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Congress's Techno-Ignorance No Longer Funny
pigrabbitbear writes "Since its introduction, the Stop Online Piracy Act (and its Senate twin PROTECT-IP) has been staunchly condemned by countless engineers, technologists and lawyers intimately familiar with the inner functioning of the internet. Completely beside the fact that these bills, as they currently stand, would stifle free speech and potentially cripple legitimate businesses by giving corporations extrajudicial censorial powers, there's an even more insidious threat: the method of DNS filtering proposed to block supposed infringing sites opens up enormous security holes that threaten the stability of the internet itself. The problem: key members of the House Judiciary Committee still don't understand how the internet works, and worse yet, it's not clear whether they even want to."
Ignorance is bliss. And when shit hits the fan, they can claim plausible deniability.
Seriously.
if one is receiving insane amounts of money and political clout to deliberately ignore severe problems in a proposed bill, is it still ignorance?
Congress just rubber-stamps bills that are written up by lobbyists. That has been fairly well proven.
My quote explains the why quite well in my opinion.
In Capitalist US, the commerce controls the Government.
All of them!
The opposite of Progress is Congress.
I don't think they are as willfully stupid as people make them out to be, but tend to let lobbyists and industry representatives do a lot of their thinking for them - in all areas, we're just focused on SOPA and Protect-IP because they are closer to our hearts.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
all of Congress is made up of lawyers. Where are the engineers and scientists? There are none.
They're perfectly consistent positions. The position is:
"Don't allow people to fuck with the internet"
those aren't mutually exclusive at all.
the whole point of net neutrality is to say, "hey! you conglomerate of ultra powerful ISPs and media outlets can't just unilaterally control the internet!"
the whole point of SOPA opposition is to say, "hey! you conglomerate of ultra powerful media and content producers can't just unilaterally control the internet!"
Net neutrality would be the regulation that no one be allowed to regulate the Internet, i.e. "Rule #1: There are no rules."
...not a giant truck you can just dump stuff on!
Time to find new ways to promote freedom of information and leave the internet become obsolete.
Congress represents the lowest common denominator of intelligence and has too much power.
Net Neutrality isn't the government regulating internet traffic. Net Neutrality is the government forbidding corporations from doing so.
No, that's not Net Neutrality at all. Net Neutrality is a whole bunch of rules that boils down to "Don't mess with internet traffic"
It's just to cheap for coorporate america to hedge it's bets when they only have to bribe.... errh I mean make campaign contributions, to 2 parties. Try to elect some representatives from the pirate party, like sweden has.
Run with the lemmings, and you'll get your feet wet.
Require that anyone who can even rule on such matters actually have a basic understanding of said matters.
If people can't understand the very basic concepts of how the internet works, they don't deserve to even use it in my opinion, never mind create rules and regulations for it.
Can't tell if you're trolling or just dim.
It's very simple. Net neutrality isn't regulating the Internet, it's regulating providers. Furthermore, it doesn't change what's on the internet, just how it gets to you. Fiddling with the DNS servers is 100% different. The analogy (not even an analogy...) is requiring the telephone company to let you call their competitors without an additional charge, vs blocking you from saying particular things.
The only thing the two have in common is the word 'internet'. Even a cursory glance shows that "don't throttle for profit" and "turn off this site" are completely different.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
The problem: key members of the House Judiciary Committee still don't understand how the internet works, and worse yet, it's not clear whether they even want to."
And does anyone find this to be surprising? I'm not sure more than a handful of congressmen know how to do anything but accept donations and campaign for re-election
I've noticed this also. As well as the backlash against usage-based billing as a consequence of network neutrality.
You have *way* too much time on your hands.
slowed down my recent ammunition purchases.
The technological ignorance of the Congressvarmints is matched by their economic ignorance.
What? Slashdot users agree on something?!
* betterunixthanunix has entered his bunker
Palm trees and 8
Vote with lead, if you see an elected official, shoot them.
Well there is a diversity of opinion on Slashdot, so you're inherently building a strawman, here.
Nevertheless, it's perfectly consistent to be pro-net-neutrality and anti-SOPA. The underlying principle here is to maintain equal access to communication technology, in particular to not allow consolidate power bases (in particular, corporations) to control the flow of information. The purpose of net neutrality is to force companies to not discriminate between information seekers and providers; this maximizes the amount of information everyone can easily access. The purpose of striking down SOPA is to prevent companies from having yet more legal power to issue takedowns, censor material, and discriminate between information seekers and provides; preventing SOPA from being passed also maximizes the amount of information everyone can easily access.
Your strawman was implicitly painting this as a debate about whether regulation is good or bad. But that's incorrect. The question is not whether we should have laws. The question is what laws.
We had the samw try here. The result was a new party in the parliamental race.
If you don't break the grip of the two party system, you will have a ruling aristocracy in less than a generation.
To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes.
"Combating the theft of U.S. property"...honestly? The words "theft" and "property" are HUGE red flags that these people have no clue what they are talking about.
Stupid.
I don't know why I'm typing this since it's been typed countless times before: He never said he invented the Internet.
If there were more politicians with Al Gore's level of understanding stuff we would't have all these problems.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
What else do you expect?
They aren't the computer generation.
What matters to most of them is just higest bidder. With enough money and few enough parties they can win another period there anyway.
And maybe more worrysome than congress, there is not enough people with a clue on the topic to have a chance to make hear their voices in big enough numbers.
Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but in my opinion, the internet should be
-> A level playing field
-> Uncensored
-> Anonymous
Anything that supports these objectives (while not having potentially disastrous side-effects) has my support. Whether it's regulation, or lack thereof that helps achieves these ends, I couldn't care less.
As Deng Xiaoping famously said: "I don't care if it's a white cat or a black cat. As long as it catches mice, it's a good cat"
They may not understand the internet but I think they understand money.
As a non American I hope this bill backfires and makes the younger and smarter more concerned and aware of politics. Yesterday tons of 4channers had streams of the amendment hearings and saw how ignorant politicians really are. Pissing off the internet is never a good idea.
Obama isn't going to pass it and if he did I see it causing major sites to simply change from American ownership to somewhere else. Of course really big sites like google would just be heavily censored like youtube.
Wouldn't be a bad time to go ahead and create some foreign sites now though.
I wouldn't mind going back to IRC personally.
then that is all that matters to them. Let the next Government worry about the fallout, because they'll be nekkid in Tahiti.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Don't use lead, it's bad for the environment. Use this instead.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
That was odd. Slashdot ate the parameter from my anchor URL... Search for "lead free ammunition".
Damn Google, spoiling my joke.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
No it's not the next logical step and you would know that if you understood the issue and had bother to read other comments. NET Neutrality is about preventing ISPs from controlling your access to content. In essence it prevents ISPs from regulating the internet.
I hope you learned a lesson on how you need to do some research as opposed to spot off like some idiot.
The ignorance of our elected officials was never funny. It was sad and grossly pathetic, and still remains so.
Given the democractic system, it is a direct reflection on who we are as a people. As much as people piss and moan about the retards we end up electing, vanishingly few of said people either vote for non-retards, or run against the retards. As such, we get the government we deserve; the government that WE THE PEOPLE voted for.
Just like the corporatocracy/plutocracy/Fascist state that we're fast becoming (which is an obvious symptomatic effect of the problem), people don't get how they are empowering the very evil they rail against. Corporations would have NO power if people stopped feeding them.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
Like post to Facebook ;-) should not be crafting any laws that affect the internet in anyway. Period.
It seems to work just fine in other countries where the government isn't so corrupted by corporate interests.
What exactly is your proposed solution to the problem of corporations controlling what you can and can't do on the internet? Trusting in the benevolent, all-seeing Invisible Hand?
I mean, I would much rather having accomplished scientists, engineers, and other professions representing me than someone who majored in law in college with the sole intention of being a politician. There is a breakdown in the system, and it was completely intended - when individual senators represent and are elected by up to 60 million people (Cali) they have no connection to their constituents at all.
I mean, the process to fix it is an arduous process. We need to take money out of politics, take it out of campaigning, and we can easily use technology to develop a mutually agreed upon open platform on the internet to market representatives. Like, say, each county could host a site called elections.XXXX.gov and it would allow people to apply and run for the office. Probably have a tiny $10 running fee to keep people from flooding the sites, but besides that make it open to all constituents and all it takes is the ability to type in ones positions and appear at public debate. And then outlaw the spending of money on political advertising, because once we have an easy to access platform for knowing all the candidates where they can respectively give their standings on different political topics, we can move away from the grossly unintended 2 party system and more towards electing people and not parties that don't work in the publics interest.
Problem is, the entrenched powers have absolutely no desire to move towards a system where anyone but the in crowd of each party could ever get nominated and handed to the public. They want 2 partys because they are easier to control and mutually benefit from the status quo.
/. view of the issue is shortsighted, believing that the government system is actually there for any purpose different from enriching the politicians and everybody with access to the politicians.
This is not an aberration, is what I am saying, this is the DESIGN, this is the purpose of what government does. Think about a little issue of taxes - does any sane person understand the entire tax structure that is now on the books in USA? Is it even humanly possible for a single person to understand it at all in one life time?
The issue is not this small (and this is a small issue compared say to your right to life and liberty), the issue is that the system is now completely subverted, the government operates outside of the law boundaries imposed upon it by the Constitution and the people bought into the idea that this is acceptable and not challenging the status-quo.
You can't handle the truth.
We wouldn't have these problems because everyone would be as bankrupt as California is from trying to become the first carbon neutral country.
I would phrase it more like this:
"Don't let the Internet turn into a fancy cable TV system"
When I was a kid, people spoke of "illegal cable" -- modified set-top boxes that allowed them to receive cable TV without paying, or to receive premium channels without paying. Some of the earliest DRM systems were designed to prevent people from accessing cable TV channels and satellite broadcasts without paying. The entire cable TV system is the antithesis of the PC and Internet revolutions: centralized control over users and their actions, permission required to do anything, and extra fees left and right.
Now the mainstream media wants to turn the Internet into the same sort of system: centralized control, DRM, fees, and users being pigeonholed as passive consumers of everything. At issue with net neutrality is whether or not websites should be treated like "channels," and forced to negotiate with ISPs for the right to transmit over the ISPs' networks. At issue with SOPA is whether or not there should be a central authority that is allowed to disconnect systems from the network when those systems do not follow the rules imposed by the central authority.
Palm trees and 8
Proof that you can make anyone out to be a hypocrite through creative manipulation of context.
The analogy ... is requiring the telephone company to let you call their competitors without an additional charge, vs blocking you from saying particular things.
More like vs changing your phone number to a government response number in all published phone directories and making it illegal to list your real number, but essentially, yes.
IIRC when foreign agents give money to us politicnas, there is a big shit storm
Imagine if they applied their level of tech knowledge to other areas. Like the economy:
"Congressman, how do you counter the charge that the 150% tax rate on the middle class and 0% tax rate on anyone making more than a million dollars in the Save Our Poor Affluent bill will result in millions going bankrupt?"
"Well, I've been assured by the good folks in the Rich Individuals Association of America that this tax rate change will result in people buying more summer homes, yachts, and expensive cars. So obviously, it will highly boost the economy!"
"But won't it...."
"Look, I just pass the laws written for me by powerful lobbying organizations. I'm not an economics nerd!"
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
the backlash against usage-based billing as a consequence of network neutrality
The only acklash against usage-based billing I've ever seen is from proponents of network neutrality who point out that usage-based billing without neutrality is asking for the system to be gamed (eg your provider drops every other packet and bills you for twice the data).
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
....is why we need a political system overhaul. The current system we have now is starting to show it's age in keeping up with the Information Age. As a start, we should loosen up the age restrictions on some of these political seats. Another one would be requiring some type of education in a professional field in order to get a higher seat. What about a rating system for our Representatives or Senators based on official public voting. Fall below a certain percentage, and see ya! Heck I'd vote alot more if I knew I could affect a Congressman's position to stay or go... I mean I'm not asking for a over night extreme makeover, but small changes like this could go a long way to implementing better laws to keep up with this age.
Once again, bonch willingly and knowingly pretends that net neutrality means something other than what it does.
He has been been corrected repeatedly, and has never even once refuted said correction, thus proving that he knows the version of net neutrality he presents is false. From this, the only possible conclusion is that he sets it up as a strawman because he knows he is not mentally competent to construct any kind of intelligent argument against the actual position of net neutrality.
The problem: key members of [strike]the House Judiciary Committee[/strike] Congress still don't understand [strike]how the internet works,[/strike] anything at all, with the possible exception of money, and worse yet, it's not clear whether they even want to.
There. Fixed that for ya.
Isn't it? You voted for this. I mean it's not likely anyone would buy politician's favours or anything isn't it?
I know they know what "we'll vote you out of office" means.
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
Either you're paid for your opinion, or you're being obtuse on a level that is reaching record heights.
Net Neutrality: make sure that the corporations who control the infrastructure do not abuse their control.
SOPA: corporations get to control who says what and how on the Internet, without any interference from due process, free speech or the fact that they didn't pay into building the Internet.
It's a perfectly consistent position. The fact that you refuse to consider that says more about you than about anyone else.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Agreed. It is a shame that people confuse governing those who would regulate with governing those who would be regulated.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I don't think they are as willfully stupid as people make them out to be
That's a bunch of wishful thinking, because some of them truly are.
The internet is seen as a means for the 99% to organize and obtain information from outside sources.
This is nothing more or less than cyber pepper spray
I'm just wondering when the corporation formerly known as the Post Office is going to introduce legislation to charge users for sending and recieving emails. Snail mail is pretty much limited these days to junk mail & magazines, except for holiday cards around this time of the year. Everybody else is using email.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Surely packet-dropping would be nacklash, not acklash.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
No, seriously, I ask this in earnest.
It's not a tech problem. It's a matter of keeping channels free (in the Freedom sense).
Introduce control and you get 1984. Introduce control by corporations and you might as well declare the US a plutocracy, without any trace of the democracy Jefferson and the other guys dreamed.
This is the moment in Animal Farm where the pigs close deals with humans. What can be clearer than that? Even a 10-year would understand with a 10-minute explanation.
has some infringing material on it, please take it down for me pursuant to SOPA. Thank you.
"Let's get ignorance off the streets of America and back into Congress where it belongs!"
Why can't these Congress folks just contact a University in their constituency for advice in such matters? Professors would love to get the opportunity to advise Congress for free. Great PR for the school and their department.
The Congress folks can brag about the local "technical expertise" and that the constituency will benefit with economic growth, more jobs, and free coke and hookers for all . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
It seems to work just fine in other countries where the government isn't so corrupted by corporate interests.
Name an example. Other countries are rife with internet censorship (like the banning of nazi material in Germany).
What exactly is your proposed solution to the problem of corporations controlling what you can and can't do on the internet? Trusting in the benevolent, all-seeing Invisible Hand?
WHERE IS THE PROBLEM YOU ARE TRYING TO SOLVE???????
Seriosuly! What "problem" have we in the US that Net Neutrality (and now SOPA) solves? There is none! It's a concept built to fight a hypothetical bogeyman that has never arisen! The closest thing we had was Comcast throttling some traffic but the way they did it would not even be covered by Network Neutrality - and the fact is they stopped when consumers complained, no government required!!
You are seeking "protection" from things people are trying to scare you into believing are problems is just like people passing bad laws "for the children". Screw that, what about the adults, don't we deserve some freedom of choice? Sure there might be a few rough patches but at least let us choose how to run our own lives.
Guess not! Crawl into your cocoon and enjoy the warmth as it slowly constricts around you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Wrong. Net neutrality says ISPs have to treat any content equally, they can't meter it out so that their websites go faster.
SOPA says if you do something infringing, or if you just seem like you've infringed, or if somebody who has infringed uses your website, then that website can be taken down FOR EVERYBODY. Nobody, anywhere on the internet, using ANY ISP, can connect AT ALL. Your site has been blocked, shut down, banned.
Net Neutrality is about controlling corporations who might try to squeeze extra money from certain major providers. ISPs would want to control traffic going over THEIR network. It would unfortunately massively hamstring the internet, whose value comes from the ability for so many people to put up their own content. But having net neutrality so that companies can't control their own traffic and give preferential treatment doesn't mean you can't have other regulations.
SOPA is about the government being able to control THE INTERNET ITSELF, ALL NETWORKS, ALL ISPs and shut down anything they don't like.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
Lack of net neutrality == filtering
SOPA == filtering
The Slashdot hive mind is pretty consistant.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
...stopped them up to now.
I don't think their techno-ignorance is any new phenomenon or particularly egregious. Pretty much why organizing your social progress around congress ends up sucking hard.
Lets take a moment to remember Jibekn, and the humor he brought to slashdot. We can only hope that the rural ass prison he was incarcerated in will get that dial up line soon so he can join us again.
Congress can't even comprehend the Constitution. How can we expect them to comprehend technology.
Al Gore didn't say he invented the Internet. Instead, he said that he invented a series of interconnected tubes that will carry information (unless they get too filled up).
Term Limits..
RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
Thank you for being a friend.
Travel down the road and back again.
Your heart is true, you're a pal and a confidant.
And if you threw a party,
invited everyone you knew.
You would see the biggest gift would be from me
and the card attached would say,
thank you for being a friend.
They just don't care. The wheels have been greased, the appropriate promises and payoffs have been made in the backrooms of Washington D.C., and this bill is slated to pass no matter what a bunch of geeks have to say about it.
Look, we all know this bill will be passed because the Congressmen are legally bribed by the "media/content industry" to pass it. We write strongly worded letters to our representatives, who send back form letters and then do as their actual masters bid them to do. The MPAA et al just have more money than we do.
But they got that money from us.
We go to their movies. We buy their DVD and Blu-rays. We pay for their cable services, their rentals via mail, via kiosk, via streaming. We pay to download from iTunes and Amazon. We gave them our money, and they use it against us.
Stop.
Stop giving them money! Don't buy their shit. Don't rent their shit. Don't even let them charge advertisers to run commercials during the shit they give you for free. Turn it off. Don't even pirate it! Just walk away from it all.
They have nothing we have not given them. Stop giving it to them.
jurys / judges in courts cases are the same way with tech cases and part of fixing Congress needs to be done at the courts level as well. Now what if there where 3rd party techs (as in not tied to 1 side or a other) to help out in cases?
OK, folks, let's concede that the government has ceased to be anything but an extension of the kleptocracy. Let's drop the left-vs-right, Republican-vs.-Democrat BS that is a dangerous distraction. Let's drop all the BS memes that have been focus-group tested by the 1% to take everyone's minds off what's really going on. OK? Let's stop pretending that Congress or any part of the government will listen to any level or form of input or bitching and change its ways. Let's just drop that stuff because it's unproductive.
Instead, let's approach this problem like the scientists, engineers, geeks, nerds, and can-do people we are and see it as a technical challenge we can solve. Society is broken, the economy is broken, government is broken. How do we fix it?
If SOPA is threatening the traditional internet, how do we route around the damage? Can we dramatically grow the number of nodes and routing capabilities? Can we design an open source ad-hoc mesh network that makes any attempt to shut it down an impossible project of confiscating every router, cellphone, car, and thing in the world that can communicate with each other?
Can we design crowd-sourcing tools that allow the 99% to track and neutralize the 1% far more effectively than they could ever do to us? Can we make it possible to in every way tell them that their BS is no longer welcome on Planet Earth?
Can we re-wire technical systems to promote and support the Steve Jobs & Woz's of the world to create a brighter future for us all?
That's really the conversation we ought to be having on /. every day, not endless hand-wringing about the supposed government and big companies who JUST WON'T LISTEN TO US.
Let's work the problem, folks.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Just as the gun nuts have the NRA, we have the EFF. It must be recognized that this fight will never end, and vigilance must be eternal. Join freedom-loving organizations, call your friends and politicians, and vote.
"I'll give you my domain when you pry it from my cold, dead hands!"
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Usage-based billing is NOT a consequence of network neutrality. The two have absolutely no relationship. Network Neutrality is being used a a pretext for usage-based billing, but that is very different. I could claim that a warm day is a pretext for playing WoW, but that would not mean there was any relationship between the two. It's fiction.
The complaint that some pipes are getting overloaded is stupid beyond belief. AQM doesn't violate Network Neutrality but is quite capable of handling pipe overload at the ISP level. Above that, most of the problem is caused by Tier 1 backbone providers oversubscribing and/or going for a Spanning Tree topology rather than mesh.
Blaming customers and locking them out until they pay protection money would be like airlines overbooking an aircraft then demanding surplus passengers cough up the cash for a chartered plane to rescue them. Sorry, but as malign, degenerate and corrupt as the airlines are, even they don't demand that! I see bugger all reason to allow any network provider to get away with what we'd never allow any other industry to excuse.
Going for a Spanning Tree when network loads were rising exponentially -- a problem caused by the network providers themselves NOT providing multicast to the home but demanding that everyone use P2P for audio and video, for profit reasons* -- rather than going for a mesh meant that pipes were bound to be saturated. They knew that when they started cutting back on routes, but fat profits meant more than good service. That's their business decision. They're allowed to make it. But they should ALSO be allowed to suffer the consequences. This is one bail-out the tax payer has NO reason to fund.
*ISPs wanted to charge customers for content in a way multicast doesn't allow. Since P2P is more network-intensive, not only did ISPs hope to charge more for the content being delivered but they also hoped to force customers to buy fatter pipes than actually needed. This is all well-documented history, anyone using the MBone prior to it being enabled by default on Tier 1 will be familiar with this. The problems of P2P were well-known to everyone the moment Cornell University released its client (yes, that's what CU stands for in the name), which is why clients and the reflectors supported multicast streaming. It was a game of chicken, in essence - the ISPs would back down or the users would back down. The game continues to this day, only the users are now so used to content-on-demand via YouTube et al that they have forgotten any other way ever existed. The ISPs still won't enable multicast because the moment they do, caching and distributed video delivery becomes easier and the network usage will plummet, killing their argument that they need to charge more to handle demand. Their argument is fiction and their issues are self-caused and self-sustained, but the moment that becomes obvious even to the most idiotic of anti-nerds, the ISPs will be absolutely dead in the water as far as milking the market is concerned.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
And this surprises you why?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Do you really expect the members of Congress, elected from the general public, to be experts in all of those areas?
No but you do expect elected politicians to be good at talking to people, specifically people who ARE experts in an area. Plus you also expect them to have enough brains to be able to weigh what they are being told against the interests of the person talking. The problem is that very few politicians, at least in the UK, come from any sort of science background. Hence they typically lack the basic tools with which to understand technical issues, even if they are properly briefed.
Worse I bet if you looked at politicians' staff you would find a similar utter lack of science backgrounds so they don't any one to give them that briefing since their staff are probably as clueless about it as they are. So while I would agree that they do not need to know specifically how X works they DO have a responsibility to make sure that they have someone they can trust who can explain technical stuff to them BEFORE they vote to pass laws on it and this part of their duty is something they are clearly failing on.
It's not just technolgy that politicians are ignorant of, it's pretty much everything outside their political sphere. This is why central planning always collapses eventually; every stupid new law passed by people who don't understand what they're doing without considering the consequences adds more cost and complexity to society until it can no longer sustain itself.
Without government regulation, Comcast would have been able to block all Netflix access.
No, because customers would have left in droves. That is the reason they never even considered such a thing.
I don't have to believe companies care about customers, just that they care about having them -something you apparently believe is unpossible.
Here's a hint - Network Neutrality has not yet passed in the U.S. and yet I am still watching Netflix over Comcast internet.
Again you are raising hypothetical bogeymen that will NEVER HAPPEN when you consider market pressures alone.
Can't we at least wait to see any any ISP does something like that before trying to write regulations that encourage the arrival of other things like SOPA? How do you know any given version of Network Neutrality would even stop Comcast from blocking Netflix in some way we cannot imaging and a bill written by people who, as this story summary notes "do not understand technology" cannot possibly imagine?
It's really hilarious to me how against things like the Patriot Act Slashdot users are in general, how quick they are to throw out the Franklin quote about liberty and security - all the while seeking to shed liberty like water off a duck when it's framed as protecting "the internets" from some mythical bogeyman that might take away a toy.
Oh, I can't help but notice you utterly failed to point out what country has Network Neutrality in place that does not also censor the internet in other ways.
Are you just stupid? Or some kind of sock puppet meant to pacify technical users so you can implement the internet controls you so desperately crave?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Explain how DNSBL adversely affects SECURITY specifically someone, please (per this quote from the article here today):
"the method of DNS filtering proposed to block supposed infringing sites opens up enormous security holes that threaten the stability of the internet itself"
Because I have seen DNSBL's be used to AID SECURITY, ala:
---
A.) Norton DNS (198.153.192.50 and 198.153.194.50/198.153.192.40 and 198.153.194.40/198.153.192.60 and 198.153.194.60) -> http://nortondns.com/ & you can even see how it updates every few minutes vs. known malicious sites-servers, here -> http://safeweb.norton.com/buzz as well as get a GOOD read on how/why it works, etc.- et al, here https://dns.norton.com/dnsweb/faq.do
It filters vs. MANY threats online & IS UP TO DATE as is possible I'd imaging (see those links, you'll understand WHY I state that). It's part of WHY I use it as my PRIMARY DNS here...
---
B.) ScrubIT DNS (67.138.54.100 and 207.225.209.66 ) -> http://www.scrubit.com/ & here is a good read on how/why it works via its FAQ's as well -> http://www.scrubit.com/index.cfm?page=faq
---
C.) Open DNS (208.67.222.222 or 208.67.220.220) -> https://store.opendns.com/get/home-free
---
EACH IS FREE, & WORKS vs. threats online of MANY kinds, doubtless via a form of DNSBL they use for filtering those threats out!
(E.G.-> Phishing/Spamming, Malware hosting sites/servers, Maliciously scripted hosts-domains etc./et al & more...)
I.E./E.G.-> I use ALL 3 of them (mostly as "failovers" for one another, in case my primary can't resolve a host/domain name to an IP address, & w/ Norton DNS as primary) - I do so, in a "layered triumvirate formation" in BOTH my IP stack DNS settings in Windows (software-side), as well as in my LinkSys/CISCO router here (hardware-side)...
* Which are ALL/EACH examples of "filtering" DNS that use DNSBL's FOR THE GOOD of others online (to block out KNOWN BAD SITES/SERVERS ONLINE!).
APK
P.S.=> Now, some b.s. artist MAY mean that DNSBL's (DNS Block Lists) "harm":
1.) Illegal file sharers' "freedoms" (freedoms to STEAL is about it), but that's NOT about security being harmed @ all, whatsoever...
2.) Nor is it harming "freedom of speech" if DNSBL's are kept strictly to blocking out known bad sites/servers that serve up malicious scripted exploits, malwares, & the like (and YES, illegally shared files along with child pornography & the like etc./et al)...
... apk/b
Stupid.
I don't know why I'm typing this since it's been typed countless times before: He never said he invented the Internet.
If there were more politicians with Al Gore's level of understanding stuff we would't have all these problems.
W-w-w-what?!?!?!?
We must not be talking about the same Al Gore...
Especially because the senate just passed a bill that lets us lock people up forever.
I doubt most bill authors on technical subjects write much of the copy themselves. The congressman sets forth the general policy and lets a specialist flesh it out. I heard something on NPR about lobbyist firms that specialize in writing bills for a fee. So when an omnibus bill opportunity comes up they spam the bill with tons of earmarks on short notice.
He never said that either. What he said was that while he was in the Senate, he "took the initiative in creating the Internet". In context, it's very very clear that what he was referring to was both ensuring that the government piece of ARPANet was well-funded, and then pushing the changes that allowed the general public to access things via the newfangled ISPs.
I am officially gone from
Look up "arms for hostages". The kidnappers were paid to hold on to the hostages until after the election.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
If you think of the Senate as a live performance of "The 100 Stooges" its actually pretty humorous. And then of course you remember they're crapping legislation all over our collective lives and the crying starts. It is however cathartic. Maybe next election we can make some of them cry a little?
Bahahahahaha
It's worth noting that these same principles, applied to to law in general rather than internet law, lead to the conclusion that a person who is in favor of ANY law at all must be in favor of ALL POSSIBLE laws. "Laws against rape and murder? Great! Laws mandating rape and murder whenever possible? ALSO GREAT!"
You should really try reductio ad absurdum on your arguments before you let other people see them so that you don't look like such an idiot.
Any chance the midly tech savvy Obama will veto this horrid bill?
It doesn't, and I don't see how anything I've said above could give you that impression. I am simpy stating the facts for those who may not be familiar with bonch's history.
Or it's like: How dare you use this free and open thing that I don't understand and I don't control!
why should the internet be any different? Hell, half of them come from states where their constituents think ID is a "scientific theory" on equal footing with evolution. And don't get me started on the whole global warming conspiracy... and fluoridation of water... and ...
"Our two-party system is a bowl of shit looking at itself in the mirror."
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I'm not a doctor, but you look like your spleen is broken. It's gotta come out. Good thing I have my Swiss Army knife. Now just lie down on that table there, bite down on something, and let's do this.
Now what does a spleen look like again, and where it is? Oh well, I'll just go digging -- I'm sure I'll find it sooner or later!
Surely you don't object to me performing surgery without a medical license or any sort of medical training? After all, like I said, I'm not a doctor ... but you're "not a nerd", and that didn't prevent you from backing SOPA, right?
Video was cute until it landed on Gore. O.K. what
he said was wrong but it was because of him we have
a publicly accessible Internet, and what we have today.
Gore more than anybody else in his position knew what
the Internet was and what it was capable of.
10 cents a minute and I'd have to pull a feed from
500 miles away (Seattle Wa, U.S.A) for my Usenet.
FidoNet was free, but not as shall we say bright as
the Internet.
Don't pound on Gore for a misstatement, learn how
the Internet worked BG (Before Gore).
Send the ignorant congress critters to jail. A few months for violation and complete disregard of The Constitution of The United States of America(tm) is the least we can do. But I honestly believe the founding fathers would have preferred death sentences instead of long jail terms. Its long overdue that people start becoming familiar and accountable for their actions. The congress critters that voted these abominations in, must be held to account. These laws violate (collectively) the most important parts of the US constitution. I'm tired of seeing "Oh, I didn't know" run roughshod all over it. JAIL! They must be brought to understand the words "DON'T TREAD ON ME".
Im not American, but yes, if my country pulled this crap, I would be killing people.
The biggest problem with Net Neutrality is that it isn't consistently defined. It means different things to different people. Indeed, in my experience, most of the people clamoring for Net Neutrality are very big about shouting "FREEDOM!!!!" like Mel Gibson in Braveheart. They love to complain that the big ISPs suck. But they're generally pretty short on specific ideas or completely-thought-through reasoning. This does not help.
Them: "Comcast sucks!"
Me: "Yes, they do. So what do you propose to do about it?"
Them: "Make them not suck!"
Me: "Okay, but how?"
Them: "Pass a law against them sucking."
Me: "Could you explain specifically what it is you want to prohibit?"
Them: "Everyone knows Comcast sucks!"
Me: *sigh*
While there are some people who can hold an intelligent conversation about this, they seem to be few and far between.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
"has been staunchly condemned by countless engineers, technologists and lawyers intimately familiar with the inner functioning of the internet"
Internet is a proper noun.
You are evidently unaware that UPS and Fedex rely on the USPS for a substantial portion of their shipping.
It never was particularly funny and it's hardly new. More like a very sad old tradition that we can't get rid of.
Today it's the internet or stem cells. Before that, it was genetic engineering in general and a whole host of scientific and technical topics.
I can remember it going back to the 70s. My science teacher father assured me it went back prior to WW2 and that was even ignoring evolution.
It's a bipartisan problem. No party will allow another to out-ignoramus it.
And I'm sure it goes back at least to the Continental Congress.
Maybe if we leverage all our 404, 405, 403 and 500 pages to "blame SOPA for the problem with this page", then maybe John Clueless will be enticed to call his congressman.
Makin' money, makin' friends, makin' whoopee and wearin' Depends
Investing in the evil is the only way to ensure a comfortable retirement.
Guess from which industry the SOPA bill's sponsor, Lamar Smith, received his largest campaign contribution. Drum roll...the TV/Movies/Music industry. http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00001811
Simple, if they switch you down, put the server overseas...preferably on a country where they will not shut you down.....
on the other hand, Tor will be the app of choice to avoid shortages.
Its about any field, the more you study any particular area, the more you realize how wrong congress is about it. I started really noticing about 20 years ago that it seemed that I disagreed with the vast majority of their activity, back then, I wrote some of it off as my own personal ignorance, but the more I learn about economics, technology, etc the more I understand just how wrong they are about those areas. From that I am forced to cynically extrapolate that they are probably just as wrong about areas in which I am not knowledgeable.
My college roomate is the only person I've ever met who said "that's beside the fact" instead of "that's beside the point". Is that you, Armand?
The net is functionally neutral. No law needed for that to happen.
Companies that fucked with clients' access long-term tend to go bankrupt. It's just one of those things.
It's kind of hard to get more fair than the TCP/IP stack itself, which is relatively data / application agnostic. Sure, there's QoS and packet-shapers and shit you can do on the router level, but it's somewhat limited.
I am John Hurt.
Without the electoral college candidates will be able to completely ignore all but the three or four most populated states.
This is nothing more than a negotiating tactic. Propose something so absurd that the engineering/scientific community is united in opposition expending all their energy, then "compromise" by proposing slightly less evil.
The whole idea of benevolent and capable technocrats running society in some rational and scientific way doesn't sustain reflection.
Also, if you have any working experience in a large company, the difficulties of central knowledge and decision become painfully obvious (this limits the size of firms).
On top of that, there are serious issues with incentives in any political system, including democratic ones. See "public choice theory" for more analysis of this topic.
what good is knowing about it if you can't do anything about it? Congress has an approval rate of 9%, and they still get elected. You're completely missing the point with your suggestion, which is that these people are our ruling class. You are not free. They own you.
The correct solution is to only allow individuals to donate, and then cap the donations at a reasonable amount. If everyone has the same opportunity to express your view with money, then you have real free speech. Also, you only get to donate to an election you can vote in. No donations if you can't legally vote. Corporations can't vote, so they don't get to donate. Period. Problem solved.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The more they posture and threaten, the greater the need to move away from the present DNS structure to one which cannot be held hostage by tyrants and dictators the world over. (Unfortunately, the US now falls into this category...)
Obama WILL pass it. He doesn't give a shit about you or anyone else except himself. Him and his wife will continue to take vacations though. He's also so narcissistic that he might actually declare martial law in order to suspend elections. Trust me, you'll learn to love him. And if not, the dear leader will find ways of persuading you. Here. Have another EBT card...
The real question is: if those stupid Americans really end up breaking the internet, what can the rest of the world do? What should the rest of the world do?
I never thought I would laugh and cry at the same time for two separate reasons on any singular subject. Congratulations U.S. politicians, you are now officially so stupid in my books that it is extremely funny and extremely sad. This is something even Attack of the Killer Tomatoes failed to do.
Sure, they should only be allowed to weigh in on bills that they understand, but how often can the Corruption and Graft Bill come up for vote?
Bark less. Wag more.
Without the electoral college candidates will be able to completely ignore all but the three or four most populated states.
Even if it was true, it would be better than what you have now, when candidates ignore everything but few least populated states. In reality it would end representation of states as some kind of homogeneous groups.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
On the one side you had a few (very few) congressmen/women, namely Mr. Issa, Mr. Polis, Mr. Chaffetz, Ms. Lofgren and Ms. Jackson. They spent the entire hearing pleading with the chairman and the rest of the committee to allow experts (nerds as they often said) to essentially come in and explain the internet to them, because it was obvious that 99% of the members of the committee had no idea what they were talking about. They made reasonable, logical arguments and put forth one amendment after the other trying to clarify some really vague areas of the bill, all of which were shot down by the rest of the committee usually by a vote of ~6 to 24.
On the other side you had 5 or 6 members of the committee who also admitted several times that they had zero understanding of the technical aspects of the bill, but that the bill was awesome anyway. This group was mainly the chairman of the committee Mr. Smith, Mr. Berman, Mr. Watt, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Goodlatte and Ms. Waters. They made no arguments beyond "We have to do something. This is something. Therefor we should do this". Unlike the first group they didn't care that they were ignorant on the subject, they just wanted to get the damn thing passed. I doubt anyone here would be surprised to learn they all received large campaign contributions from the TV/Music/Film industry. Check the contributions of the first group and you'll find the same industry conspicuously absent. It's also worth noting that more than half the committee never said a word during the entire session that wasn't "No" in response to an amendment vote. This third group cared so little they couldn't even be bothered to take part in the debate.
So when you're condemning this committee for being willfully ignorant just keep in mind that 5 or 6 of them don't deserve to be thrown in with the rest like that. I'll end with a quote from a frustrated Darrell Issa, speaking to the chairman of the committee half way through the second day:
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
TCP has no NAKs, only ACKs.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
While this techno-ignorance is old, definitively pre-WW2, the Cold War was a time of a surprisingly sane Congress and Supreme Court in terms of pushing modern science.
It was after-all partially thanks to the Cold War that creationsim was finally forced out of the science textbooks(just to come back as "creation science", and then "intelligent design" ..
> SOPA is about the government being able to control THE INTERNET ITSELF, ALL NETWORKS, ALL ISPs and shut down anything they don't like.
That's cool.
You Americans go right ahead with that and let me know how it works out. I'll be over here, in Europe, enjoying my free unfettered access to the New World Wide Web that the planet inevitably creates to route around your brain-damaged country. While you guys continue to drool over yourselves constantly bickering about IP laws and copyright, the rest of the world will simply go on without you.
I'm sorry, but as a non-American, the thought that **any** of you think you have the power to CONTROL THE ENTIRE INTERNET (a truly global resource) is disgusting. It's all about you and your stupid fucking corporations, and I'm sick of it. I'm tempted to say that the world wide 'net would be a better place without the USA right now. It's not like the most popular trackers on the planet are hosted there anyways.
-AC
Most people online tend to ignore the effects of piracy, and are quite tolerant of it. Sure, mainstream music and movies get most of the attention, but look at PC gaming. Crytech, Id Software, Epic Games, and others have demoted PC games to second class status. The movie industry should be fortunate most of the population is not technically skilled enough to engage in piracy.
how about not tying representation to geographic districts, giving access to good politicians from other areas.
so often I hear stuff like "why can't our state have someone like X"
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Many members of Congress (especially the WASPy old men) wilfully flaunt their ignorance about all things tech as some atavistic badge of honour. Remember, we're dealing with boring old farts who still use their female aides to fetch their coffee and dry-cleaning. They're of a generation who views it as unmanly to type one's own memos, schedule one's own lunches, and so forth. So they sit on their thrones and let their underlings dirty their hands on those doodads and thingamawhatzits.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
RE: SOPA 3261 I am the IT Director for (redacted, an entity in his district). I have 28 years IT experience. Please cease and desist with the SOPA H.R.3261. To me the bill reads like a bad joke. Thank you for your consideration.
So what else is new. Congress sucks. They kowtow to their corporate masters and media industry bosses and like good lackeys, only do what they're told. In fact, they do such a good job, I find myself often wishing we could find some folks like that who could do the same for the rest of us...
"The Senate trying to govern cyberspace is analogous to King George believing he could still govern the colonies even though he had never been there." -- John Perry Barlow
Maybe this would mean only the technically inclined would be able to communicate freely using some distributed DNS+encryption etc. I'm not saying if that is a good thing or bad but we definitely are making anti-progress.
"key members of the House Judiciary Committee still don't understand how the internet works"
Easy: it's like a series of tubes.
Isn't http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Research_Service_reports suppose to educate the Congress members?
For e.g. Skype
Casteism
The only thing the Congress and Senate care about is their next drink and child to molest. These laws are all written by lobbyists paid by the sponsors. The politicians are paid to support or not support the bills. We do not have a legislative body any more. They are nothing more than drunken perverts living like royalty and we are too stupid and lazy to do anything about it.
All I can say is, "well duh!" The mega-corps wrote the law and gee they benefit themselves over the proletariat. Surprise! Nothing to see here. Get rid of these bums (assuming we can) or just suck it up.
to sink SOPA, if i understand the US system right, is to hitch a rider to the bill that will make it completely unpalatable to the corporations. The political equivalent to a poison pill.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
and impose huge fines, jail time and immediate loss of position for lawmakers and staff receiving any money or gifts from lobbyists. Define gifts as anything more than you haven't eaten by the end of the day. So the plate of cookies from Martha homemaker are ok and the 500 lunch from a corporation are ok. Both allow bending of an ear but little else.
It allows people who want to make a difference into lawmaking. It quickly disperses the ones who are willing to lie cheat and steal enough money for the next voting campaign.
To help level out the playing field: Limit the amount of money a campaign fund can spend. Pay salary and benefits such that any other current sources of income will take away from your lawmaking salary. Stay at home. You cannot leave your voted state except for vacations and emergencies. This one will be particularly difficult for the people who get high on face to face inter-personal manipulations, bribes and compromises.
The real problem is that often there is one or two people who want to do the right thing but are beaten down by the current way of doing things. In order to survive they have to adapt and become just like the others or fizzle out.
Now if we could vote on the items we wish to spend our taxes on every four years we can solve a lot of problems.
You talk about the lack of adoption of multicast. I think that was preferable back in the days of "the Internet will be just like cable, with channels that everyone can watch a show on at the same time." Instead, YouTube allows people to watch whenever they want; if two people start watching a movie a minute apart, I don't think multicast will help (although it's been a while since I studied it).
Another aspect of it is the existence of the "local caching companies", like Akamai. If, instead of streaming every time we wanted to watch "Party Rock Anthem ft. Lauren Bennett, GoonRock", we streamed it the first time and then brought it from local cache, we would be causing less strain on the networks and might not have created the conditions required for Akamai to incorporate in the first place. And it could still be arranged with counters on the site; the code would just go "update counter; get from local cache; if not there, get from internet". Sure, some people would find a way to access the cache without the counters. Big deal; our rights and freedoms are far more interesting than the profits of some temporary corporation.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
There are common sense ways of changing incentives to address the deleterious effect of corporate wealth. Lawrence Lessig explains why transparency alone is insufficient, and talks about some real reforms that will actually change behavior:
1) Democracy Vouchers
2) Mandatory Anonymous Donations
These are examples of the basic reforms we need to restore decency to our democracy.
Unfortunately it will be for the follow on generation who will have a better handle on tech than the present who will have to correct a whole litany of laws written by the old business model operators to try to keep their model alive instead of using new technology to expand their positions, examples of what happens when you fail to innovate are apple Itunes versus SAM Goodies, Sam is out of business I believe. How will SOPA affect the net??? I believe there will become two camps the innovation community and the stodgy old school camps with their own independent DNS hierarchy. It will be interesting to see the outcome, the stodgy campers will undoubtedly sue and the innovators will have to try to buy out the old guard where they can and absorb them into revised/new corporate incarnations that are friendly to innovation.
I don't see a single comment on top that says what needs to be done.
Vote Ron Paul 2012, he'll veto all of this nonsense and he'll work to reduce the federal agency and shut down federal departments and reduce federal spending, which means transferring the power from the elites back to the people.
You can't handle the truth.
"...key members of the House Judiciary Committee still don't understand how the internet works..." pretty redundant, they don't know how anything in reality-world works, save their money train.
Your comment reflects an almost complete lack of understanding of incorporation. First, the idea that "corporations are bodies created to remove people from the equation" shows that you've learned just (barely) enough theory to be dangerous. The corporate veil has been put in place to protect people in business so that they are able to take financial risk without placing their personal assets at stake in the event of bankrupcy or a lawsuit. With it, the primary losers are banks that lend to bad companies that go bankrupct. Without it, we would ALL be losers because business activity would dry up overnight - taking with it nearly all the material goods, medicines, food, and shelter that you and I depend on as well as crippling the vast majority of technological innovation and scientific research.
Furthermore, if I, in my role as officer of a corporation, commit a crime against you, then the prosecutors assigned to the case will "pierce the corporate veil" like it meant nothing whatsoever IF it is the appropriate action. If personal prosecution is not appropriate, then you'll still have a cause of action against the corporate entity. Yes, corporate entities do often have more latitude than we might all prefer and NO I am not defending the big media companies foisting SOPA on us (I've written my congressmen to oppose it).
I thought Senator Stevens (R-AK) explained it a few years back: "It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material."
What's not to understand?
Remember children and felons can't vote, so you have to make that 100 grand available to invest as your personal wealth (you can't decide where your pension manager puts their money).
A corporation closes when it finishes its statement of purpose. It can only work within that statement of purpose.
Corporations as exist nowadays in almost every single case DO NOT DO THIS.
Too bad those in power don't give even the slightest of two shits about what society as a whole thinks. What are people going to do, vote them out? Never happen. IF (and that's a big if) the polls aren't rigged as-is, those being elected just need to convince the proles that they're good... ie: exactly what they've been doing for the past long time. The number of stupid people by FAR outweighs the number of smart people.
All of this of course ignores the two-party system where both parties have different views on the "hot" topics (ie: the ones that don't actually matter in the grand scheme of things), but all strive towards the same end goal.
And THAT ignores the fact that if someone else were elected in, they would be bought and sold before they set foot on the white house grounds, and follow the exact same path as all those before.
This isn't about officers of the corporation, it's about owners of the corporation.
I didn't make any value judgments in my post. You inferred them from nothing. I merely pointed out the massiver error in the parent to my post.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai