Meet the Strange Bedfellows Who Could Stop SOPA 231
jfruhlinger writes "In a political environment that's become very strongly defined by partisan lines, the SOPA debate has offered an unexpected ray of hope: the two main Congressional opponents of the bill are Ron Wyden, an Oregon Senator deemed a 'hardcore liberal' and Darrell Issa, a California Representative who is one of the Obama Administration's fiercest critics. (There are both Ds and Rs in favor of the bill, too.)" (Read more below.)
In the technical rather than political world, opposition seems easier to find: Trailrunner7 writes "A group of engineers, networking specialists, security experts and other specialists deeply involved with the Internet's development and growth have sent a letter to lawmakers criticizing the highly controversial SOPA and PIPA bills and imploring them not to pass the legislation, which they say would stifle innovation and 'threaten engineers who build Internet systems or offer services that are not readily and automatically compliant with censorship actions by the U.S. government.' The letter is signed by a long list of Internet pioneers and other respected figures, including Steve Bellovin, Paul Vixie, Vint Cerf, Jon Callas, Tony Li, Robert W. Taylor, Esther Dyson and Fred Baker, among many others. Both SOPA and PIPA have been criticized heavily by technologists, privacy advocates and security experts who say that not only would the proposed bills make it difficult for companies to create innovative new technologies, but they also would likely not even accomplish the goals their authors' had in mind, namely preventing copyright infringement and content piracy." And (hat tip to Rob Malda), here's the letter itself (PDF).
Re:And if you don't know offhand what SOPA is... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:They're NOT opposed to SOPA (Score:5, Informative)
Basically, OPEN only goes after commercial infringement, and only does so in a commercial way. I'm OK with that.
Re:They're NOT opposed to SOPA (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly this.
I've used this very tactic at home; I started out telling my wife that our entire AV setup is outdated, the larger living room in our new home necessitated a 70" TV and surround sound to fill the room, as well as my aging computer no longer being able to handle the demands of a home theater PC server...
What I actually really wanted: The green-light on building a new computer. We negotiated down from the TV, surround sound and new computer to just the new computer. My wife feels that that she managed to put the breaks on a lot of needless spending and I got exactly what I wanted short-term. In truth, I eventually want all three, but I have the patience to wait a while before complaining loudly that I can never hear the TV properly because of the crappy speakers, and the game will be afoot again. I wonder how long after the passage of SOPA or OPEN before they start complaining loudly that they can't fully protect us without expanding their reach to U.S. sites as well...
Re:And if you don't know offhand what SOPA is... (Score:5, Informative)
The article fails at describing SOPA and is super vague in most of its descriptions.
Better description [bbc.co.uk]
Re:They're NOT opposed to SOPA (Score:4, Informative)
Very good post, thanks. I think you will find it even easier if you stop thinking about right and left as being aligned with limited government and social welfare. The political right is not about limited government. Political 'right' and 'left' have nothing to do with where the solutions to problems come from. There are plenty of right wingers that believe in increased government and in government vs private sector solutions.
Think about how complacent we are that large corporate special interest groups get government help on the taxpayer's dime. Guitar maker Ernie Ball was raided by the BSA [slashdot.org] using local law enforcement to conduct the raid. Laws have been passed forcing businesses accused by the BSA to pay fines up-front, guilt can be decided later. People just seem to expect that government should drop everything and do what corporations want, no expenses spared. This is right wing, but certainly not conservative and limited government. copyright and license infringement that Ernie Ball was accused of is a civil not criminal matter. Law enforcement should have no role beyond serving a warrant, and law enforcement should only be called upon if private efforts to serve the warrant fail.
In the late 19th until the mid 20th century in America, the right wing tended to believe in limited government and be more conservative, and the left wing has been more socialist asking for government based solutions to problems like poverty, homelessness and loss of jobs. After World War II the trend for corporate America to feed at, and become dependent on, the government and the taxpayer has been constantly increasing. The people who back this kind of socialist welfare for the corporations has also increased.
There are plenty of examples of both right wing socialism and right wing totalinarianism throughout history. You can have someone with right wing ideals, like say a preference for management vs labor. Some of these right wingers will be conservative and think that we need less governement and more free market, knowing full well that this could result in the failure of many businesses who take too many risks(no safety nets). Others among these right wingers will be more socialist, like most of the Republicans in the USA. These socialist right wingers expect huge government backing of corporations and work to implement their beliefs in redistributing the taxes from middle class Americans to businesses and corporations.
Right and left does not translate to conservative and liberal. They are orthogonal attributes. Your conclusion that the liberals need the Tea Party to get government limited down to size again is spot on. Its not about right vs left, its about socialist solutions vs private sector solutions. Both right and left need to create private sector solutions to issues they are concerned about. Government is not always the solution.
Re:And if you don't know offhand what SOPA is... (Score:3, Informative)
From the article.
"The letter is short and to the point, explaining that, under the provisions currently found in the Stop Online Piracy Act " stop being a dumb ass.
Re:And if you don't know offhand what SOPA is... (Score:4, Informative)
SOPA has been mentioned at least once a week on /. for at least a few weeks, if not months, and you still don't know what it is?
What if they mailed the link to their non-techie relatives? What if they just joined Slashdot? What if the person is a writer with a mind for words and phrases not acronyms? Journalistic standard is to use the full name first before using the acronym. The exception is headlines. So Slashdot should have posted:
Headline: Meet the Strange Bedfellows Who Could Stop SOPA ...
jfruhlinger writes
"In a political environment that's become very strongly defined by partisan lines, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) debate has offered