6 ms·

How SOPA Could Ruin My Life

115 points by AdamFernandez 15y ago

stcredzero 15y ago
What the US government and many other non computer-savvy people in power need to realize is that linking is speech! One of my first employers was at a public television station. In his mind, he had to ask the other party permission to link to them. That is thinking of a link as a physical thing, as if it was a copper wire or a metal house key. It's not. It's just information. Needing permission to link to something is exactly like needing permission to talk about something. That shouldn't be. If we live in a society that believes in free speech, we should all be free to link to anything we want to!
- blurbytree 15y ago
  Free speech has many exceptions. So no, you shouldn't be able to link to anything you want to. Just like free speech, there are many exceptions about what you can link to which are already illegal.
  - floppydisk 15y ago
    That's like saying I can't walk out of a public art gallery and go tell a friend there's a cool landscape portrait by a famous artist hanging on the 3rd floor. That's linking. By definition, if it's on the internet, it's public facing and therefore publicly available knowledge. Linking is simply telling others, hey, look over here for publicly available information. Now, if you link to something illegal or perverse, depending on content, that could result in interest from the authorities but that's because you, the user, made a personal decision to directly affiliate yourself with that content via a link. The mere act of linking to publicly available information, should not in and of itself, be illegal or prohibited.
    - shasta 15y ago
      Really? That's the best analogy you could come up with? It's more like a newspaper printing advertisements that there will be stolen radios for sale or prostitutes behind the Walmart on Saturday.
      - stcredzero 15y ago
        Poor analogy. Unless there are other mechanisms in place, a link doesn't serve an advertising purpose any more or less than a purely informational one. I would like for a newspaper engage in activities like exposing fences or street prostitution. I believe that's called "reporting."
redthrowaway 15y ago
This is bad. I would have thought the overwhelming stupidity of this bill would have, if not killed it, then at least signaled its demise by now. The so-called "nuclear option" of everyone who is opposed to SOPA blacking out their sites is looking like it might be a necessity.
- marshray 15y ago
  The article was dated a few weeks ago. Hopefully the tide is turning.
dethstarr 15y ago
This is a shakedown by Members of Congress, plain and simple. Internet companies have made billions of dollars in an unregulated market but have not paid off Congressmen/Senators through campaign contributions, lobbyists, creation of significant PACs, 527 committees -- things which all appeal to a politician's self-interest. Hollywood has outspent internet companies, paid hundreds of millions of dollars through direct and indirect campaign financing and actually gives a demonic benefit to the greedy politicians by essentially paying them off. If internet companies want to do anything, I think they should get off their butts and outspend the heck out the idiotic music/movie industry so politicians can see there is a monetary return from internet companies. To be naive and think that SOPA will go away because of its inherent stupidity is wrong. You have to fight. You have to take action and battle for protection of the internet. You need to pay Congress the "protection money" in this sickening game of soft-extortion. Understand that Congress has power, and can exercise it either way, as long as you appeal to the politicians' self-interest. It's sad but true. Save the internet, stop SOPA now!
- benwerd 15y ago
  Wow. I hadn't thought of it in these terms, but you're absolutely right: we're one of the few industries that doesn't contribute much in the way of lobbying or other contributions, so we lose out unless we fall in line. It's shocking - our government is a protection scam. It strikes me that this is a great opportunity for technologists to get into politics. It's been done before, of course, with semi-lighthearted endeavors like the Pirate Party. But there's certainly room for a new kind of democratic party that works like the web and espouses the combination of social libertarianism and progressive business that so many of us are behind. Human society is a complex system, made up of graphs and dependencies; there are so many political approaches we can apply to that idea.
- snowwrestler 15y ago
  > Internet companies have made billions of dollars in an unregulated market but have not paid off Congressmen/Senators through campaign contributions, lobbyists, creation of significant PACs, 527 committees -- things which all appeal to a politician's self-interest. This is completely false; Internet companies are regulated by the DMCA, which provides them safe harbor from private lawsuits related to copyright infringement. If the DMCA did not exist, they would have been sued into oblivion by the content companies long ago. There are a lot of reasons to oppose SOPA but let's not pretend that the Internet is unregulated.
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- sledmonkey 15y ago
  If he's doing around 2.8-3.2 million pages views a month he's most likely in the premium program that allows for things like that.
mindslight 15y ago
This kind of weak-minded opposition actually makes me think that I'd rather see SOPA proceed as-is. If SOPA were amended with some provisions for cargo-cult "due process", most of the corporate opposition would disappear but we'd still be left with the same broken internet. > It’s hard to make a coherent case that you should be able to download a full movie or album completely for free Actually, it's hard to make a coherent case that it's even possible to police such downloading when universal computing devices and networks exist. The internet community needs to wake up and realize that the copyright cartels (and political groupthink, in general) are their mortal enemies, stop kowtowing to them, and write code to defend themselves (and push these realizations to the masses).
- whackedspinach 15y ago
  Exactly. We need to put up some opposition to this in court, but eventually just decentralize all levels of the internet. The real fight is when using that code (Namecoin, TOR, etc) is becoming illegal. Then we have a final legal battle to fight.

115 points by AdamFernandez 15y ago

What the US government and many other non computer-savvy people in power need to realize is that linking is speech! One of my first employers was at a public television station. In his mind, he had to ask the other party permission to link to them. That is thinking of a link as a physical thing, as if it was a copper wire or a metal house key. It's not. It's just information. Needing permission to link to something is exactly like needing permission to talk about something. That shouldn't be. If we live in a society that believes in free speech, we should all be free to link to anything we want to!

blurbytree 15y ago
Free speech has many exceptions. So no, you shouldn't be able to link to anything you want to. Just like free speech, there are many exceptions about what you can link to which are already illegal.
- floppydisk 15y ago
  That's like saying I can't walk out of a public art gallery and go tell a friend there's a cool landscape portrait by a famous artist hanging on the 3rd floor. That's linking. By definition, if it's on the internet, it's public facing and therefore publicly available knowledge. Linking is simply telling others, hey, look over here for publicly available information. Now, if you link to something illegal or perverse, depending on content, that could result in interest from the authorities but that's because you, the user, made a personal decision to directly affiliate yourself with that content via a link. The mere act of linking to publicly available information, should not in and of itself, be illegal or prohibited.
  - shasta 15y ago
    Really? That's the best analogy you could come up with? It's more like a newspaper printing advertisements that there will be stolen radios for sale or prostitutes behind the Walmart on Saturday.
    - stcredzero 15y ago
      Poor analogy. Unless there are other mechanisms in place, a link doesn't serve an advertising purpose any more or less than a purely informational one. I would like for a newspaper engage in activities like exposing fences or street prostitution. I believe that's called "reporting."

redthrowaway 15y ago

This is bad. I would have thought the overwhelming stupidity of this bill would have, if not killed it, then at least signaled its demise by now. The so-called "nuclear option" of everyone who is opposed to SOPA blacking out their sites is looking like it might be a necessity.

marshray 15y ago
The article was dated a few weeks ago. Hopefully the tide is turning.

dethstarr 15y ago

This is a shakedown by Members of Congress, plain and simple. Internet companies have made billions of dollars in an unregulated market but have not paid off Congressmen/Senators through campaign contributions, lobbyists, creation of significant PACs, 527 committees -- things which all appeal to a politician's self-interest. Hollywood has outspent internet companies, paid hundreds of millions of dollars through direct and indirect campaign financing and actually gives a demonic benefit to the greedy politicians by essentially paying them off. If internet companies want to do anything, I think they should get off their butts and outspend the heck out the idiotic music/movie industry so politicians can see there is a monetary return from internet companies. To be naive and think that SOPA will go away because of its inherent stupidity is wrong. You have to fight. You have to take action and battle for protection of the internet. You need to pay Congress the "protection money" in this sickening game of soft-extortion. Understand that Congress has power, and can exercise it either way, as long as you appeal to the politicians' self-interest. It's sad but true. Save the internet, stop SOPA now!

benwerd 15y ago
Wow. I hadn't thought of it in these terms, but you're absolutely right: we're one of the few industries that doesn't contribute much in the way of lobbying or other contributions, so we lose out unless we fall in line. It's shocking - our government is a protection scam. It strikes me that this is a great opportunity for technologists to get into politics. It's been done before, of course, with semi-lighthearted endeavors like the Pirate Party. But there's certainly room for a new kind of democratic party that works like the web and espouses the combination of social libertarianism and progressive business that so many of us are behind. Human society is a complex system, made up of graphs and dependencies; there are so many political approaches we can apply to that idea.
snowwrestler 15y ago
> Internet companies have made billions of dollars in an unregulated market but have not paid off Congressmen/Senators through campaign contributions, lobbyists, creation of significant PACs, 527 committees -- things which all appeal to a politician's self-interest. This is completely false; Internet companies are regulated by the DMCA, which provides them safe harbor from private lawsuits related to copyright infringement. If the DMCA did not exist, they would have been sued into oblivion by the content companies long ago. There are a lot of reasons to oppose SOPA but let's not pretend that the Internet is unregulated.

deleted 15y ago

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deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

sledmonkey 15y ago
If he's doing around 2.8-3.2 million pages views a month he's most likely in the premium program that allows for things like that.

mindslight 15y ago

This kind of weak-minded opposition actually makes me think that I'd rather see SOPA proceed as-is. If SOPA were amended with some provisions for cargo-cult "due process", most of the corporate opposition would disappear but we'd still be left with the same broken internet. > It’s hard to make a coherent case that you should be able to download a full movie or album completely for free Actually, it's hard to make a coherent case that it's even possible to police such downloading when universal computing devices and networks exist. The internet community needs to wake up and realize that the copyright cartels (and political groupthink, in general) are their mortal enemies, stop kowtowing to them, and write code to defend themselves (and push these realizations to the masses).

whackedspinach 15y ago
Exactly. We need to put up some opposition to this in court, but eventually just decentralize all levels of the internet. The real fight is when using that code (Namecoin, TOR, etc) is becoming illegal. Then we have a final legal battle to fight.