19 ms·

How to stop SOPA: Don't build it.

299 points by imgabe 15y ago

pithic 15y ago
It is painful for me to see this effete hand waving be taken as seriously this. A trivially simply thought experiment is all that is needed to grasp the obvious futility of this strategy. I'm not saying, "Go ahead and work on SOPA." But if we really want to stop it (or any act of Congress), we must do better than such passive-aggressive smoke blowing.
pg 15y ago
This is an intriguing idea. The majority of hackers hate this bill, and yet if the lobbyists and politicians pass it, they are going to need us to implement it for them. So maybe it would be some sort of solution, in the worst case, to organize a boycott of any person or company that works on it.
- maeon3 15y ago
  A union of global programmers. Has a nice ring to it. Needs to have an incentive to join and keep the lobbyists out. Same problem that stackoverflow has to keep out trolls and idiots. In this case the trolls are riaa, mpaa, national interests to take over the internet and those who wish not to contribute, but to be armchair dictators of the most powerful tool ever made by mankind.
  - EdSkrillex 15y ago
    A union of global "programmers/activists" already exists. It's called Anonymous. Honestly, we as programmers have to fight this evil with a greater evil -- create a new internet and/or get Anonymous intimately involved in this current affair.
- zackzackzack 15y ago
  It would only take a small minority of hackers to actually build it though. SOPA backers would probably put up the, upper limit, 100 million it would take to pay 10 brillant but selfish engineers to build the thing.
  - eumenides1 15y ago
    you are correct so you have to low-ball your bid and say you can do it for less, say 50 million. A total steal. Then you delay. Delay delay delay. When they fire you, get your friend to promise the same thing you promised. Incompetence is not a failing, but merely a tool in need to the right time.
- eli 15y ago
  I don't think Raytheon or SAIC would feel very threatened by a consumer boycott.
  - davidwparker 15y ago
    I'm not sure you read the article or pg's post. Consumers aren't boycotting. Programmers and those building SOPA would quit, so Raytheon and SAIC wouldn't have an employees to build it.
    - Vivtek 15y ago
      I've known lots of contractors for companies such as SAIC (I was one myself for a few years, not for SAIC, but for another much smaller company in Indianapolis) and they will have no such compunctions. Sorry, pg - I know you talk with a lot of smart people, but you don't have to be too smart to break something. You just have to be venal, and there's never a shortage of venality. This boycott is doomed to failure from the get-go.
  - pg 15y ago
    Not a consumer boycott; an employee boycott. It might make a company think twice before touching this type of work if they knew it would make it impossible to hire or retain good programmers.
    - bmelton 15y ago
      A boycott might have worked in a better economy, but there are far too many unemployed workers capable of implementing SOPA restrictions that would love a job, regardless the moral implications. Also, the employees that work at SAIC/Raytheon/federal contracting are already more used to working on things that are morally questionable. Sometimes they're black-box implemented (where each party makes only a small part of it, and it is then pieced together later,) but usually it isn't.
    - _delirium 15y ago
      I like the idea, but so far the attempts to make that happen with companies that work on the Great Firewall of China have been, I think, pretty unsuccessful. Cisco's gotten some bad press at times, but programmers still go work for them.
- cbs 15y ago
  they are going to need us to implement it for them Its a nice idea, but that is flat-out not true.
- mindstab 15y ago
  Hackers hate it, but there are more programmers than "hackers". Think about middle aged family men, career men. They aren't all going to care as strongly or be able to quit. Also even if you could convince all american talent to boycott it, there's a whole world of people out there who don't care at all, and just like America has been happy to sell censorship tech to the rest of the world for years, I'm sure the rest of the world would be happy to repay :) I don't think Indian or Russian programmers are going to give a toss about it if it pays bills. Ha or you could just buy back equipment already sent to Chian and Iran. Which sort of raises the point that American talent has already built this equipment and been selling it for years now. It is way past too late for this boycott to work.
  - pg 15y ago
    I'm not suggesting we could prevent e.g. Cisco from finding enough people to build this stuff. More that Cisco would steer clear of such projects if working on them would put a black mark on their corporate reputation that would make it harder for them, as a company, to hire good people.
    - zem 15y ago
      and yet the likes of the nsa, fbi, etc have never lacked for good (in the technical sense) people to write surveillance software. heck, there are some pretty sophisticated spammers out there, and the spam industry is almost universally regarded as the cesspool of the tech world. if sopa does need to get implemented, i'm sure questionable small companies across the nation would flock to bid for the job.
      - omouse 15y ago
        We might be able to enlist the technical help of spammers like that. They may not like SOPA either? I wouldn't be surprised if all technical people, regardless of what they do as their job, are against SOPA and other things like it.
        zem 15y ago
- timtadh 15y ago
  Maybe a general strike would work better. Everyone should just stop writing code for their employers on Monday. EDIT: I made a submission about this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3361689 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3361689 text ''' The world depends on software. We, the world's programmers, write the software. SOPA threatens many things we believe in and care about. Letter writing and traditional means have not worked to stop SOPA. The only alternative is direct action. In the 1960's direction was sitting on buses and swimming in pools. During the industrial revolution it was strikes in front of factories and rail roads. Occupying may get a lot of news coverage but protesters can be removed by force. No one can make us write code. If we stop, no one can do it for us. I call for a General Programmer strike. We should set a day. '''
  - untog 15y ago
    Good luck with that one. While the world does depend on software, it does not depend on the code you are writing today. If programmers went on strike the world would continue to turn with very, very few problems. In time, of course, things would unravel, but you'd have to be willing to sit through an incredibly long strike. Also your job would probably be outsourced within a week.
  - sp332 15y ago
    Your post reminds me very strongly of this aphorism: http://www.despair.com/worth.html http://www.despair.com/worth.html "Just because you're necessary, doesn't mean you're important."
- pnathan 15y ago
  Very smart people have built nuclear bombs, nerve gas bombs, and weapons of plague. People with the same ethics will be hired to build censorship and be happy to take home the paycheck.
  - theorique 15y ago
    I would definitely have participated in the Manhattan Project if asked - it was necessary to stop the Nazis. On the other hand, I would definitely not work on SOPA. Don't confuse what is necessary with what is merely expedient.
    - baddox 15y ago
      People have different ideas about what is necessary. Calling the Manhattan Project "necessary" without thinking much about it is reckless. I've heard accounts from many of the scientists and workers, and many were quite horrified about the results (incidentally, against the Japanese, not Nazis). Presumably many do conclude that developing a nuclear weapon was "necessary," but not without considerably ethical debate.
      - jlind 15y ago
        It would be again much different if the Manhattan Project was something to be used against your fellow countrymen.
        WorldGroove 15y ago
        Are you implying that the life of your countrymen is more important that the life of someone not of your country? If so, I'd say those are questionable ethics.
    - pnathan 15y ago
      A number of other weapons of great destruction have been created outside of the Manhattan Project.
- jim-greer 15y ago
  The main enforcement mechanism is domain seizure, which already works quite well already, unfortunately. It's pretty likely that there will be a darknet DNS system or DNS alternative, but that's not a great outcome for anyone - more confusion, more malware.
- projectileboy 15y ago
  Accenture will be thrilled to build The Great Firewall of America, and they're sufficiently capable of doing it, especially since they'll have an effectively unlimited budget. And sadly, there's more than one Accenture in the world.
- damoncali 15y ago
  It only takes one.
- radicalbyte 15y ago
  Actually now that you've said it, we could start a boycott right now of the companies who are supporting the bill.
  - jen_h 15y ago
    Agreed - likely low effect, but we should all do this anyway if we haven't already begun (I've blackholed a few of them already in /etc/hosts just because their sites do things like auto-play video that you can't stop). Here's a list of supporters for reference: http://www.thedominoproject.com/2011/12/who-wants-to-break-the-internet.html http://www.thedominoproject.com/2011/12/who-wants-to-break-t...
    - jen_h 15y ago
      Good info here, too, on the money trail: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h3261/money http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h3261/money
- Cushman 15y ago
  Hey Paul, I'm trying to raise a seed round for my startup. Our organization will match any offer made to any engineer to design or implement any system for censorship of the Internet, and employ that engineer building tools to resist censorship. I figure we only need a few hundred million to get off the ground... How much can I put you down for?
- flatline 15y ago
  While I would love to see this happen, it won't be very hard to convince many people, developers included, that the entire purpose is to stop knock-off handbag sites, scummy download sites, and shady online gambling operations, and I'm sure they can provide enough glaring examples of piracy that the argument will seem reasonable. Coupled with the fact that it would be somebody's job on the line, I'm afraid that the boycott would be doomed to failure, behind the aegis of corporate anonymity for any individuals involved.
- davidu 15y ago
  dura lex, sed lex.
- malandrew 15y ago
  There will always be those who prostitute themselves out to build the software to support the bill. Some companies, those most likely to be be the victim of litigation by those in favor of the bill will have no choice but to implement the software due to the threat of litigation damages. However, the best way to combat litigation damages would be a threat to those same companies from every network that connects to them. i.e. an internet embargo against any company that implements the filtering and changes to the DNS. At the end of the day networks need to connect to other networks. If a company implements software that filters it, every network that doesn't have the same obligation can embargo those businesses so that those businesses have no choice but to fight the MPAA and RIAA. Treat those that implement the technology like a cancer and "excise" them from the network. Following the money is the only way to prevent the technological implementation of SOPA from spreading. There needs to be an equally or more costly financial threat from the anti-SOPA companies. It doesn't even need to be at the network level. The browser level is sufficient. Chrome, Firefox and Internet explorer (built by 3 organizations that are against SOPA) could all embargo sites at the browser level in the default installations of the browsers. The majority of Internet dollars travel through the browser. The browsers could sniff for DNS systems implementing SOPA and blacklist them. If your DNS implements SOPA then you aren't part of the internet. If they want a browser that supports networks that implement SOPA, let them build it themselves and spend time and money trying to get their browser adopted. The search engine level is another approach. Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo could reduce the search rank of every site on networks that implements SOPA. SOPA uses legislation to break the technological contract that keeps the internet together. Break the technological contract and you should no longer part of the Internet.
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    > There will always be those who prostitute themselves out to build the software to support the bill. I think I'm opposed to the term "prostitute" in this context. What if I need to keep my job to purchase medication to keep my wife and children alive, and that medication is prohibitively expensive without insurance? At that point, I wouldn't be a prostitute - arguably I would be a hostage.
    - 15y ago
- danielharan 15y ago
  Raiding the people at the company that gets the contract might be a more ethical and effective action, especially if some of those people feel stuck working there. The company may be able to replace those workers, but churn could really hurt them.
- aschoen 15y ago
  Alternatively one could boycott the entertainment companies lobbying for the bill. Which really is not much of a sacrifice.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  > organize a boycott of any person or company that works on it. This is dangerously like a witch hunt. This tool is theirs, not ours. But I agree we may need better tools to protect the things we hold dear.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- omouse 15y ago
  It's worked before and I would use stronger words than boycott; like blockade and strike. Doing economic damage by refusing to work on it or by refusing to buy their products or anything else is a damn fine idea and it's worked in the past for various trade unions. The only thing is that we need a support network for people who refuse to work on it. Like say an employee and Cisco wants to blow the whistle on all the invasive tech they work on or wants to stop working on SOPA-related tech. They need to be able to do that without fearing that their family will go hungry because they wont get a paycheck anymore. Union dues and donations were used for supporting striking workers. We have things like Kickstarter, Paypal, Bitcoin, etc. I don't see why we can't pitch in and donate to support any hackers who refuse to work on SOPA-related tech.
maeon3 15y ago
People who are unable to comprehend the internet want to tax and regulate and censor every bit and byte. As the programmers and engineers who built the thing. Lets give them what they want. When it turns out what we built actually makes censorship harder and the imbeciles become angry, shrug and apologize then promise you will do it right if you get another chance. Knowledge is power, they cant take away our superiority there. They can only ASK us to tie ourselves up and put ourselves in the oven and serve ourselves up for lunch. You want root on the global net? War on freedom begins now.
incomethax 15y ago
Is there a cached version? The site seems to be down.
- ktsmith 15y ago
  Here's the text --------------------- I've been following the news about SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, for the past couple of weeks. Yesterday there was an interesting development when 83 of the most prominent engineers responsible for creating the Internet signed an open letter voicing their opposition to SOPA. This in and of itself is hardly surprising. Since the law was introduced anyone with a shred of technical acumen has stated that a.) It will not work. The law will not hinder piracy. b.) It will be hugely detrimental to the normal operation of the Internet. But, this made me think. If a law like SOPA were to be passed, how would it be implemented? How would it be enforced? I think it's safe to say that at some point somebody is going to have to write some code or possibly build some hardware. Maybe some of these technologies can be bought off the shelf from, say, China or North Korea, but at the very least someone is going to have to administer the servers that make this all work. Who's going to do that? The politicians? The lawyers? Entertainment industry executives? No. The task is going to fall to the very people who have been the most vocal opponents of the law from the start. What if they refuse? If SOPA were to pass and your job would require you to enforce its provisions, you should quit. If you currently work in IT or software development for a company advocating for the law, for a lobbying firm that is promoting the law, for the campaign of one of the representatives sponsoring or supporting it, you should quit. The organization paying you is actively trying to use your skills make people less free. There's a perpetual shortage of talent in the industry, right? Surely, you can find another job that does not require you to be an instrument of government oppression, that does not ask you to dismantle the infrastructure you've spent your career building and maintaining. I know it may seem like a drastic measure, but freedom, as we are so often reminded, is not free. If a free Internet is important to you, you have to be willing to make sacrifices to defend it, or it will cease to exist. Be happy that you can fight for freedom on economic terms instead of having to put your life on the line. If your current position would not be involved in complying with SOPA, but you're in charge of hiring people, you could let it be known that any experience that included building or making technology for the enforcement of SOPA would immediately disqualify an applicant from getting a job at your company. (Assuming, of course that they participated willingly, not the folks I just told to quit their jobs in the previous paragraph.) I don't think this would be unreasonable or unfair. Deliberately building something that nearly every expert in the field has condemned as a detriment to the Internet represents such a staggering lack of professional judgement that it should disqualify you from ever working again in this profession. As engineers we spend most of our education and careers focusing on what we can build, and very little time thinking about what we should built. Unlike doctors or lawyers we (mostly) do not have professional licenses or ethics boards to report to. This does not mean we cannot act unethically, or that we should not consider the social ramifications of the things we make. An engineer who would build the infrastructure to make SOPA a reality should be treated exactly like a doctor who would willingly commit malpractice. He should be blacklisted from the profession. I know this isn't a foolproof plan. If there's enough money on the table, someone will come out of the woodwork to take the job. If the task receives enough scorn from the rest of the industry, though, you can be sure that it won't be the best and the brightest working on this. Anything that results will be that much less effective for it. Remember politicians and lawyers can bloviate and scheme all they like, but ultimately it is engineers who have to bring their plans into existence. We are the gatekeepers between dreams and reality, and when it comes to the politicians and executives, they need us far more than we need them. Of course, there are Professional Engineer (P.E.) licenses. But for the majority of Internet related work I believe they are not required. For what it's worth, I do happen to have a PE and work in a field where it's required. It is expected and understood that you would refuse to design something for a client that would be harmful or unsafe for the people using it. Indeed, you would lose your license (and thus your livelihood) if you did so.
ktsmith 15y ago
> Maybe some of these technologies can be bought off the shelf from, say, China or North Korea, but at the very least someone is going to have to administer the servers that make this all work. Unfortunately much of the technology used for censorship in places like China was developed in the US. Refusing to deploy it seems to be the only option. If we already have engineers willing to build these technologies it seems very likely there are going to be engineers willing to deploy it as well.
toblender 15y ago
The problem is not the engineers. If the executives of the companies are obligated by law to build this system or go out of business/be fined, they will pass that pressure down the chain. I know this bill upsets people, but getting fired would be more upsetting to those programmers/engineers.
radicalbyte 15y ago
Why don't we just build a new internet? They're blocking DNS records and IP address? Then why don't we design and build a new system. Using the knowledge we've gained from the Internet v1 we'd be able to do a much better job with Internet v2. We have to do a lot of work to switch over to IP6 anyhow, so why not just go the whole hog and built a new infrastructure?
- masonhensley 15y ago
  I honestly don't think the law would distinguish between the two. Maybe implementation would be more difficult across two infrastructures; however, in the eyes of representative X and Senator Y, communication from one electronic device to another is the internet.
  - ComputerGuru 15y ago
    You're missing the point - his suggestion was for a decentralized internet that isn't blockable in the first place. Cliche idea that won't actually happen, but that aside...
fleitz 15y ago
Don't do that, just build better tech a little further out west. Read the declaration of independence, act accordingly. Recall what the net was like before the masses, perhaps something truly free is worth more than whatever you're giving up by not being able to sell coupons on it. Who cares if the masses never come. They just wanted to sell their freedom for a pay cheque anyway.
- Raphael 15y ago
  How do you go further west when you've reached the Pacific Ocean? Sail to China?
tibbon 15y ago
With this theory, if we wanted to stop wars, we could encourage arms builders to simply stop building weapons of war. Yet, there will always be some people who view opportunity over everything else, and will be more than happy to build the weapons of war, even if 99% of the population disagrees. On the flip side, the government may see any organization to halt such as illegal (I don't know what law it would violate, but I'm sure they could find something appropriate to give the organizers a nice cell in Gitmo). Best idea if asked, is to build it, but do it incompetently (but intentionally). Poor UI, poor filters, bad tests, etc. Obfuscate the code as much as possible. Claim that its for optimization. Write it in an esoteric language that few will be able to audit properly. Pull out every trick in the book. I suppose some could call this sabotage, but it seems one way to do it. The US Government never seems to have a problem with hiring those with a strong record of incompetence.
Apreche 15y ago
General nerd strike. We run the world. If we actually unite, we can get everything we want. Not just stopping SOPA, but complete copyright and patent reform, net neutrality, and everything else we care about. The problem is we are a bunch of sissies. If there was actually a general strike, would you seriously refuse to go to work until SOPA was stopped? Could you do it? Are you willing to fight for what you believe? If enough of us do it, we will get our way. We have to be willing to refuse to go to work and to cause serious suffering on the part of others until we get our way. I'll do it, but unless enough people join me it won't matter.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- maeon3 15y ago
  I will join you. A union of programmers across disciplines. Imagine if we all went on strike for a few Weeks. as programmers we could collectively do what Congress cant (yet) take down a big portion of the internet for a few days.
jpdoctor 15y ago
I disagree: Somebody will build the thing, because there's always someone desperate enough to take the job. However, there is a better way to accomplish the goal imho: A truly shitty implementation. Those who are already in the position to implement it would not have to quit; they would instead commit to implementing it in the least-efficient way possible. As a nice side effect, we will open up whole new disciplines for inefficient coding, and create all sorts of employment as people need big iron to run bad code.
- polemic 15y ago
  Subvert the system from within? Now that's a plan. Volunteer for the project, form a consortium to bid on the project at cost, etc. Do a thoroughly average job with lots of backdoors and subtle exploits, anonymously drip feed to the community. Now that has a chance of working =D
- Vivtek 15y ago
  Now, say, this makes sense to me.
- wanorris 15y ago
  Once you start down that road, it comes to mind that estimates generally say that something like 50% of all IT projects fail. Hmm....
- redthrowaway 15y ago
  The implementation would have to be shitty in a very specific way in order for it to not hurt the Internet at large. If this thing does get built, all American Internet traffic will have to flow through it, so it has to be stable and fast. Maybe we could just make it block by default the websites of all the politicians and corporations that support SOPA.
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    > If this thing does get built, all American Internet traffic will have to flow through it, so it has to be stable and fast. Alternatively, it could be unstable and slow. How long would this law last one Congress realizes that they've completely shut down their own email accounts, their ability to shop online, their children and grandchildren's ability to do their homework? How about when they realize that they've just put a sizable portion of their constituents out of a job? Fill those warheads full of pinball machine parts.
tomelders 15y ago
What would happen if all the ISP's simply switched off the internet for a day? As a protest, a strike against SOPA if you will. Or if Google simply shut down it's service for a day? And Youtube, and Facebook et al. It's an outlandish proposition, but not as outlandish as SOPA. Governments need to understand that they don't control the internet. The people that do could switch off their parts of it, and in these tricky economic times, a co-ordinated strike by the major players would send a very clear message. "Back off, or we'll grind the country to a halt and it'll cost you billions". These politicians are playing dirty tricks. Their mind was made up a long time ago. They'll not be beaten by due process and fairness.
- ktsmith 15y ago
  I don't think a company like Google could do that even if the top brass wanted to. It wouldn't fly with share holders, would likely be a breach of fiduciary duty etc. It's another great sounding idea that just won't happen.
  - kirubakaran 15y ago
    Not commenting on whether or not this is an effective idea, but it won't be a breach of fiduciary duty as it actually protects shareholder interests in the long(er) term.
    - ktsmith 15y ago
      While that might actually be true no one looks at the long term, only quarter by quarter.
- johngalt 15y ago
  Poetic, but trust me it wouldn't work. All it would do is push 90% of the country to back the government more. The average Joe already fears the amount of control computers systems have over his life. Both parties would play that fear like a piano. It's one thing to strike when you are the "poor downtrodden factory worker", it's entirely another thing when you are a bunch of "rich white collar smarties trying to control the world".
johngalt 15y ago
Don't bet on this. Too many people will build anything they are told to, and won't pay attention to what it means. Or at least they will be able to rationalize it. I've seen this in person with CALEA in the late 90s.
grecy 15y ago
An interesting idea, but as the article and others have mentioned, our society already has an excellent motivator that is used to make people do things they would rather not do. Money.
markbao 15y ago
I find it doubtful that General Dynamics or some other massive government contractor will get a contract for $x million, look at it for a minute, and turn it down because of the ethical ramifications. Not only is that not a factor, but it would mean giving business to a competing government contractor. Everything about this would be against the contractor's shareholders, so it won't happen. Unfortunately, someone, somewhere, will be happy to take money to build it.
superpanic 15y ago
Atlas Shrugged
nextparadigms 15y ago
SOPA would have a much harder time to pass if we had some kind of Constitutional Amendment or at least some strong Human Rights regarding the Internet. Because right now it seems that when something important to the infrastructure of the Internet clashes with the ability to enforce copyright, they say that the copyright side should win. This is possible because there aren't that many defenses set-up for the Internet itself besides the 1st Amendment.
mindstab 15y ago
This is unfortunately a very American-centric and hacker/san-fransisco-centric view. All the tech for SOPA has been build and used for years in countries such as China and Iran. They already have their great firewalls and have had them for a long time. What's more, a lot of the tech they used was built and sold to them by american companies. This war was lost probably 10 to 15 years ago. All this bill is about is dog-fooding your own censorship products. ;)
- ktsmith 15y ago
  This is exactly correct. It should also be pointed out that while the nerd-rage surrounding SOPA is all completely valid the same type of response was seen during the build up to the votes on the DMCA and congress had no trouble passing the DMCA. I think it's highly unlikely that SOPA or PIPA will be modified in any meaningful way and will likely be passed.
- cpeterso 15y ago
  And much of that firewall technology is already built in the US. For example, if NetApp had no qualms selling (indirectly) systems to the Syria government despite US export bans, I don't think they would have any qualms about selling to the US government legally. NetApp faces probe into Syrian spooks' use of its storage kit: FAS racks 'used to slurp email' despite export ban http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/10/netapp_syria/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/10/netapp_syria/
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
quellhorst 15y ago
If Americans don't build it, they'll find some coders in India to do it
praptak 15y ago
Boycott never works, for all practical values of never, sorry. If you're thinking of a boycott, you've already lost.
- ahi 15y ago
  Cesar Chavez and the United Farmworkers would strongly disagree.
  - CamperBob 15y ago
    And how are those farmworkers doing these days?
- flamingbuffalo 15y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Bus_Boycott http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Bus_Boycott (agreed that it is very rare they work though)
- robbrown451 15y ago
  You are right, except in cases where defecting on the boycott is more harmful to you than not defecting. For instance, if I am a scab and cross a picket line, I can put myself in danger or at least make myself unhireable in the future. In this case, though, people can be hired without anyone knowing about it. If lots of money is offered, someone will take it, and if there is pressure not to do take such a job, they will simply keep it secret who takes the job. I think what you are saying, which I absolutely agree with, is that any system that relies on people going against their own personal self-interest, in mass, is doomed to failure.
raldi 15y ago
I don't get this. SOPA has penalties for companies that don't comply. The rallying cry has been, "If SOPA passes, {Wikipedia|reddit|YouTube|etc} could not exist." If their engineers don't build SOPA takedown tools and their organizations get their pants sued off for the ensuing noncompliance, it's the same outcome. The sites will cease to exist in their current form.
- For_Iconoclasm 15y ago
  Or, if all of the engineers quit instead of building the tools, then those websites cease to be for lack of workers.
vital_sol 15y ago
Ok, so let's say SOPA is implemented and my Internet provider is blocking some sites through their DNS server. Who would stop me from using another DNS server (located perhaps in Russia or China) that is not blocking those websites? This is pretty much the same way that people in China use when they want to see blocked content. It works both ways, I suppose.
- pasbesoin 15y ago
  I'm not up-to-date on most recent amendments or rewriting, but as of some days ago, SOPA made such activity illegal. And if you use a VPN, they don't have to demonstrated what you were accessing. That you were using an encrypted pipe is enough. As I understand it, the legislation is far more ham-fisted than simply "borking domestic DNS". More or less, it hands the government -- and private parties having sufficient clout -- the proverbial lead pipe with which to beat you. Step 1: Block access. Step 2: Criminalize circumvention of those blocks. Of course, enforcement may be selective. But consider who is doing the selection and under what criteria -- both present and future.
- Kell 15y ago
  Huh ? No. People in China are not facing just DNS blocking. There's DPI going on there (not for everyone), and they're nating a lot of people. And, in US, what if using some other thing than your ISP DNS server gets forbidden ? Anyway, most of the people in America and in the world do not have a single clue about changing dnsservers... Heck, most of the times they do not even imagine that a website domain relates to an IP address.
  - xolox 15y ago
    For those who are not familiar with DPI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_packet_inspection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_packet_inspection As an example, HTTP uses the "Host:" header which contains the domain name of the website in question. Deep packet inspection could work by recognizing HTTP communication, inspecting the "Host:" header and simply dropping traffic to censored websites.
cpeterso 15y ago
I am reminded of Pigdog's 2002 open letter/rant to the Sony engineers who wrote the DRM code that would brick iMacs that played certain Celene Dion CDs. WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE! ;) "d00d, Quit being a FUCKING ASS": http://www.pigdog.org/auto/software_jihad/link/2581.html http://www.pigdog.org/auto/software_jihad/link/2581.html
sunils34 15y ago
scalability fail
EdSkrillex 15y ago
So if SOPA passes and "regulates the Internet" to the point where the current internet becomes useless, why not get all the "programmers" together to build a new internet that functions just like the one the U.S Government wants to control?
- cbs 15y ago
  Because this internet does function like the one they want to control. If there is New Thing X that makes the internet not-useless, new legislation will expand SOPA to cover that too.
fatjokes 15y ago
Don't boycott it---just do a half-ass job. Take the government's money and make it super-easy to get around.
kevinchen 15y ago
Looks like they went down. Cached in Google: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://greaterdebater.com/blog/gabe/post/27&hl=en&safe=active&client=safari&rls=en&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
peterwwillis 15y ago
SOPA is going to get challenged on first amendment grounds at a minimum. There's still a chance that if it takes a really long time to implement the provisions of SOPA, they can get it struck down before it does any real damage. Stall. Stall. Stall.
JDulin 15y ago
This essay admits the fact that there will always be someone willing to "come out of the woodwork" to implement the SOPA. However, the reason this idea could work is that the programmers you have building the law will never be as smart as the hackers not. Or even actively working against it.
funkah 15y ago
Well, that's a nice thought. But there's a depression on and people need money, so someone will do it. The US government will find a way, I'm sure.
polemic 15y ago
Interesting that many people here think that software engineers, as a population sample, have a 'moral disposition' spread fundamentally different from any other profession. I think we all know that is not the case. Some would even go as far to say that tend to be more morally ambiguous relative to everyone else, purely as a function of the type of personality the profession attracts (although it might just be a matter of perspective or priority). There's a more than enough engineers in the long tail of people financially desperate, intellectually interested or simply pro-SOPA to build it. And then let's not forget the miserably misguided geniuses who created a airborne H1N5 virus in the name of research. Evil comes in many forms.
davidu 15y ago
This is an idiotic post. I run OpenDNS. If SOPA passes and I don't implement it, I will be sued out of existence. The 60 jobs I provide now, and the 60 jobs I'm hiring for, will vaporize. And there will be programmers who will do the work required to implement it. This is not the right way to fight laws. In fact, this is one of the Brocard's -- Dura lex, sed lex -- "The law is harsh, but it is the law." In other words, you must obey the law, even if it is wrong. You must work to change the laws if they are unjust.
- imgabe 15y ago
  I know that you, or rather your company, would be legally obligated to comply with the law. Your employees however, are not legally obligated to continue working for you if they disagree with what their job requires them to do. Indeed, you are not required to continue operating your company if the government requires that it operate in a way you deem unethical.
  - davidu 15y ago
    Let me know when you want to get in touch with reality. This is SOPA. The government has done far worse. And the Internet will survive SOPA, just as it survived the DMCA. That doesn't mean it isn't horrible. It still needs to be stopped. That's why I went to DC to meet with congressmen to talk about how badly written and reckless it is, but you think I should destroy 120 jobs over it? I don't think so.
    - imgabe 15y ago
      Talking to Congressmen is great. I hope that it's sufficient to stop this. If it's not, then what? Is your position that it's just not really that bad? Or that whatever freedom we lose is less important than running your business? That's a valid position to take. Everyone is entitled to set their own priorities. Maybe they'll just go this far and stop, and that will be enough interference with the operation of the Internet. I'm sure plenty of people thought that was the case when the DMCA passed.
foxylad 15y ago
Another idea: if the MPAA and RIAA break the internet, let's break them. How about a petition of people who pledge not to go to the movies or buy mainstream music if SOPA passes?
- CamperBob 15y ago
  Sites like www.riaaradar.com have been around for years. No effect. Edit: just checked, and riaaradar.com is, in fact, gone. And www.riaa.org is still up and running five-nines, thank you.
atc 15y ago
Ain't gonna work. Noble, yes, but it'll just push the salary up 'til someone who doesn't care takes the job.
atc 15y ago
Ain't gonna work. Noble, yes, but it'll just push the salary up 'til someone who doesn't care takes the job.
cmillllllls 15y ago
Someone will do it when they offer a ton of our taxpayer money to fund it. Its sad, but some people will do anything for a buck :/
jrockway 15y ago
An even better idea is to do a really bad job implementing it. If all the smart people quit, that will take care of it. If the smart people want to stay on, though, perhaps they could be a bit more lax about their coding standards for this project. Widely-deployed bugs are hard to fix. Look at Windows.
vlasta2 15y ago
I do not think this has any chance to be effective. There only need to be few people, who decide the money for implementing SOPA is too good. A better response will be building a technology that cannot be controlled like this. Why not just let the DNS die and replace it with something better? It is a dinosaur anyway.
ahi 15y ago
This won't work, but we should do it anyway. Just because someone is going to do it, doesn't mean that someone should be me or any of the people I am responsible for hiring. Unethical is unethical. I won't be responsible for it and I don't want to work with any of the assholes that are.
ken 15y ago
It's not quite like a Professional Engineering license, but the ACM does have a Code of Ethics: http://www.acm.org/about/code-of-ethics http://www.acm.org/about/code-of-ethics
dbattaglia 15y ago
The part here about not hiring anyone who has worked on SOPA-compliance software feels a bit absurd to me, unless you take the same line with every personal belief. Does that mean you should never hire any engineers that have worked on software for a predator drone? Or even just things that annoy you like telemarketing call center systems? I use that example because I'm guilty of it myself at my first programming gig. I'm against this bill as much as most are on here, but I think we need to be realistic about people's need to feed themselves and even the percentage of computer programmers that would qualify as the hacker types who would even give a rats ass (I don't know too many personally).
robbrown451 15y ago
While you are at it, please talk programmers out of writing programs that send spam. Oh, and what the heck, if that works, please talk people out of being greedy in general. Thanks.
trout 15y ago
A lot of what SOPA is black holing US internet traffic. All it takes is one person at one service provider to do this. India and China have done this on accident before. (They create a black hole route and accidentally advertised it) Sure there are some more specific details to make it smooth to the end user, but from a technical level it is 3 commands on a service provider router to bring down a public network.
EmilENewton 15y ago
I think Onymous may have already thought of this ;-)
psawaya 15y ago
Just out of curiosity, has anyone here applied the same refusal to work with/hire someone who was affiliated with building DRM? Or any other example of Big Content trying to cripple technology.
ctdonath 15y ago
"Your terms are acceptable."
wqed 15y ago
How to stop SOPA? Boycott the products the sponsors of it want you to buy. The mindless entertainment that pirates are selling. For even a short period, if enough people simultanrously just said "No, thanks. We value a free Internet more than your movies and TV", then these movie studios might take notice. As long as internet users keep seeking these movies and TV programs from pirates online, Hollywood is not going to relent. Do nerds really understand what SOPA says? Business located outside the US having no jurisdictional ties to the US are not going to be sued as a result of SOPA. It does not try to create extraterritorial jurisdiction. This bill only extends to US businesses that pirates use: e.g., US-based ISP's, domain name registrars, ad networks, payment processors. And they carry no liability. They are merely subject to injunctions. This is a far cry from a Great American Firewall. But yeah, it will be nerds that build such a firewall one day. They are already head over heels into spying. And that does not say much for nerd solidarity.
rbanffy 15y ago
There is always someone who will consider something like SOPA a shining beacon of progress compared to whatever lawless state they live in. At least SOPA does not propose stoning movie pirates to death... yet.
JWLong 15y ago
Heh... for all the hating on Ayn Rand that goes on around here, you seem to have found the idea behind her magnum opus quite useful...

299 points by imgabe 15y ago

It is painful for me to see this effete hand waving be taken as seriously this. A trivially simply thought experiment is all that is needed to grasp the obvious futility of this strategy. I'm not saying, "Go ahead and work on SOPA." But if we really want to stop it (or any act of Congress), we must do better than such passive-aggressive smoke blowing.

pg 15y ago

This is an intriguing idea. The majority of hackers hate this bill, and yet if the lobbyists and politicians pass it, they are going to need us to implement it for them. So maybe it would be some sort of solution, in the worst case, to organize a boycott of any person or company that works on it.

maeon3 15y ago
A union of global programmers. Has a nice ring to it. Needs to have an incentive to join and keep the lobbyists out. Same problem that stackoverflow has to keep out trolls and idiots. In this case the trolls are riaa, mpaa, national interests to take over the internet and those who wish not to contribute, but to be armchair dictators of the most powerful tool ever made by mankind.
- EdSkrillex 15y ago
  A union of global "programmers/activists" already exists. It's called Anonymous. Honestly, we as programmers have to fight this evil with a greater evil -- create a new internet and/or get Anonymous intimately involved in this current affair.
zackzackzack 15y ago
It would only take a small minority of hackers to actually build it though. SOPA backers would probably put up the, upper limit, 100 million it would take to pay 10 brillant but selfish engineers to build the thing.
- eumenides1 15y ago
  you are correct so you have to low-ball your bid and say you can do it for less, say 50 million. A total steal. Then you delay. Delay delay delay. When they fire you, get your friend to promise the same thing you promised. Incompetence is not a failing, but merely a tool in need to the right time.
eli 15y ago
I don't think Raytheon or SAIC would feel very threatened by a consumer boycott.
- davidwparker 15y ago
  I'm not sure you read the article or pg's post. Consumers aren't boycotting. Programmers and those building SOPA would quit, so Raytheon and SAIC wouldn't have an employees to build it.
  - Vivtek 15y ago
    I've known lots of contractors for companies such as SAIC (I was one myself for a few years, not for SAIC, but for another much smaller company in Indianapolis) and they will have no such compunctions. Sorry, pg - I know you talk with a lot of smart people, but you don't have to be too smart to break something. You just have to be venal, and there's never a shortage of venality. This boycott is doomed to failure from the get-go.
- pg 15y ago
  Not a consumer boycott; an employee boycott. It might make a company think twice before touching this type of work if they knew it would make it impossible to hire or retain good programmers.
  - bmelton 15y ago
    A boycott might have worked in a better economy, but there are far too many unemployed workers capable of implementing SOPA restrictions that would love a job, regardless the moral implications. Also, the employees that work at SAIC/Raytheon/federal contracting are already more used to working on things that are morally questionable. Sometimes they're black-box implemented (where each party makes only a small part of it, and it is then pieced together later,) but usually it isn't.
  - _delirium 15y ago
    I like the idea, but so far the attempts to make that happen with companies that work on the Great Firewall of China have been, I think, pretty unsuccessful. Cisco's gotten some bad press at times, but programmers still go work for them.
cbs 15y ago
they are going to need us to implement it for them Its a nice idea, but that is flat-out not true.
mindstab 15y ago
Hackers hate it, but there are more programmers than "hackers". Think about middle aged family men, career men. They aren't all going to care as strongly or be able to quit. Also even if you could convince all american talent to boycott it, there's a whole world of people out there who don't care at all, and just like America has been happy to sell censorship tech to the rest of the world for years, I'm sure the rest of the world would be happy to repay :) I don't think Indian or Russian programmers are going to give a toss about it if it pays bills. Ha or you could just buy back equipment already sent to Chian and Iran. Which sort of raises the point that American talent has already built this equipment and been selling it for years now. It is way past too late for this boycott to work.
- pg 15y ago
  I'm not suggesting we could prevent e.g. Cisco from finding enough people to build this stuff. More that Cisco would steer clear of such projects if working on them would put a black mark on their corporate reputation that would make it harder for them, as a company, to hire good people.
  - zem 15y ago
    and yet the likes of the nsa, fbi, etc have never lacked for good (in the technical sense) people to write surveillance software. heck, there are some pretty sophisticated spammers out there, and the spam industry is almost universally regarded as the cesspool of the tech world. if sopa does need to get implemented, i'm sure questionable small companies across the nation would flock to bid for the job.
    - omouse 15y ago
      We might be able to enlist the technical help of spammers like that. They may not like SOPA either? I wouldn't be surprised if all technical people, regardless of what they do as their job, are against SOPA and other things like it.
      - zem 15y ago
timtadh 15y ago
Maybe a general strike would work better. Everyone should just stop writing code for their employers on Monday. EDIT: I made a submission about this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3361689 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3361689 text ''' The world depends on software. We, the world's programmers, write the software. SOPA threatens many things we believe in and care about. Letter writing and traditional means have not worked to stop SOPA. The only alternative is direct action. In the 1960's direction was sitting on buses and swimming in pools. During the industrial revolution it was strikes in front of factories and rail roads. Occupying may get a lot of news coverage but protesters can be removed by force. No one can make us write code. If we stop, no one can do it for us. I call for a General Programmer strike. We should set a day. '''
- untog 15y ago
  Good luck with that one. While the world does depend on software, it does not depend on the code you are writing today. If programmers went on strike the world would continue to turn with very, very few problems. In time, of course, things would unravel, but you'd have to be willing to sit through an incredibly long strike. Also your job would probably be outsourced within a week.
- sp332 15y ago
  Your post reminds me very strongly of this aphorism: http://www.despair.com/worth.html http://www.despair.com/worth.html "Just because you're necessary, doesn't mean you're important."
pnathan 15y ago
Very smart people have built nuclear bombs, nerve gas bombs, and weapons of plague. People with the same ethics will be hired to build censorship and be happy to take home the paycheck.
- theorique 15y ago
  I would definitely have participated in the Manhattan Project if asked - it was necessary to stop the Nazis. On the other hand, I would definitely not work on SOPA. Don't confuse what is necessary with what is merely expedient.
  - baddox 15y ago
    People have different ideas about what is necessary. Calling the Manhattan Project "necessary" without thinking much about it is reckless. I've heard accounts from many of the scientists and workers, and many were quite horrified about the results (incidentally, against the Japanese, not Nazis). Presumably many do conclude that developing a nuclear weapon was "necessary," but not without considerably ethical debate.
    - jlind 15y ago
      It would be again much different if the Manhattan Project was something to be used against your fellow countrymen.
      - WorldGroove 15y ago
        Are you implying that the life of your countrymen is more important that the life of someone not of your country? If so, I'd say those are questionable ethics.
  - pnathan 15y ago
    A number of other weapons of great destruction have been created outside of the Manhattan Project.
jim-greer 15y ago
The main enforcement mechanism is domain seizure, which already works quite well already, unfortunately. It's pretty likely that there will be a darknet DNS system or DNS alternative, but that's not a great outcome for anyone - more confusion, more malware.
projectileboy 15y ago
Accenture will be thrilled to build The Great Firewall of America, and they're sufficiently capable of doing it, especially since they'll have an effectively unlimited budget. And sadly, there's more than one Accenture in the world.
damoncali 15y ago
It only takes one.
radicalbyte 15y ago
Actually now that you've said it, we could start a boycott right now of the companies who are supporting the bill.
- jen_h 15y ago
  Agreed - likely low effect, but we should all do this anyway if we haven't already begun (I've blackholed a few of them already in /etc/hosts just because their sites do things like auto-play video that you can't stop). Here's a list of supporters for reference: http://www.thedominoproject.com/2011/12/who-wants-to-break-the-internet.html http://www.thedominoproject.com/2011/12/who-wants-to-break-t...
  - jen_h 15y ago
    Good info here, too, on the money trail: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h3261/money http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h3261/money
Cushman 15y ago
Hey Paul, I'm trying to raise a seed round for my startup. Our organization will match any offer made to any engineer to design or implement any system for censorship of the Internet, and employ that engineer building tools to resist censorship. I figure we only need a few hundred million to get off the ground... How much can I put you down for?
flatline 15y ago
While I would love to see this happen, it won't be very hard to convince many people, developers included, that the entire purpose is to stop knock-off handbag sites, scummy download sites, and shady online gambling operations, and I'm sure they can provide enough glaring examples of piracy that the argument will seem reasonable. Coupled with the fact that it would be somebody's job on the line, I'm afraid that the boycott would be doomed to failure, behind the aegis of corporate anonymity for any individuals involved.
davidu 15y ago
dura lex, sed lex.
malandrew 15y ago
There will always be those who prostitute themselves out to build the software to support the bill. Some companies, those most likely to be be the victim of litigation by those in favor of the bill will have no choice but to implement the software due to the threat of litigation damages. However, the best way to combat litigation damages would be a threat to those same companies from every network that connects to them. i.e. an internet embargo against any company that implements the filtering and changes to the DNS. At the end of the day networks need to connect to other networks. If a company implements software that filters it, every network that doesn't have the same obligation can embargo those businesses so that those businesses have no choice but to fight the MPAA and RIAA. Treat those that implement the technology like a cancer and "excise" them from the network. Following the money is the only way to prevent the technological implementation of SOPA from spreading. There needs to be an equally or more costly financial threat from the anti-SOPA companies. It doesn't even need to be at the network level. The browser level is sufficient. Chrome, Firefox and Internet explorer (built by 3 organizations that are against SOPA) could all embargo sites at the browser level in the default installations of the browsers. The majority of Internet dollars travel through the browser. The browsers could sniff for DNS systems implementing SOPA and blacklist them. If your DNS implements SOPA then you aren't part of the internet. If they want a browser that supports networks that implement SOPA, let them build it themselves and spend time and money trying to get their browser adopted. The search engine level is another approach. Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo could reduce the search rank of every site on networks that implements SOPA. SOPA uses legislation to break the technological contract that keeps the internet together. Break the technological contract and you should no longer part of the Internet.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  > There will always be those who prostitute themselves out to build the software to support the bill. I think I'm opposed to the term "prostitute" in this context. What if I need to keep my job to purchase medication to keep my wife and children alive, and that medication is prohibitively expensive without insurance? At that point, I wouldn't be a prostitute - arguably I would be a hostage.
  - 15y ago
danielharan 15y ago
Raiding the people at the company that gets the contract might be a more ethical and effective action, especially if some of those people feel stuck working there. The company may be able to replace those workers, but churn could really hurt them.
aschoen 15y ago
Alternatively one could boycott the entertainment companies lobbying for the bill. Which really is not much of a sacrifice.
rbanffy 15y ago
> organize a boycott of any person or company that works on it. This is dangerously like a witch hunt. This tool is theirs, not ours. But I agree we may need better tools to protect the things we hold dear.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
omouse 15y ago
It's worked before and I would use stronger words than boycott; like blockade and strike. Doing economic damage by refusing to work on it or by refusing to buy their products or anything else is a damn fine idea and it's worked in the past for various trade unions. The only thing is that we need a support network for people who refuse to work on it. Like say an employee and Cisco wants to blow the whistle on all the invasive tech they work on or wants to stop working on SOPA-related tech. They need to be able to do that without fearing that their family will go hungry because they wont get a paycheck anymore. Union dues and donations were used for supporting striking workers. We have things like Kickstarter, Paypal, Bitcoin, etc. I don't see why we can't pitch in and donate to support any hackers who refuse to work on SOPA-related tech.

maeon3 15y ago

People who are unable to comprehend the internet want to tax and regulate and censor every bit and byte. As the programmers and engineers who built the thing. Lets give them what they want. When it turns out what we built actually makes censorship harder and the imbeciles become angry, shrug and apologize then promise you will do it right if you get another chance. Knowledge is power, they cant take away our superiority there. They can only ASK us to tie ourselves up and put ourselves in the oven and serve ourselves up for lunch. You want root on the global net? War on freedom begins now.

incomethax 15y ago

Is there a cached version? The site seems to be down.

ktsmith 15y ago
Here's the text --------------------- I've been following the news about SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, for the past couple of weeks. Yesterday there was an interesting development when 83 of the most prominent engineers responsible for creating the Internet signed an open letter voicing their opposition to SOPA. This in and of itself is hardly surprising. Since the law was introduced anyone with a shred of technical acumen has stated that a.) It will not work. The law will not hinder piracy. b.) It will be hugely detrimental to the normal operation of the Internet. But, this made me think. If a law like SOPA were to be passed, how would it be implemented? How would it be enforced? I think it's safe to say that at some point somebody is going to have to write some code or possibly build some hardware. Maybe some of these technologies can be bought off the shelf from, say, China or North Korea, but at the very least someone is going to have to administer the servers that make this all work. Who's going to do that? The politicians? The lawyers? Entertainment industry executives? No. The task is going to fall to the very people who have been the most vocal opponents of the law from the start. What if they refuse? If SOPA were to pass and your job would require you to enforce its provisions, you should quit. If you currently work in IT or software development for a company advocating for the law, for a lobbying firm that is promoting the law, for the campaign of one of the representatives sponsoring or supporting it, you should quit. The organization paying you is actively trying to use your skills make people less free. There's a perpetual shortage of talent in the industry, right? Surely, you can find another job that does not require you to be an instrument of government oppression, that does not ask you to dismantle the infrastructure you've spent your career building and maintaining. I know it may seem like a drastic measure, but freedom, as we are so often reminded, is not free. If a free Internet is important to you, you have to be willing to make sacrifices to defend it, or it will cease to exist. Be happy that you can fight for freedom on economic terms instead of having to put your life on the line. If your current position would not be involved in complying with SOPA, but you're in charge of hiring people, you could let it be known that any experience that included building or making technology for the enforcement of SOPA would immediately disqualify an applicant from getting a job at your company. (Assuming, of course that they participated willingly, not the folks I just told to quit their jobs in the previous paragraph.) I don't think this would be unreasonable or unfair. Deliberately building something that nearly every expert in the field has condemned as a detriment to the Internet represents such a staggering lack of professional judgement that it should disqualify you from ever working again in this profession. As engineers we spend most of our education and careers focusing on what we can build, and very little time thinking about what we should built. Unlike doctors or lawyers we (mostly) do not have professional licenses or ethics boards to report to. This does not mean we cannot act unethically, or that we should not consider the social ramifications of the things we make. An engineer who would build the infrastructure to make SOPA a reality should be treated exactly like a doctor who would willingly commit malpractice. He should be blacklisted from the profession. I know this isn't a foolproof plan. If there's enough money on the table, someone will come out of the woodwork to take the job. If the task receives enough scorn from the rest of the industry, though, you can be sure that it won't be the best and the brightest working on this. Anything that results will be that much less effective for it. Remember politicians and lawyers can bloviate and scheme all they like, but ultimately it is engineers who have to bring their plans into existence. We are the gatekeepers between dreams and reality, and when it comes to the politicians and executives, they need us far more than we need them. Of course, there are Professional Engineer (P.E.) licenses. But for the majority of Internet related work I believe they are not required. For what it's worth, I do happen to have a PE and work in a field where it's required. It is expected and understood that you would refuse to design something for a client that would be harmful or unsafe for the people using it. Indeed, you would lose your license (and thus your livelihood) if you did so.

ktsmith 15y ago

> Maybe some of these technologies can be bought off the shelf from, say, China or North Korea, but at the very least someone is going to have to administer the servers that make this all work. Unfortunately much of the technology used for censorship in places like China was developed in the US. Refusing to deploy it seems to be the only option. If we already have engineers willing to build these technologies it seems very likely there are going to be engineers willing to deploy it as well.

toblender 15y ago

The problem is not the engineers. If the executives of the companies are obligated by law to build this system or go out of business/be fined, they will pass that pressure down the chain. I know this bill upsets people, but getting fired would be more upsetting to those programmers/engineers.

radicalbyte 15y ago

Why don't we just build a new internet? They're blocking DNS records and IP address? Then why don't we design and build a new system. Using the knowledge we've gained from the Internet v1 we'd be able to do a much better job with Internet v2. We have to do a lot of work to switch over to IP6 anyhow, so why not just go the whole hog and built a new infrastructure?

masonhensley 15y ago
I honestly don't think the law would distinguish between the two. Maybe implementation would be more difficult across two infrastructures; however, in the eyes of representative X and Senator Y, communication from one electronic device to another is the internet.
- ComputerGuru 15y ago
  You're missing the point - his suggestion was for a decentralized internet that isn't blockable in the first place. Cliche idea that won't actually happen, but that aside...

fleitz 15y ago

Don't do that, just build better tech a little further out west. Read the declaration of independence, act accordingly. Recall what the net was like before the masses, perhaps something truly free is worth more than whatever you're giving up by not being able to sell coupons on it. Who cares if the masses never come. They just wanted to sell their freedom for a pay cheque anyway.

Raphael 15y ago
How do you go further west when you've reached the Pacific Ocean? Sail to China?

tibbon 15y ago

With this theory, if we wanted to stop wars, we could encourage arms builders to simply stop building weapons of war. Yet, there will always be some people who view opportunity over everything else, and will be more than happy to build the weapons of war, even if 99% of the population disagrees. On the flip side, the government may see any organization to halt such as illegal (I don't know what law it would violate, but I'm sure they could find something appropriate to give the organizers a nice cell in Gitmo). Best idea if asked, is to build it, but do it incompetently (but intentionally). Poor UI, poor filters, bad tests, etc. Obfuscate the code as much as possible. Claim that its for optimization. Write it in an esoteric language that few will be able to audit properly. Pull out every trick in the book. I suppose some could call this sabotage, but it seems one way to do it. The US Government never seems to have a problem with hiring those with a strong record of incompetence.

Apreche 15y ago

General nerd strike. We run the world. If we actually unite, we can get everything we want. Not just stopping SOPA, but complete copyright and patent reform, net neutrality, and everything else we care about. The problem is we are a bunch of sissies. If there was actually a general strike, would you seriously refuse to go to work until SOPA was stopped? Could you do it? Are you willing to fight for what you believe? If enough of us do it, we will get our way. We have to be willing to refuse to go to work and to cause serious suffering on the part of others until we get our way. I'll do it, but unless enough people join me it won't matter.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
maeon3 15y ago
I will join you. A union of programmers across disciplines. Imagine if we all went on strike for a few Weeks. as programmers we could collectively do what Congress cant (yet) take down a big portion of the internet for a few days.

jpdoctor 15y ago

I disagree: Somebody will build the thing, because there's always someone desperate enough to take the job. However, there is a better way to accomplish the goal imho: A truly shitty implementation. Those who are already in the position to implement it would not have to quit; they would instead commit to implementing it in the least-efficient way possible. As a nice side effect, we will open up whole new disciplines for inefficient coding, and create all sorts of employment as people need big iron to run bad code.

polemic 15y ago
Subvert the system from within? Now that's a plan. Volunteer for the project, form a consortium to bid on the project at cost, etc. Do a thoroughly average job with lots of backdoors and subtle exploits, anonymously drip feed to the community. Now that has a chance of working =D
Vivtek 15y ago
Now, say, this makes sense to me.
wanorris 15y ago
Once you start down that road, it comes to mind that estimates generally say that something like 50% of all IT projects fail. Hmm....
redthrowaway 15y ago
The implementation would have to be shitty in a very specific way in order for it to not hurt the Internet at large. If this thing does get built, all American Internet traffic will have to flow through it, so it has to be stable and fast. Maybe we could just make it block by default the websites of all the politicians and corporations that support SOPA.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  > If this thing does get built, all American Internet traffic will have to flow through it, so it has to be stable and fast. Alternatively, it could be unstable and slow. How long would this law last one Congress realizes that they've completely shut down their own email accounts, their ability to shop online, their children and grandchildren's ability to do their homework? How about when they realize that they've just put a sizable portion of their constituents out of a job? Fill those warheads full of pinball machine parts.

tomelders 15y ago

What would happen if all the ISP's simply switched off the internet for a day? As a protest, a strike against SOPA if you will. Or if Google simply shut down it's service for a day? And Youtube, and Facebook et al. It's an outlandish proposition, but not as outlandish as SOPA. Governments need to understand that they don't control the internet. The people that do could switch off their parts of it, and in these tricky economic times, a co-ordinated strike by the major players would send a very clear message. "Back off, or we'll grind the country to a halt and it'll cost you billions". These politicians are playing dirty tricks. Their mind was made up a long time ago. They'll not be beaten by due process and fairness.

ktsmith 15y ago
I don't think a company like Google could do that even if the top brass wanted to. It wouldn't fly with share holders, would likely be a breach of fiduciary duty etc. It's another great sounding idea that just won't happen.
- kirubakaran 15y ago
  Not commenting on whether or not this is an effective idea, but it won't be a breach of fiduciary duty as it actually protects shareholder interests in the long(er) term.
  - ktsmith 15y ago
    While that might actually be true no one looks at the long term, only quarter by quarter.
johngalt 15y ago
Poetic, but trust me it wouldn't work. All it would do is push 90% of the country to back the government more. The average Joe already fears the amount of control computers systems have over his life. Both parties would play that fear like a piano. It's one thing to strike when you are the "poor downtrodden factory worker", it's entirely another thing when you are a bunch of "rich white collar smarties trying to control the world".

johngalt 15y ago

Don't bet on this. Too many people will build anything they are told to, and won't pay attention to what it means. Or at least they will be able to rationalize it. I've seen this in person with CALEA in the late 90s.

grecy 15y ago

An interesting idea, but as the article and others have mentioned, our society already has an excellent motivator that is used to make people do things they would rather not do. Money.

markbao 15y ago

I find it doubtful that General Dynamics or some other massive government contractor will get a contract for $x million, look at it for a minute, and turn it down because of the ethical ramifications. Not only is that not a factor, but it would mean giving business to a competing government contractor. Everything about this would be against the contractor's shareholders, so it won't happen. Unfortunately, someone, somewhere, will be happy to take money to build it.

superpanic 15y ago

Atlas Shrugged

nextparadigms 15y ago

SOPA would have a much harder time to pass if we had some kind of Constitutional Amendment or at least some strong Human Rights regarding the Internet. Because right now it seems that when something important to the infrastructure of the Internet clashes with the ability to enforce copyright, they say that the copyright side should win. This is possible because there aren't that many defenses set-up for the Internet itself besides the 1st Amendment.

mindstab 15y ago

This is unfortunately a very American-centric and hacker/san-fransisco-centric view. All the tech for SOPA has been build and used for years in countries such as China and Iran. They already have their great firewalls and have had them for a long time. What's more, a lot of the tech they used was built and sold to them by american companies. This war was lost probably 10 to 15 years ago. All this bill is about is dog-fooding your own censorship products. ;)

ktsmith 15y ago
This is exactly correct. It should also be pointed out that while the nerd-rage surrounding SOPA is all completely valid the same type of response was seen during the build up to the votes on the DMCA and congress had no trouble passing the DMCA. I think it's highly unlikely that SOPA or PIPA will be modified in any meaningful way and will likely be passed.
cpeterso 15y ago
And much of that firewall technology is already built in the US. For example, if NetApp had no qualms selling (indirectly) systems to the Syria government despite US export bans, I don't think they would have any qualms about selling to the US government legally. NetApp faces probe into Syrian spooks' use of its storage kit: FAS racks 'used to slurp email' despite export ban http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/10/netapp_syria/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/10/netapp_syria/

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

quellhorst 15y ago

If Americans don't build it, they'll find some coders in India to do it

praptak 15y ago

Boycott never works, for all practical values of never, sorry. If you're thinking of a boycott, you've already lost.

ahi 15y ago
Cesar Chavez and the United Farmworkers would strongly disagree.
- CamperBob 15y ago
  And how are those farmworkers doing these days?
flamingbuffalo 15y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Bus_Boycott http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Bus_Boycott (agreed that it is very rare they work though)
robbrown451 15y ago
You are right, except in cases where defecting on the boycott is more harmful to you than not defecting. For instance, if I am a scab and cross a picket line, I can put myself in danger or at least make myself unhireable in the future. In this case, though, people can be hired without anyone knowing about it. If lots of money is offered, someone will take it, and if there is pressure not to do take such a job, they will simply keep it secret who takes the job. I think what you are saying, which I absolutely agree with, is that any system that relies on people going against their own personal self-interest, in mass, is doomed to failure.

raldi 15y ago

I don't get this. SOPA has penalties for companies that don't comply. The rallying cry has been, "If SOPA passes, {Wikipedia|reddit|YouTube|etc} could not exist." If their engineers don't build SOPA takedown tools and their organizations get their pants sued off for the ensuing noncompliance, it's the same outcome. The sites will cease to exist in their current form.

For_Iconoclasm 15y ago
Or, if all of the engineers quit instead of building the tools, then those websites cease to be for lack of workers.

vital_sol 15y ago

Ok, so let's say SOPA is implemented and my Internet provider is blocking some sites through their DNS server. Who would stop me from using another DNS server (located perhaps in Russia or China) that is not blocking those websites? This is pretty much the same way that people in China use when they want to see blocked content. It works both ways, I suppose.

pasbesoin 15y ago
I'm not up-to-date on most recent amendments or rewriting, but as of some days ago, SOPA made such activity illegal. And if you use a VPN, they don't have to demonstrated what you were accessing. That you were using an encrypted pipe is enough. As I understand it, the legislation is far more ham-fisted than simply "borking domestic DNS". More or less, it hands the government -- and private parties having sufficient clout -- the proverbial lead pipe with which to beat you. Step 1: Block access. Step 2: Criminalize circumvention of those blocks. Of course, enforcement may be selective. But consider who is doing the selection and under what criteria -- both present and future.
Kell 15y ago
Huh ? No. People in China are not facing just DNS blocking. There's DPI going on there (not for everyone), and they're nating a lot of people. And, in US, what if using some other thing than your ISP DNS server gets forbidden ? Anyway, most of the people in America and in the world do not have a single clue about changing dnsservers... Heck, most of the times they do not even imagine that a website domain relates to an IP address.
- xolox 15y ago
  For those who are not familiar with DPI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_packet_inspection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_packet_inspection As an example, HTTP uses the "Host:" header which contains the domain name of the website in question. Deep packet inspection could work by recognizing HTTP communication, inspecting the "Host:" header and simply dropping traffic to censored websites.

cpeterso 15y ago

I am reminded of Pigdog's 2002 open letter/rant to the Sony engineers who wrote the DRM code that would brick iMacs that played certain Celene Dion CDs. WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE! ;) "d00d, Quit being a FUCKING ASS": http://www.pigdog.org/auto/software_jihad/link/2581.html http://www.pigdog.org/auto/software_jihad/link/2581.html

sunils34 15y ago

scalability fail

EdSkrillex 15y ago

So if SOPA passes and "regulates the Internet" to the point where the current internet becomes useless, why not get all the "programmers" together to build a new internet that functions just like the one the U.S Government wants to control?

cbs 15y ago
Because this internet does function like the one they want to control. If there is New Thing X that makes the internet not-useless, new legislation will expand SOPA to cover that too.

fatjokes 15y ago

Don't boycott it---just do a half-ass job. Take the government's money and make it super-easy to get around.

kevinchen 15y ago

Looks like they went down. Cached in Google: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://greaterdebater.com/blog/gabe/post/27&hl=en&safe=active&client=safari&rls=en&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

peterwwillis 15y ago

SOPA is going to get challenged on first amendment grounds at a minimum. There's still a chance that if it takes a really long time to implement the provisions of SOPA, they can get it struck down before it does any real damage. Stall. Stall. Stall.

JDulin 15y ago

This essay admits the fact that there will always be someone willing to "come out of the woodwork" to implement the SOPA. However, the reason this idea could work is that the programmers you have building the law will never be as smart as the hackers not. Or even actively working against it.

funkah 15y ago

Well, that's a nice thought. But there's a depression on and people need money, so someone will do it. The US government will find a way, I'm sure.

polemic 15y ago

Interesting that many people here think that software engineers, as a population sample, have a 'moral disposition' spread fundamentally different from any other profession. I think we all know that is not the case. Some would even go as far to say that tend to be more morally ambiguous relative to everyone else, purely as a function of the type of personality the profession attracts (although it might just be a matter of perspective or priority). There's a more than enough engineers in the long tail of people financially desperate, intellectually interested or simply pro-SOPA to build it. And then let's not forget the miserably misguided geniuses who created a airborne H1N5 virus in the name of research. Evil comes in many forms.

davidu 15y ago

This is an idiotic post. I run OpenDNS. If SOPA passes and I don't implement it, I will be sued out of existence. The 60 jobs I provide now, and the 60 jobs I'm hiring for, will vaporize. And there will be programmers who will do the work required to implement it. This is not the right way to fight laws. In fact, this is one of the Brocard's -- Dura lex, sed lex -- "The law is harsh, but it is the law." In other words, you must obey the law, even if it is wrong. You must work to change the laws if they are unjust.

imgabe 15y ago
I know that you, or rather your company, would be legally obligated to comply with the law. Your employees however, are not legally obligated to continue working for you if they disagree with what their job requires them to do. Indeed, you are not required to continue operating your company if the government requires that it operate in a way you deem unethical.
- davidu 15y ago
  Let me know when you want to get in touch with reality. This is SOPA. The government has done far worse. And the Internet will survive SOPA, just as it survived the DMCA. That doesn't mean it isn't horrible. It still needs to be stopped. That's why I went to DC to meet with congressmen to talk about how badly written and reckless it is, but you think I should destroy 120 jobs over it? I don't think so.
  - imgabe 15y ago
    Talking to Congressmen is great. I hope that it's sufficient to stop this. If it's not, then what? Is your position that it's just not really that bad? Or that whatever freedom we lose is less important than running your business? That's a valid position to take. Everyone is entitled to set their own priorities. Maybe they'll just go this far and stop, and that will be enough interference with the operation of the Internet. I'm sure plenty of people thought that was the case when the DMCA passed.

foxylad 15y ago

Another idea: if the MPAA and RIAA break the internet, let's break them. How about a petition of people who pledge not to go to the movies or buy mainstream music if SOPA passes?

CamperBob 15y ago
Sites like www.riaaradar.com have been around for years. No effect. Edit: just checked, and riaaradar.com is, in fact, gone. And www.riaa.org is still up and running five-nines, thank you.

atc 15y ago

Ain't gonna work. Noble, yes, but it'll just push the salary up 'til someone who doesn't care takes the job.

atc 15y ago

Ain't gonna work. Noble, yes, but it'll just push the salary up 'til someone who doesn't care takes the job.

cmillllllls 15y ago

Someone will do it when they offer a ton of our taxpayer money to fund it. Its sad, but some people will do anything for a buck :/

jrockway 15y ago

An even better idea is to do a really bad job implementing it. If all the smart people quit, that will take care of it. If the smart people want to stay on, though, perhaps they could be a bit more lax about their coding standards for this project. Widely-deployed bugs are hard to fix. Look at Windows.

vlasta2 15y ago

I do not think this has any chance to be effective. There only need to be few people, who decide the money for implementing SOPA is too good. A better response will be building a technology that cannot be controlled like this. Why not just let the DNS die and replace it with something better? It is a dinosaur anyway.

ahi 15y ago

This won't work, but we should do it anyway. Just because someone is going to do it, doesn't mean that someone should be me or any of the people I am responsible for hiring. Unethical is unethical. I won't be responsible for it and I don't want to work with any of the assholes that are.

ken 15y ago

It's not quite like a Professional Engineering license, but the ACM does have a Code of Ethics: http://www.acm.org/about/code-of-ethics http://www.acm.org/about/code-of-ethics

dbattaglia 15y ago

The part here about not hiring anyone who has worked on SOPA-compliance software feels a bit absurd to me, unless you take the same line with every personal belief. Does that mean you should never hire any engineers that have worked on software for a predator drone? Or even just things that annoy you like telemarketing call center systems? I use that example because I'm guilty of it myself at my first programming gig. I'm against this bill as much as most are on here, but I think we need to be realistic about people's need to feed themselves and even the percentage of computer programmers that would qualify as the hacker types who would even give a rats ass (I don't know too many personally).

robbrown451 15y ago

While you are at it, please talk programmers out of writing programs that send spam. Oh, and what the heck, if that works, please talk people out of being greedy in general. Thanks.

trout 15y ago

A lot of what SOPA is black holing US internet traffic. All it takes is one person at one service provider to do this. India and China have done this on accident before. (They create a black hole route and accidentally advertised it) Sure there are some more specific details to make it smooth to the end user, but from a technical level it is 3 commands on a service provider router to bring down a public network.

EmilENewton 15y ago

I think Onymous may have already thought of this ;-)

psawaya 15y ago

Just out of curiosity, has anyone here applied the same refusal to work with/hire someone who was affiliated with building DRM? Or any other example of Big Content trying to cripple technology.

ctdonath 15y ago

"Your terms are acceptable."

wqed 15y ago

How to stop SOPA? Boycott the products the sponsors of it want you to buy. The mindless entertainment that pirates are selling. For even a short period, if enough people simultanrously just said "No, thanks. We value a free Internet more than your movies and TV", then these movie studios might take notice. As long as internet users keep seeking these movies and TV programs from pirates online, Hollywood is not going to relent. Do nerds really understand what SOPA says? Business located outside the US having no jurisdictional ties to the US are not going to be sued as a result of SOPA. It does not try to create extraterritorial jurisdiction. This bill only extends to US businesses that pirates use: e.g., US-based ISP's, domain name registrars, ad networks, payment processors. And they carry no liability. They are merely subject to injunctions. This is a far cry from a Great American Firewall. But yeah, it will be nerds that build such a firewall one day. They are already head over heels into spying. And that does not say much for nerd solidarity.

rbanffy 15y ago

There is always someone who will consider something like SOPA a shining beacon of progress compared to whatever lawless state they live in. At least SOPA does not propose stoning movie pirates to death... yet.

JWLong 15y ago

Heh... for all the hating on Ayn Rand that goes on around here, you seem to have found the idea behind her magnum opus quite useful...