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Senate Panel Approves Website Shut-Down Bill
itwbennett writes "The Senate Judiciary Committee has voted 19-0 in favor of a bill that would allow the Department of Justice to seek court orders to shut down websites offering materials believed to infringe copyright. 'Rogue websites are essentially digital stores selling illegal and sometimes dangerous products,' Senator Patrick Leahy, the main sponsor of the bill, said in a statement. 'If they existed in the physical world, the store would be shuttered immediately and the proprietors would be arrested. We cannot excuse the behavior because it happens online and the owners operate overseas. The Internet needs to be free — not lawless.' However, the internet will likely remain 'lawless' for a while longer, as there are only a few working days left in the congressional session and the bill is unlikely to pass through the House of Representatives in that short amount of time."
The majority of the population does NOT want to see this pass, yet it made it through the Senate with NO opposition?
I thought the government was for the people by the people. What a fucking joke.
So what's this "or dangerous" bit? Ammunition? Websites promoting cults? Websites attacking cults? Websites selling material that promotes anything that senators don't like, like free thought, opposing political positions, naked bodies that they can't grope for themselves?
This ain't about piracy, people.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
It is amazing how often people rail against the lack of democracy in the modern world, and how few are willing to do anything about it.
"What can we, mere peons, do?" you might ask. Well, you can start by working on the one and only hope you have: open sourcing governance.
Which brings up an interesting point: How would a government org go about shutting down a rogue server? Lets pretend it is hosted in some remote country, so sending a CnD letter is probably ineffective. Blocking the DNS entries will just result in people putting up non-us filtered DNS servers, and you are playing whack a mole to try to find them and block them. You could put ip-filters on all the trunks going in and out of the country, but that's another game of whack a mole, since any proxy server outside the country can redirect.
I am not a networking expert, but even if you had the political will to do this, it seems to me it would be no more than an inconvenience for anyone determined enough.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
There probably were folks who thought it was a bad bill, but voted for it anyway because it bought them leverage on (what they felt were) more important issues.
I'm a bit of a state house watcher, and I've heard politicians stand up and speak against bills five minutes before voting for them. Basically, if the chairman of the committee favors something and you don't, but it's going to pass anyway, you curry favor with the chairman by letting him submit the bill to the floor with 'unanimous approval', thereby increasing the chances of getting your own issue heard by the now appeased chairman in the future. In the end, you get the same result you would have if you opposed the thing, but the next time you need something, you're more likely to get it.
That or the HVAC might have been out. Our state legislature seems to decide completely on-the-fly that 'today is going to be the last day of session'. They typically suspend public hearings and pass 300 pieces of legislation that night. Why would you suspend public hearings and do 80% of your work on one coffee-fueled all-nighter? Well, the committee rooms don't have air conditioning, suits are really hot, and most of the legislature is a bit portly. Once the summer heat starts penetrating the marble walls, there's no stopping it until late October, so they 'go Nike' on democracy's ass and Just Do It.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails