Slashdot Mirror
Oregon Senator Stops Internet Censorship Bill
comforteagle writes "Senator Wyden of Oregon has objected to a bill in committee that if passed would have given the government the ability to censor the Internet. His objection effectively stop its current passing, forcing it to be introduced again if the bill is to continue — which it may not. Oregonians, please send this man pats on the back."
The free world thanks you Senator Wyden of Oregon. Senator Stephen Conroy of Australia, take note.
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
trash talk the filibuster now?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
This commendable Senator took care of the first half of the problem. The second half of the problem is more institutional in nature. It grants one hell of an advantage to those who view various forms of freedom as an inconvenient hinderence to their goals.
All oppressive laws have this in common: those who push for them view a defeat like this as merely a delay or minor setback. They can keep trying to get them passed, over and over, through defeat after defeat, until finally they find a Congress more willing to be swayed by their arguments. They understand that once they get the law passed, it will stay on the books forever and will never be repealed. Agencies, bureaucracies and contractors will form around it and give it even more inertia. After a generation or two people will grow up knowing no other status quo.
What's a good, simple, robust solution to that?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Dude, I appreciate that you may want the pageviews, but consider linking to the source next time. It's how it's done in the Big Leagues.
His objection effectively stop its current passing forcing it to be introduced again if the bill is continue.
English, please?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
it took a revolution in 1774, and then another in 1789, and then a few more others in 1848s to establish the fundamentals of the modern liberties and freedoms, and all human rights we take granted now. apparently, we need a few more in order to get one step further.
Read radical news here
Do the editor stop check for subject verb agreement? Me am curious.
Great warrior...hrmph! Wars not make one great.
I usually sway to the Red, however I must say that this Senator has earned my respect by standing up for what do you call it? You know, that thing this country was supposedly built upon and champions, oh yeah Freedom!
Thank you!
Pass a constitutional amendment that strips Congress of civil immunity for their unconstitutional laws. Let them get sued for lost wages, profits, trebble damages and emotional distress and suddenly we'll have 535 originalist legal scholars.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101118/10291211924/the-19-senators-who-voted-to-censor-the-internet.shtml
* Patrick J. Leahy -- Vermont
* Herb Kohl -- Wisconsin
* Jeff Sessions -- Alabama
* Dianne Feinstein -- California
* Orrin G. Hatch -- Utah
* Russ Feingold -- Wisconsin
* Chuck Grassley -- Iowa
* Arlen Specter -- Pennsylvania
* Jon Kyl -- Arizona
* Chuck Schumer -- New York
* Lindsey Graham -- South Carolina
* Dick Durbin -- Illinois
* John Cornyn -- Texas
* Benjamin L. Cardin -- Maryland
* Tom Coburn -- Oklahoma
* Sheldon Whitehouse -- Rhode Island
* Amy Klobuchar -- Minnesota
* Al Franken -- Minnesota
* Chris Coons -- Delaware
I live in New York and plan on sending a letter of thanks to Sen. Wyden (even if I'm not convinced of his reasons for stopping this, it still desperately needed to be stopped) as well as letters to my own Senators. Will it do anything? No, of course not. Will it have an impact if many of us do? Probably not, but it's certainly worth a few minutes of each of our time to at least try.
The decline into an Orwellian state has been slowed down, at least a little.
Slashdot was in favor of net neutrality, but it's against COICA? Both involve the government regulating internet traffic. The only thing I can see that makes Slashdotters against COICA is that it specifically targets piracy.
I can't speak for every Slashdotter, but...
Net Neutrality isn't about the government controlling the internet, it's about preventing corporations using leverage to control the internet and/or hold bandwidth hostage for competitive advantage or to inhibit the flow of free information.
As for being against policies that stop policies, it's not that I'm for piracy. It's just that legislation, policies, and industry practices to reduce piracy have been ineffective, will probably never be effective, hurt legitimate content consumers more than it hurts the pirates, and continuously erode what we can do under Fair Use. That's not to mention that they create ways for corporations to try to financially ruin individuals that are accused of infringing on a rather small scale, even if the evidence that they have done so is shaky. The people are abused, and even content providers of public domain works are often caught in the crossfire. And all of this is done in the name of stopping piracy (whose actual impact is really hard to know) of copyrighted (for way too damn long) works.
I think that these views are entirely consistent. We don't want corporations and governments meddling with our legitimate access to content and information.
Individuals are powerless, and this is by design.
Well, yeah, that's how democracy works. A system in which individuals are powerful is called a monarchy, or a dictatorship. Alwyas seems to be the wrong individuals, somehow. By design, you should have to wave around huge blocks of voters to have an effect within a democracy (even a representative democracy like our own).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
When the government makes regulation that censors the Internet, that's bad. When the government makes regulation that keeps corporations from censoring the Internet, that's good. Censorship is evil, freedom is good. It's that simple.
A car analogy: If the government made a law that prevented you from driving to California, that would be very bad. If a toll road operator forced you to tell your destination and charged extra if it was California, and the government would bitchslap them for that, it would be very good.
Good is good, whether it's done by the government, corporations, or anyone, and evil is evil, whether it's done by the government, corporations, or anyone. This is an entirely consistent position.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
It is not bribery when one person helps another person get elected. And yes, a pool of low income individuals can help a candidate get elected. Obama was elected relying on many small donations.
Influencing your elected representatives should be a simple matter of writing a letter and nothing else.
And if they do a good job helping them get reelected. But if they don't then help get someone else elected instead of them, even if that someone else is "none of the above".
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Rightly or wrongly, the difference that Slashdot perceives is that COICA enables the government to censor, whereas net neutrality enables the government to prevent censorship by others.
Yet the most powerful argument against net neutrality is that it could (and likely would) result in government censorship. Net neutrality is nothing more than a backdoor attempt to put the Internet under the purview of the government, packaged such that it sells to geeks.
Social Engineering Expert: Because there is no patch for stupidity.
As someone under the new caps being "test marketed" and soon coming to you, let me tell what life without net neutrality is like and what it results in. You have a cap of 36GB residential and 76GB business. Vonage counts against the cap, the cableco VoIP doesn't. Result? I don't use Vonage. MSFT Windows Update doesn't count against the cap, Mac and Linux does. The result? I wouldn't buy a Mac and while I used to like trying new distros I don't mess with Linux anymore. Youtube and Netflix has "made a deal" so that their services don't count against the cap, while other video sites do. Result? It just got a lot harder for a competing video site to gain traction here.
Get the picture? Without some sort of common carrier rules you end up in a situation like I'm in, where the cableco can make THEIR offering attractive while everyone else looks bad because they will cost you extra. It also allows them to "herd you" towards the services they approve of, by punishing you (at $1.50 per GB if you go over) if you don't stick to approved services. It is the walled garden all over again, only thanks to the fact many of us live with either no choice or a duopoly that refuses to compete with one another (my only choice is DSL where they made it clear they have NO intention of upgrading the 40+ year old lines here, which means 200KB max speed) so without some sort of basic rules you have tilted the game even farther against competition.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
That is exactly what democracy is, people supporting what they like and opposing what they don't like.
If you really believe that is not democracy I don't know what your definition of democracy is.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
When the government makes regulation that censors the Internet, that's bad. When the government makes regulation that keeps corporations from censoring the Internet, that's good. Censorship is evil, freedom is good. It's that simple.
A car analogy: If the government made a law that prevented you from driving to California, that would be very bad. If a toll road operator forced you to tell your destination and charged extra if it was California, and the government would bitchslap them for that, it would be very good.
Good is good, whether it's done by the government, corporations, or anyone, and evil is evil, whether it's done by the government, corporations, or anyone. This is an entirely consistent position.
Your analogy for COICA isn't really on all fours; it's more as if the government were able to say "There have been reports that your car was seen to be speeding; no one has presented any proof of this, but just to make sure you aren't going to violate the speed limit, we're confiscating your car."
OK - I'm in a band. We record our parts for our current album at our individual homes, and share them with each other, at full quality (24bit, 88.2KHz is what we are recording at) - and my drum set is oh, lets see, in some tracks upwards of 15 tracks at that sample/bit rate. Hey look! Lots of legal bandwidth usage!
And that is exactly the crux of the issue. The internet wasn't designed for any particular purpose. It was designed for any purpose anyone could dream up. It is ridiculous for anyone to think they had enumerated all the uses of the internet, or believe anyone ought to 'justify' their consumption.