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."

Comments

They don't want to

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignorance is bliss. And when shit hits the fan, they can claim plausible deniability.

Re:They don't want to

[forkfail]

To be more specific, their supposed ignorance allows them to allow the (paying) lobbyists to write the bills in the manner that most benefits our purported representatives true constituency - the corporations and their owners who aren't satisfied with the majority of the pie, but who want the whole damn thing.

Re:They don't want to

[Anonymous Coward]

And when shit hits the fan, they'll either be retired, promoted or have a nice position on the board of some nice corporation.

FTFY

Re:They don't want to

[alexborges]

Change:
"...it's not clear whether they even want to" [understand how the internet works]

To:
"....its clear they dont even want to"

I saw ALL the discussion yesterday. This is ridiculous, the people advocating this act are entirely ignorant of any and all issues regarding WTF they are doing and they dont even realize it will ALL backfire. I ended yesterday thinking this could even be good for "us" (freedom loving people all over the world): its clear that if SOPA passes, bitcoins, tor proxies and ways to monetize darknet access will be a good way to make money.

They want their broken internet: let them have it.

Re:They don't want to

[GrumpySteen]

While members of congress may not know the technical details of how a combustion engine works, they have a general idea of how it works.

This is the equivalent of adding in a provision to the fuel economy laws that allows any company that produces gasoline to arbitrarily shut down any gas station they say is selling their company's gas without permission without any proof and no consequences for being wrong. Give that power to any gas company and you'll quickly see every competing station in town shut down and the costs at the one brand that's left skyrocket.

It doesn't take an expert to understand that giving someone arbitrary judicial powers with no consequences for the abuse of those powers is a horrible idea. Even the dumbest congressman understands it, but they don't give a fuck because the consumers don't donate as much money as the corporations that stand to benefit from the bill.

Re:They don't want to

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really expect the members of Congress, elected from the general public, to be experts in all of those areas? If YOU were elected to Congress, how many areas are YOU an expert in?

I think the problem here isn't that they are not experts, its the fact that experts are not involved.

Re:They don't want to

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is the thing, if you are legislating something. You HAVE to understand how it works. You can't just pass a law saying that all cars must get 100 MPG, and then leave it to the engineers to make your law so. It would obviously lead to disaster.

Re:They don't want to

[Anonymous Coward]

Most members of Congress also don't know all of the technical details of engines either, but that doesn't mean they can't create laws specifying average fuel economy. It is up to the experts in those fields to make the laws reality.

"If I ordered a general to fly from one flower to another like a butterfly, or to write a tragic drama, or to change himself into a sea bird, and if the general did not carry out the order that he had received, which one of us would be in the wrong?" the king demanded. "The general, or myself?"

Re:They don't want to

[betterunixthanunix]

If YOU were elected to Congress, how many areas are YOU an expert in?

If I had to make a decision on matters that I have no expertise in, I would get the opinion of a panel of experts. Our politicians are not even going that far -- they are dismissing the need for a panel of experts while admitting that they have no clue about the technical matters they are voting on. It is funny when they try to paraphrase expert testimony and get it wrong; it is not funny when they do not bother to listen to expert testimony because their real goal is to give a hand-out to some industry.

Re:They don't want to

[Old97]

Because "corporations are people too". (Mitt Romney)

Re:They don't want to

[PopeAlien]

Get together with a million other geeks to throw money at this problem

This is the problem with allowing money to act as a form of 'free speech'. It's an arms race with more and more money trying to buy the 'right' laws and the people (corporations) that financially benefit from those laws will always have more money to buy more laws.

Re:They don't want to

[Red Flayer]

Corporations are made of people.

No, corporations are made of *money*.

Corporations are bodies created to remove people from the equation. When an entity is incorporated, the shareholders are absolved of personal responsibility for the actions of the corporation (aside from their financial interest).

A corporation is a tool, nothing more than a way for many not-so-rich people to fund an effort and own the result (...) Like any tool, it can be used for good or evil.

No. Corporations also shelter the investors from personal responsibility. If a corporation is made of people, why is that those people are not personally liable for the actions of the corporation?

Corporations are likely to be used for evil because the perpetrators (the investors) are not personally responsible for the evil outcomes of the corporation's activities.

Re:They don't want to

[Jawnn]

Bullshit.
Corporations are business entities. There mission is not to represent n% of the populace "banding together and funding an effort" as you so romantically put it. A corporation's mission, it's sole reason to be, is to make money for it's shareholders. As a matter of principle and law, all other priorities are secondary. If doing "the right thing" reduces profit, the corporation is obliged to avoid doing the right thing if it can legally do so. This is not a case of the corporation being "evil". As you say, it is only a tool.
Alas, more often than not, this places corporations at odds with the interests of the citizens, you know, the actual living, breathing, and voting people. Corporations have their place, but it is not anywhere near the role of citizens. Since we have allowed corporations to essentially co-opt the men and women WE elected to represent US, we no longer live in a representative republic. We could debate the name, but it is nothing like what we were taught in school. Wake the hell up.

Re:They don't want to

[lgw]

I'm not in the top 1%, but I own some micro-% of the means of production in this country through my stock ownership. It's not a lot, but it's more than 1/300,000,000th.

What percentage of basketball players get to play in the NBA? What percentage of drivers drive in Formula-1 races? Sure, investing is by nature competitive, but it's actually less concentrated at the top than most competitive groups. Scrape together a few bucks to buy some shares of an S&P500 ETF fromm a discount broker, and you're in, making capital gains and owning part of major corporations.

Everyone certainly does get to play, it's just that most people spen their money on toys instead, then whine about the inevitable results. Your television, cable bill, sneakers, new rims, and iPod - none of these pay a dividend. It's not some secret that this is how money works, no special handshake is required to start investing, and in fact the majority of americans own stock indirectly, through a pension plan or 401k. Being good at investing is a different matter, of course.

Re:They don't want to

[Old97]

That is the origin of Mitt's thinking, yes. It's the single worst decision they ever made in that it creates a grave threat to personal freedom and the healthy functioning of democracy. The fact that a few managers, not shareholders, can take money invested for an economic enterprise and spend it on their political agenda without their consent is appalling. As a shareholder, I've never been asked for or given consent to any political spending.

Fuck them

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously.

Re:Fuck them

[Zaphod The 42nd]

End the two-party system. That is the only way we're going to get ANY kind of accountability or responsibility from the American government. We need the alternative vote NOW, and we need to end the electoral college.

The United States aren't a democracy, and we're not even a republic anymore. We don't have the right to vote on matters of policy, nor do we have the right to vote for the president and his cabinet. We participate in a shell game they set up through gerrymandering and the threat that your vote will be meaningless if you don't vote for one of the two approved party candidates.

There is NO legitimate excuse why we shouldn't have the alternative vote in America, except that the Democrats and Republicans don't want it. There is NO legitimate excuse as to why we need the electoral college in America, we don't even have ballots anymore, it is all done electronically.

A matter of who pays for the campaign

[walterbyrd]

Congress just rubber-stamps bills that are written up by lobbyists. That has been fairly well proven.

That's because

[Bogue]

all of Congress is made up of lawyers. Where are the engineers and scientists? There are none.

Re:That's because

[rrohbeck]

Engineers and scientists don't promise pink unicorns to everybody and are generally not very interested in money and power.

Re:Confusing positions

[fightinfilipino]

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!"

Re:a hypothetical

[flirno]

Willfull ignorance.

You Americans need more parties.

[Kristian T.]

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.

It was never funny.

[sstamps]

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.

Re:Confusing positions

[betterunixthanunix]

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.

Level of knowledge applied elsewhere

[Jason Levine]

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!"

Re:a hypothetical

[mwvdlee]

Criminal negligence

Re:a hypothetical

[MLRScaevola]

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair. I think this describes our situation, and your hypothetical, quite nicely.

Re:a hypothetical

[Genda]

And if a "citizen" through acts of collusion with a member of the federal legislature attempts to have a law passed which fundamentally damages the national infrastructure and security, the rights of the country's citizens, and the ability for millions of businesses to rightfully function, then that "Citizen" has committed a crime against the nation (corporation or not) and the representatives that have colluded with that citizen should be censured and if necessary charged with criminal offense.

Time and time again, the arguments presented by the media have proven to be hollow, without basis in fact, and utterly grounded in the need to lay white knuckled fists on all intellectual property (including that which does not belong to them.) This is offensive at best and almost certainly should be considered illegal. Its time to wake up. You can't monopolize other peoples work anymore, and get away with it. There are simply too many ways to circumvent you. You are no longer significant in this equation. You better hustle up a new way to get relevant, or prepare yourself to go the way of buggy-whips and whale bone corsets.

For the love of all that's holy, please get the bankers and lawyers out of entertainment. They've been screwing it up for years and now they're trying drag the whole world into the black hole they've created. Just do us all a favor and go away please.

Re:In case anyone has not yet heard it..

[inglorion_on_the_net]

in all areas, we're just focused on SOPA and Protect-IP because they are closer to our hearts.

That is actually the part that scares me the most. If things are this bad in areas that I actually have some knowledge about, how much badness am I not seeing because I am too ignorant? How many horrible ideas have we silently let be implemented, just because we didn't know?

What's the Technical Solution?

[Phoenix666]

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.

Horiible idea

[rsilvergun]

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.