11 ms·

The nightmarish SOPA hearings

592 points by elliottcarlson 15y ago

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ajtaylor 15y ago
I tried watching the hearings but I couldn't stay awake through the reading of the bill. My heart goes out to the poor clerk who had to read it out! "There ought to be a law, I think, that in order to regulate something you have to have some understanding of it." Ne'er were truer words written. Why on earth do we allow people who have no real understanding of technology to regulate it so closely? It's a train wreck in the making, one you'll be hard pressed to avoid should this bill get approved.
- shadowfiend 15y ago
  The problem is simple: how do you define having understanding of something? :)
  - ajtaylor 15y ago
    Let's start by being able to talk about the basics like IP addresses, servers and domain names? The baseline doesn't have to be very high to weed out the ignorant.
- dromidas 15y ago
  Unfortunately that will never, ever happen. Law makers don't care about technology because their world is only politics. Same like engineers don't care about beauty products but we create database products that we think they might like to use. If someone did actually make a law like that then nothing would be passed because nobody would be able to understand everything anyway. Fact is, even if they pass this law then there will just be more creative ways to get around it... it's the guiding principal upon which the internet is based.
rorrr 15y ago
I'm voting against every fucker in my district who supports it. That's the only non-violent way.
- masonhensley 15y ago
  But by then it will be too late.
  - xer0 15y ago
    Already too late, they're falling all over themselves to proclaim their ignorance and vote this into tragic existence.
  - stumm 15y ago
    For this bill, but it would show them that need to be representing their constituents.
- guelo 15y ago
  You have to let them know now before their vote.
- rajbot 15y ago
  Additionally, you could also boycott all the products of SOPA backers such as the MPAA or RIAA. Unfortunately, every time I try to explain to my friends that I don't want to see a Pixar movie and would rather see a movie at an indie theater instead, no one seems to really understand what the problem with Pixar or Disney or Sony or UMG is. It turns out, almost no one cares about the DMCA or SOPA or Protect-IP or anything that requires more than 30 seconds to explain. It is quite depressing...
  - forensic 15y ago
    Unfortunately corporations have become the new governments/armies, and so if you boycott every corporation that does something you don't like... you're screwed. It's like telling people in Soviet Russia that if they don't like Communism, they should boycott the communist food lines. It's an unreasonable request. The free market is no longer free, corporate oligarchies might as well be called Soviet Planning Committees. (What the Soviets called their authoritarian overlords who owned and distributed all the resources)
mbesto 15y ago
I watched roughly 2-3 hours of the hearing. I could be wrong, but I thought in general there was actually a bi-partisan agreement that they needed experts in on the conversation. Unfortunately it didn't mean much when it came to voting on amendments (as most were shot down). Where it got interesting is when Mel Watt came out and said "We all know that everyone in this room on both sides has enough resources to pull in experts that will aid their side of the argument equally, so we're going to get into the same mess we did when we talk about derivatives being the most evil things on earth by one party and the saving grace by another". Good point, but the difference here is that not all parties that are for SOPA have purely financial incentives as the banks did.
- Iv 15y ago
  > Where it got interesting is when Mel Watt came out and said "We all know that everyone in this room on both sides has enough resources to pull in experts that will aid their side of the argument equally, so we're going to get into the same mess we did when we talk about derivatives being the most evil things on earth by one party and the saving grace by another". That's truly frightening. "We have no clues and we both invite biased experts so let's just disregard facts and vote according to our ideology." It is OK for a politician to vote on laws about things he does not completely understands, the catch is that the JOB of a politician is to know WHO to ask to get an expert advice. If they can't do that they are simply not fit for the job. The rush without reason should indicate to them that something screwy is happening. Yeah, "screwy", come on, politicians can not even identify THAT ? It is either gross incompetence or conspiracy. Since the W Bush administration I no longer bet on which one is the correct option.
  - billswift 15y ago
    That Bush bit is a little biased, Clinton was just as bad. Both had loose screws and power grabs, they were just in slightly different places. Go read Bovard's books, Feeling Your Pain and The Bush Betrayal, then tell me that you could see any significant differences between them.
    - 15y ago
masonhensley 15y ago
Does anyone have a list of where each representative is leaning on SOPA? Edit: some reps against sopa, for an open internet: @RepJohnCampbell @jasoninthehouse @RepLloydDoggett @USRepMikeDoyle @RepAnnaEshoo @RepZoeLofgren @jaredpolis
ck2 15y ago
I am not sure if you see the same ads as I've seen on TV lately from SOPA sponsors but it's pretty darn obvious that the only reason this bill exists is that the lobbyists simply paid for it to be created. Like the "Patriot" Act they have no clue what exactly they are voting on, and I don't think they care, they are doing what they are bribed to do. The hearing is just theater, it's meaningless, they've already decided to get in on the take.
- srl 15y ago
  To be clear, nobody bribed anybody on PATRIOT; it's just that the folk in congress apparently lack the rest of the country's visceral suspicion of the phrase "national security".
mattvot 15y ago
I've been watching all of this for the last 3-4 hours. I am amazed at how most of the committee do not want to hear from experts, and ignore the facts with a quick dismissal like "Oh, I'm not a nerd, I don't understand, but what I do know is that piracy is theft and we must stop it.". How can they not listen to the experts? EDIT: Here's a livestream http://www.justin.tv/unearthed365#/w/2249527504 http://www.justin.tv/unearthed365#/w/2249527504
antihero 15y ago
It's weird, it seems like there's an amendment suggested, with lots of reason behind it, but fuck it we're going to say no anyway. WTF.
bprater 15y ago
I haven't listened to the hearing, so I'm curious (and slightly facetious) -- when the RIAA inevitably flags videos on YouTube that are using copyrighted music -- will it be legally fairly simple for the industry to request a DNS take-down of the whole site? Will site owners have any recourse or will they just wake up in the morning and be completely out of business?
- xer0 15y ago
  Let's hope so, it seems only something that ridiculous is going to get anyone's attention. I suppose the Elves leaving .com might do it too.
- dangrossman 15y ago
  The problem is that there's not going to be a government attorney that will go to a judge and ask for the seizure of youtube.com. This will only be enforced against sites that are small or controversial enough that it won't cause general outrage when they're disappeared from the web. Yet the looming threat that someone could remove YouTube from the web will be enough to keep the next Google from buying/creating the next YouTube.
  - jaylevitt 15y ago
    Eh? SOPA has a private right of action.
    - dangrossman 15y ago
      You're right. SOPA does so much it's hard to keep track of. I'm barely able to keep from turning off my TV while listening to the hearings.
msluyter 15y ago
Nice post from Felix Salmon on the topic: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/12/15/do-any-real-people-support-sopa/ http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/12/15/do-any-real... He makes the point that virtually no average citizens support this (either they're against it or they don't know anything about it.) People often worry that congress fails when they can't agree on anything, but this makes me think that the time to really worry is when they do agree. When they disagree, they're at least probably mirroring the electorate.
- Jgrubb 15y ago
  Well put. Lately I worry the most when Dems and Repubs find something that they can slam-dunk agree on.
  - vinhboy 15y ago
    Example: NDAA
    - jrockway 15y ago
      And the PATRIOT Act, and the DMCA.
      - luriel 15y ago
        And Prohibition (aka the War on Drugs).
- cpeterso 15y ago
  I hear corporations are "real people" these days. ;)
- gcb 15y ago
  If you want a government that respects the will of the people, you are welcome to move to a democracy.
jacques_chester 15y ago
For some time now it's been clear to me that as society grows ever more technical, it's leaving legislators behind. At the same time, the background of lawmakers has increasingly narrowed. In Australia, for example, it used to be commonplace for the Parliament to contain people whose first careers were as teachers, farmers, train drivers, engineers, small businessmen and so forth. Not any more. Today it's an almost wall-to-wall collection of law students who were all groomed by party machines. Go to uni, join political club, graduate and work in minister's office/a union/a politically-connected law firm, get pre-selected at the local branch, elected to Parliament. At no point has this person a) studied something other than law or b) held down an ordinary job or run a small business. I imagine the pattern is similar elsewhere. And so our law making bodies are filled with folk whose main skill is forensic disputation. This is problematic when technical debates are held because politicians are often mistrustful of experts outside their circle of loyalty -- because for any expert I can procure, someone else can get an expert to say the opposite. Having experts inside the circle of trust is golden. The classic example is the banning of CFCs. Margaret Thatcher's undergraduate degree was in chemistry and so she understood the mechanisms. In turn she was able to assure Regan that the phenomenon was real and serious and the rest is history. I have for some time toyed with the idea of forming a non-partisan organisation whose purpose is helping STEM professionals to get elected. Please contact me by email (check my profile) if you are interested.
- deleted 15y ago
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- shadowfiend 15y ago
  It's also worth mentioning that the bigger problem here is that the breakneck pace of technological advancement has left legislators behind just due to age. They did not grow up with the Internet. Hell, they barely grew up with television. But we went from radio to the Internet in 70 years, less than many a human lifetime. That's going to cause some pendulum swinging. Obviously I think we should oppose SOPA with all of our hearts and all of our voices, but let's also not despair that this is how it will always be. Call me an idealist, but 5-10 years from now, when people start getting elected who were young when the Internet changed everything, I think we'll see a swing of the pendulum back away from this madness.
nirvana 15y ago
I think the heart surgery analogy is excellent. I would never, unless it were an extremely dire situation with no doctors, attempt any kind of surgery on someone. Nor would I ever start dictating to doctors how the perform their procedures. Yet that is what government does, day in and day out. They regulate industries which work in ways they don't understand, and they do it primarily for political motivations. The MPAA may want tools to fight piracy, but to politicians, who don't really care about piracy, this is an opportunity to have something to campaign on, and it gives the government more power. More power means more prestige and more money for them, if not now, in their post career lives when they lobby, etc. More regulations gives them more control over industry- the power to threaten to make the regulations even worse, or the threat that their opponent will do that if they don't get re-elected (so please give generously!) I don't think these people are "well intentioned". They don't actually want to help anybody. Theft is already against the law. SOPA won't change that, it won't stop piracy, and its not criminalizing piracy. No, they're politicians. And they're not even corrupt politicians. This is simply the nature of what they do. They pass laws, they shake down industry, and they get paid for passing ever more laws without regard for the impact of those laws. Hell, when those laws cause massive destruction to the economy, what do they do? They turn around and say "Well, If we'd been able to pass the law I proposed, this wouldn't have happened! Here, we need to rush into force even more regulations to make sure this never happens again!" There's a famous(?) libertarian author by the name of L. Neil Smith who's got a saying that's very applicable here: "Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure." I hope we stop SOPA. But the lesson I would hope a lot of you take away from this is that SOPA is not an isolated incident, it is one of thousands of incidents, most of which go by completely unmentioned each year, where the system works to undermine human rights and make people's lives worse. These guys aren't corrupt, the system is corrupt. The constitution, in the enumeration clause and in the Bill of Rights, attempted to prevent this. The enumeration clause limits the powers of the federal government to only those enumerated in the constitution. Regulation of the internet, or communications of any kind, is not an enumerated power of the Federal Government. This means that when the federal government does this, it is doing it without authorization. Further, the Bill of Rights forbids congress from engaging in censorship. SOPA clearly authorizes censorship so they're also in violation of the Bill of Rights. These words in the constitution, in this day and age have very little teeth. The PATRIOT act runs afoul of them as well, but nobody has succeeded in getting it overturned. The situation will continue to get worse. Even if SOPA is defeated-- this isn't the first attempt-- it will come back in a few years. I think that the only possible solution is a technological one. I think that the only way to to fight them is with technology and disobedience to the very idea that they have the right to restrain speech or control the internet. The courts will not help us, and they certainly won't, and every election is so stage managed that nobody who actually knows the difference between a domain name and an IP address will ever get elected. Help us with technology, its our only hope!
firefoxman1 15y ago
My local congressman, also a co-sponsor and co-author of the SOPA bill, held a public phone conference the other night. You could press 0 to enter a queue to ask a question, so I did, but after 2 hours I was tired of waiting and I had a term paper to write so I gave up. I kind of regret it now, because I wanted everyone to hear just how little he, a co-author, knew about the subject. He's not one for listening to his constituents. I had already written him a letter and tried to call his office and no reply for either.
- jrockway 15y ago
  I always get replies from my Congresspeople. Unfortunately, they're usually along the lines of "SOPA will save America from sinking into the ocean" or some similar bullshit.
Timothee 15y ago
I've listened to the hearings a little bit today and in particular I heard the amendment about not removing the ability to target IP addresses. Listening to him, it just made sense: one address can be the front of multiple websites, one website can have multiple IP addresses, addresses are moved around dynamically, etc. We all know that and his explanations were very clear. So I was a bit confused when later on I was hearing a lot of "No"s. Had I missed the vote for that amendment and they were voting on something else? Nope. They were just denying common sense. I'm not even sure how they would do it on a per domain basis. What about subdomains? One guy posts something on his Tumblr and all the Tumblr's go down? I'm sure they have no idea what that means and would just say "take down all the sites!" On another note, though I don't mind the term generally, I was annoyed by them referring over and over to "nerds". "I'm not a nerd", "Bring in the nerds"… It's fine in some contexts but in the context of discussing a law, I think "technical experts", "people who have a clue" is more appropriate.
- jacques_chester 15y ago
  > So I was a bit confused when I was hearing a lot of "No"s later on. A common political tactic is to automatically vote "no" for anything you don't understand or for which you have not received instructions from factional/party leadership. After all, it might a trojan horse that undermines your own goals.
  - Timothee 15y ago
    It just made me wonder what the point of having these hearings was. I'll admit I'm not very familiar with the process. But it looked like it was the time to present why such and such amendments should be added, and then vote on it. If they can't decide on the spot, why have the vote on the spot then? That particular amendment was especially surprising to me because of how obvious it is (for us "nerds" that is), and because his explanation was pretty clear. But I know what you're saying, it's not how the game is played…
    - jacques_chester 15y ago
      Most political business is done behind closed doors; the speeches and votes are mostly performance art. There's a great deal of exchange between politicians in different countries -- the International Parliamentary Union, various politically-aligned groups like the International Democratic Union and so on. Plus exchanges for young aspiring politicians. So practices and techniques tend to pop up all over the world. Maybe the "Default to No" came from Australia, or Britain, or the USA. I have no idea.
eegilbert 15y ago
SOPA is horrifying. No doubt about it. But it's funny how many people I meet who share this view, yet think Congress is perfectly capable of regulating just about everything else. Because Congress understands that stuff. Like economies. Those things are simple. </LibertarianThursdays>
- scarmig 15y ago
  By the same token... SOPA is horrifying. No doubt about it. But it's funny how many people I meet who share this view, yet think giant multinationals are the best suited institutions for running the world. Because media conglomerates have our best interests at heart. Like our rights. Those things are universally respected. </SocialDemocratThursdays> Yeah, yeah, libertarians don't believe corporations should corrupt the political process, reign supreme, etc. For that matter, though, neither do people on the Left think government should make bad corrupt laws.
- leot 15y ago
  Sometimes, just sometimes, a group of lawmakers puts together a diverse group of people who are experts, and has them undertake a good faith investigation of an issue. And sometimes, just sometimes, the lawmakers read the group's recommendations and base their votes on those recommendations. We cannot expect a much better response to any collective action problem. Clearly, this is not happening with a bill that was written by and for the media industry. But the source of the problem is not governance per se, but rather the fact that the system has been corrupted.
dreamdu5t 15y ago
Thank God for government regulation. I'm so glad we have progressives like the Democrats and Republicans in office to curb the evils of industry. Without regulation the Internet would be monopolized by big business and criminals will prey on your children. Good thing the State is there to protect us. Don't forget to pay your taxes, and have a happy holidays!
noonespecial 15y ago
Just remember to add "in the United States" to the end of each dire prediction. Try it: SOPA will cause rampant censorship of the internet... in the United States. I am a US citizen, currently living in the US, and I hate this, but even so, it makes me feel better to remember that there's a big, big world outside our borders. If the US flies off the rails on this, I fully expect the rest of the world to shrug and move on. The internet and the Americans have been closely intertwined since the beginning but I don't expect it will always be that way. The America that created the internet is more or less gone now. Its time for the rest of the world to step up.
- yangez 15y ago
  If SOPA's passed, what kind of example would the United States set for the rest of the world, especially after all our criticism of China's internet censorship? http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111208/07411217009/chinese-internet-users-relish-irony-sopas-great-firewall-america.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111208/07411217009/chines... The effects of this won't just be confined to the USA.
  - noonespecial 15y ago
    A terrible one. So bad, I hope, that the rest of the world says to themselves "those Americans and Chinese are all nuts! We shouldn't trust them with too much of the internet's infrastructure."
- jacques_chester 15y ago
  They won't stop at US borders. They'll just use it as an argument in other countries. Eventually the Congress would be convinced to pass laws to punish foreign nationals -- deny visas, seize domains on US DNS servers and so on.
  - noonespecial 15y ago
    I can't think of a better way to erode Americas international influence. If you can't go there and your web sites can't be viewed there, and they won't let you watch any of their popular media, or even import your products for sale there, what the hell good are they to anyone? I expect the makers of SOPA et al think they're dictating terms to the world. I think will turn out to be just isolationism in disguise.
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zmmmmm 15y ago
What is it about technology that makes people proud to announce they know nothing about it while simultaneously assuming positions of authority and power over it? At least in other domains people put up a pretense of having knowledge about areas they are taking crucial decisions on. Something about technology and especially the internet seems to evoke this phenomenon.
- chipsy 15y ago
  A sort of myopia seems to be rife through all the specialist fields - STEM, medicine, law, and politics all host individuals with a nasty combination of elitism and borderline-religious opinions. Whether or not they've actually studied the subject is irrelevant - everyone from the least educated bumpkin to the foremost authority may speak on it, and everyone else will take their opinions with a grain of salt and continue with their existing ideology, rather than try to dissect the logic. Worse yet, it's possible for people to study the subject and still exhibit strong myopic symptoms. This is the origin of cargo-cult programming(to name one example).
balloot 15y ago
I highly recommend contacting your Representatives/Senators immediately. It amazes me that both of the California Senators are cosponsors of this turd. I would think they are among those who can be swayed.
- thebigshane 15y ago
  They are easily swayed (as they all are), but remember Hollywood is in California.
kylek 15y ago
Looks like a big joke to some people in the room! https://twitter.com/#!/SteveKingIA/status/147371129177255936 https://twitter.com/#!/SteveKingIA/status/147371129177255936
- sukuriant 15y ago
  Bad link, please update?
  - rl1987 15y ago
    "We are debating the Stop Online Piracy Act and Shiela Jackson has so bored me that I'm killing time by surfing the Internet."
evoxed 15y ago
Has anyone seen the TV ad? "Illegal downloads on foreign websites, stealing AMERICAN jobs......" It was frighteningly manipulative.
- mindcruzer 15y ago
  It's funny because the pile of jobs lost to illegal downloads isn't visible from the top of the mountain of jobs that will be lost due to SOPA.
- slowpoke 15y ago
  I'd say that piracy creates way more jobs than it does destroy them. Maybe not only American jobs, sure, but we live in a globalized world. Nationalism won't do away with that, either. Also, who's loosing their job, really? RIAA lawyers? Entertainment industry bureaucrats? Excuse me for being snarky, but oh no what a tremendous loss for society!
tomkinstinch 15y ago
What will it take to elect technical people to public office?
- forensic 15y ago
  Technical people will need to grow some balls and stop treating politics like a dirty word
Shenglong 15y ago
Too bad we don't have some sort of upper age limit on electing officials.
- Achshar 15y ago
  Why the downvotes? If we can have a lower limit then why not upper limit. They may have an advisory status but voting rights should not be given to "old" people.
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jrwoodruff 15y ago
Can someone who is following this more closely than myself (as in actually watching this on CSPAN) please post the names of all the senators, representatives and other elected officials who are blithering idiots in support of this. I would like to vote any of them that may be in my district out of office as soon as possible. Thank you.
- Matt_Cutts 15y ago
  I found a list of sponsors of SOPA and PIPA: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:HR03261:@@@P http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:HR03261:@@@P http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:SN00968:@@@P http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:SN00968:@@@P
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nyellin 15y ago
"We have had no hearings and no testimonies on the technical issues" - Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, 20:15 (http://www.justin.tv/unearthed365/b/302702510? http://www.justin.tv/unearthed365/b/302702510?)
zotz 15y ago
I greatly enjoyed reading this thread and peoples' well-expounded opinions on history and the Constitution. I can't add much but this quote seemed apropos. The author was a US Senator from South Dakota during the critical period of the late 19th-early 20th century. "Two per cent of the people of the United States own sixty per cent of the property of the United States. Yet they produced none of it. By legislation, by craft and cunning, by control of Congress and the courts, they took to themselves what others produced. Sixty-six per cent of the people of the United States own five per cent of the property of the United States. Yet they produced all of the wealth and have none of it. Why do not the producers of this wealth have what they produce? Because the making of the laws and the control of the courts is in the hands of those who do not work, and this has been true from the beginning of the Government. The convention which framed the Constitution of the United States was composed of fifty-five members. A majority were lawyers—not one farmer, mechanic or laborer. Forty owned Revolutionary Scrip. Fourteen were land speculators. Twenty-four were money-lenders. Eleven were merchants. Fifteen were slave-holders. They made a Constitution to protect the rights of property and not the rights of man, and, ever since, Congress has been controlled by the property owner, and has framed laws in their interests and their interests only, and always refused to frame any laws in the interest of those who produce all the wealth and have none of it." TRIUMPHANT PLUTOCRACY by Senator Richard F. Pettigrew, 1921 pg.407
gcb 15y ago
Why is everyone so worried about SOPA? patriot act has already passed.
VonLipwig 15y ago
I think this is a really good analysis of what is going on in Washington. I have always found it worrying when politicians walk into a field which they have little knowledge about and try to pass laws. Anyone can become an elected official and the power they yield over things they have no background in is scary. In the UK a person can effectively go from University >> Elected Official >> Misc Support Roles >> Secretary of State. Or... Student >> MP with 1 or 2 staff >> An advisor to someone >> Budget of billions, hundreds of thousands of employees. In business you would work your way up. Employee >> Supervisor of Employees >> Manager with budgets >> Area Manager >> Country Manger >> CEO. You gain responsibility as you go. MP's do not have this. They fall into a job which they are almost never qualified for. Some do OK. However.. if you look closely at the majority you will see mistakes that anywhere else would see them fired. In the states these dubiously qualified MP's are now looking to legislate an global network as a single nation... I am sure that some of them cannot even comprehend what the Internet is.
BrandonM 15y ago
It's rather interesting to see members here proclaim in one breath that legislators are money-grubbing old-fashioned idiots who are just out to make a bunch of laws, and in another remark complain of them calling people "nerds". Other groups garnering mentions are corporate, capitalist monsters and economy-destroying bankers. As I see it, the biggest problem gripping our country right now is a refusal to understand someone else's point of view and come to a reasonable solution that is pretty good for everyone. All we seem to have are multiple sides shouting over each other, simultaneously ignoring everyone else and complaining that no one is listening to them. It is as though somewhere along the way we forgot how to be reasonable adults and have normal conversations. People cease to be caricatures when you understand their concerns and motivations. I agree that some of the SOPA proposals are way out of line, and I also agree that people passing laws without a full understanding of the ramifications are not helping matters. But we also are not helping matters by trying to oversimplify everything and fit everyone and everything into neat little boxes. That's simply not how the world works. There's no fundamental reason why Google can't provide media companies and luxury goods manufacturers with easy tools to report issues of copyright and counterfeit goods. Sure, it will cost development money that should be borne by those who stand to gain from the tools, but those are details. The point is, working together we actually have a chance to solve problems. Shouting past each other and appealing to authority (read: lobbying Congress) is never going to solve anything. So let's try to understand the problems and work together to solve them. It's ludicrous to expect that kind of behavior from our politicians but not to exhibit it ourselves.
- TheCapn 15y ago
  You're right when you bring up things like "confirmation bias" where people believe "my opinion is just as valid as your facts" but that is the problem we're seeing here. It has nothing to do with the fact that one side may not understand one another, that's the point of debate: to persuade the other or a group. What we're seeing here is one side plugging their ears and shouting "LALALALLA" when the opposition tries to create a point. We simplify stuff for the less tech oriented to help them understand. This committee sitting for SOPA doesn't understand the internet yet they're trying to regulate it. When someone with knowledge comes along and wants to make an analogy to something they will understand they have none of it! I understand your points but you're viewing everything through rose coloured lenses. What you want is unattainable because you need complete cooperation from all sides; if even one player breaks the rules then the whole system crumbles back to where we are now. Sure Google could provide those tools but the moment one party doesn't get their way (probably because it wasn't fair to the others) they'll go shouting to congress to make it happen, just like we have now. DMCA wasn't enough for MPAA/RIAA so they're in the back pocket of the government to make it worse. Hell, look at what's happening between UMG and MegaUpload right now!
eurohacker 15y ago
you would be a fool to think that the old dynasties like Rockefellers have lost any influnce or wealth in the last century, but internet certainly threatens their traditional grip , so much so that Nelson Rockefeller stated openly that world would be a better place without the internet http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct9xzXUQLuY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct9xzXUQLuY he stated that 2 years ago , so that it was known that hearings like SOPA are on their way ..
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TheCapn 15y ago
I've sort of viewed the entire circus in a defeated light. If SOPA goes down another version will crawl up either on its own or stapled to the "think of the children" act of 2012, 2014, or whenever they get enough campaign funding to draft it. But what does that mean for Hackers? I think with enough work we could make a network off of the regulated lines. I live in a rather sparse city and even now I can throw a ball far enough to hit the next techy over. Push comes to shove we could have a mini network several blocks wide that doesn't touch a single www link. Wireless is almost ready, security is probably the biggest issue right now but the technology is available, just not affordable. But what about the tech giants against the SOPA? If "push comes to shove" would they fund a new network that has less control? Then at what point is the government allowed to intervene? If a sizable network was built from the ground up separate from the internet are they allowed to slap down regulations? I want to say no because they didn't fund it, but then at the same time what's really stopping them? If they're able to throw SOPA through, convincing these dweebs that a private uncontrolled network is not worthy of SOPA2.0 would not be difficult to do. Can I get some hacker-friendly input? I know a lot of us here are software oriented but I'm certain I'm not the only one that lurks this site with background in network provisioning.
- CountHackulus 15y ago
  Something like this was done in the Cory Doctorow book Little Brother. It's surprisingly relevant to the SOPA discussion.
jderick 15y ago
The real issue here is corruption. That's why you keep get these ridiculous bills. Lessig explained the issue in a recent post: http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/13119510676/me-mia-on-the-sopa-soap-opera http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/13119510676/me-mia-on-the-sopa...

592 points by elliottcarlson 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

I tried watching the hearings but I couldn't stay awake through the reading of the bill. My heart goes out to the poor clerk who had to read it out! "There ought to be a law, I think, that in order to regulate something you have to have some understanding of it." Ne'er were truer words written. Why on earth do we allow people who have no real understanding of technology to regulate it so closely? It's a train wreck in the making, one you'll be hard pressed to avoid should this bill get approved.

shadowfiend 15y ago
The problem is simple: how do you define having understanding of something? :)
- ajtaylor 15y ago
  Let's start by being able to talk about the basics like IP addresses, servers and domain names? The baseline doesn't have to be very high to weed out the ignorant.
dromidas 15y ago
Unfortunately that will never, ever happen. Law makers don't care about technology because their world is only politics. Same like engineers don't care about beauty products but we create database products that we think they might like to use. If someone did actually make a law like that then nothing would be passed because nobody would be able to understand everything anyway. Fact is, even if they pass this law then there will just be more creative ways to get around it... it's the guiding principal upon which the internet is based.

rorrr 15y ago

I'm voting against every fucker in my district who supports it. That's the only non-violent way.

masonhensley 15y ago
But by then it will be too late.
- xer0 15y ago
  Already too late, they're falling all over themselves to proclaim their ignorance and vote this into tragic existence.
- stumm 15y ago
  For this bill, but it would show them that need to be representing their constituents.
guelo 15y ago
You have to let them know now before their vote.
rajbot 15y ago
Additionally, you could also boycott all the products of SOPA backers such as the MPAA or RIAA. Unfortunately, every time I try to explain to my friends that I don't want to see a Pixar movie and would rather see a movie at an indie theater instead, no one seems to really understand what the problem with Pixar or Disney or Sony or UMG is. It turns out, almost no one cares about the DMCA or SOPA or Protect-IP or anything that requires more than 30 seconds to explain. It is quite depressing...
- forensic 15y ago
  Unfortunately corporations have become the new governments/armies, and so if you boycott every corporation that does something you don't like... you're screwed. It's like telling people in Soviet Russia that if they don't like Communism, they should boycott the communist food lines. It's an unreasonable request. The free market is no longer free, corporate oligarchies might as well be called Soviet Planning Committees. (What the Soviets called their authoritarian overlords who owned and distributed all the resources)

mbesto 15y ago

I watched roughly 2-3 hours of the hearing. I could be wrong, but I thought in general there was actually a bi-partisan agreement that they needed experts in on the conversation. Unfortunately it didn't mean much when it came to voting on amendments (as most were shot down). Where it got interesting is when Mel Watt came out and said "We all know that everyone in this room on both sides has enough resources to pull in experts that will aid their side of the argument equally, so we're going to get into the same mess we did when we talk about derivatives being the most evil things on earth by one party and the saving grace by another". Good point, but the difference here is that not all parties that are for SOPA have purely financial incentives as the banks did.

Iv 15y ago
> Where it got interesting is when Mel Watt came out and said "We all know that everyone in this room on both sides has enough resources to pull in experts that will aid their side of the argument equally, so we're going to get into the same mess we did when we talk about derivatives being the most evil things on earth by one party and the saving grace by another". That's truly frightening. "We have no clues and we both invite biased experts so let's just disregard facts and vote according to our ideology." It is OK for a politician to vote on laws about things he does not completely understands, the catch is that the JOB of a politician is to know WHO to ask to get an expert advice. If they can't do that they are simply not fit for the job. The rush without reason should indicate to them that something screwy is happening. Yeah, "screwy", come on, politicians can not even identify THAT ? It is either gross incompetence or conspiracy. Since the W Bush administration I no longer bet on which one is the correct option.
- billswift 15y ago
  That Bush bit is a little biased, Clinton was just as bad. Both had loose screws and power grabs, they were just in slightly different places. Go read Bovard's books, Feeling Your Pain and The Bush Betrayal, then tell me that you could see any significant differences between them.
  - 15y ago

masonhensley 15y ago

Does anyone have a list of where each representative is leaning on SOPA? Edit: some reps against sopa, for an open internet: @RepJohnCampbell @jasoninthehouse @RepLloydDoggett @USRepMikeDoyle @RepAnnaEshoo @RepZoeLofgren @jaredpolis

ck2 15y ago

I am not sure if you see the same ads as I've seen on TV lately from SOPA sponsors but it's pretty darn obvious that the only reason this bill exists is that the lobbyists simply paid for it to be created. Like the "Patriot" Act they have no clue what exactly they are voting on, and I don't think they care, they are doing what they are bribed to do. The hearing is just theater, it's meaningless, they've already decided to get in on the take.

srl 15y ago
To be clear, nobody bribed anybody on PATRIOT; it's just that the folk in congress apparently lack the rest of the country's visceral suspicion of the phrase "national security".

mattvot 15y ago

I've been watching all of this for the last 3-4 hours. I am amazed at how most of the committee do not want to hear from experts, and ignore the facts with a quick dismissal like "Oh, I'm not a nerd, I don't understand, but what I do know is that piracy is theft and we must stop it.". How can they not listen to the experts? EDIT: Here's a livestream http://www.justin.tv/unearthed365#/w/2249527504 http://www.justin.tv/unearthed365#/w/2249527504

antihero 15y ago

It's weird, it seems like there's an amendment suggested, with lots of reason behind it, but fuck it we're going to say no anyway. WTF.

bprater 15y ago

I haven't listened to the hearing, so I'm curious (and slightly facetious) -- when the RIAA inevitably flags videos on YouTube that are using copyrighted music -- will it be legally fairly simple for the industry to request a DNS take-down of the whole site? Will site owners have any recourse or will they just wake up in the morning and be completely out of business?

xer0 15y ago
Let's hope so, it seems only something that ridiculous is going to get anyone's attention. I suppose the Elves leaving .com might do it too.
dangrossman 15y ago
The problem is that there's not going to be a government attorney that will go to a judge and ask for the seizure of youtube.com. This will only be enforced against sites that are small or controversial enough that it won't cause general outrage when they're disappeared from the web. Yet the looming threat that someone could remove YouTube from the web will be enough to keep the next Google from buying/creating the next YouTube.
- jaylevitt 15y ago
  Eh? SOPA has a private right of action.
  - dangrossman 15y ago
    You're right. SOPA does so much it's hard to keep track of. I'm barely able to keep from turning off my TV while listening to the hearings.

msluyter 15y ago

Nice post from Felix Salmon on the topic: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/12/15/do-any-real-people-support-sopa/ http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/12/15/do-any-real... He makes the point that virtually no average citizens support this (either they're against it or they don't know anything about it.) People often worry that congress fails when they can't agree on anything, but this makes me think that the time to really worry is when they do agree. When they disagree, they're at least probably mirroring the electorate.

Jgrubb 15y ago
Well put. Lately I worry the most when Dems and Repubs find something that they can slam-dunk agree on.
- vinhboy 15y ago
  Example: NDAA
  - jrockway 15y ago
    And the PATRIOT Act, and the DMCA.
    - luriel 15y ago
      And Prohibition (aka the War on Drugs).
cpeterso 15y ago
I hear corporations are "real people" these days. ;)
gcb 15y ago
If you want a government that respects the will of the people, you are welcome to move to a democracy.

jacques_chester 15y ago

For some time now it's been clear to me that as society grows ever more technical, it's leaving legislators behind. At the same time, the background of lawmakers has increasingly narrowed. In Australia, for example, it used to be commonplace for the Parliament to contain people whose first careers were as teachers, farmers, train drivers, engineers, small businessmen and so forth. Not any more. Today it's an almost wall-to-wall collection of law students who were all groomed by party machines. Go to uni, join political club, graduate and work in minister's office/a union/a politically-connected law firm, get pre-selected at the local branch, elected to Parliament. At no point has this person a) studied something other than law or b) held down an ordinary job or run a small business. I imagine the pattern is similar elsewhere. And so our law making bodies are filled with folk whose main skill is forensic disputation. This is problematic when technical debates are held because politicians are often mistrustful of experts outside their circle of loyalty -- because for any expert I can procure, someone else can get an expert to say the opposite. Having experts inside the circle of trust is golden. The classic example is the banning of CFCs. Margaret Thatcher's undergraduate degree was in chemistry and so she understood the mechanisms. In turn she was able to assure Regan that the phenomenon was real and serious and the rest is history. I have for some time toyed with the idea of forming a non-partisan organisation whose purpose is helping STEM professionals to get elected. Please contact me by email (check my profile) if you are interested.

deleted 15y ago
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shadowfiend 15y ago
It's also worth mentioning that the bigger problem here is that the breakneck pace of technological advancement has left legislators behind just due to age. They did not grow up with the Internet. Hell, they barely grew up with television. But we went from radio to the Internet in 70 years, less than many a human lifetime. That's going to cause some pendulum swinging. Obviously I think we should oppose SOPA with all of our hearts and all of our voices, but let's also not despair that this is how it will always be. Call me an idealist, but 5-10 years from now, when people start getting elected who were young when the Internet changed everything, I think we'll see a swing of the pendulum back away from this madness.

nirvana 15y ago

I think the heart surgery analogy is excellent. I would never, unless it were an extremely dire situation with no doctors, attempt any kind of surgery on someone. Nor would I ever start dictating to doctors how the perform their procedures. Yet that is what government does, day in and day out. They regulate industries which work in ways they don't understand, and they do it primarily for political motivations. The MPAA may want tools to fight piracy, but to politicians, who don't really care about piracy, this is an opportunity to have something to campaign on, and it gives the government more power. More power means more prestige and more money for them, if not now, in their post career lives when they lobby, etc. More regulations gives them more control over industry- the power to threaten to make the regulations even worse, or the threat that their opponent will do that if they don't get re-elected (so please give generously!) I don't think these people are "well intentioned". They don't actually want to help anybody. Theft is already against the law. SOPA won't change that, it won't stop piracy, and its not criminalizing piracy. No, they're politicians. And they're not even corrupt politicians. This is simply the nature of what they do. They pass laws, they shake down industry, and they get paid for passing ever more laws without regard for the impact of those laws. Hell, when those laws cause massive destruction to the economy, what do they do? They turn around and say "Well, If we'd been able to pass the law I proposed, this wouldn't have happened! Here, we need to rush into force even more regulations to make sure this never happens again!" There's a famous(?) libertarian author by the name of L. Neil Smith who's got a saying that's very applicable here: "Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure." I hope we stop SOPA. But the lesson I would hope a lot of you take away from this is that SOPA is not an isolated incident, it is one of thousands of incidents, most of which go by completely unmentioned each year, where the system works to undermine human rights and make people's lives worse. These guys aren't corrupt, the system is corrupt. The constitution, in the enumeration clause and in the Bill of Rights, attempted to prevent this. The enumeration clause limits the powers of the federal government to only those enumerated in the constitution. Regulation of the internet, or communications of any kind, is not an enumerated power of the Federal Government. This means that when the federal government does this, it is doing it without authorization. Further, the Bill of Rights forbids congress from engaging in censorship. SOPA clearly authorizes censorship so they're also in violation of the Bill of Rights. These words in the constitution, in this day and age have very little teeth. The PATRIOT act runs afoul of them as well, but nobody has succeeded in getting it overturned. The situation will continue to get worse. Even if SOPA is defeated-- this isn't the first attempt-- it will come back in a few years. I think that the only possible solution is a technological one. I think that the only way to to fight them is with technology and disobedience to the very idea that they have the right to restrain speech or control the internet. The courts will not help us, and they certainly won't, and every election is so stage managed that nobody who actually knows the difference between a domain name and an IP address will ever get elected. Help us with technology, its our only hope!

firefoxman1 15y ago

My local congressman, also a co-sponsor and co-author of the SOPA bill, held a public phone conference the other night. You could press 0 to enter a queue to ask a question, so I did, but after 2 hours I was tired of waiting and I had a term paper to write so I gave up. I kind of regret it now, because I wanted everyone to hear just how little he, a co-author, knew about the subject. He's not one for listening to his constituents. I had already written him a letter and tried to call his office and no reply for either.

jrockway 15y ago
I always get replies from my Congresspeople. Unfortunately, they're usually along the lines of "SOPA will save America from sinking into the ocean" or some similar bullshit.

Timothee 15y ago

I've listened to the hearings a little bit today and in particular I heard the amendment about not removing the ability to target IP addresses. Listening to him, it just made sense: one address can be the front of multiple websites, one website can have multiple IP addresses, addresses are moved around dynamically, etc. We all know that and his explanations were very clear. So I was a bit confused when later on I was hearing a lot of "No"s. Had I missed the vote for that amendment and they were voting on something else? Nope. They were just denying common sense. I'm not even sure how they would do it on a per domain basis. What about subdomains? One guy posts something on his Tumblr and all the Tumblr's go down? I'm sure they have no idea what that means and would just say "take down all the sites!" On another note, though I don't mind the term generally, I was annoyed by them referring over and over to "nerds". "I'm not a nerd", "Bring in the nerds"… It's fine in some contexts but in the context of discussing a law, I think "technical experts", "people who have a clue" is more appropriate.

jacques_chester 15y ago
> So I was a bit confused when I was hearing a lot of "No"s later on. A common political tactic is to automatically vote "no" for anything you don't understand or for which you have not received instructions from factional/party leadership. After all, it might a trojan horse that undermines your own goals.
- Timothee 15y ago
  It just made me wonder what the point of having these hearings was. I'll admit I'm not very familiar with the process. But it looked like it was the time to present why such and such amendments should be added, and then vote on it. If they can't decide on the spot, why have the vote on the spot then? That particular amendment was especially surprising to me because of how obvious it is (for us "nerds" that is), and because his explanation was pretty clear. But I know what you're saying, it's not how the game is played…
  - jacques_chester 15y ago
    Most political business is done behind closed doors; the speeches and votes are mostly performance art. There's a great deal of exchange between politicians in different countries -- the International Parliamentary Union, various politically-aligned groups like the International Democratic Union and so on. Plus exchanges for young aspiring politicians. So practices and techniques tend to pop up all over the world. Maybe the "Default to No" came from Australia, or Britain, or the USA. I have no idea.

eegilbert 15y ago

SOPA is horrifying. No doubt about it. But it's funny how many people I meet who share this view, yet think Congress is perfectly capable of regulating just about everything else. Because Congress understands that stuff. Like economies. Those things are simple. </LibertarianThursdays>

scarmig 15y ago
By the same token... SOPA is horrifying. No doubt about it. But it's funny how many people I meet who share this view, yet think giant multinationals are the best suited institutions for running the world. Because media conglomerates have our best interests at heart. Like our rights. Those things are universally respected. </SocialDemocratThursdays> Yeah, yeah, libertarians don't believe corporations should corrupt the political process, reign supreme, etc. For that matter, though, neither do people on the Left think government should make bad corrupt laws.
leot 15y ago
Sometimes, just sometimes, a group of lawmakers puts together a diverse group of people who are experts, and has them undertake a good faith investigation of an issue. And sometimes, just sometimes, the lawmakers read the group's recommendations and base their votes on those recommendations. We cannot expect a much better response to any collective action problem. Clearly, this is not happening with a bill that was written by and for the media industry. But the source of the problem is not governance per se, but rather the fact that the system has been corrupted.

dreamdu5t 15y ago

Thank God for government regulation. I'm so glad we have progressives like the Democrats and Republicans in office to curb the evils of industry. Without regulation the Internet would be monopolized by big business and criminals will prey on your children. Good thing the State is there to protect us. Don't forget to pay your taxes, and have a happy holidays!

noonespecial 15y ago

Just remember to add "in the United States" to the end of each dire prediction. Try it: SOPA will cause rampant censorship of the internet... in the United States. I am a US citizen, currently living in the US, and I hate this, but even so, it makes me feel better to remember that there's a big, big world outside our borders. If the US flies off the rails on this, I fully expect the rest of the world to shrug and move on. The internet and the Americans have been closely intertwined since the beginning but I don't expect it will always be that way. The America that created the internet is more or less gone now. Its time for the rest of the world to step up.

yangez 15y ago
If SOPA's passed, what kind of example would the United States set for the rest of the world, especially after all our criticism of China's internet censorship? http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111208/07411217009/chinese-internet-users-relish-irony-sopas-great-firewall-america.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111208/07411217009/chines... The effects of this won't just be confined to the USA.
- noonespecial 15y ago
  A terrible one. So bad, I hope, that the rest of the world says to themselves "those Americans and Chinese are all nuts! We shouldn't trust them with too much of the internet's infrastructure."
jacques_chester 15y ago
They won't stop at US borders. They'll just use it as an argument in other countries. Eventually the Congress would be convinced to pass laws to punish foreign nationals -- deny visas, seize domains on US DNS servers and so on.
- noonespecial 15y ago
  I can't think of a better way to erode Americas international influence. If you can't go there and your web sites can't be viewed there, and they won't let you watch any of their popular media, or even import your products for sale there, what the hell good are they to anyone? I expect the makers of SOPA et al think they're dictating terms to the world. I think will turn out to be just isolationism in disguise.

deleted 15y ago

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zmmmmm 15y ago

What is it about technology that makes people proud to announce they know nothing about it while simultaneously assuming positions of authority and power over it? At least in other domains people put up a pretense of having knowledge about areas they are taking crucial decisions on. Something about technology and especially the internet seems to evoke this phenomenon.

chipsy 15y ago
A sort of myopia seems to be rife through all the specialist fields - STEM, medicine, law, and politics all host individuals with a nasty combination of elitism and borderline-religious opinions. Whether or not they've actually studied the subject is irrelevant - everyone from the least educated bumpkin to the foremost authority may speak on it, and everyone else will take their opinions with a grain of salt and continue with their existing ideology, rather than try to dissect the logic. Worse yet, it's possible for people to study the subject and still exhibit strong myopic symptoms. This is the origin of cargo-cult programming(to name one example).

balloot 15y ago

I highly recommend contacting your Representatives/Senators immediately. It amazes me that both of the California Senators are cosponsors of this turd. I would think they are among those who can be swayed.

thebigshane 15y ago
They are easily swayed (as they all are), but remember Hollywood is in California.

kylek 15y ago

Looks like a big joke to some people in the room! https://twitter.com/#!/SteveKingIA/status/147371129177255936 https://twitter.com/#!/SteveKingIA/status/147371129177255936

sukuriant 15y ago
Bad link, please update?
- rl1987 15y ago
  "We are debating the Stop Online Piracy Act and Shiela Jackson has so bored me that I'm killing time by surfing the Internet."

evoxed 15y ago

Has anyone seen the TV ad? "Illegal downloads on foreign websites, stealing AMERICAN jobs......" It was frighteningly manipulative.

mindcruzer 15y ago
It's funny because the pile of jobs lost to illegal downloads isn't visible from the top of the mountain of jobs that will be lost due to SOPA.
slowpoke 15y ago
I'd say that piracy creates way more jobs than it does destroy them. Maybe not only American jobs, sure, but we live in a globalized world. Nationalism won't do away with that, either. Also, who's loosing their job, really? RIAA lawyers? Entertainment industry bureaucrats? Excuse me for being snarky, but oh no what a tremendous loss for society!

tomkinstinch 15y ago

What will it take to elect technical people to public office?

forensic 15y ago
Technical people will need to grow some balls and stop treating politics like a dirty word

Shenglong 15y ago

Too bad we don't have some sort of upper age limit on electing officials.

Achshar 15y ago
Why the downvotes? If we can have a lower limit then why not upper limit. They may have an advisory status but voting rights should not be given to "old" people.

deleted 15y ago

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jrwoodruff 15y ago

Can someone who is following this more closely than myself (as in actually watching this on CSPAN) please post the names of all the senators, representatives and other elected officials who are blithering idiots in support of this. I would like to vote any of them that may be in my district out of office as soon as possible. Thank you.

Matt_Cutts 15y ago
I found a list of sponsors of SOPA and PIPA: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:HR03261:@@@P http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:HR03261:@@@P http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:SN00968:@@@P http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:SN00968:@@@P

deleted 15y ago

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nyellin 15y ago

"We have had no hearings and no testimonies on the technical issues" - Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, 20:15 (http://www.justin.tv/unearthed365/b/302702510? http://www.justin.tv/unearthed365/b/302702510?)

zotz 15y ago

I greatly enjoyed reading this thread and peoples' well-expounded opinions on history and the Constitution. I can't add much but this quote seemed apropos. The author was a US Senator from South Dakota during the critical period of the late 19th-early 20th century. "Two per cent of the people of the United States own sixty per cent of the property of the United States. Yet they produced none of it. By legislation, by craft and cunning, by control of Congress and the courts, they took to themselves what others produced. Sixty-six per cent of the people of the United States own five per cent of the property of the United States. Yet they produced all of the wealth and have none of it. Why do not the producers of this wealth have what they produce? Because the making of the laws and the control of the courts is in the hands of those who do not work, and this has been true from the beginning of the Government. The convention which framed the Constitution of the United States was composed of fifty-five members. A majority were lawyers—not one farmer, mechanic or laborer. Forty owned Revolutionary Scrip. Fourteen were land speculators. Twenty-four were money-lenders. Eleven were merchants. Fifteen were slave-holders. They made a Constitution to protect the rights of property and not the rights of man, and, ever since, Congress has been controlled by the property owner, and has framed laws in their interests and their interests only, and always refused to frame any laws in the interest of those who produce all the wealth and have none of it." TRIUMPHANT PLUTOCRACY by Senator Richard F. Pettigrew, 1921 pg.407

gcb 15y ago

Why is everyone so worried about SOPA? patriot act has already passed.

VonLipwig 15y ago

I think this is a really good analysis of what is going on in Washington. I have always found it worrying when politicians walk into a field which they have little knowledge about and try to pass laws. Anyone can become an elected official and the power they yield over things they have no background in is scary. In the UK a person can effectively go from University >> Elected Official >> Misc Support Roles >> Secretary of State. Or... Student >> MP with 1 or 2 staff >> An advisor to someone >> Budget of billions, hundreds of thousands of employees. In business you would work your way up. Employee >> Supervisor of Employees >> Manager with budgets >> Area Manager >> Country Manger >> CEO. You gain responsibility as you go. MP's do not have this. They fall into a job which they are almost never qualified for. Some do OK. However.. if you look closely at the majority you will see mistakes that anywhere else would see them fired. In the states these dubiously qualified MP's are now looking to legislate an global network as a single nation... I am sure that some of them cannot even comprehend what the Internet is.

BrandonM 15y ago

It's rather interesting to see members here proclaim in one breath that legislators are money-grubbing old-fashioned idiots who are just out to make a bunch of laws, and in another remark complain of them calling people "nerds". Other groups garnering mentions are corporate, capitalist monsters and economy-destroying bankers. As I see it, the biggest problem gripping our country right now is a refusal to understand someone else's point of view and come to a reasonable solution that is pretty good for everyone. All we seem to have are multiple sides shouting over each other, simultaneously ignoring everyone else and complaining that no one is listening to them. It is as though somewhere along the way we forgot how to be reasonable adults and have normal conversations. People cease to be caricatures when you understand their concerns and motivations. I agree that some of the SOPA proposals are way out of line, and I also agree that people passing laws without a full understanding of the ramifications are not helping matters. But we also are not helping matters by trying to oversimplify everything and fit everyone and everything into neat little boxes. That's simply not how the world works. There's no fundamental reason why Google can't provide media companies and luxury goods manufacturers with easy tools to report issues of copyright and counterfeit goods. Sure, it will cost development money that should be borne by those who stand to gain from the tools, but those are details. The point is, working together we actually have a chance to solve problems. Shouting past each other and appealing to authority (read: lobbying Congress) is never going to solve anything. So let's try to understand the problems and work together to solve them. It's ludicrous to expect that kind of behavior from our politicians but not to exhibit it ourselves.

TheCapn 15y ago
You're right when you bring up things like "confirmation bias" where people believe "my opinion is just as valid as your facts" but that is the problem we're seeing here. It has nothing to do with the fact that one side may not understand one another, that's the point of debate: to persuade the other or a group. What we're seeing here is one side plugging their ears and shouting "LALALALLA" when the opposition tries to create a point. We simplify stuff for the less tech oriented to help them understand. This committee sitting for SOPA doesn't understand the internet yet they're trying to regulate it. When someone with knowledge comes along and wants to make an analogy to something they will understand they have none of it! I understand your points but you're viewing everything through rose coloured lenses. What you want is unattainable because you need complete cooperation from all sides; if even one player breaks the rules then the whole system crumbles back to where we are now. Sure Google could provide those tools but the moment one party doesn't get their way (probably because it wasn't fair to the others) they'll go shouting to congress to make it happen, just like we have now. DMCA wasn't enough for MPAA/RIAA so they're in the back pocket of the government to make it worse. Hell, look at what's happening between UMG and MegaUpload right now!

eurohacker 15y ago

you would be a fool to think that the old dynasties like Rockefellers have lost any influnce or wealth in the last century, but internet certainly threatens their traditional grip , so much so that Nelson Rockefeller stated openly that world would be a better place without the internet http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct9xzXUQLuY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct9xzXUQLuY he stated that 2 years ago , so that it was known that hearings like SOPA are on their way ..

deleted 15y ago

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TheCapn 15y ago

I've sort of viewed the entire circus in a defeated light. If SOPA goes down another version will crawl up either on its own or stapled to the "think of the children" act of 2012, 2014, or whenever they get enough campaign funding to draft it. But what does that mean for Hackers? I think with enough work we could make a network off of the regulated lines. I live in a rather sparse city and even now I can throw a ball far enough to hit the next techy over. Push comes to shove we could have a mini network several blocks wide that doesn't touch a single www link. Wireless is almost ready, security is probably the biggest issue right now but the technology is available, just not affordable. But what about the tech giants against the SOPA? If "push comes to shove" would they fund a new network that has less control? Then at what point is the government allowed to intervene? If a sizable network was built from the ground up separate from the internet are they allowed to slap down regulations? I want to say no because they didn't fund it, but then at the same time what's really stopping them? If they're able to throw SOPA through, convincing these dweebs that a private uncontrolled network is not worthy of SOPA2.0 would not be difficult to do. Can I get some hacker-friendly input? I know a lot of us here are software oriented but I'm certain I'm not the only one that lurks this site with background in network provisioning.

CountHackulus 15y ago
Something like this was done in the Cory Doctorow book Little Brother. It's surprisingly relevant to the SOPA discussion.

jderick 15y ago

The real issue here is corruption. That's why you keep get these ridiculous bills. Lessig explained the issue in a recent post: http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/13119510676/me-mia-on-the-sopa-soap-opera http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/13119510676/me-mia-on-the-sopa...