SOPA Makes Strange Bedfellows 439
davide marney writes "What do 1-800-Contacts, Adidas, Americans for Tax Reform, Comcast, the Country Music Association, Estee Lauder, Ford, Nike and Xerox all have in common? According to OpenCongress.org, they all have specifically endorsed H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act. A total of 158 corporations have signed up in favor of the bill, and only 87 against. $21 Million has been donated to Congressmen who favor the bill, but only $5 Million to those against. Thanks to OpenCongress for these insights. This goes a long way towards explaining why this bill has so much traction, despite all its negative publicity."
Money. (Score:5, Insightful)
And nothing more.
Re:Stand up, people! (Score:5, Insightful)
Write to your senators, your representatives! Tell them you oppose this bill!
http://www.opencongress.org/contact_congress_letters/new?bill=112-h3261&position=oppose [opencongress.org]
Tell your family, friends, even the guy at the gas station to do the same!
This bill WILL get passed if we don't make our position clear to elected officials!
Be sure to include a check for at least $10,000.
Re:Stand up, people! (Score:5, Insightful)
This bill WILL get passed regardless of whether we make our position clear to elected officials!
FTFY. When congressmen will not even listen to expert testimony on these matters, what makes you think they will listen to their constituents?
Go after the companies (Score:5, Insightful)
Go after the companies that are supporting the bill as well. Look what happened to GoDaddy when it was found out they were supporting it. Imagine what happens when companies like 1800contacts, Ford, Adidas and others start getting consumers telling them to drop support as well or lose business.
Business funds Congress... if they start saying no, Congress will say no too.
Re:Do something (Score:4, Insightful)
In reality none of those are viable long term options either. Since the ISPs ( which are also content providers ) support this they will just take the next logical step, if these alternatives becomes common place, and ratchet down your "open" bandwidth to the point that you cant afford to do anything.
Buying content from their servers will of cousre not count against your measly cap.
The only true solution will be point-to-point community networks. ( mainly neighborhood wifi mesh )Get rid, and get around, the need for a link to the 'public internet' except for perhaps your online banking and buying stuff from amazon.
Who all here remembers BBSs and FidoNet?
Re:Stand up, people! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stand up, people! (Score:5, Insightful)
What I find interesting is that it's never mentioned much in the mainstream media. It's not mentioned in the presidential debates. And I don't understand why unions, Americans for Tax reform and builders associations support it. Our current extreme IP inhibits economic growth (which is why tax reforms should be against it) and helps to bolster income inequality (which is why unions and builders associations should oppose it).
I understand that this this is the ONE issue that CNN, MSNBC and FOX all agree on. Because they all are part of media companies that want ever stronger IP to bolster their profits. The whole subject is censored.
So many of my so called 'informed' friends aren't aware of it and they say IP is boring. My god - what are we to do!
Business Software Alliance.... (Score:5, Insightful)
You know when *they* are anti-SOPA, there's something wrong with it...
Come on... (Score:4, Insightful)
All those people that were berating others for supporting (or even just not caring about) the GoDaddy debacle, come out in force and NOW follow your own advice.
You should now throw away anything you wear that has Adidas or Nike on it, cut your Comcast connections, stop listening to country music (okay, no great loss there), take all the Estee Lauder gear back that you bought your girlfriend for Christmas, sell any Ford you might have, start returning your photocopiers, etc.
No? Or is it actually not that important compared to moving a couple of domains around? Boycotts like that were stupid for one reason - you didn't know WHO supported it because many companies have kept absolutely silent about their stance and almost every company would have an opinion on it. Surprise, surprise a profit-making business supports the option that makes the most profit for them.
As I said back then: You have zero idea what political agenda any company is secretly supporting or not.
If you want to boycott, then you can't selectively boycott. And then you will realise that virtually all profit-making companies would support something that you would want to boycott (unless you were a shareholder).
Re:Stand up, people! (Score:5, Insightful)
Ten years from now, when the Internet has been conquered by old media interests and there are toll booths and walls everywhere, people will start to get annoyed -- and by then, it will be too late. People are annoyed by the DMCA now, but there is little hope of getting it overturned. SOPA will be no different.
Re:I guess I don't understand... (Score:5, Insightful)
On the one hand, I can see the point of view of the designers who are annoyed about the counterfeiting of their product.
On the other hand, what does it say about the actual value of their designs? It says that people are not willing to pay the prices they demand for the somewhat ephemeral value that their design commands.
It used to be that artisans had makers marks because their product was of superior quality and they wished to differentiate it. People seeing the superior quality of the product and desiring that quality for themselves would see the makers mark and know where they could get an item of similar quality.
Quality is no longer the differentiation though - price is. The relationship has inverted ; a maker no longer puts their mark on something to identify the maker of the product and generate sales, he puts the mark on to increase the perceived value of the product. As some people are no doubt pointing out - a lot of the so-called "counterfeit" product is made on the same production line, from the same materials, by the same workers using the same amount of labour.
There is no difference in the intrinsic value of the product - it's the same material object with the same properties - so why can Loius Vuitton sell it for more than Mr Chang? Because Loius Vuitton inflates the perception of value of their products in ways that have nothing to do with their actual utility - they put them in a swanky shop with a flunky on the door, they don't pile them high, and they don't sell them cheap.
The real counterfeit is therefore the perceived value of the "genuine" product - people are buying fake value. This is not an artisan product made by a skilled craftsman. This is a product designed to be made as piecework in a third world sweatshop - a product that by definition, has to be makable by the lowest common denominator of skill.
Re:Weird money (Score:5, Insightful)
Sen. Harry Reid [D, NV] $3,502,624
Sen. Charles Schumer [D, NY] $2,648,770
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand [D, NY] $2,080,651
I wonder how much Obama got ...
Hmmm... you don't mention of the republicans on the list (John Beohner, Eric Cantor, Scott Brown, Robert Portman, Patrick Toomey, Mark Kirk) and you bring up Obama, who is not on the list. Thank you for clearly identifying your ideological slant.
Re:Stand up, people! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll definitely vote for whoever runs against him in the next election, though.
Don't forget to vote in the primary as well. Knocking a candidate out in the primary can mean that you can play party politics as usual in the general. In Washington state now, the general isn't even a two-party election, it's a runoff from the top two vote getters in the primary.
Re:Money. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because politicians quit answering to voters once they are elected.
If congress critters were subject to recall like their local and state counterparts you'd see a LOT more responsiveness.
In the regular 9 to 5 world us working class folks live in, your boss actually gets to fire you if you screw up.
Re:Weird money (Score:5, Insightful)
The BSA is unsurprising actually. Many of their members (including Microsoft) have online services with user-generated content which could be targeted by the bill.
Re:Stand up, people! (Score:5, Insightful)
The one thing I hate most about these, though, is that the Americans basically think themselves as above everybody else. What can I do, as a Canadian citizen, to stop this bill? Nothing. But if it passes, I will have to live with the consequences.
If it were just the Americans that would be affected, I'd just let them hang themselves. They seem very capable in doing so. However, when their laws start trespassing borders to affect the entire PLANET, I think something is clearly wrong.
Re:Come on... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to boycott, then you can't selectively boycott.
Says who? Your lazy, uninterested, pro-SOPA ass? Fuck you, we'll boycott whomever we can, and if one company happens to be the lowest hanging fruit, we will damn well kick that one in the nuts, and proceed from there.
It's really simple: those who didn't even bother to boycott GoDaddy, have really no say in the issue. Some of us did at least a little bit to knock down the first domino (GoDaddy) and a few other dominos followed.
Re:Stand up, people! (Score:4, Insightful)
MY senators? MY representatives?
News Flash: I don't have any representative to write to. Time Warner has representatives. ExxonMobil has representatives. Pfizer has representatives. Lockheed Martin has representatives. You and I don't have squat in terms of governmental representation.
Congress has a 9% approval rating... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't really have a solution. The problem is we're too balkanized. It's easy to divide and conquer. Blacks & Whites. Gays and Straights. Union & non-Union. Hell, a good friend of mine is vehemently anti-Union. He just described to me how the non-Union guys at his work got a pay cut so the Union guys could get a pay raise. He didn't even notice the company was pitting the non-Union against the Union, let alone ask why BOTH groups didn't get a raise...
The only way to win is not to play. Don't have children. If you do; only have one. If there's fewer rats in the race you've got to keep the ones you got alive. Aside from that I'll keep plugin away with my liberal/progressive agenda on
Re:Weird money (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama is a singular individual who can kill this bill directly. He has more power over it becoming law than anyone else.
Damn right we need to know what his position on this bill is and why.
The next most important influences on this bill becoming law are Reid (already betrayed us by bringing it up for a vote) and Boehner (very likely to betray us by bringing SOPA to a vote in the house).
I just can't shake the feeling that when SOPA/PIPA passes, that the Internet will catch fire and rain down torment on 'our' elected officials and the content industry.
Perhaps all the shooting in the next revolution will happen online.
Re:Weird money (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Weird money (Score:2, Insightful)
A lot of slashdot types would dislike the idea on princible too, as it outright admits that the US is now an outright plutocracy where laws may be purchased.
Do you think politicians are swayed by rational argument, or by money?
I remember reading about a (historic; early 20th century) Democrat who was losing votes because the Republican candidate would always publish slanderous lies about him. Since he didn't want to lose the next election the Democrat decided to tell lies about his Republican counterpart. (I wish I could remember his name, but Google didn't help me this time).
Sometimes its unethical to play the game, but as in business, the cheaters usually win. It's a structural thing, because the people who really do want to help the country (instead of themselves) are less likely to cheat and therefore less likely to win. Choose your evil.
Re:Weird money (Score:2, Insightful)
The voters are a big part of problem. Think about it, a politician getting lots of campaign money does not force you to vote for that politician. You can vote for someone else, or even be a candidate.
But maybe many actually do like voting for politicians who get the most campaign money. That's democracy for you.
No Corporations (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a goddamn crime that the list of those supporting this heinous, un-American tyranny is topped with giant corporations. Multinational corporations. Foreign corporations.
These foreign non-people should have absolutely no influence over the laws set by the government of the United States. The legitimate government is by, of and for the people, not the people's property like corporations.
The Constitution does not give the government any power to represent corporations. But even from the beginning the Constitution has needed amendments that spelled out for corrupt government officials the limits to its power that were not already spelled out: the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights shouldn't have been necessary, because the powers it prohibits aren't granted in the original document. But obviously it was necessary; obvious when it was written and passed, and obvious ever since as it must be constantly invoked when government reaches across its bounds. It's clear by now that we need to amend the Constitution to spell out that corporations aren't people. That they don't have rights, that the government can restrict their actions with the existing powers government has.
There is already such an amendment in the works. Closing in on 200,000 people have already signed on supporting it. You should too. [senate.gov] If you're a person, anyway. Why suffer being a second class citizen behind corporations that aren't even people?
Re:Money. (Score:4, Insightful)
Bingo... My mother has fairly average media habits for her age (61), which includes the various local/national news shows on ABC, and she hadn't heard about SOPA. Worse, she's one of the Clueless Public in many ways (not for lack of effort on my part) and in order to get her to really grasp why SOPA is a problem, I had to carefully step her through ways it could/would likely be abused along with examples proving that each possibility could really happen here.
Unless every single anti-SOPA person with communicative skills gets out there and starts carefully educating their Clueless Relatives on it, we're completely fucked, and even then it's probably too late.
Re:Stand up, people! (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's the answer... here's why you don't understand:
There is an existing game, an existing set of rules for getting what is wanted out of the US government. (A) be an enormous corporation or a confederation of smaller ones, (B) buy legislation, and (C) make sure the populace doesn't riot by managing their "news" etc... about the important work done by the government.
The Internet is finally showing itself to be a major threat to the status quo. Arab Spring... Ron Paul's increasing popularity, Steissand Effects everywhere, Wikileaks, Anti-Sec... And so, while the rules of the game are still mostly in effect, the Game Players who have enjoyed successful ownership of the largest government on Earth are working to ensure they will maintain that ownership.
All unions, All PACs, all politicians participating in the election games, and definitely the media empires... all of them currently enjoy winning at the game with the current set of rules. A free Internet only provides benefits to their opponents in this game: us. Humans. People who care about how they're governed and dare disagree with how Sony wants us governed. So, there will be no media coverage. No major PAC, party, union, etc... with an interest in its long-term survival will dare bring SOPA up.
The actual battle is going to be technological. Legislation is a foregone conclusion.