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SOPA not Dead. Hearings to Resume in Feb.
- RexRollman 15y agoOf course it's not over. Our corporate overlords haven't gotten their money's worth yet.
- jcromartie 15y ago> legislation that protects consumers, businesses and jobs from foreign thieves who steal America's intellectual property What is SOPA going to do to stop foreign thieves? I thought it was limited to American ISPs? Unless they mean domestic thieves who use foreign sites...
- sp332 15y agoIt refers to foreign-hosted sites that sell to US-based customers, or who use US-based advertising agencies, or US banks. The idea is that the largest audience for US-made IP is in America, so blocking US users would cripple foreign pirates who traffic in US IP.
- corin_ 15y agoI think crippling foreign pirates isn't even the biggest goal, the biggest goal is that US customers can't benefit from foreign pirates. They'll care much less about that Russian/wherever site hosting their content if everyone in America has already paid for it.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- nextparadigms 15y agoFirst step: create "online borders" around US (they tried to do this in Europe) to "protect our jobs" and all that. Second step: filter the information you get in US. Make the Internet more like TV. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2XPiqhN_Ns http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2XPiqhN_Ns)
- corin_ 15y agoUnlike traditional, physical, theft, the damage of IP theft comes not when the file is put online illegally, but when it is downloaded/viewed illegally. Essentially their aim is to stop foreign theves from having any domestic (US) customers/downloaders/viewers.
- comicjk 15y agoThe "damage" is even more removed than you give it credit for. Assuming the goal of the IP owner is to sell the content, the "damage" occurs when the subset of downloaders who would have bought, don't buy. Clearly not all downloaders are in the category, and some both download illegally and buy legally. There's also a counteracting benefit to the IP owner, if illegal downloads serve to advertise his IP and induce more people to buy. Overall the connection to "traditional, physical theft" is weak.
- Vivtek 15y agoYou can't get traction in the US fighting Americans. If you present something as fighting foreign evildoers, though, you basically get carte blanche.
- derefr 15y agoThey already have the power to fight domestic IP "abuse", though—that's what the DMCA does. These acts are basically just to try to fill in the cracks the DMCA can't touch (foreign companies which allow domestic consumers breach IP law.)
- Jach 15y agoWant to buy your medicine from an evil Canadian e-commerce site for much cheaper? Only if you know how to get to their site without a domain name or using a non-US DNS server, bwahaha.
- TomOfTTB 15y agoI think you're missing the strategic issues here. SOPA is really about the 2012 election. On the content providers' side they see a close election for both the Presidency and the Senate (the House is likely to stay GOP no matter what). This means two very important things... 1. Control of the entire federal government is up for grabs 2. All Senate races will be under the microscope. Even those that don't usually get attention. Meaning Senators who aren't used to raising large sums of money are going to need large sums of money. Both these factors mean the content providers' money is worth even more and they know it. So now is the time to push. But the politician's are scared by protests. A close election means even a (relatively) small group of Internet activists could turn it. That makes politicians scared of laws that get people riled up. So the content providers need to both pay off policitians AND find a strategy that gives them political cover. The best way to do that in a bad economy is to frame it as a "jobs bill". Especially since it's the exact strategy that worked in Spain just a few months ago. That's why you're hearing about jobs and foreign thieves.
- cjoh 15y agoLearn to stop it tomorrow during the blackouts: http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/better-activism-day-january-18 http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/better-activism-day...
- sudonim 15y agoThat's the first time I've heard of SOPA being described as protecting consumers. It seems to me that consumers are knowingly buying the counterfeit goods or consuming the IP that is targeted by SOPA.
- firefoxman1 15y agoOh yeah, it's just another set of nice-sounding words to make the bill sound more friendly. Just like how NBC's VP called it a "jobs bill," playing on the hot 2009-2012 buzzword "jobs." If anything, older consumers are way less willing to pirate a product; they tend to look for legit brands. It took a lot to convince my mom that streaming TV shows online was (mostly) legal before she would do it. As for younger generations, they know very well what they're doing when they pirate.
- Avenger42 15y agoSOPA is a crime bill, and we need to make sure any attempts to paint it as a "jobs bill" are corrected. We can then move on to how it's a crime bill where the costs are far out of whack with the benefits, but I feel we're playing from behind when their first card is the "jobs bill" card and we don't immediately call them on it.
- wmf 15y agoBlaming the site operators for tricking poor innocent Americans into pirating stuff is a better spin than blaming the downloaders. For example, if you pirate Windows MS says "you may be a victim of counterfeiting". I suppose there might have been some people who thought AllOfMP3 was legitimate, though.
- dchest 15y agoAllOfMP3 was legitimate in Russia according to Russian laws.
- Tim-Boss 15y agoSOPA was never dead. At most is was just revised or slightly watered down, and I don't think anyone really believed that "Big Media Co" was going to back off that easily!
- RexRollman 15y agoWhat I expect is that it will eventually get passed and attached to something that will create a bad situation if vetoed. If nothing else, they will probably scale back a provision or two, and reintroduce those at a later date.
- djtriptych 15y agoWow look at that gorgeous parseable plain text. I miss the web of old sometimes...
- chc 15y agoWhat do you mean? I'd say the markup for that page is a bit lousy (e.g. pointless layout tables, abusing the strong tag just to make text bold), but it's hardly the worst thing I've ever seen. I can't even tell if you're being sarcastic or not.
- degenerate 15y agoI think he meant to reply to "What the first web blackout looked like" here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3475813 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3475813
- djtriptych 15y agoack sorry. Indeed I did.
- ChuckMcM 15y agoIn my opinion, the only way to kill the RIAA/MPAA. They seem to be the 'tap root' which produces weeds long after the ground appears barren.
- potatolicious 15y agoKilling the RIAA/MPAA will do nothing - another organization under a different name will simply spring up to take its place. Plus, it would only address a single issue out of what is really a systemic problem. The main problem is how much influence industry and lobby groups have on our politicans, and the vast majority of this isn't some conspiracy-laden secret-hand-shaking secret, it's just campaign financing. Despite some attempts in that direction, we haven't done enough here. I'm convinced that, if we slam the door shut on lobbying groups' ability to fund politicians, their influence will vaporize overnight. If corporations are people, then they need to be on a level playing field - they shouldn't be able to simply outspend regular citizens in contributing to politicians.
- ChuckMcM 15y agoCan you say more about "The main problem is how much influence industry and lobby groups have on our politicans, and the vast majority of this isn't some conspiracy-laden secret-hand-shaking secret, it's just campaign financing." ? I ask because stuff like this is used to abuse Google (see the Viacom vs Youtube lawsuit) and they have oodles of money and a super PAC and everything. If one can simply buy a politician why haven't they bought them all off? Seems expedient. That they haven't has made me wonder how causative this problem is with respect to bad public policy. I'd be interested in ways to validate where the problem is.
- gwillen 15y agoI suspect Google's PAC is underfunded because it mostly employs the kind of people who hate the whole concept of a PAC and find it morally loathsome.
- vaksel 15y agoI wish we had a truth in politics law that would punish these guys for lying or cheating the public
- steve-howard 15y agoWho's gonna pass it?
- vaksel 15y agowell it might be done. Seems like congress people bend over backwards for companies that donate as little as $100K to their reelection campaigns. There are 535 people in congress, so we'd need to raise 53,500,000 to make it happen. A small price to pay if you think about it To be safe, might want to support both candidates, so double that number to 107 million. So if 1 out of 3 Americans donates a dollar to the goal, it could happen.
- pjscott 15y agoThe next question: who will enforce it?
- freehunter 15y agoFederal Election Commission?
- steve-howard 15y agoSo Congress would accept some money up front to stop the gravy train forever? (Noting that some Senators serve for a half century or longer at a time)
- nl 15y agoIs there a specific lie you can point to? To enact legislation that protects consumers, businesses and jobs from foreign thieves who steal America's intellectual property, we will continue to bring together industry representatives and Members to find ways to combat online piracy Even this isn't technically a lie. SOPA would protect some businesses and jobs from some thieves. I don't think it's a good way to go about it, and I think the other consequences outweigh the benefits, but as it stands your comment doesn't really make sense in this context.
- narrator 15y agoWhy is the tech sector always on the defensive? Tech companies should pitch in to start a lobbying campaign to limit all copyright to 25 years or something like that and pursue it relentlessly, if only to keep the RIAA and MPAA lobbyists busy instead of letting them have all the time in the world to make trouble.
- Homunculiheaded 15y agoThis is especially strange when you stop to think that Apple's profits alone are around double the total revenue of all RIAA members. It's hard to imagine that the RIAA is the one that gets to bully apple around.
- cowkingdeluxe 15y agoA lot of the MPAA members also own a majority of the news stations and newspapers. They sway voters a lot more than Apple ever could.
- untog 15y agoHas Apple actually clarified their position on SOPA?
- tlb 15y agoApple makes some of that money from works more than 25 years old, so it's not necessarily in their interest.
- philwelch 15y agoHm, really? 25 years ago was 1987. I'm sure if Apple lost the copyright to 1987-era NeXTStep, virtually all of Mac OS X would still be locked down. There's scarcely anything else they still make money from, in copyright terms. Unless you mean iTunes revenue, but that's a break-even for devices anyway, and I'm not sure their profits would be hurt that much by music from before 1987 going into the public domain. In fact, it might help because there's a lot of movie and even TV content pre-1987 they'd suddenly be able to offer without one bit of negotiation.
- pasbesoin 15y agoThis Ars Technica story contains a quote from Chris Dodd (former Democratic Senator, now MPAA head), illustrates their attitude, and the misleading nature of their rhetoric. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/sopa-livesand-mpaa-calls-protests-an-abuse-of-power.ars http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/sopa-livesan... Contrary to what he says, the blackouts were driven from sites' user-bases, rather than the reverse. And negotiation and planning for them began well before the Administration's statement (limited in scope as it was, to boot). Of course, most of us here know this. Just remember, you're dealing with (consummate) liars. In this statement. And when they say things are "dead". And basically, as the saying goes, whenever you see their lips moving.
- libraryatnight 15y agoI would love this gentleman's actual address, email or physical, so I could be certain he was reading what I would like to say to him. We're all doing a pretty good job of making our representation know we don't like this legislation, I wish it were as easy to let the people responsible for engineering this crap just how horrible a thing they're doing.
- pasbesoin 15y agoI have been worrying that I let my emotions get the best of me in my grandparent comment. I have some thoughts about how to effectively address the politicians who are the tools in this (note that Dodd would now be in good part a tool wielder rather than a tool, having moved to the other side of Washington's revolving door). However, talk's cheap, and I've restrained myself from posting them when I don't have any further, concrete steps to take or taken, personally, with respect to what I think might be effective. (I've communicated to numerous parties, including written letters to my legislators.) As for his address, the MPAA office address is readily available. But I doubt anything would actually get through to Dodd. He's not interested in listening.
- logn 15y agoWhen you're paid hundreds of thousands (millions?) by a lobbyist, you don't give up that easily.
- viking 15y agoI suggest creating a list of special interest groups (strong pro- or anti-) paired with websites supporting their view that is a potential SOPA target. This list could be used by activists to inform each of these organizations of the risk that SOPA could effectively make it possible for their opposers to censor these websites with a false takedown request. This would essentially reframe the issue from a piracy/copyright violation issue to a censorship issue. It would then be a censorship bill, not a jobs bill.
- georgieporgie 15y agoI'm surprised that big media companies are spending so much time and money lobbying, instead of doing more creative things. The current generation of youth is growing up in an era where media can be copied instantaneously and easily. IP is a hard sell, since we're individually far removed from the mechanics of the economy (we don't work in car factories, for example), so there's no strong material goods basis from which to build an IP metaphor. They could be creating PSAs. They could be backing television shows and movies which portray piracy in a negative light. They could do this skillfully, and in a manner that isn't laughably heavy handed (like the pre-movie PSAs that were mocked on The IT Crowd). Look at that article about diamonds from awhile back, and how stunningly successful De Beers was in inserting diamonds into the public mind. Compare that with the heavy-handed, simplistic legislation approach that the MPAA and friends are following.