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Meet the Strange Bedfellows Who Could Stop SOPA

Posted by timothy on from the oh-for-enough-mortar-and-enough-bricks dept.

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).

4 of 231 comments (clear)

  1. Re:And if you don't know offhand what SOPA is... by SirGarlon · · Score: 4, Informative

    Stop Online Piracy Act.

    --
    [Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
  2. Re:They're NOT opposed to SOPA by jmac_the_man · · Score: 4, Informative
    This isn't actually true. OPEN makes it harder to transfer money to sites that have been ruled "infringing" by a court. It doesn't include capabilities for takedowns, blocks from searches, etc. SOPA, on the other hand, could possibly require deep packet inspection to keep people off infringing sites.

    Basically, OPEN only goes after commercial infringement, and only does so in a commercial way. I'm OK with that.

  3. Re:They're NOT opposed to SOPA by TheLuggage2008 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Exactly this.

    I've used this very tactic at home; I started out telling my wife that our entire AV setup is outdated, the larger living room in our new home necessitated a 70" TV and surround sound to fill the room, as well as my aging computer no longer being able to handle the demands of a home theater PC server...

    What I actually really wanted: The green-light on building a new computer. We negotiated down from the TV, surround sound and new computer to just the new computer. My wife feels that that she managed to put the breaks on a lot of needless spending and I got exactly what I wanted short-term. In truth, I eventually want all three, but I have the patience to wait a while before complaining loudly that I can never hear the TV properly because of the crappy speakers, and the game will be afoot again. I wonder how long after the passage of SOPA or OPEN before they start complaining loudly that they can't fully protect us without expanding their reach to U.S. sites as well...

  4. Re:And if you don't know offhand what SOPA is... by Synerg1y · · Score: 5, Informative

    The article fails at describing SOPA and is super vague in most of its descriptions.

    Better description