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Oregon Senator effectively kills Internet censorship bill
- joshes 16y agoSadly it appears as though the only legislation which unifies both sides of the political aisle (be it in favor of or against a given piece of legislation) is that which is completely asinine and backward. The seemingly basic bills are inevitably deadlocked in recent years. Then again, that's not entirely unexpected.
- nkassis 16y agoI think this is mostly due to the low impact on votes that these kind so of bills have. These bills can usually go undetected. <spam>I think this again shows that groups like the EFF are invaluable. Donate today! </spam>
- _delirium 16y agoYeah, sadly I don't think this is a priority for most of the public, and many who do have an opinion support the "shut down the pirates, whatever it takes" approach. Take Wyden in particular: he just won reelection two weeks ago, 57-40%. If this sequence of events had taken place before the election, would he have won by a larger margin? I think it's unlikely. Probably it would've turned out the same, but if anything it's possible he would've done slightly worse, since his opponent could attempt to portray him as a pro-piracy "extremist" who blocked a bipartisan bill that had passed the relevant committee unanimously.
- laujen 16y agoI live in Oregon. Wyden had that election won long before election day. The focus was in the governor's race here and even Wyden's opponent, a Lewis and Clark University law professor named Hoffman, admitted the state Republican party put all its money into the gubernatorial race. The outcome of this bill wouldn't have made a difference one way or the other.
- DevX101 16y agoSend him a thank you for defending freedom of speech on the internet: http://wyden.senate.gov/contact/ http://wyden.senate.gov/contact/
- adammichaelc 16y agoSent. Good idea. Politicians normally only hear from us when we are mad. A nice twist.
- aperiodic 16y agoAnd, if you can at all spare it, donate to his campaign. We need people like this to stay in Washington. http://www.standtallforamerica.com/ http://www.standtallforamerica.com/
- _delirium 16y agoWell, he did just win reelection two weeks ago (by a large margin), so isn't facing another election until 2016.
- tomjen3 16y agoDoesn't matter - if politicians realize that their constituents are willing to pay to keep them in office when they go against corporate interests, we are going to see some real change in Washington.
- whimsy 16y agoCan we really compete on that point? Corporations have quite a lot of money compared to most generous private citizens... even those private citizens combined.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- Calamitous 16y ago
- iwr 16y agoWould this system block websites at the IP level or at the DNS level? Doing it at the DNS level would mean you could roll your own DNS or use a non-US DNS provider. Doing it at the IP level would mean banned IPs and reverse-lookups of IPs back into domain names, checking against a list of banned domains. This one could only be bypassed through proxies.
- navyrain 16y agoMy understanding of it is that US nameservers couldn't resolve banned domains. Anyone with the tiniest bit of technical knowledge could use an untainted nameserver, or run their own. However, the spirit of the bill is terribly misguided, no matter how easy it is to circumvent.
- tomjen3 16y agoThats exactly what they did with the free-speech filter in Denmark (which they said was only supposed to block child-porn). I know at least one dorm where the geeks just changed the DNS servers for everyone.
- olefoo 16y agoOne of the downsides of allowing legislation like this that imposes compliance requirements on organizations is that it creates widespread law-breaking by the otherwise law-abiding. It can also inadvertently stifle key technical standards. Would you be willing to switch on DNSSEC validation in client side software (browsers, operating systems) if it only talks to nameservers that are compliant with government censorship? Yes, this is a stupid law, but it's technical implementation is possible because there is a single root for public DNS.
- tshtf 16y agoI wouldn't be surprised if this was a direct result of the Senator hearing from his constituents about this issue. Regardless, job well done!
- flipbrad 16y agoi wish i was a US citizen so I could send him a note of appreciation and some chocolates, or a box set of mad men, or something... this bill would have gone global (and might do, one day)
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- SkyMarshal 16y agoPlease do anyway. I'm sure he'd be gratified to know others outside the US are paying attention, care, and appreciate it. I would.
- tmgrhm 16y agoI'm from England but I still sent him a short email in thanks. Just use something like 90210 for the zip code on the form.
- corin_ 16y agoI already sent him a message from England, and depressingly 90210 was the first zip code to come into my mind too. (But went with 90017, last ZIP code I stayed in.)
- tmgrhm 16y agoYeah it's pretty embarrassing/depressing but there's not really any other famous zip codes.
- laujen 16y agoOregon is 97xxx just so you know :-)
- tmgrhm 16y agoThanks, but I use 90210 for all ZIP code forms because it's easy to remember. :P
- tommi 16y ago"Deploying this statute to combat online copyright infringement seems almost like using a bunker-busting cluster bomb, when what you need is a precision-guided missile," Wyden said. As far as I understand the article does not explain Wyden doing anything else than saying that particular sentence. How is that effectively killing Internet censorship?
- marcusestes 16y agoIndividual senators may place holds on legislation and there are only a few woking days left in the congressional calendar this year. If it doesn't pass this year, it will have to be reintroduced by Lahey next year.
- DanielBMarkham 16y agoThis is the part of the story where folks acknowledge how great the U.S. Senate is for allowing one member to block offending legislation. But I doubt that will happen.
- brown9-2 16y agoSo often the story is that the U.S. Senate has stupid rules that allow one member to block legislation when the legislation being blocked is thought of as a good thing - such as unemployment extension, aid to Haiti, etc. So it cuts both ways. We should be careful about praising this rule too much since often we criticize it when we like the legislation being blocked.
- laujen 16y agoThat is a very good point. It seems like we forget the good uses when bad comes up. (Free speech has the same problem.)
- jdp23 16y agoWell done by Senator Wyden! The headline's a little too optimistic, though. The bill will be back next session -- and the new Congress is likely to be just as friendly to the content industries (who are driving the bill). So it's a great time to support Wyden, EFF and others who are on the right side of this issue.
- laujen 16y agoSenator Wyden is a good man. I told this story in yesterdays post but I have a friend that used to take the same Portland to DC flights every Monday (to DC) and Friday (to PDX). senator Wyden, even though he had probably earned millions of frequent flyer miles, always sat in coach, always in the same spot. If any of you were paying attention to the national health care debate, it was Wyden and then Senator Bennett's proposal before Obamacare that made the most sense. In fact we would be much better off if Congress would consider their changes instead of complete repeal.