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).
They're NOT opposed to SOPA (Score:5, Insightful)
This summary makes it sound like they're heroes fighting for our freedom or something. In actuality, they're just advocated for their own alternative Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act [wikipedia.org] (OPEN). And the only difference between their bill and SOPA is that SOPA will put enforcement in the hands of the Justice Department and OPEN will put it in the hands of the United States International Trade Commission [wikipedia.org], which in practice will make ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE to most sites being busted.
The only reason Darrel Issa and Ron Wyden are supporting it is because it provides more protection for the Googles, Facebooks, etc. and they're both from states where those companies are big players.
Re:They're NOT opposed to SOPA (Score:2, Insightful)
Sometimes advocating a less offensive alternative is the only viable means of effectively opposing something vile.
And this is good? (Score:4, Insightful)
So these two politicians can do what countless citizens petitioning,calling,and writing cannot... What a tragedy.
Re:They're NOT opposed to SOPA (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the mindset that has caused the US to move steadily to the right for the past 30 years. The lesser evil is still evil.
Re:And if you don't know offhand what SOPA is... (Score:2, Insightful)
So you'd like such helpful parentheticals as Linux (an operating system derived from Unix), PHP (a programming language), iOS (the operating system run by Apple's mobile devices), etc...?
Sometimes you have to know your audience. The Slashdot audience can reasonably be expected to know or be able to search for SOPA and PIPA (Protect IP) at this point, considering how much they've been discussed lately.
Re:All this and we still don't have a budget (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing Congress can agree on is that something must be done to "stop those thieves!"
Meanwhile people on every side lie to them. Ruthlessly so.
You mean the foxes guarding the henhouse could actually be entrusted to propose actually guarding the henhouse?
Trusting Congress to do the right thing is like expecting a snake to get up and walk in a straight line -- they may get about where you'd like them to be, but only with a lot of twisting, turning, amending and consulting with their friendly neighborhood lobbyists to leave in loopholes where more evil legislation could easily be inserted later, perhaps wadded up in a 662 billion dollar defense bill.
Re:They're NOT opposed to SOPA (Score:5, Insightful)
No, no, a hundred thousand times NO. That's known as "changing the window," and it's a well known problem with politics.
Example: For the kids, we're now going to conduct random warrantless household searches across the nation.
With your approach, we should approve of a less offensive alternative, like, say, "but this will only happen twice a year, instead of once a month." You feel like you "won" something when in reality, by any measure, you have objectively lost. This is basically how the Constitution and our "inalienable rights" have been eviscerated over the last century or so.
This approach is extremely common in politics, and less offensive alternatives are absolutely NOT the way to address it! Wholehearted refusal of THE ENTIRE PREMISE is required, potentially along with civil disobedience if either version does get enacted.
CAPTCHA: frauds. How appropriate.
Re:They're NOT opposed to SOPA (Score:5, Insightful)
The mindset of drawing battle lines in terms of 'right' and 'left' is what has allowed politicians to move steadily into lobbyist pockets (like hermit crabs) for the past 30 years... I can't think of a better illustration than the SOPA, ACTA, DMCA et cetera garbage that has been getting pushed through lately with bipartisan support and almost zero outcry or media coverage. Everyone is too busy fighting about stem cells and carbon credits and which politician is banging their stenographer.
Not right or left, statist (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the mindset that has caused the US to move steadily to the right for the past 30 years. The lesser evil is still evil.
We have not really moved left or right exactly, so much as we have moved towards statism - where the state controls everything. That is what we must withdraw from to regain freedoms we have lost.
However it must be noted that currently the Left is far more into promoting statist ideals than the Right (which was body-checked by the Tea Party over this issue).
Re:They're NOT opposed to SOPA (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, this is enabled by the consolidation of media control into the hands of 5 or 6 corporations. In effect, a few dozen people get to decide what is news in the United States, based on the orders of a half-dozen CEOs. And where the interests of the corporations coincide with each other there will be casual collusion to promote or bury stories, as the case may be. If the CEOs who run the corporations that own the majority of the news media don't want anyone talking about SOPA, (for example because they think it will boost the revenues of their entertainment divisions) then they are perfectly able to make it known that it is in every employee's best interests to make sure it is not covered in any depth, if it absolutely has to be covered at all.
Of course, the flip side is the issue just isn't nearly as interesting to most people as celebrity gossip, so they may not even have to do that. After all, bread and circuses is a very old formula.
Re:They're NOT opposed to SOPA (Score:3, Insightful)
Limited Government died a while back, and Social Inequity is rising. The Left needs to help the Tea Party bring back Limited Government before society has no one that fares well, save nobility.
You're joking right? The biggest threat to this country is unrestricted growth of the upper class on the backs of the lower classes. The government does have a very important place in the lives of the populace, and one of the primary roles is to protect it citizenry from abuses just like SOPA. Limiting government too much just give the businesses more power. The government ostensibly has the serve the populace. The corporation only has to serve its shareholders and they don't have to give a good god damn about your rights as an individual unless you have a vested interest in the company. Cutting social welfare just to give economic welfare to corporations and the wealthy are exactly the agenda that the tea party, knowingly or unknowingly are pushing with their idiotic "no taxes on job creators" nonsense. Seemingly, the whole agenda of the tea party is social inequity through government limitation and unrestricted economic incentives for the wealthy.
Re:And if you don't know offhand what SOPA is... (Score:5, Insightful)
SOPA I would say isn't reasonable for everyone to know what it is or what it stands for. For one it is new. It is for a new bill, it hasn't been around for years. Secondly it is what the United States Congress calls it, Other countries are not always involved what the US is doing all the time... Also us Americans may not always be into seeing every bill that comes out of the US. Third Slashdotters don't always log in every day, or week or month. So when they come it these articles make no sense.
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?
SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act AKA the U.S. Government Lets RIAA/MPAA Hijack DNS With No Oversight Act.
Re:They're NOT opposed to SOPA (Score:4, Insightful)
[government] protect[s] it citizenry from abuses just like SOPA
SOPA doesn't have teeth without the might of the government. Totalitarianism (we have to pass the bill before you can read it) is the mechanism through which the social inequity is being forged. With a limited government (note I didn't say *lack of government*), the nobility has a much shorter sword to threaten the populace with.
Re:Not right or left, statist (Score:4, Insightful)
However it must be noted that currently the Left is far more into promoting statist ideals than the Right (which was body-checked by the Tea Party over this issue).
Two observations about this. First, the republicans don't control the government right now. So obviously they're not going to want to increase the power of the government. Put republicans back in charge and they will rapidly increase the power of the state just like they've done every time they held power.
Second, the Tea Party alternative to statism is corporatism which is even worse than statism.
Rock, hard place: Interstitial (Score:4, Insightful)
See, here's the thing. The constitution only authorizes limited government. No sane person can read it any other way. The federal government, for its part, has found such actual authorization too limiting... seriously... and so basically ignores the constitution. In doing so, it has exercised the power to enable various things it doesn't actually have the authority to implement, such as a nationwide social safety net. It has also destroyed the bill of rights and unleashed a veritable laundry list of evils upon the population.
Now, if you want the federal government to be restrained, either you need an entirely new constitution to be put in place (how???), or you need the government's exercise of power to be chopped back to the current constitution's authorized limits, and then the constitution will need amendment so that the good things, which actually consist of a fairly long list despite the long, long list of evils, can be legitimized as functions of the federal government -- because really, the constitution as it stands doesn't authorize much power for the feds at all unless you read it with a mumble, two glass eyes, and a brain tumor.
On the other hand, if you want the federal government to be free to do whatever it wants, constrained only by what congress can agree upon, so that inconveniences like constitutional conventions aren't required to implement, for instance, nationwide medicare for old folks, nationwide schooling and standards for children, and making it legitimately illegal for your neighbor to own an anthrax factory or a nuke, then (a) we're already in that situation, but (b) it unfortunately has brought with it a whole host of evils, like the sundering of almost the entire bill of rights, the inversion of the commerce clause, ex post facto law, usurpation of article 5 powers under the guise of article 3, assassination of US citizens (aka premeditated killing by stealth without anything even remotely resembling due process), congress-folk voting in things like their own raises and being immune to insider trading laws. From my POV, government freedom has been tested and found extremely wanting.
But getting to a constitutionally restrained government... I haven't got even a clue about a workable process for that. I don't think anyone else does, either. The "ammo box", so beloved of Internet tough guyz, I can't see working. Supposing the unlikely event of a successful armed revolution, I truly can't imagine enough of a framework remaining to create a new government. OTOH, if the military does it for us, that'll leave us directly in the hands of a known conservative religious organization with huge firepower, and I think the only thing that would possibly arise successfully from that is a theocracy -- something considerably worse, IMHO, than what we have now, strange as that may sound. Certainly the congresscritters aren't going to limit themselves, they're quite literally fat and happy with the status quo, and looking at the political requirements for becoming one (basically you need to be corrupt) and the bennies once you're there, why wouldn't they be?
What's going to happen here -- IMHO, of course -- is that our society is going to continue this slide down to the outright ultimate power of the 535; elections will continue to be less and less subtly rigged, as we see with the media ignoring Paul, despite his essentially equal to front runner status, with the public being steered carefully to vote only for approved candidates, and/or voting machines rigged as required, when required, again as we have already seen; laws will continue to be made regardless of constitutionality, and then backed up by the bought-and-paid-for mouthpieces on the supreme court; and the vast majority of the country will continue to not care. Technology will step in with robotics and manufacture on demand, and keep the population generally happy with "stuff" and comfort, and all will be well, as long as you are willing to be the round peg in the round hole the government makes available fo