] An even greater risk is putting this subpoena power in
] the hands of anyone willing to pretend to have a copyright
] claim. These fraudulent requests will be impossible to
] distinguish from legitimate ones.

The EFF spoke of this at Defcon... That as these subpoenas become an established proceedure, which is almost the case now, they will be a powerfull tool for stalkers, batterers, and other kinds of predators. You don't really care about being in contempt of court if you are planning to assault someone. Predators will use these subpoenas to track down their victims. The internet will really become a very unsafe place unless you use an anonymizing proxy network.

Whether its the elminiation of judicial oversite for subpoenas or the approval of vigilanti computer hacking, Congress seems to be absolutely committed to the erosion of critical, fundamental pillars that underlie the very rule of law in the United States in an attempt to give their friends in the media industries what they want. Enabling predators is obviously far far worse then any amount of copyright infringement that might be going on, but thats just the beginning. If they continue down this road, Congress must eventually must conceed that by picking away at the rule of law they are in fact picking away at their own authority and their own reasons for existance. Do it here, and establish that its legal here, and it will pop up somewhere else, and then again, and again, until there are very serious threats to the stability of this system of goverment.

Of all possible ways to address this problem, these people have chosen a path that is dumber then any I had imagined... Between these actions, and the pressures they exert which will naturally lead to the development of extremely strong anonymizing proxy technology, Congress is breaking ground, at this moment, on a very, very ugly future for all of this. And they have absolutely, positively, no fucking clue about the implications of their actions. Tim May might just turn out to have been right all along.

] An even greater risk is putting this subpoena power in
] the hands of anyone willing to pretend to have a copyright
] claim. These fraudulent requests will be impossible to
] distinguish from legitimate ones.

(Comments from Decius)

The EFF spoke of this at Defcon... That as these subpoenas become an established proceedure, which is almost the case now, they will be a powerfull tool for stalkers, batterers, and other kinds of predators. You don't really care about being in contempt of court if you are planning to assault someone. Predators will use these subpoenas to track down their victims. The internet will really become a very unsafe place unless you use an anonymizing proxy network.

Whether its the elminiation of judicial oversite for subpoenas or the approval of vigilanti computer hacking, Congress seems to be absolutely committed to the erosion of critical, fundamental pillars that underlie the very rule of law in the United States in an attempt to give their friends in the media industries what they want. Enabling predators is obviously far far worse then any amount of copyright infringement that might be going on, but thats just the beginning. If they continue down this road, Congress must eventually must conceed that by picking away at the rule of law they are in fact picking away at their own authority and their own reasons for existance. Do it here, and establish that its legal here, and it will pop up somewhere else, and then again, and again, until there are very serious threats to the stability of this system of goverment.

Of all possible ways to address this problem, these people have chosen a path that is dumber then any I had imagined... Between these actions, and the pressures they exert which will naturally lead to the development of extremely strong anonymizing proxy technology, Congress is breaking ground, at this moment, on a very, very ugly future for all of this. And they have absolutely, positively, no fucking clue about the implications of their actions. Tim May might just turn out to have been right all along.