will settle for nothing less than regime change. and a multi-billion pound battle between russian pride going to operate a motorist and fugitive mobile birdie's berezovsky in a london court finally approaching. five next peter the bell and his guests debate the rao over planned u.s. anti-piracy legislation which critics say could censor the internet worldwide. hello and welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle it's a contest pitting silicon valley against hollywood with washington in the middle supporters of the stop online piracy act claim they are losing billions of dollars a year to staff on the internet opponents of sopa worry the internet as we know it today could be hijacked.

to discuss the future of the internet i'm joined by daniel castro in washington he's a senior analyst with information technology and innovation foundation specializing in the information technology policy also in washington we have wayne rash he is a senior analyst for weeks labs and to new york we cross to jason metz only he is the job beilin professor of law at brooklyn law school all right gentlemen this is crosstalk that means you can jump in anytime you want and i very much encourage it ok when and if i can go to you first to what degree should internet companies be involved share responsibility for curbing piracy in light of the law that is in front of the laws that are in front of congress right now. well i think internet companies have a responsibility to not knowingly participate in pirated information or from a shelter which. the copyright use is in question in other words if they know that

something is being used illegally then they obviously should not allow it to be on their sites but you know most internet sites don't have a way to know what's out there most of them simply actors what you might call giant receptacles of data and as a result they don't specifically look at what the content is somebody complains about it so they have a responsibility if they know. that is still legal but they may not know jason what do you think about that i mean to what degree should companies be held responsible because if you're if you're a web site like you tube i mean i've talked to people at you tube it is very very hard to police it because so many uploads going on through every hour and we're looking at and through the course of months and years it's a huge number of videos being put up and they and i can i know a personal example when i asked them something taken down and within an hour you tube did it. so you tube is an interesting case because it actually i mean it has

the resources for you to do things that many other companies might not have so you know that's one thing to keep in mind talking about you tube in terms of the current system that we have you tube is as you just suggested pretty responsive and we do have a system under current law that allows a copyright owner to notify you tube or another side that somebody has up loaded infringing content you tube has a largely automated process for reviewing that and it's able to take down material in response to that site in other words disable access to it pretty quickly in a matter of hours now there are a lot of complaints about perhaps too much content is being taken down but in terms of you tube itself because it has the resources to do it because there is a process by which a notice can be send a fairly straightforward notice by the copyright owner that system from the perspective of copyright owners i think works pretty well i mean some things do get

through the gaps but you tube i think is doing pretty good good job and it's doing it because of fairly simple procedures and legislation the problem with so is that it would radically change that system and impose a much more burdensome requirements upon you tube and when you start talking about smaller sides small energies they don't have the same kinds of. sources the costs could be could be tremendous and danny what do you think about that i mean i mean i mean let me go to get me to daniel first truly go ahead. yeah. the legislation that's been introduced has specifically not targeted at sites like you tube and that's kind of the whole point of this you tube isn't the problem and there are existing laws to deal with that and you tube is a very responsible actor in that sense the purpose of stop also hiring you explain you know to use massive opposition to the infringers. jason you want to reply to

that well you tube obviously doesn't. doesn't think that i mean yesterday we had we had which was thursday in the united states we had the internet blackout day where the thousands of american based domestic internet companies including google facebook and other large entities opposing sopa on the grounds that they have very concerned about the potential burden and possible liabilities under the statute upon them these are pretty savvy entities so it's hard to explain if the sponsors of the bill. so certain that there is no risk to a company like you tube why there would be so much opposition domestic technology companies mainstream technology companies like you too facebook boring boring all kinds of other entities that are really

a staple part of the of the internet as we know it today the event only opposed to this statute and they're not opposed to it just for ideological reasons because they see serious business consequences. let's look at some of these kinds of consequences when i mean look we know a lot of a lot of the backing of these. legislation comes from the content industry particularly the film industry and music but. why should the entire internet be changed to cater to their needs or is it because hollywood is being paying politicians on both sides of the aisle these politicians realize they have to they've taken the money now they have to follow through and a few of them actually realize they didn't read the legislation and they've backed away from the last forty eight hours i mean to what degree should the internet be changed for a small number of people here. well the internet should not be. basically dismantled from the way it works because of the fact that hollywood is scared of

technology this is one of the problems is that what you've got here is a situation where you tube for example to use an obvious example because we've been discussing it could under the ways sopa is written be actually taken offline because somebody alleges that they've got copyrighted material on their site. and this is the internet i don't know actually if you look at the legislation it's only direct to the foreign infringing sites only for infringing sites so no no no sign the united states could have action taken against the people you look at the managers of many more you over on the record of similar use again so they are all the d.n.a.'s block improvements which are about taking down sites so taking down sites is because you know that's blocking the idea as blocking would of. blocking would have interfered with a whole bunch of security issues but the fact is is it is still aimed at sites that could be taken down because someone alleges without any real actual process that

they've got copyrighted material there now here we are talking about taking down it's not that you would have to get a court order first. yes you have to get a court order which is actually going to be sending you to court you don't have to write in to us ok jason jump in jason jump in you've got to go before a judge as it was is that the government. what the government you know order to in order to require intermediaries to stop dealing with. sites that the government is targeting does have to commence in action with the court. and it's a pretty fairly simple process you simply need to file the paperwork private entities in order to shut off funding payment processing by visa master card paper how other private other entities that really the lifeblood of many of these sites. you noted to shot down their transactions private entities

don't have to go before any judge at all they simply have to send the notice within five days of five days of very short period the recipient of the notice visa pay pal some other entity that is providing payment must disable transactions there's no judicial review before that happens there's no opportunity for the side to go for a judge and say that it's not true that we have infringing material this is completely contrary to how we normally regulate speech in the united states there's no other instance in the united states. because if you look at the way the system works right now by sending a letter off to you. you go ahead go ahead dan you know what i mean if i could just any if i could just if i could just somewhat up i mean well from what jason just said here there's no due process that's what he's saying when we look at these this legislation yes exactly so you know this is really going to if you do not already know and i'm sure this is

a service animal when you're going to go ahead with. these are these are companies that already say in their terms of service that they will not do business with criminal criminals and they say in their terms of service that you can use for example we don't know that they're going to there's no. jobs on the. there's no jobs monogamy in the computer is this any other illegal activity and when they learn about it they shut down those sites and they. doing business with them so right now this actually increases the opportunities there's no jobs no there's no it's not as exciting as it goes before a judge ok where do you jump in on that one. the only people and i was trying to earlier go ahead with the fact is this what we're trying to do is enforce u.s. copyright laws on foreign companies whose copyright laws may be different from ours and what we're saying is if you don't follow u.s. law in terms of copyrights then we have the right to shut you down and whether it's

through withholding payment whether it's through a search engine you can't deliver results we're no longer have the walking but the fact is is that you know this is what we're telling people is that you have to follow u.s. law regardless of what the law may be where you're physically located and that's part of the problem the other part of the problem is affectively is let's get to the decision of it is. you're objecting to the fact that people are trying to stop sites that are pirating american american intellectual property and it's not always just movies and music it's also physical goods that are counterfeit you know these are counterfeit drugs there are also maybe a little written material that can i you know harm in france harm children harm adults this is serious there are serious consequences it's one thing there's one certain subject that's going to object to these sides but the the problem here the problem here is in terms of how you go about remedying the problem if there is a problem that should be remedied particularly if you're talking about

a remedy that imposes very significant costs on the rest of us i don't think the content industries have explained and this gets us back to really the very first questions with which we started why it is that the rest of us should suffer all of these very serious consequences in terms of the interruption to the structure of the internet in terms of the censorship of sites in order to protect the interest to me jason i'm going to have to jump anyhow gentlemen we're going to go to a short break. and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on protecting the internet's day party. started.

when an uncomfortable question leads to a grave accusation the world who is more is you know far. the president who isn't supposed to hide anything. worth someone asking him why do you make a secret of it when the powers to be suppress the voice of those who think different culture when you get experiencing very serious problems off of the saakashvili government came to power in two thousand and three but the book that was when the problems began piling up. interviews were now off limits to our journalists they were often beason up and humiliated in public when the attempt to

protect property puts life in real danger that we have been deprived of the only means of earning a living and i have gone to the regionals with all the papers so that their little eyes the ownership rights on the basis of companies freedom becomes just a stage prop. and you can. still. welcome back across talk on people about to mind you were talking about the stop online piracy act. and you can. start. if i can return to you daniel it seems to me and correct me if you think i'm wrong they weren't using one or using status quo. tools to fix

a problem in this piracy on the internet but isn't it because the internet is uniquely different than other types of piracy that we should have a unique answer and that in the legislation is going through congress is really kind of backward looking and not forward looking could we get something that's more innovative that works with companies instead of something that is so it seems to me that. using a sledgehammer when we should be using a very fine surgical instrument to solve this problem. for you do you do me a multi-pronged approach to tackling this this issue is not going to be solved by industry alone it's not only sold by government alone one thing that you can do is go after the economics of piracy you have to look and see how these sites are being run and where they're making their money and how they're drawing an audience so the way to cut that off is to cut off their sources of funding go after the networks go after the payment processor stop linking to the sites and this is really going after the worst of the worst the forward infringer is there right now are outside

of the jurisdiction the united states and we can do anything about this is a way of saying if you're an american company and a court finds that. identifies a site as a rogue malicious site then as an american company you'll stop doing business with them i think that's part of being a responsible player on the internet she said when you think about that if you leave just over arching it should be much more specific much more nuanced and dealing with this issue because it seems like it the way you want to talk about freedom of expression later is that it can be the way these laws are being proposed there's an enormous amount of abuse could be out there using these laws as you pointed out the first part of the program yes i mean you know a big part of the problem here is that we are relying upon assurances by copyright owners and particularly very wealthy copyright owners that they will act in a restrained way unfortunately the history of their behavior does not bear that out copyright owners routinely exaggerate the scope of their rights go after websites

that are not infringing or are using content in a way that is protected by the fair use provisions of the us copyright act copyright enforcement tools are often used just to shut down competition rather than to pursue any legitimate copyright claim we shouldn't be depends. and for a system of copyright in force than upon the copyright holders acting in good faith which is what is really built upon there are too many public costs in play both in the copyright system in general but particularly when you're talking about monkeying around with the internet and all of the implications for freedom of expression that come from censorship and so i think that you're quite right to suggest that a much more nuanced approach is appropriate here and i think we're going to get something like that i mean the soap right now reminds me

a bit of the italian cruise ship. that capsized recently and the captain abandoning the ship i mean the legislators sponsoring the bill are abandoning it as quickly as they can and it's current version it has no chance of going through so i do think and this is true in part because of pressure from the white house was which has expressed many. problems with the statute from its perspective so i think we are going to be going back to the table and going back to the table does i think meaning gauging in a serious way with technology companies they were not part of the legislative process in the same kind of serious way that they should be and i think that recent activities have demonstrated that they really have a strong position now they obviously have resources to to to lobby and to put forward their own views and all members of congress are going to really have to take account of that it's important though to keep in mind that the copyright

owners and technology companies. need to sort of sets the stakeholders and we also have ordinary members the public and users of consumers of copyright material and so i would hope that any process going forward would be inclusive of them as well we just have not had an inclusive process this very interested. in. history in sideways if i only had a way to go to win here i mean i think that you jason you bring up a very interesting point here i mean do you think if the industry wrote it in sent it over to congress because just this week jason pointed out and i said early in the program in a lot of politicians in washington are walking away from it even though they used to be supporters i mean did they actually read it or did they listen to their constituents and did they listen to these technology companies or change. i think what happened is two things one of which is i think we should make it abundantly clear to the people who are watching this program that both soap of the stop online piracy act and the protect i intellectual property act are both dead they are not

going to go through either the cost of the house or the senate this year they will not be signed into law this year. so they are dead the chances of this becoming an actual issue this year are nonexistent however that does not mean they will come back again sort of zombie like to. rise again and bother us all year from now so the issue is that the movie houses the movie out of the movie producers the record producers have a lot of lobbyists and they managed to get a lot through that they wrote that gave them everything they wanted and because of the fact that they had some well paid lobbyists who were very effective they managed to get hearings and managed to get it as a proposed bill only one company was actually invited to testify at the hearings that was not from one of these groups and that was a that was a person from google who was invited to testify no other internet related company was invited to testify this it shows you that this bill was very one sided from the

beginning and it's not surprising that it is now dead but the fact is it should ever been brought up in this kid is one of the first place ok so the fact is is that i was going to go to dan i was going to say yes and i was going to ask dan daniel what's plan b. then if both or dead. well you know i think if you look at the alternative bill that was introduced the open act. that was introduced by really the kind of opponents of so and. there's a lot of similarity between the two so we're. going after the ad networks going after the payment processors search engines and blocking sites through d.n.a.'s the open act just goes after the ad networks and it just goes after the payment processors and so there's actually a lot of agreement from both attack companies and from the content industries going after the ad networks and the payment processors is the right way forward so i would say it's dead i would say the provisions have been taken out about blocking

that started this year you know that's really completely off the table whether or not a search engines will be included is an open question but i think there is a lot of agreement that it's an important problem in the white house statement said something should be done this year so i would say that it's out of the question to have action on it and i think it would be a fair compromise which is kind of the point of washington is to come together and find you know room for agreement and to say well least we can go and have bad networks and payment processors stop dealing with these known bad sides jason if i can ask you i mean it's going to go ahead. and go ahead you know it's not going to . act is going to pass this year either. not because it may not be a good idea because it's an election year and right now nobody in congress wants to have something which happened yesterday happen closer to the election it's just not going to it's just not going to fly you know after the election is over that's a different story but right now this whole issue is actually just yesterday this is not so similar to it already does that i was introduced to you open bill in the

house so you know i think they are moving forward with a ok i want to change gears a little bit here just jason if i'm going to do an ad also ok go ahead jason jump in. i was going to say on the open and important distinction is that there is the there is available of independent review. before any of this censorship actually happens which is something that i think is very important for protecting freedom of speech in which is one of the principal defects of so far in the protect ip act one of the things that the white house has zero going on ok if i can ask you and i think was pretty impressive this seven thousand maybe more sites when i went dark on wednesday i mean what does that tell you about the power of the internet now i don't think we've ever seen anything quite like this before i mean is this. a new political force or at least a force of consciousness that in society where we can find consensus on something when we have such political. gridlock in the united states. well i don't think

gridlock is going to go anywhere but i do think that it shows that i do think that it shows that the internet community can work together to a common interest and i think that is what got the attention of congress i don't think anybody in congress particularly care that the sites themselves went dark but they did care about the fact that there is the ability of the internet community to work together to a common interest and that they believe strongly enough about this interest to do something which is. the way legislation works around here is really worth noting because quite frankly congress is pretty out of touch with things on the internet in general even now sending an e-mail to your congressman is probably not going to receive the congressman it's going to get seen by some junior staffer who will simply mark what used as a yes or a no or want to two or something and they will then not pass along anywhere so congress is not that in touch with the internet but they are in touch with her i

was in it and i don't see it as or in touch with a lobbyist jason you i just want to jump in there jason. yeah i was going i was going to take a slightly more cynical assessment of what's happened in recent weeks and what we have seen basically in terms of opposition to these to the legislation. it is a convergence of interests between technology companies like google and ordinary internet users and so and so you might look at that and say well ordinary people using the internet have now found a political voice they're organized in a way that hasn't been true in the past i'm not sure the congress is listening to them i think congress and the white house are listening more to the technology companies and again sonic's entirely clear that the interests of the technology companies are reflective at all points in time of the interests of ordinary consumers and so while the coalition is has been highly effective in this instance

. we'll have to wait and see how things play out in the next round ok looks like a little bit like occupy the internet here all right gentlemen we're run out of time fascinating discussion looks like we ended up on occupying the internet many thanks to my guest today in washington and in new york and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time and remember.

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. packer's strike back anonymous cripples major u.s. government and corporate websites in response to a crackdown on a file sharing service and pending anti-piracy laws. syria's opposition holds more mass rallies demanding more prisoners be released despite a general amnesty earlier this week critics say only regime change will satisfy the protest leaders now. a multi-billion pound battle between russian tycoon romana and fugitive mogul boris berezovsky in a london court finally approaches its conclusion.