If there’s anyone whose bills I want to see made into law, it’s the greedy little content goblins abusing artists and choking out every last bit of creativity from movies and tv for an extra buck. Make it harder to pirate and I’ll work harder.

This exactly. I suppose I may actually have to engage my VPN on starlink now. I stopped bothering a long time ago. Tbh, I've grown rather lazy - I used to have several machines that were as anonymous as could be at any given time.

Seems like that time again.

The only people this legislation will prevent from piracy are the people least likely to pirate anything - to the rest of us, this is like fuel.

A law that protects the lower players and punish blood-sucking corps? Not very soon let me tell you.

When you have the Internet's birthplace making these types of moves, the writing is on the wall. The truly wild open and global Internet has been sick and hobbling for a long time, and these are truly its last days. It's held up strong, but it looks like it's not going to survive the current wave of post-pandemic anti-globalism and corporate centralization.

One of the most positive things to come out of the open global Internet is the worldwide open source movement and Linux. I'm sure Linux will be protected in the coming closedown, but only because it's been extremely useful to companies. In the long run it won't matter. POSIX can't last forever. At some point given the massive parallelism in GPUs and that continuing to increase within CPUs, some new paradigm is certain to take hold and it won't be open source.

Decades shall pass, and the Internet will become like the telephone, radio and television: a big boring thing controlled and meted out by massive corporate entities, culturally moving at the speed of molasses, providing slow and reliable returns on investment, and fading more or less into the background.

Maybe after half a century or so there will be a new disruptor, a new 90's Internet with its optimism and desire for freedom; and maybe it will take some lessons learned from this iteration and survive longer.

What do you think will be the nail in the coffin for the internet? Do you think there will be anywhere to go after?

The more liability that ISPs are under for content, the more the Internet is dead. It'll probably be some cybersecurity regulation effectively requiring whitelisting of domains. No one will care because AI slop will have made it unusable for most at that point.

I could see ISPs being eventually put in a position where--given concerns of cybersecurity, liability, profitability, and absence net neutrality--access to domains gets treated more or less like cable channels.

You'll have a basic package of a hundred or so approved non-foreign "safety-certified" domains that tend to be part of your phone or Internet bill, and then access to other domains is available if ISP-consortium approved and you pay. There won't be very many because there will be a complex regulatory environment both for domain owners, providers of the service behind the domain, and the ISP allowing access. To register and provide services under a new domain you will have to spend a lot of upfront capital or work under an established regime.

> Do you think there will be anywhere to go after?

No clue. My crystal ball is dark. I guess UUCP would still work if you can get a dial tone somehow lol. I'm sure we'll still have phone numbers.

How is OpenAI going to train its next model?

TFW consumers trade their one of their streaming subscriptions for VPN to pirate. I'm surprised RU or some other sanctioned country haven't build out a nice piracy/streaming service to undermine US media sector. North Korea could make a lot of $$$ working on Nintendo emulators. Or maybe they have and I'm too content with my legal PLEX setup.

Are there currently any laws in the U.S. requiring blocks on specific websites for any reason (csam, terrorist recruitment etc.).

Look for a TorrentFreak article "US Court Orders Every ISP in the United States to Block Illegal Streaming Sites" - first I've heard of that. Not a law but something a court ordered ISPs to do. Article is from August 2024.

But typically what will happen in the U.S. for web properties involved in crimes is that they seize the domain and redirect to a seizure notice.

The solution to piracy isn’t further escalation of the cat and mouse game.

The music industry already showed the answer; stop trying to hold on so tight with a winner-take-all model. Let platforms have access to content and create services at a reasonable price. All the services trying to carve out at own their own piece of the streaming market is what frustrates users and drives them to the pirate sites. A paying customer should have a better and more seamless solution than a pirate. This is the case with many music service, is not the case with TV and movies. It’s too confusing, too expensive, and constantly shifting. The user experience is a complete nightmare. Until the industry solves the user’s plight, they deserve to lose.

"The music industry already showed the answer; stop trying to hold on so tight with a winner-take-all model."

They sure did. It ended up with more money in the pockets of the music industry, less for popular artists, and none for independent artists.

They can't emulate the music industry by simply exploiting the performers because, unlike musicians, the film studios have lawyers too.

Regarding the going through courts part of this. It seems like they would have free choice in choosing where to sue from. cough 5th circuit cough With little effort from large stake holders they would be able to turn that check into a rubber stamp.

As an aside, I wonder if it would be possible to force a randomization of the court that would hear a case (for cases that are not bound to a location).