On 01/18/2012 08:23 PM, upscope wrote:
On Wednesday, January 18, 2012 04:06:28 PM webmaster for Kracked
Press>
For software like LibreOffice, the hosting company would have to find
out if the client has a legal right to have a download link on the
page they host. Then they have to determine if the software was
legally obtained for the source and it was legal to either post the
link for downloading or hosting the file on their site. There are
some things, as far as I remember over the years, that is legal to
have a link to another host so you can download, but not legal to
place the software on your server and have it downloaded from there.
I have a list of free, FOSS or other types of, software in a list. I
provide links to the software's home page, and not host the software
itself. That is legal. If I downloaded and then hosted the software
on my hosting account, then 90% of that would be illegal. There are
only a few non FOSS packages that will allow you to do that. So it
can be very difficult for your hosting company to determine which
ones is which and do this for all their 1000's of clients and their
100,000's of web pages and their millions of links. Then do this
every time a web page file changes. The manpower costs for the legal
teams and the people who do the researching would make hosting a
domain and web pages too expensive for the average person. I can
have 100 or even 1000 domains on my hosting account for one monthly
fee of less than $7 a month. This new law would force the hosting
company to charge per domain. But the real result would be that
EVERY hosting company in the USA would close its doors do to the
costs of doing business in the USA. People viewing a web page mostly
do not care where the web page is hosted. It does not matter that
they are getting their information from a European based server
instead of one physically in New York. It does not cost the reader
any more money to do "business" with a web site in a different
country.
SO the real result will be that there will be less companies in the
USA that are willing to host web pages and can afford to do what the
proposed law will require them to do to stay in business in the USA.
SOPA will shut down a large percentage of hosting companies whos
clients are all doing legal "business". They would not be able to
afford to do business in the USA. We now have companies who move
from one state to another after the original state changes their tax
laws. The USA will make it so the companies will have to leave the
country to stay in business legally. On a local note, my city has
just passed a law that requires a swap-shop, or used-item store, to
prove that the items were legally allowed to be sold to them. They
have to prove that the item was not stolen or was not owned by more
than the one person who was selling it. That goes for garage sales
and yard sales. You have to prove that you own the child's toy that
you have had for 10 years and not want to sell it for a $1. This law
went into effect on Jan. 1st and every used item store, except the
used book store [books seem exempt], are closing their doors after
being open for 10 to 30 years. So locally we have a type of SOPA law
and it is closing good businesses. SOPA will do the same across the
USA.