Lawmakers Intent On Approving SOPA, PIPA 513
snydeq writes "U.S. Congress appears likely to move forward with SOPA and PIPA, despite widespread opposition, IDGNS reports. The U.S. Senate is expected to begin floor debate on PIPA shortly after senators return to D.C. on Jan. 23, and supporters appear to have the votes to override a threatened filibuster. Some opponents of the bills hold out hope: 'We're optimistic that if members really understood the Internet architecture and cybersecurity measures, they would not support SOPA as written. Instead, members who are really committed to combatting online piracy would look for effective ways to do that without compromising cybersecurity or the open architecture of the Internet,' said a CCIA spokesperson. Others remain doubtful that Congress will come to this understanding."
Can't wait (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Freedom (Score:5, Interesting)
No, no, no. We won't buy. This legislation, which is so tilted against the interests of the vast majority of the populace, which imperils the functioning of the internet, will cause piracy to explode. Because this law will give pirates something they've never had until now. Moral sanction.
More people will feel it is right to steal from Hollywood, than to buy from them. And that will seal their fate.
It'll seal ours too, more's the pity, as our internet struggles to survive.
Re:Can't wait (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:business can use stuff like this to stop compet (Score:3, Interesting)
Gee, if someone wrote a program to automatically submit a claim against a site, and someone else wrote an extension to use that program to submit a claim against every single internet site on the planet, and many many people used it all at the same time, I wonder what would happen?
Re:Can't wait (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes yes, protests are all fine, but where were Google when SOPA was being drafted?
Getting slammed with anti-trust bullshit. Google is "the enemy" to a lot of people in Congress right now, because they're marching to the orders of the MAFIAA.
Besides, Google's testimony was pretty much completely dismissed by the committee right to their face. They more or less said "I don't understand how this is going to negatively effect the internet nor do I care." They never had any intention of listening to a fucking word anyone said in opposition.
Good "Why SOPA is bad for non-geeks" article? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Time for tactical action? (Score:5, Interesting)
Put up a site outing the names of every lawmaker that ever votes in favor of such a bill, and allow visitors to sign a petition pledging to vote against anybody that does so. Show the count on the site, and forward a list of those who signed to said lawmakers a week before any major vote on the issue. That should make them sweat.
Really no reason for the site to be real. They won't know. Problem is they don't care. They leave congress and get a nice job handed to them along with a kilo of blow and three underage hookers.
Agreed (Score:5, Interesting)
Education, and logical argument based on the realities of the technology, won't make our representatives budge. The only way to get them to change their position is to apply real political force. That means forming lobbies and throwing actual money at the problem, just like the large corporations do. It also means getting enough people ready and willing to vote for candidates who will actually represent them.
Of course, producing that level of political force requires a huge amount of cooperation (and hence understanding) from the governed. *THAT* is hard to do. Most American people, even the ones who vote and consider themselves politically involved, don't understand these issues well enough to self-organize properly. That is why the wealthy corporations (which for all practical purposes are already well-organized political armies with a handful of people calling the shots) have such an easy time of pushing the rest of us around.
THEY aren't the ones who don't understand. We are.
Re:Good "Why SOPA is bad for non-geeks" article? (Score:4, Interesting)
Technical solutions? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm doing what I can on the social front (emailing and calling), but if (when) this does pass, what is the best way to route around the damage on a personal level?
We got a large number of suggestions for alternate providers with the GoDaddy debacle; can we get some suggestions of good international VPN / Proxy providers? Alternate suggestions for dealing with this?
Who does this help? Not many I can tell. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm quite confused about who this serves.
Usually, moves like these are pushed as in the interests of large corporate interests - but as far as I can understand the only company interests this will actually serve will be law firms and a few confused entertainment groups that don't mind acting like public villains to punish their potential customers.
The whole thing just looks like a big legal clusterfuck - where everyone demands everyone else pull everything from the internet. The net effect will just be a huge drain on the economy, as even more resources are spent on useless legal back-and-forths, and everyone gets even more nervous before being able to accomplish something businesswise in the world.
The net effect should mostly be to deepen the recession, force more consolidation with a smaller pool of useful resources for everyone, and push more business out of the US.
It just doesn't make sense - why would any lawmaker be interested in lowering the economic tides for everyone, further stalling a huge and important part of our economic recovery just for the sake of a very small number of companies without much actual money?
From a moral perspective it makes no sense - which is what I usually expect - but even from a sociopathic perspective of gathering resources at all costs, it makes no sense.
Ryan Fenton
Re:Good "Why SOPA is bad for non-geeks" article? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's time to take a historical approach... (Score:5, Interesting)
Our founding fathers declared themselves an independent country and went to war over shit like this. No taxation without representation...are we truly represented in this government? The people? Of course not. It's time to stop trying to play their stupid game, the game is rigged against us from the start. It's time to start flipping boards...
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Revolution is our birthright. The Bill of Rights grants all U.S. citizens the right of revolution by guaranteeing the freedoms that facilitate it, freedoms that our government has been trying to rein in with every passing year. Every branch of this government is corrupt. We have no representation in congress anymore. History has come full circle...
Time to start looking to those 2nd Amendment solutions, boys and girls. Put your trust in God, but keep your powder dry. I never in a million years thought I would see this in my lifetime, but it seems that it is inevitable at this point.
Re:Can't wait (Score:5, Interesting)
Opponents of the bill include Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, Twitter, DynDNS, AOL, LinkedIn, eBay, Mozilla Corporation, the Wikimedia Foundation and human rights organizations such as Reporters Without Borders the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the ACLU, and Human Rights Watch.
Forget for a moment mozilla, wikipedia or the other non-profit organizations - with all those companies (amazon, yahoo, facebook, google) opposing SOPA, isn't it very weird that this proposed law hasn't been canceled already? Does the MPAA/RIAA block have more lobby-power than all those companies combined?
Re:Here's What Needs To Happen. (Score:5, Interesting)
i will not vote for a Republican ever because they support so many other violations of personal liberty (same sex relationships, racism, discrimination against the impoverished) that it's ridiculous.
that being said, i'm taking a long, hard look at independents now.
Re:It's time to take a historical approach... (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think you understand revolution, and in particular why the US had one. Two, if you count the civil war as an attempt at revolution that failed.
At the time of the US revolution, a minority approved of it. However, at the time, virtually everyone was self-reliant, or could be. The choice was essentially between the old European governments establishing control over the colonies, or them having their own, local government. Civil war (by which I still mean the US revolution) was acceptable because there was no horrible consequence to temporary anarchy. It turned out to be an excellent idea, because a bunch of idealists were able to determine the form of government, which is in the end what you (and I, were it practical) are espousing.
In the modern US, specialization of labor has replaced self-reliance to an ungodly degree. The existence of metropolises, and suburbs, is proof of that. There are many places where even temporary anarchy would spell the deaths of hundreds of thousands, or millions, because food and medicine is not produced locally. That means any attempt at violent revolution would be, in effect, telling those people to sacrifice themselves for your idealism. Considering the focus of your idealism is on a bill that regulates theft from the entertainment industry, you're going to have a hard time convincing Joe Public.
Meanwhile, the existing government has a 100% foolproof way to convince Joe Public: Thousands will die. There is somewhere on the order of zero chance that a violent populist uprising will work.
The best chance the US has of "revolution" is someone getting elected who takes up the mantle of tyrrany only long enough to put the people in jail who deserve to be in jail (politicians, corporates, and the sleazeballs who encourage their behavior), and changes the system to remove the vulnerabilities, before stepping back and letting Democracy work again. Sort of a modern-day George Washington; remember, at the time of the revolution, he had control of the military, and many people wondered if he would honor his promise to step down and hold elections, especially since there was still turmoil going on.
Is this a good idea? No, because you have to look very, very closely at anyone who would take up the mantle of tyranny, and make sure that they don't do it for the wrong reasons, and given our track record of politicians, we won't look that closely, and they'll probably be bad people. It's not that it can't work, but finding the right person to do it is essentially impossible.
"To summarize: it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem." ~The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Re:It's time to take a historical approach... (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Martial law is not a conspiracy theory, it's NDAA - was signed on December 31, 2011, it includes military detaining civilians for indefinite time periods authorised by POTUS and it denies any rights to a lawyer or a trial, etc.
2. There ain't nothing magical about dollar collapse, it's quite straight forward [slashdot.org] and only the blind and the ignorant don't understand the issue and it has to do with illegitimate currency backed by nothing and given out like candy to whoever knows how to ask.
3. Comments on /.? Sure, why not. It can be any comments, it can be youtube videos [youtube.com] or being associated with people who post such videos, for example being their children [huffingtonpost.com].
just when were the good times, then? Was it back when African-Americans were enslaved?
- and this was completely legitimised by the GOVERNMENT of the time and it ended because the free market capitalism made it more profitable to hire free workers rather than to own slaves.
When women had no rights?
- and this was completely legitimised by the GOVERNMENT, which set the rules that only white men with land could vote.
This eventually too, was changed only once the free market capitalism made the people productive enough [wikipedia.org] so that they didn't have to be subsistence farmers and women could finally stop being baby making machines for the farmers and could become economically independent in large numbers, and this was due to the innovation and entrepreneurship that only happened because of sound money and investment and freedom from government chains.
When Native Americans were treated like blacks were in the 60s? When we fought continual wars against the natives pretty much because they were in our way? The Trail of Tears?
- completely legitimised by GOVERNMENT.
etc.etc.
All the things you are complaining about was legitimate by the law of the land and the law of the land had to change, government had to be reigned in and powers had to be removed from it that made it possible for all the discrimination.
Of-course while the discrimination against specific groups of people were becoming less of an issue, the discrimination against a much larger group of people was on the rise - the workers, the savers, the investors.
The modern day worker, saver, investor and tax payer is the slave of the past, but it's done in a more uniform manner.
Of-course the blacks and other minorities are still in a hole, specifically because the government took over the people's power to do with their own bodies as they want, so the war on drugs succeeded in enslaving the blacks once again, instead it's now being enslaved into a system not for providing cheap source of labor, but it's done to increase the power of the police state, provide money for illegal CIA operations and various other political reasons.
Of-course you, being an historian, just like Newt Gingrich, would probably say that the Founders of US Republic would just execute the potheads and other drug users, completely disregarding the fact that the Founders themselves were using all sorts of drugs, from hashish to opiates. But who cares about such inconvenient details, right?
Re:The other 3 have failed, break out the 4th box. (Score:4, Interesting)
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
John F Kennedy, 13 Mar 1962, Address_on_the_First_Anniversary_of_the_Alliance_for_Progress [wikisource.org]