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No SOPA Vote Until 2012
jfruhlinger writes "A victory, or a just a breather? The U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee has postponed further debate on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) until after Congress' holiday break. At the urging of some SOPA opponents, Representative Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican and committee chairman, said Friday he will consider a hearing or a classified briefing on the bill's impact on cybersecurity." Update: 12/17 04:28 GMT by T : "Or not," as an anonymous reader comments below. "Despite the fact that Congress was supposed to be out of session until the end of January, the Judiciary Committee has just announced plans to come back to continue the markup this coming Wednesday. This is rather unusual and totally unnecessary. But it shows just how desperate Hollywood is to pass this bill as quickly as possible, before the momentum of opposition builds up even further."
Or not. Despite the fact that Congress was supposed to be out of session until the end of January, the Judiciary Committee has just announced plans to come back to continue the markup this coming Wednesday. This is rather unusual and totally unnecessary. But it shows just how desperate Hollywood is to pass this bill as quickly as possible, before the momentum of opposition builds up even further.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111216/11102617108/sopa-markup-runs-out-time-likely-delayed-until-2012.shtml
If you care about this issue and are a US citizen, then I strongly urge you to sign the a petition relating to the matter or start and promote a new one. The existing petition only has 2 days left. You can find it at:
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/amend-constitution-making-internet-unalienable-right/YJ3fXQcm
It might not fix the problem by itself, but it does get us a response and also gives the White House an idea of how many people are opposed to it.
As an aside, signing petitions at whitehouse.gov takes much less than voting and (given the 25,000 signature threshold) may actually have more of an impact than voting. I strongly urge you to do so.
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I just posted this in the other thread, but I'll go ahead and repost it here too, that way I can feel like I didn't waste my time on it. I actually watched most of the judiciary hearing yesterday and while I was probably in the middle of a stroke for most of it the parts I remember paint a pretty clear picture.
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.
Basically, at several points during the hearing some congressmen (usually Mr. Chaffetz and a couple others) pushed the committee to bring in some high level tech experts from various branches of the government to talk about the possible implications to DNSSec and general cyber security that SOPA might have, hence the classified briefing. They also pushed for more public hearings over and over again. It got to the point where Mr. Chaffetz offered to withdraw an amendment he made if the chairman would consider holding the classified briefing and, ideally, at least one other public briefing with "internet experts". He said he would consider it, but he didn't sound very sincere about it ("Oh, yeah ok, sure I'll consider it. Are you withdrawing your amendment now? Good, lets move on.").
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Because it isn't really, unless you're trying to make a false equivalency to create an argument to stand in for a real one in favor of controlling information for profit.
The store purchased the copy of the movie (a bit of a simplification, but that's what it works out to). Stealing the movie means the studio profits and the store loses an equal amount. Money changed hands, and the store lost: that is why stealing the movie is a crime against the store, not the studio.
Piracy duplicates the movie. It does not remove anything from anyone along the line, other than a potential to make money. That is not the same as stealing, just as refusing to allow BMW to tattoo their logo on your forehead is not stealing from BMW. If it is right or not to pirate needs to be determined on the value of the idea of owning ideas, NOT on some made up analogy to theft. Trying to phrase the argument as such is dishonest and deceptive.
Aside from that, I haven't really got time to respond to people who lie to improve their position. I am tired of hearing the same old rhetoric I have disproved hundreds of times, and I think your using it destroys your credibility to a point it isn't worth debating further. I will quote myself:
Great Intellect...
I disagree.
Both the detention provisions of the NDAA and the SOPA have been discussed extensively on the gun boards I frequent.
Learn about Photography Basics.
Do all of you clamoring about a "midnight vote" realize that this bill is still in committee? Even if the House Judiciary Committee passes it, it still has to pass both houses, the reconciliation process, and withstand a veto to become law.
I agree that the best time to strangle and bury this monster is before it leaves committee and becomes a soundbite issue that can be made law in the dead of night, but this isn't quite over yet.
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Oppose SOPA, PROTECT-IP, and other anti-Internet freedom legislation
http://blog.demandprogress.org/campaigns/
I realize that recall is in the rules, but you guys have to be the sorest losers ever.
Says the guy stumping for the party that less than a year ago was screaming "The people have spoken! The people have spoken!!" then, 8 months after "dropping the bomb", falls all over itself trying to prevent the people from exercising their right to recall their elected reps. They shot their wad and figured that the opposition would just piss and moan and sit on their hands; now that they're using the system to push back, now all of a sudden we need to start playing all sorts of games with voter ID, try to force the recalls to happen in the newly created districts that don't even legally take effect until November 2012, invoke a law that hasn't been used in a century to legally place their own operatives in the polls as part of their "strategy" (gee, I wonder why that could be?), pushing to try and declare it illegal to sign a recall petition more than once (which people were almost forced to do by all the Tea Party idiots screaming on Facebook about how they were going to collect signatures and shred them later, ha ha ha, oops, that's a felony?!). Talk about sore losers, we're not sitting here trying to change the rules when we're losing the game like a bunch of spoiled brats.
And a voter-ID law--what? students don't carry school photo IDs and/or driver's licenses? You can't cash a check or board a plane without ID, but a voter-ID law is "disenfranchisement"?
Uh, school photo ID's weren't acceptable until the UW jumped through a lot of strategically placed hoops to have their ID's recognized at a cost of $700,000 to the state. Tech school ID's are still not allowed because "tech school students typically commute to school" or some bullshit reason. But in order to qualify, the ID must have the student's signature and expire within two years of the date of issuance. Within two years? My driver's license, which is an acceptable form of ID to vote, expires in 2018. So, please, explain to me why a school ID isn't good enough if it's more than 2 years old but my driver's license, which still has my address on it from like 4 apartments ago, is?
And you don't explain how the elderly are being kept from voting. They can always get IDs if they need them.
Simple: Elderly people are less likely to be driving, and thus are far more likely to have an expired ID card. How many people in nursing homes do you think are concerned with running down to the DMV when their license, which they haven't used in years, is expired? And how the hell do they get down there to renew it? What if they're bedridden, or don't have anyone to drive them down there? They just don't get to vote anymore? And yes, expired ID's are allowed to vote via absentee ballot, but the ID must be dated no later than the last election, November 2010 in this case. They must also be photocopied and mailed in ahead of time. I mean, everyone has a photocopier in their home, especially the elderly, amirite?
Obama and the lousy National economy are as much to blame...
You think I'm cheering for Obama? I don't give a fuck about him or any other Democrats, either. They're all equally corrupt, they're all on the take. But, unlike the typical partisan assholes flooding this state as of late, my absolute disgust with Scott Walker and the other Tea Party Republicans in our state legislature does not translate to an endorsement for their opponents. I don't want to just recall the Republicans, I want to recall everyone, again and again and again, until the special interests and lobbyists either run out of money or get tired of throwing it away on perpetual campaigns.
Don't be one of those people, Anonymous Coward. R