> Opponents of the Stop Online Piracy Act, the bill that threatens to block large swathes of foreign websites for alleged copyright infringement, have complained that Congress has yet to hear their voice.
Foreign websites? This, combined with the fact that they're referred to once as 'haters' and twice as 'nerds', makes me think that Forbes is worthless at writing about anything except how rich blue-chip CEOs are.
Why wouldn't they have the right? The DNS servers in question are physically in US territory. And due process is part of the bill: in the current version a domain takedown requires a court order. Weak protection to be sure, given the army of lawyers the MPAA has lined up and the tendency of some judges to rubber-stamp legitimate-seeming orders, but not strictly speaking a due-process issue.
IANA is only under (US-based) ICANN control because of the grudging agreement of the rest of the world. There have been arguments to remove control over the DNS root from US jurisdiction, but each time the US Government and ICANN have promised not to do something like SOPA.
Why wouldn't they have the right? The DNS servers in question are physically in US territory.
Well in the US we have this thing called "constitutional rights" which say, among other things, that Congress shall make no law "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press".
Laws blocking results returned from a DNS server is just about the closest thing imaginable to "abridging a press" in the 21 century.
Foreign websites? This, combined with the fact that they're referred to once as 'haters' and twice as 'nerds', makes me think that Forbes is worthless at writing about anything except how rich blue-chip CEOs are.