6 ms·

i'm as big a hater of SOPA as the next guy, but this fearmongering is getting a bit silly. as if SOPA is going to pass and overnight all of those popular comme

by there 15y ago

i'm as big a hater of SOPA as the next guy, but this fearmongering is getting a bit silly. as if SOPA is going to pass and overnight all of those popular commercially-run websites are going to vanish with no notice or court hearings. and from a technical standpoint, most of those websites listed use CDNs for static assets, so unless you list the constantly-changing IPs of akamai and other servers for all of the weird random-looking hostnames used by those CDNs, many of those sites will not even load to a usable state. (and porn sites? really?) also, from the reddit thread: As some posters suggested, you can use another DNS server. The two server I'm reasonably certain about are OpenDNS and Google DNS. Both of them are US based but I think Google will move it's server to Europe if SOPA passes. using a resolver in the EU from the US would be frustratingly slow due to the latency. you're better off showing users how to setup their own caching servers to bypass their ISP (i've always run my own caching server just for technical reasons). and do you really think google cares about SOPA? they have done practically nothing to stop it; no notice on their homepage, no public awareness, only one legal representative sent to the preliminary hearing, etc. this is the same company that partnered with china and supported their censorship just to make some additional ad revenue.

burgerbrain 15y ago
"and porn sites? really?" I don't understand this comment. Can you explain it?
ck2 15y ago
Right because enforcement never overreaches and never abuses any weapon they are given. In the meatspace world, see tasers and pepper spray which are only supposed to be used when a gun would have been, so they are less than lethal - then there is warrantless everything these days, or no-knock warrants on the wrong house from a "tip" and they kill your dog for good measure (happens so often it's a cliche already). On the net see the DMCA mission creep and the thousands of Patriot Act "cannot tell anyone you were served, not even your lawyer" National Security Letters nonsense. If someone copies the code to crack bluray or something like that to wikipedia - why wouldn't SONY's lawyers use SOPA to take down all of wikipedia for 10 days?
- there 15y ago
  Right because enforcement never overreaches and never abuses any weapon they are given. i didn't say that, and i realize why the bill is dangerous. but to fear that it's suddenly going to shut down a bunch of popular sites overnight and we have to scramble to revert back to an /etc/hosts-over-ftp distribution of addressing is silly. we should be focusing on stopping the bill from passing first, rather than worry about how we'll get to the pirate bay in a few months.
  - ck2 15y ago
    Sorry that wasn't meant to be at you at all - I am just really upset about all this stuff so much lately that I think I better stop watching the news for the rest of the year. Reality is we cannot stop it from passing, the people in charge of the committee want it to pass so the hearing is just pretend to go through the motions. In some form or another it's going to pass, so start planning.
    - 7rurl 15y ago
      Just because it passes the committee doesn't mean it will pass the full house and senate votes, and then it has to pass through the President's veto powers. I'm holding out hope that Congress and the President have heard us and won't make it law. If all else fails maybe we can get it declared to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. And even if the Supreme Court fails us, then we just have to vote some new people into Congress and overturn the law.
      - SoftwareMaven 15y ago
        Given how many people in the White House have direct ties to Hollywood, I would count on a signature if it makes it out of Congress.
      - slowpoke 15y ago
        >then we just have to vote some new people into Congress and overturn the law. No. Just no. That's so delusional it's not even funny anymore. It doesn't matter who "you" vote into congress, it's the same shit with different assholes. They are ALL corporate sellouts. What's broken is the current system, where people who have no clue what so ever are allowed to vote on things they do not understand even on a surface level, dismiss the opinions of experts with comments such as "I'm not a nerd so I wouldn't understand" and vote "No" to everything because they've been told to do so. Stop believing that "the next election surely will change everything". It's bullshit and you should know it. Worse, most people will think that their responsibility is done after voting, sheepishly waiting for the next election where they fall for the same empty promises and banal phrases as they did in the previous election. Furthermore, even if we get SOPA to be repealed, the same shit will come up not even half a year later in a new disguise, I can promise you that with absolute certainty. As I said, the system is broken, and that is what needs to be fixed. Fighting SOPA and other abominations is just a never-ending battle with the symptoms.
dangrossman 15y ago
There's no need to worry about porn sites. One of the amendments proposed yesterday was to instruct the AG to not use any resources protecting the copyrights of pornography producers. I suppose their legal rights aren't as important as the industries that backed this bill.
- boredguy8 15y ago
  I missed that, so thanks for highlighting that one. And that's pretty interesting, because I'd imagine that pornography producers are amongst those whose IP is most often stolen. But you're right: according to Forbes, "The [Porn / Adult Entertainment] industry is tiny next to broadcast television ($32.3 billion in 1999 revenue, according to Veronis Suhler), cable television ($45.5 billion), the newspaper business ($27.5 billion), Hollywood ($31 billion), even to professional and educational publishing ($14.8 billion)." http://www.forbes.com/2001/05/25/0524porn.html http://www.forbes.com/2001/05/25/0524porn.html
  - dangrossman 15y ago
    The porn industry has grown a lot since 2001. The rationale given for the amendment was that without it, the AG would spend all its time working pornography cases, as they'd be the majority of copyright infringement occurring.
    - Zirro 15y ago
      How did they justify it, though? Did they explicitly say that "our industry is more important"?
      - jgeralnik 15y ago
        They just asserted that the government should not be working towards helping pornography producers because the material is distasteful.
    - tomflack 15y ago
      "Most of the copyright abuse is happening in this area... so let's ignore it in favour of the concerns of a larger group of patrons." Fantastic.
kevinchen 15y ago
Exactly. Those sites (the big ones, at least) will not go down without a fight. They have too much to lose.
w1ntermute 15y ago
> and porn sites? really? I don't understand this visceral hatred of pornography. Like it or not, it's an indisposable part of modern Western culture. It fulfills a need that is as old as mankind itself. Why can't we just acknowledge it for what it is instead of sweeping it under the rug?
- there 15y ago
  i was actually saying that because everything loaded from a porn site comes from other servers, so just listing its main hostname will not show anything at all.
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    Is this really categorically true for porn sites and only porn sites? Otherwise your comment seems rather weird.
    - uxp 15y ago
      > Is this really categorically true for porn sites and only porn sites? Depends on the entire structure of the site, and no not only porn sites. If you run chrome, hit up your Network Inspector in the dev tools and go to YouTube (or RedTube if you want, it's just about the same) to watch a video. The random video I had in my chrome history loaded from o-o.preferred.nuq04s10.v21.lscache3.c.youtube.com , and all images loaded from *.ytimg.com If Youtube were to go down and I tossed their IP address into my hostfile, I could visit their homepage, but there's a pretty good chance thumbnail images wouldn't load, and a 100% chance I would not have every single (seemingly dynamic) content server in my hostfile, so none of the videos would load anyways.
      - burgerbrain 15y ago
        Yes, this was my impression.
- yuvadam 15y ago
  It's not hatred of pornography. It's hatred of an industry that thrives and profits on suppression, humiliation and objectification of women.
magicalist 15y ago
> only one legal representative sent to the preliminary hearing I'm not sure if you know how senate hearings work. There's a reason that no other tech companies were at that hearing, and it's not because they all support SOPA.

by there 15y ago

burgerbrain 15y ago

"and porn sites? really?" I don't understand this comment. Can you explain it?

ck2 15y ago

Right because enforcement never overreaches and never abuses any weapon they are given. In the meatspace world, see tasers and pepper spray which are only supposed to be used when a gun would have been, so they are less than lethal - then there is warrantless everything these days, or no-knock warrants on the wrong house from a "tip" and they kill your dog for good measure (happens so often it's a cliche already). On the net see the DMCA mission creep and the thousands of Patriot Act "cannot tell anyone you were served, not even your lawyer" National Security Letters nonsense. If someone copies the code to crack bluray or something like that to wikipedia - why wouldn't SONY's lawyers use SOPA to take down all of wikipedia for 10 days?

there 15y ago
Right because enforcement never overreaches and never abuses any weapon they are given. i didn't say that, and i realize why the bill is dangerous. but to fear that it's suddenly going to shut down a bunch of popular sites overnight and we have to scramble to revert back to an /etc/hosts-over-ftp distribution of addressing is silly. we should be focusing on stopping the bill from passing first, rather than worry about how we'll get to the pirate bay in a few months.
- ck2 15y ago
  Sorry that wasn't meant to be at you at all - I am just really upset about all this stuff so much lately that I think I better stop watching the news for the rest of the year. Reality is we cannot stop it from passing, the people in charge of the committee want it to pass so the hearing is just pretend to go through the motions. In some form or another it's going to pass, so start planning.
  - 7rurl 15y ago
    Just because it passes the committee doesn't mean it will pass the full house and senate votes, and then it has to pass through the President's veto powers. I'm holding out hope that Congress and the President have heard us and won't make it law. If all else fails maybe we can get it declared to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. And even if the Supreme Court fails us, then we just have to vote some new people into Congress and overturn the law.
    - SoftwareMaven 15y ago
      Given how many people in the White House have direct ties to Hollywood, I would count on a signature if it makes it out of Congress.
    - slowpoke 15y ago
      >then we just have to vote some new people into Congress and overturn the law. No. Just no. That's so delusional it's not even funny anymore. It doesn't matter who "you" vote into congress, it's the same shit with different assholes. They are ALL corporate sellouts. What's broken is the current system, where people who have no clue what so ever are allowed to vote on things they do not understand even on a surface level, dismiss the opinions of experts with comments such as "I'm not a nerd so I wouldn't understand" and vote "No" to everything because they've been told to do so. Stop believing that "the next election surely will change everything". It's bullshit and you should know it. Worse, most people will think that their responsibility is done after voting, sheepishly waiting for the next election where they fall for the same empty promises and banal phrases as they did in the previous election. Furthermore, even if we get SOPA to be repealed, the same shit will come up not even half a year later in a new disguise, I can promise you that with absolute certainty. As I said, the system is broken, and that is what needs to be fixed. Fighting SOPA and other abominations is just a never-ending battle with the symptoms.

dangrossman 15y ago

There's no need to worry about porn sites. One of the amendments proposed yesterday was to instruct the AG to not use any resources protecting the copyrights of pornography producers. I suppose their legal rights aren't as important as the industries that backed this bill.

boredguy8 15y ago
I missed that, so thanks for highlighting that one. And that's pretty interesting, because I'd imagine that pornography producers are amongst those whose IP is most often stolen. But you're right: according to Forbes, "The [Porn / Adult Entertainment] industry is tiny next to broadcast television ($32.3 billion in 1999 revenue, according to Veronis Suhler), cable television ($45.5 billion), the newspaper business ($27.5 billion), Hollywood ($31 billion), even to professional and educational publishing ($14.8 billion)." http://www.forbes.com/2001/05/25/0524porn.html http://www.forbes.com/2001/05/25/0524porn.html
- dangrossman 15y ago
  The porn industry has grown a lot since 2001. The rationale given for the amendment was that without it, the AG would spend all its time working pornography cases, as they'd be the majority of copyright infringement occurring.
  - Zirro 15y ago
    How did they justify it, though? Did they explicitly say that "our industry is more important"?
    - jgeralnik 15y ago
      They just asserted that the government should not be working towards helping pornography producers because the material is distasteful.
  - tomflack 15y ago
    "Most of the copyright abuse is happening in this area... so let's ignore it in favour of the concerns of a larger group of patrons." Fantastic.

kevinchen 15y ago

Exactly. Those sites (the big ones, at least) will not go down without a fight. They have too much to lose.

w1ntermute 15y ago

> and porn sites? really? I don't understand this visceral hatred of pornography. Like it or not, it's an indisposable part of modern Western culture. It fulfills a need that is as old as mankind itself. Why can't we just acknowledge it for what it is instead of sweeping it under the rug?

there 15y ago
i was actually saying that because everything loaded from a porn site comes from other servers, so just listing its main hostname will not show anything at all.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  Is this really categorically true for porn sites and only porn sites? Otherwise your comment seems rather weird.
  - uxp 15y ago
    > Is this really categorically true for porn sites and only porn sites? Depends on the entire structure of the site, and no not only porn sites. If you run chrome, hit up your Network Inspector in the dev tools and go to YouTube (or RedTube if you want, it's just about the same) to watch a video. The random video I had in my chrome history loaded from o-o.preferred.nuq04s10.v21.lscache3.c.youtube.com , and all images loaded from *.ytimg.com If Youtube were to go down and I tossed their IP address into my hostfile, I could visit their homepage, but there's a pretty good chance thumbnail images wouldn't load, and a 100% chance I would not have every single (seemingly dynamic) content server in my hostfile, so none of the videos would load anyways.
    - burgerbrain 15y ago
      Yes, this was my impression.
yuvadam 15y ago
It's not hatred of pornography. It's hatred of an industry that thrives and profits on suppression, humiliation and objectification of women.

magicalist 15y ago

> only one legal representative sent to the preliminary hearing I'm not sure if you know how senate hearings work. There's a reason that no other tech companies were at that hearing, and it's not because they all support SOPA.