lonecity.com

If you are going to take away people’s rights or property, you better not let them know until it is too late. If you are going to take away people’s rights or property, then it is best to hide your intent under the banner of a fight against something so bad that no one dare oppose the fight. For example, suppose that you operate a nationwide furniture store chain and want to eliminate local competition from independent operators. You could ask your Senator to sponsor the “Wipe Out The Little Guy Act of 2008″ but it is unlikely that your Senator or the public would give you much support. A much better strategy would be to hide your intent to wipe out your competition inside a bit of legislation that appears to fight a battle that everyone would support. For example, how about the “Furniture Consumer Protection Act of 2008″ in which you tout the benefits of protecting consumers against deceptive furniture sales practices and price gouging etc. Then in the middle of the Bill you hide a provision that would allow you to press charges against anyone who tries to sell the same types of furniture that you do — effectively putting out of business the pesky independent stores across the country that compete with you. If you read the “Anti-Phishing Consumer Protection Act of 2008″ carefully, you will see that this is exactly what it will do. It will let government and big business take away websites (the virtual equivalent of store fronts) from individuals and small businesses — without the due process protections that exist in the current domain name resolution protection and even the current trademark law. It is a brazen grab by the big to take over what belongs to the small. Everyone should support efforts to reduce phishing and online fraud. No one should support the anti-competitive power grab hidden in this Bill as currently worded.” - Bob Connor

By now, we all take the internet for granted.  We just assume its going to work when we turn on the computer and that when we type in a dot .com its going to get us where we want to be.  The web is a great thing and it provides an avenue for everyone to get their voice heard.  My rant Blog is an example of that.  You probably won’t belive it, but right now the internet is in danger. Seriously!

Truth be told, nobody can be right about everything.  The answer to that dilemma is to take everyones ideas, mix them together, and come up with a consensus that works for almost everyone.  Then take the few who don’t agree and force them to conform with the general consensus.  The Snowe bill, an anti phishing act introduced by senator Snowe seems at its surface to be aimed at stopping phishing scams.  This pice of trash Legislation is so full of loopholes that it actually becomes a risk to free speech itself. 

The changes introduced by the bill are supposedly aimed at making it harder for a scammer to register a domain name and use that domain name to perpetrate their scam.  One would hope we all know that this won’t actually stop the scammer.  Someone smart enough to purpotrate a Phishing scam wouldn’t register the name legitimately in the first place.  What it will do is unbalance the way the domain registration and arbitration system works strongly in the favor of trademark owners.  Which by the way has nothing to do with Phishing.  As an example of this, say a Hewlet Packard spots someone re-selling an HP computer on ebay.  If the seller didn’t get explicit permission to use the trademark”Hewlett Packard” in their ad the seller is in violation of the Anti-Phishing Act of 2008.  Furthermore, for letting the seller post the listing, Ebay is also in violation.  Now HP can legally file criminal charges against the seller, Ebay, and sue for up to $6 Million in damages.  Futhering the problem, if the Snowe bill passes HP can take Ebay.com away because it is bieng used to infringe on HP’s Tradmark rights.  The icing on the cake is that HP wouldn’t even have to prove that their trademark was abused for Phishing.  All they would have to do is say their tradmark was used without permission and they’ve already won. 

The example above is probably never going to happen.  Why?  Because Ebay can afford expensive lawyers and even if they fought it out the matter would be settled.  But now think of this what about the same scenario except instead of ebay you have a mom and pop computer shop going up against HP.  Chances are Ma can’t afford all them fancy lawyers.  The end result will be a bankrupt competitor that HP shut down just because Ma can’t afford to fight back.

Presently if someone really had a grudge against Ebay they could register EbaySucks.com and rant away.  (Yes, I’m sure its already taken.)  Under current trademark law this is acceptable, and rightfully so.  The person isn’t infringing on the companies business.  Trademarks are there to prevent other people marketing similar products and confusing consumers about what they are really buying.  (Trade - Mark)  Think about the meaning of the words.  The Snowe bill will effectively kill these types of websites by allowing companies to take away the domains that contend with them without any type of arbitration.  In the end its free speech on the internet that lies in danger here.

To summerize I urge everyone to write their congressman and quash this bill.  Hopefully this senator can find himself a good telephone and then hang himself with the wire…  Seriously this isn’t the first piece of anti-internet legislation he has been involved with, and its downright shamful that he had the nerve to pitch it as a consumer friendly anti-phishing bill.  I’d much rather have the guy in office who just got busted for whoring it up.  He may have hurt a few people’s religeous sensability, but he wasn’t hurting everyone. Snowe is dangerous.  He is risking damage to the world economy and may even succeed in breaking the internet. 

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