and oversight purposes?
Does a large set of MPLS tunnel over a different providers networks constitute part of The Internet?
Does just the circuit path within the territory of the United States constitute the 'Internet' as far as the USG is concerned? Do we need filtering routers on every border?
What happens when I peer with a different provider over a new circuit that's not connected to the current Internet? At what scale does that become 'the Internet Too'?
I2, Lambda Rail, ESNet, etc. There are dozens of HUGE, international, not-the-internet networks running IP with IANA assigned address space, etc. Do these count as 'The Internet'?
When Cogent and L3 decide to have another spat and de-peer, and the world now has two congruent but unequal routing tables, without full reachability or visibility, which one is The Internet? Do we now have 2 Internets?
And back to the Public Infrastructure - does the US presume to provide rules and regulations over the national infrastructure of other countries? Many nation states have monopoly, government owned network / phone service providers - does the US really think they can dictate what those other countries do? And if the regulations only apply to stuff 'physically' in the US...well, what's physically mean in a virtualized, cloudy world?
To use your analogy - I own the property and the pavement of the roads around my house, and they are NOT public roads (ie: private development, shopping mall, etc.). The DoT doesn't enforce any law, such as speed limit, equipment condition, etc. on these types of setups - only on the Public Infrastructure. The Internet is just a bunch of these private shopping malls connected to each other - there are NO public roads (in the US at least).
A privately owned network is "on the Internet" in the usual sense if it uses IPv4 (or maybe 6), is properly assigned IP addresses that are not in the private use area (publicly routable IPs), and has some systems that can exchange packets with the diversity of other networks that make up "the Internet". NAT devices tend to complicate this definition.
But that's a technical definition. You're asking about how it could be politically regulated.
Almost all privately owned networks (other than ISPs themselves) pay an "internet service provider" for "internet services". So you're not going to weasel out of regulation by nitpicking about the definition of "the Internet".
Yes, and the BSA opposes SOPA, as per the Information Week link
>In a blog post, Business Software Alliance (BSA) president and CEO Robert Holleyman said that, while he believes the proposed SOPA legislation, (H.R. 3261) is well intended, it's too sweeping in its current form.
Yes, now they oppose it. After learning we were watching and paying attention. After an overwhelming majority of computer users and companies very vocally opposed it.
And, IIRC, Microsoft didn't make any public statement regarding SOPA. It's assumed they pressured the BSA's president to change the institution's opinion.
I'd rather an organization learn from their supporters and change their vote based on the wants of their customers than hold steadfast to an unjust/unpopular idea. It'd be nice if they got it right in the first place, but you can't fault them for changing their stance once they realized who it would be hurting.
"Today Chairman Smith and his co-sponsors in the House of Representatives have taken a good step by introducing legislation to address the problem of online piracy, including software piracy,"
"Good step"?! I would expect an apology after statements like this.
It's definitely better than nothing, but a public statement would earn more good will from the public. One possible reason not to make a public statement is if they are trying to stay on the good side of SOPA proponents, too.
Good for Kapersky, but their opposition doesn't carry much weight. They have a financial interest in continued piracy and other skullduggery leading to more infected computers.
* He doesn't like the fact that SOPA doesn't defend the interests of non-US based authors, while at the same time deals with non-US infringers. That is, you can infringe the rights of non-Americans everywhere but American's interests must be obeyed everywhere.
* BSA didn't even talk with their members before stating their position.
* SOPA opens a way for lawyers to sue the hell out of every website.
* He doesn't defend pirates, but he would become one if the only way to acquire music and movies were to buy CD/DVD.
He quotes someone: "There's a movie in the torrents. If I download it, I'm a criminal, if not -- I'm an idiot." Laws like SOPA divide the world into criminals and idiots.
He then goes on to say that the old way of distributing things ("the age of vinyl records") is dying and defending businesses that try to keep their current business models ("dinosaurs with nut-sized brains") with SOPA-like laws is akin to taxing email in favor of postal services, pricing Skype calls at the level of long-distance phone calls, etc.
He's position is:
1. Kill SOPA.
2. Retire dinosaurs.
3. Distribute content using new ways:
- Low quality -- for free.
- Medium quality -- cheap and fast.
- High (professional) quality -- expensive.
Finally, he says that his antivirus is not a product, it's a service that provides antiviral base updates, and he doesn't care how a user acquires his software.