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“When Google and other piracy apologists start talking about free speech, it’s completely disingenuous,” Harbinson said. “These guys don’t give a crap about fre

“When Google and other piracy apologists start talking about free speech, it’s completely disingenuous,” Harbinson said. “These guys don’t give a crap about free speech.” Maybe they don't, but at least they are trying to stop this bill, while the others are pushing for it, clearly not giving a crap about free speech either, as it seems all they care about is the ability to stop piracy - at all cost.

roc 15y ago
> "while the others are pushing for it, clearly not giving a crap about free speech either" This, I think, is the problem in American politics. The best the citizenry can hope for, given the amount of corruption that unfettered political donation has brought, is for a corporate champion whose own economic interests just happen to align with our liberty on this issue. Because the legislators supporting this don't care about piracy any more than Google cares about free speech. They care about protecting their share of political donations by the industries whose economic interests are aligned with pushing crap like SOPA.
- CWuestefeld 15y ago
  the amount of corruption that unfettered political donation has brought That's one side of the issue, and it's not inaccurate. But I'd ask you to consider the other side as well. Why do you think that businesses find it worthwhile to dump so much money into political contributions? I submit that the reason is because, as the government has assumed increasing amounts of power, it acquires the ability to confer significant advantages upon those favored by the law. So it's necessary for business to take extreme steps to ensure that they are, in fact, favored thusly. In these terms, I think that a more constructive strategy for solving the problem isn't to attack political contributions (which is bound to get into thorny First Amendment questions), but to strike at the root by limiting the power that the government has to decide who is going to win and who is going to lose. If we take away the government's power, then there's nothing for corporations to buy. If we give the government more power (to regulate the corporations' contributions and other matters), then there is an even greater incentive for the corporations to influence the goverenment -- which is exactly what we're trying to get away from.
  - shadowfiend 15y ago
    There is something for them to buy—each other. Arguably this is an even more dangerous situation, because the result then is monopoly, or close. And then, no competition. And then... Well, then the free market falls on its face, and all of a sudden the answer is that one company wins and everyone else—competitors and customers alike—loses. There is no silver bullet, for this as well as other problems. Just a web of interconnected aids that we can use to at least try to react when the inevitable corruption arises.
    - TDL 15y ago
      Monopolies rise up in the scenario you describe only in a static marketplace. Very few, if any, markets are static. There is constant change. Well healed competitors from other markets will enter a market where they see monopoly pricing power and begin to compete to grab a piece of a high margin business. Disruptive technologies or methods are also in play. In order for a company to successfully buy it's way into a monopoly, it requires that all other competitors (and potential competitors) either acquiesce to being bought or not enter the market after the monopoly has been created. Certainly there can be barriers to entry, but those barriers will not be permanent.
      - shadowfiend 15y ago
        A pleasant fiction, but a well-operated monopoly will move to crush nascent competition by undercutting them in price or securing their supplies—and thus their ability to produce at all—at prices that cannot be competed with by a smaller entity. This isn't to say that it wouldn't be possible to defeat a monopoly eventually, just that it's not as straightforward as you make it sound. Indeed, historically, monopolies seem to have required government intervention to be dismantled (Standard Oil, AT&T, etc), though perhaps that's simply defining monopolies as those entities that the government dismantled as such. Regardless, I think this is one of the two “silver bullet”-style myths that likes to float around the area of government regulation: one, that less regulation is always better, the other, that more regulation is always better. In essence, a refusal to acknowledge that regulation is and should be in a fluid state, adapting to what the market is doing at any given moment—and ideally ahead of the curve, rather than reacting after financial or other disaster has already struck.
kevinalexbrown 15y ago
It's not just piracy, unfortunately. Suppose SOPA passes - there are all these tools available to stop Google/other services from interacting with "rogue" websites. But what about other things that are as bad as or worse than piracy -- if we use those tools to stop piracy, why not use SOPA-like tools to stop them? (This isn't a slippery-slope argument, it's more of an "equivalent-harms" one.) Similar to how terrorism-inspired tools are used all the time for non-terrorism law enforcement.
firefoxman1 15y ago
Yeah Google obviously isn't trying to protect free speech; they have their own business interest in mind. But really, who cares what their motivation is, as long as someone is fighting the dark side. This bill has turned into a fight between old Big Business vs. new Big Business. There would be no reason for congressmen to just randomly decide to create a bill like this. It was obviously the result of heavy lobbying from the dying record industry, the overpriced and overpaid film industry, and older tech companies like Microsoft. It's just nice to see newer big companies like Facebook and Google fight on the opposing side, even if it's just because this bill could possibly kill their companies. I've read the bill myself and it's pretty unsettling. Check section 1.4 for some real-world "1984" thinking.
- numeromancer 15y ago
  "But really, who cares what their motivation is, as long as someone is fighting the dark side." If you must make any agreements with firefoxman, make sure you get it in writing, notarized, with witnesses.
  - numeromancer 15y ago
    A bit too personal. Sorry.

roc 15y ago

> "while the others are pushing for it, clearly not giving a crap about free speech either" This, I think, is the problem in American politics. The best the citizenry can hope for, given the amount of corruption that unfettered political donation has brought, is for a corporate champion whose own economic interests just happen to align with our liberty on this issue. Because the legislators supporting this don't care about piracy any more than Google cares about free speech. They care about protecting their share of political donations by the industries whose economic interests are aligned with pushing crap like SOPA.

CWuestefeld 15y ago
the amount of corruption that unfettered political donation has brought That's one side of the issue, and it's not inaccurate. But I'd ask you to consider the other side as well. Why do you think that businesses find it worthwhile to dump so much money into political contributions? I submit that the reason is because, as the government has assumed increasing amounts of power, it acquires the ability to confer significant advantages upon those favored by the law. So it's necessary for business to take extreme steps to ensure that they are, in fact, favored thusly. In these terms, I think that a more constructive strategy for solving the problem isn't to attack political contributions (which is bound to get into thorny First Amendment questions), but to strike at the root by limiting the power that the government has to decide who is going to win and who is going to lose. If we take away the government's power, then there's nothing for corporations to buy. If we give the government more power (to regulate the corporations' contributions and other matters), then there is an even greater incentive for the corporations to influence the goverenment -- which is exactly what we're trying to get away from.
- shadowfiend 15y ago
  There is something for them to buy—each other. Arguably this is an even more dangerous situation, because the result then is monopoly, or close. And then, no competition. And then... Well, then the free market falls on its face, and all of a sudden the answer is that one company wins and everyone else—competitors and customers alike—loses. There is no silver bullet, for this as well as other problems. Just a web of interconnected aids that we can use to at least try to react when the inevitable corruption arises.
  - TDL 15y ago
    Monopolies rise up in the scenario you describe only in a static marketplace. Very few, if any, markets are static. There is constant change. Well healed competitors from other markets will enter a market where they see monopoly pricing power and begin to compete to grab a piece of a high margin business. Disruptive technologies or methods are also in play. In order for a company to successfully buy it's way into a monopoly, it requires that all other competitors (and potential competitors) either acquiesce to being bought or not enter the market after the monopoly has been created. Certainly there can be barriers to entry, but those barriers will not be permanent.
    - shadowfiend 15y ago
      A pleasant fiction, but a well-operated monopoly will move to crush nascent competition by undercutting them in price or securing their supplies—and thus their ability to produce at all—at prices that cannot be competed with by a smaller entity. This isn't to say that it wouldn't be possible to defeat a monopoly eventually, just that it's not as straightforward as you make it sound. Indeed, historically, monopolies seem to have required government intervention to be dismantled (Standard Oil, AT&T, etc), though perhaps that's simply defining monopolies as those entities that the government dismantled as such. Regardless, I think this is one of the two “silver bullet”-style myths that likes to float around the area of government regulation: one, that less regulation is always better, the other, that more regulation is always better. In essence, a refusal to acknowledge that regulation is and should be in a fluid state, adapting to what the market is doing at any given moment—and ideally ahead of the curve, rather than reacting after financial or other disaster has already struck.

kevinalexbrown 15y ago

It's not just piracy, unfortunately. Suppose SOPA passes - there are all these tools available to stop Google/other services from interacting with "rogue" websites. But what about other things that are as bad as or worse than piracy -- if we use those tools to stop piracy, why not use SOPA-like tools to stop them? (This isn't a slippery-slope argument, it's more of an "equivalent-harms" one.) Similar to how terrorism-inspired tools are used all the time for non-terrorism law enforcement.

firefoxman1 15y ago

Yeah Google obviously isn't trying to protect free speech; they have their own business interest in mind. But really, who cares what their motivation is, as long as someone is fighting the dark side. This bill has turned into a fight between old Big Business vs. new Big Business. There would be no reason for congressmen to just randomly decide to create a bill like this. It was obviously the result of heavy lobbying from the dying record industry, the overpriced and overpaid film industry, and older tech companies like Microsoft. It's just nice to see newer big companies like Facebook and Google fight on the opposing side, even if it's just because this bill could possibly kill their companies. I've read the bill myself and it's pretty unsettling. Check section 1.4 for some real-world "1984" thinking.

numeromancer 15y ago
"But really, who cares what their motivation is, as long as someone is fighting the dark side." If you must make any agreements with firefoxman, make sure you get it in writing, notarized, with witnesses.
- numeromancer 15y ago
  A bit too personal. Sorry.