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Alexis Ohanian and Dan Kaminsky will address Congress on Jan 18th

270 points by nextparadigms 15y ago

aspir 15y ago
This is a step in the right direction, but this level of action should not stop after SOPA. The tech industry is so large and powerful in this current era that it's due time that it begin to develop a more powerful voice in Washington. SOPA has made it this far because our congress does not have a reliable technology lobby to educate our lawmakers. SOPA would have been killed already if this lobby existed in full strength; and this industry has the funds to have actually created this presence many years ago. We should focus on stopping SOPA, of course, but after this episode, something needs to be put in place to prevent this from happening again.
- derrida 15y ago
  Perhaps. But I worry those lobbying voices would only in the end represent big money, and not necessarily the small entrepreneurs and creators. I can imagine a future where a powerful tech lobby augments a bill like SOPA to benefit the existing big players, and locks other (small) competitors out. I don't think we can fight fire with fire. I do think that the widespread opposition to SOPA has united many. Organizations which represent our common interests and already have widespread support, need to be further supported, the EFF etc. I would be skeptical of efforts from players to throw lots of money at a new organisation 'in Washington' in the hope that it does the work. Good and effective organizations already exist, they need your activism and they need your funding. :-)
  - aspir 15y ago
    True, but I wasn't really referring to us (small firms, freelancers, etc.) but the big companies. Its practically laughable to take out a NY times ad [0], when each of these companies (or their respective founders) could pledge a hundred grand a quarter and dramatically change the industry's presence. This could be used against small business, but that's not really my point either. I guess my point is that if you won't "play the game," you'll always end up losing, and there's too many billions of dollars at stake to not play the game. Why should Google struggle for years in youtube-based court litigation when they could have stopped SOPA at inception? Many industries (pharmaceuticals, energy, chemicals) understand this. They don't particularly like it, but they also understand that its in the best interest of their industry's long term growth. I think Internet powerhouses are beginning to realize this now too. [0] http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/internet-titans-fight-sopa-with-full-page-ny-times-ad/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/internet-titans-fight-sopa-... EDIT- This is also just a thought: how many lunches, golf outings, and "beer summits" with Sen. Leahy and Rep. Lamar and their respective staff would that NY Times Ad have bought. I'm willing to wager that the RIAA and big content do.
- toyg 15y ago
  Who is large and powerful in the tech industry? Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe... they all have their own long-established lobbying efforts in place. Unfortunately, they don't care about the internet; the net is actually disruptive of their business model, for the most part. You can look at BSA's position to see what "big money" from the tech industry really wants. For them, Google, Facebook etc, are uppity competitors, and they'd love to see them cut to size by the government. So it's rather the internet-based industry, rather than the generic "tech world", who should improve their lobbying. FB, Google and Twitter execs should start cashing in some of those umpteen photo-ops with Obama, threatening to sponsor and enable primary challengers for everyone who will vote for bad bills. Even better, threaten to silently downrank specific politicians on their sites: "we can do censorship too, let's see how you hurt when people can't find your donation page".
  - prophetjohn 15y ago
    I hate to break it to you, Apple, Microsoft and the rest: they're all essentially internet-based. If Apple doesn't care about the internet, they need to have a long, hard think about why people are buying their products. How many iPads are they going to sell when people can only access a crippled version of Facebook and Twitter is shut down? The technology industry as it is today exists almost exclusively because of the ubiquity of the internet. Companies whose products stand to suffer directly from SOPA are not the only tech companies that should be worried; any company whose profits are a result of the proliferation of the internet should be scared of SOPA. That's almost every single tech company out there.
    - toyg 15y ago
      Eh, go tell the BSA... I bet Microsoft would thrive in a censored internet as much as it did in the pre-internet days.
- kn0thing 15y ago
  I've been pleased with the folks at engineadvocacy.org and I'm hoping this can be a long-term solution. They're non-partisan and solely focused on lobbying on behalf of the tech entrepreneur, plain and simple.
  - aspir 15y ago
    These guys are what I've been dreaming of. Thanks! Now you should casually point Reddit their direction :)
d_r 15y ago
Is anyone else irked by Forbes' need to use a "revenge of the nerds" picture there? I feel like the SOPA argument is inherently skewed for most Americans, and it is bitterly unfair. Pro side: "we're stopping evil foreign counterfeiters, we're helping save American jobs, we're looking out for your safety." Con side: "complicated sounding tech mumbo jumbo, this will break the internet, and some references to Libya" Which side would you support if you didn't know any better? SOPA affects more than just the "nerds." How can the messaging be improved? How can it be made more compelling to resonate more with laypeople? Why aren't the "influential" people focusing on the message?
- celoyd 15y ago
  How can the messaging be improved? How can it be made more compelling to resonate more with laypeople? Explain SOPA as (1) censorship and (2) a heavy burden on legitimate business. These are honest ways of describing it in everyday terms, and at least one of those points should resonate with almost any American, whatever their political identity. Given the time to lay out a clearer case, explain that even if you agree with some of the intentions behind SOPA, it’s unlikely to be effective at stopping piracy. If passed, it would probably have to be at least partly rolled back. And explain that the kind of highly creative, small-time artists whom people instinctively want to defend are, in general, hurt by draconian IP policy. I think this is realistic and counteracts the impression that people who object to SOPA are all Professor Frink.
  - ericb 15y ago
    Censorship is the wrong approach. Our current regime is anti-civil liberty (free speech included). You need to use the right language against them. SOPA regulations will increase the size of our government, cost millions of jobs, and billions of dollars in market value, while destroying America's technological edge. The legislation hurts small businesses(how can they have blog comments without being sued under SOPA). Also, you need to find a way to call the bill a tax increase.
    - evolve2k 15y ago
tmcw 15y ago
> Opponents of the Stop Online Piracy Act, the bill that threatens to block large swathes of foreign websites for alleged copyright infringement, have complained that Congress has yet to hear their voice. Foreign websites? This, combined with the fact that they're referred to once as 'haters' and twice as 'nerds', makes me think that Forbes is worthless at writing about anything except how rich blue-chip CEOs are.
- citadrianne 15y ago
  Not defending Forbes, but the bill was amended to only apply to sites outside US jurisdiction. "Lamar’s amendments also clarify that sites ending in .com, .org and .net are not covered by the bill. Only foreign sites fall under SOPA’s wrath." http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/sopa-watered-down-amendment/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/sopa-watered-down-a...
  - nextparadigms 15y ago
    So co.uk sites are a go. Please explain what gives US the right to do that? Especially without due process.
    - skymt 15y ago
      Why wouldn't they have the right? The DNS servers in question are physically in US territory. And due process is part of the bill: in the current version a domain takedown requires a court order. Weak protection to be sure, given the army of lawyers the MPAA has lined up and the tendency of some judges to rubber-stamp legitimate-seeming orders, but not strictly speaking a due-process issue.
      - gergles 15y ago
        A domain takedown, sure, but not a payment-processing and ad-serving ban, which may as well be a takedown for 99+% of sites.
      - marshray 15y ago
rythie 15y ago
Someone [a designer probably] needs to make one of those really nicely designed micro-sites with a really clear explaination of why SOPA is bad. For example this is nice: http://rogerdudler.github.com/git-guide/ http://rogerdudler.github.com/git-guide/ but what if the same effort could go into explaining SOPA to lay people (and politicians)?
herval 15y ago
On a totally off-topic note: I don't know a large number of successful individuals, but I have to say that Mr Ohanian is among the most approachable, good people I've met so far. I wish some of the "successful" individuals I know back home would learn a lesson or two from people like him... (brace for the downvotes)
- kn0thing 15y ago
  Ignore the downvotes :) thanks! I hope this is part of the reason why they've invited me back to DC.
doki_pen 15y ago
I find it interesting that technical arguments will be heard but there will be no debate about liberty and the 1st amendment.
- skymt 15y ago
  Is there really an obvious 1st-amendment issue here? SOPA is a censorship tool with great potential for abuse, but as written and intended it targets IP infringement, a very narrow category of speech that our society has already decided to censor. The 1st amendment will come into play when Congress wants to censor more, not merely censor better.
  - nextparadigms 15y ago
    If I'm not mistaken SOPA can take down websites that merely link to infringing sites. I believe that is very dangerous for the Internet, because it's what it's built on, and it's also very dangerous for freedom of speech. Linking is speech.
  - gergles 15y ago
    Prior restraint is the biggest 1st-amendment issue possible (as expressed by SCOTUS in several opinions), and shutting down sites based on a say-so and a court order that the site "looks infringing" is prior restraint.
dicroce 15y ago
Ask them if they've ever seen one of these: 74.125.224.49 Then tell them that if THEY have seen IP addresses, then the pirates that are trading copyright material online certainly have, and that with just an IP address, SOPA can be circumvented.
- wl 15y ago
  SOPA provides for DNS and IP blacklisting. In fact, there was even a failed amendment to take the IP blacklisting out.
scott_s 15y ago
Alexis, please consider explaining why Congress has not heard what you and the other experts are there to say. If I was to say it myself, I would say "I'm sorry for putting you in this position. You're in this position because Washington does not undertand technology. And that is because technology does not understand Washington. We need to change that." Part of the problem is that the RIAA and MPAA have active lobbying efforts. We don't need to frame it as "buying influence," just that if one set of people are the only ones around explaining a problem and its solutions, that's all they're going to know. The technology industry needs lobbyists heading off these sorts of issues by actively explaining to Congress people the implications of doing this sort of thing. I imagine that something they will think is, "If what these people are saying is true, and the consequences are so dire, how is it possible that I didn't hear this before?" This explanation answers that question, and, I think, makes the technical explanations and their wider implications more believable.
dimitertg 15y ago
I believe this video explains it very nicely in businessman's / lawmaker's terms: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhwuXNv8fJM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhwuXNv8fJM
clebio 15y ago
While it's nice that opposition to SOPA is getting some traction, the passage of the 2012 NDAA slipped by with little fanfare. Criticism and debate of that legislation are moot now. though NDAA is not a technological issue of itself, sections 1021 and 1022 still diminish our civil liberties much more effectively. I'm glad to see the knowledge-worker communities rallying around a topic peripheral to our basic freedoms, but I fear we've missed the boat on this one. Regrettably, pizza sauce in school lunches was not the only bit of smoke and mirrors foist upon us.
xtc 15y ago
Dan needs to maintain his composure when talking about DNS.
walru 15y ago
What needs to be addressed more than anything is the capricious wording of the legislation, and how it puts an extreme amount of power into a very select few individuals who remain hidden behind drawn curtain. More than any inconvenience this provides for a company which operates on the web, this is censorship in its highest form.
IgorPartola 15y ago
What will happen if SOPA passes? I don't mean the legal consequences, but rather: will we just create a new way to exchange DNS information, such as a giant hosts file distributed over BitTorrent that contains the addresses of most popular websites? Or will the geeks shrug this one off and move on, just with half of the Internet going dark? The way I see it, the internet has always found a way to adapt in the past, and the greater the threat, the more ingenious the solution. Currently, bunch of people on Reddit are trying to build an (IMHO) hopeless mesh network, but the real need is not there yet. What happens if SOPA goes through and we can no longer use the internet as is and the need becomes urgent?
- chunkyslink 15y ago
  > What will happen if SOPA passes? I'm going to close Facebook down by regularly posting links to copyrighted files and 'letting the authorities know'. I cant wait. edit: What a completely ridiculous situation this is

270 points by nextparadigms 15y ago

aspir 15y ago

This is a step in the right direction, but this level of action should not stop after SOPA. The tech industry is so large and powerful in this current era that it's due time that it begin to develop a more powerful voice in Washington. SOPA has made it this far because our congress does not have a reliable technology lobby to educate our lawmakers. SOPA would have been killed already if this lobby existed in full strength; and this industry has the funds to have actually created this presence many years ago. We should focus on stopping SOPA, of course, but after this episode, something needs to be put in place to prevent this from happening again.

derrida 15y ago
Perhaps. But I worry those lobbying voices would only in the end represent big money, and not necessarily the small entrepreneurs and creators. I can imagine a future where a powerful tech lobby augments a bill like SOPA to benefit the existing big players, and locks other (small) competitors out. I don't think we can fight fire with fire. I do think that the widespread opposition to SOPA has united many. Organizations which represent our common interests and already have widespread support, need to be further supported, the EFF etc. I would be skeptical of efforts from players to throw lots of money at a new organisation 'in Washington' in the hope that it does the work. Good and effective organizations already exist, they need your activism and they need your funding. :-)
- aspir 15y ago
  True, but I wasn't really referring to us (small firms, freelancers, etc.) but the big companies. Its practically laughable to take out a NY times ad [0], when each of these companies (or their respective founders) could pledge a hundred grand a quarter and dramatically change the industry's presence. This could be used against small business, but that's not really my point either. I guess my point is that if you won't "play the game," you'll always end up losing, and there's too many billions of dollars at stake to not play the game. Why should Google struggle for years in youtube-based court litigation when they could have stopped SOPA at inception? Many industries (pharmaceuticals, energy, chemicals) understand this. They don't particularly like it, but they also understand that its in the best interest of their industry's long term growth. I think Internet powerhouses are beginning to realize this now too. [0] http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/internet-titans-fight-sopa-with-full-page-ny-times-ad/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/internet-titans-fight-sopa-... EDIT- This is also just a thought: how many lunches, golf outings, and "beer summits" with Sen. Leahy and Rep. Lamar and their respective staff would that NY Times Ad have bought. I'm willing to wager that the RIAA and big content do.
toyg 15y ago
Who is large and powerful in the tech industry? Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe... they all have their own long-established lobbying efforts in place. Unfortunately, they don't care about the internet; the net is actually disruptive of their business model, for the most part. You can look at BSA's position to see what "big money" from the tech industry really wants. For them, Google, Facebook etc, are uppity competitors, and they'd love to see them cut to size by the government. So it's rather the internet-based industry, rather than the generic "tech world", who should improve their lobbying. FB, Google and Twitter execs should start cashing in some of those umpteen photo-ops with Obama, threatening to sponsor and enable primary challengers for everyone who will vote for bad bills. Even better, threaten to silently downrank specific politicians on their sites: "we can do censorship too, let's see how you hurt when people can't find your donation page".
- prophetjohn 15y ago
  I hate to break it to you, Apple, Microsoft and the rest: they're all essentially internet-based. If Apple doesn't care about the internet, they need to have a long, hard think about why people are buying their products. How many iPads are they going to sell when people can only access a crippled version of Facebook and Twitter is shut down? The technology industry as it is today exists almost exclusively because of the ubiquity of the internet. Companies whose products stand to suffer directly from SOPA are not the only tech companies that should be worried; any company whose profits are a result of the proliferation of the internet should be scared of SOPA. That's almost every single tech company out there.
  - toyg 15y ago
    Eh, go tell the BSA... I bet Microsoft would thrive in a censored internet as much as it did in the pre-internet days.
kn0thing 15y ago
I've been pleased with the folks at engineadvocacy.org and I'm hoping this can be a long-term solution. They're non-partisan and solely focused on lobbying on behalf of the tech entrepreneur, plain and simple.
- aspir 15y ago
  These guys are what I've been dreaming of. Thanks! Now you should casually point Reddit their direction :)

d_r 15y ago

Is anyone else irked by Forbes' need to use a "revenge of the nerds" picture there? I feel like the SOPA argument is inherently skewed for most Americans, and it is bitterly unfair. Pro side: "we're stopping evil foreign counterfeiters, we're helping save American jobs, we're looking out for your safety." Con side: "complicated sounding tech mumbo jumbo, this will break the internet, and some references to Libya" Which side would you support if you didn't know any better? SOPA affects more than just the "nerds." How can the messaging be improved? How can it be made more compelling to resonate more with laypeople? Why aren't the "influential" people focusing on the message?

celoyd 15y ago
How can the messaging be improved? How can it be made more compelling to resonate more with laypeople? Explain SOPA as (1) censorship and (2) a heavy burden on legitimate business. These are honest ways of describing it in everyday terms, and at least one of those points should resonate with almost any American, whatever their political identity. Given the time to lay out a clearer case, explain that even if you agree with some of the intentions behind SOPA, it’s unlikely to be effective at stopping piracy. If passed, it would probably have to be at least partly rolled back. And explain that the kind of highly creative, small-time artists whom people instinctively want to defend are, in general, hurt by draconian IP policy. I think this is realistic and counteracts the impression that people who object to SOPA are all Professor Frink.
- ericb 15y ago
  Censorship is the wrong approach. Our current regime is anti-civil liberty (free speech included). You need to use the right language against them. SOPA regulations will increase the size of our government, cost millions of jobs, and billions of dollars in market value, while destroying America's technological edge. The legislation hurts small businesses(how can they have blog comments without being sued under SOPA). Also, you need to find a way to call the bill a tax increase.
  - evolve2k 15y ago

tmcw 15y ago

> Opponents of the Stop Online Piracy Act, the bill that threatens to block large swathes of foreign websites for alleged copyright infringement, have complained that Congress has yet to hear their voice. Foreign websites? This, combined with the fact that they're referred to once as 'haters' and twice as 'nerds', makes me think that Forbes is worthless at writing about anything except how rich blue-chip CEOs are.

citadrianne 15y ago
Not defending Forbes, but the bill was amended to only apply to sites outside US jurisdiction. "Lamar’s amendments also clarify that sites ending in .com, .org and .net are not covered by the bill. Only foreign sites fall under SOPA’s wrath." http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/sopa-watered-down-amendment/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/sopa-watered-down-a...
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  So co.uk sites are a go. Please explain what gives US the right to do that? Especially without due process.
  - skymt 15y ago
    Why wouldn't they have the right? The DNS servers in question are physically in US territory. And due process is part of the bill: in the current version a domain takedown requires a court order. Weak protection to be sure, given the army of lawyers the MPAA has lined up and the tendency of some judges to rubber-stamp legitimate-seeming orders, but not strictly speaking a due-process issue.
    - gergles 15y ago
      A domain takedown, sure, but not a payment-processing and ad-serving ban, which may as well be a takedown for 99+% of sites.
    - marshray 15y ago

rythie 15y ago

Someone [a designer probably] needs to make one of those really nicely designed micro-sites with a really clear explaination of why SOPA is bad. For example this is nice: http://rogerdudler.github.com/git-guide/ http://rogerdudler.github.com/git-guide/ but what if the same effort could go into explaining SOPA to lay people (and politicians)?

herval 15y ago

On a totally off-topic note: I don't know a large number of successful individuals, but I have to say that Mr Ohanian is among the most approachable, good people I've met so far. I wish some of the "successful" individuals I know back home would learn a lesson or two from people like him... (brace for the downvotes)

kn0thing 15y ago
Ignore the downvotes :) thanks! I hope this is part of the reason why they've invited me back to DC.

doki_pen 15y ago

I find it interesting that technical arguments will be heard but there will be no debate about liberty and the 1st amendment.

skymt 15y ago
Is there really an obvious 1st-amendment issue here? SOPA is a censorship tool with great potential for abuse, but as written and intended it targets IP infringement, a very narrow category of speech that our society has already decided to censor. The 1st amendment will come into play when Congress wants to censor more, not merely censor better.
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  If I'm not mistaken SOPA can take down websites that merely link to infringing sites. I believe that is very dangerous for the Internet, because it's what it's built on, and it's also very dangerous for freedom of speech. Linking is speech.
- gergles 15y ago
  Prior restraint is the biggest 1st-amendment issue possible (as expressed by SCOTUS in several opinions), and shutting down sites based on a say-so and a court order that the site "looks infringing" is prior restraint.

dicroce 15y ago

Ask them if they've ever seen one of these: 74.125.224.49 Then tell them that if THEY have seen IP addresses, then the pirates that are trading copyright material online certainly have, and that with just an IP address, SOPA can be circumvented.

wl 15y ago
SOPA provides for DNS and IP blacklisting. In fact, there was even a failed amendment to take the IP blacklisting out.

scott_s 15y ago

Alexis, please consider explaining why Congress has not heard what you and the other experts are there to say. If I was to say it myself, I would say "I'm sorry for putting you in this position. You're in this position because Washington does not undertand technology. And that is because technology does not understand Washington. We need to change that." Part of the problem is that the RIAA and MPAA have active lobbying efforts. We don't need to frame it as "buying influence," just that if one set of people are the only ones around explaining a problem and its solutions, that's all they're going to know. The technology industry needs lobbyists heading off these sorts of issues by actively explaining to Congress people the implications of doing this sort of thing. I imagine that something they will think is, "If what these people are saying is true, and the consequences are so dire, how is it possible that I didn't hear this before?" This explanation answers that question, and, I think, makes the technical explanations and their wider implications more believable.

dimitertg 15y ago

I believe this video explains it very nicely in businessman's / lawmaker's terms: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhwuXNv8fJM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhwuXNv8fJM

clebio 15y ago

While it's nice that opposition to SOPA is getting some traction, the passage of the 2012 NDAA slipped by with little fanfare. Criticism and debate of that legislation are moot now. though NDAA is not a technological issue of itself, sections 1021 and 1022 still diminish our civil liberties much more effectively. I'm glad to see the knowledge-worker communities rallying around a topic peripheral to our basic freedoms, but I fear we've missed the boat on this one. Regrettably, pizza sauce in school lunches was not the only bit of smoke and mirrors foist upon us.

xtc 15y ago

Dan needs to maintain his composure when talking about DNS.

walru 15y ago

What needs to be addressed more than anything is the capricious wording of the legislation, and how it puts an extreme amount of power into a very select few individuals who remain hidden behind drawn curtain. More than any inconvenience this provides for a company which operates on the web, this is censorship in its highest form.

IgorPartola 15y ago

What will happen if SOPA passes? I don't mean the legal consequences, but rather: will we just create a new way to exchange DNS information, such as a giant hosts file distributed over BitTorrent that contains the addresses of most popular websites? Or will the geeks shrug this one off and move on, just with half of the Internet going dark? The way I see it, the internet has always found a way to adapt in the past, and the greater the threat, the more ingenious the solution. Currently, bunch of people on Reddit are trying to build an (IMHO) hopeless mesh network, but the real need is not there yet. What happens if SOPA goes through and we can no longer use the internet as is and the need becomes urgent?

chunkyslink 15y ago
> What will happen if SOPA passes? I'm going to close Facebook down by regularly posting links to copyrighted files and 'letting the authorities know'. I cant wait. edit: What a completely ridiculous situation this is