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Lawmakers Intent On Approving SOPA, PIPA
snydeq writes "U.S. Congress appears likely to move forward with SOPA and PIPA, despite widespread opposition, IDGNS reports. The U.S. Senate is expected to begin floor debate on PIPA shortly after senators return to D.C. on Jan. 23, and supporters appear to have the votes to override a threatened filibuster. Some opponents of the bills hold out hope: 'We're optimistic that if members really understood the Internet architecture and cybersecurity measures, they would not support SOPA as written. Instead, members who are really committed to combatting online piracy would look for effective ways to do that without compromising cybersecurity or the open architecture of the Internet,' said a CCIA spokesperson. Others remain doubtful that Congress will come to this understanding."
You are free to do as we tell you. Buy BUY BUY....
Internet blackout day is sure to be a historical event for all ages.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
I think it's pretty naïve to think that SOPA passing is an issue of understanding, as though lawmakers wouldn't consider it if they knew anything about technology.
The vast majority or these people have already been bought and paid for by the entertainment industry. Their technological knowledge is irrelevant. They need to be removed from office, not educated.
Good! I have a thing for legislation with pronounceable acronyms. In fact, that's really the only important part. I'm sure many legislators would agree.
Better known as 318230.
Has anyone written a good article on why this is so bad that non-geeks could understand? Something you could link non-technical friends to?
Put up a site outing the names of every lawmaker that ever votes in favor of such a bill, and allow visitors to sign a petition pledging to vote against anybody that does so. Show the count on the site, and forward a list of those who signed to said lawmakers a week before any major vote on the issue. That should make them sweat.
Really no reason for the site to be real. They won't know. Problem is they don't care. They leave congress and get a nice job handed to them along with a kilo of blow and three underage hookers.
Education, and logical argument based on the realities of the technology, won't make our representatives budge. The only way to get them to change their position is to apply real political force. That means forming lobbies and throwing actual money at the problem, just like the large corporations do. It also means getting enough people ready and willing to vote for candidates who will actually represent them.
Of course, producing that level of political force requires a huge amount of cooperation (and hence understanding) from the governed. *THAT* is hard to do. Most American people, even the ones who vote and consider themselves politically involved, don't understand these issues well enough to self-organize properly. That is why the wealthy corporations (which for all practical purposes are already well-organized political armies with a handful of people calling the shots) have such an easy time of pushing the rest of us around.
THEY aren't the ones who don't understand. We are.
The government is shaking down the Internet related businesses, and that's what these laws are aimed at I think. The politicians are looking at Google, Yahoo, Amazon, etc., and asking themselves a question: WHAT THE FUCK? Why aren't these putzes paying us the racket money like the rest of them? Of-course those businesses are also paying something that has to do with taxes, but there is so much money there (and everybody knows about it), that the politicians want more than just tax optimization/evasion money, they want REAL money, they want - "hey, you have a nice business going here, it would be a shame if something was to happen to your entire business model and you were shut down" money.
That, and also of-course they want the RIAA and MPAA money and they want ISP money and they want your money and they want to be able to shut down the Internet because it's scaring them - just look at the way Ron Paul support grew because of the Internet.
So you have too much freedom - and that's what politicians want to take away and I had a long discussion about the fact that every single law that politicians push forward ends up reducing your freedoms and increases 'strength' of the government while weakening the individual liberties and the economy and the society of the nation, and even on this site people don't see this.
You can't handle the truth.
I'm quite confused about who this serves.
Usually, moves like these are pushed as in the interests of large corporate interests - but as far as I can understand the only company interests this will actually serve will be law firms and a few confused entertainment groups that don't mind acting like public villains to punish their potential customers.
The whole thing just looks like a big legal clusterfuck - where everyone demands everyone else pull everything from the internet. The net effect will just be a huge drain on the economy, as even more resources are spent on useless legal back-and-forths, and everyone gets even more nervous before being able to accomplish something businesswise in the world.
The net effect should mostly be to deepen the recession, force more consolidation with a smaller pool of useful resources for everyone, and push more business out of the US.
It just doesn't make sense - why would any lawmaker be interested in lowering the economic tides for everyone, further stalling a huge and important part of our economic recovery just for the sake of a very small number of companies without much actual money?
From a moral perspective it makes no sense - which is what I usually expect - but even from a sociopathic perspective of gathering resources at all costs, it makes no sense.
Ryan Fenton
Some of you won't like this, but I hope you'll at least give this a hard consideration. The bottom line is that it's our fault.
For example, I know from the comments here over the years that some of you are complete partisans. I'm surprised that, even this early in this thread, we haven't already seen "It's the Evil Republicans(tm)," followed by, "no, it's the stupid Democrats," complete with scores that go up and down like a VU meter on a rap tune: troll, insightful, back to troll, then insightful, over and over, as each partisan group lashes out.
BOTH PARTIES ARE CORRUPT AND HAVE SOLD YOU OUT. This doesn't mean there aren't a few honest congresscritters running loose. But folks, there's a REASON why, during the primaries, candidates can call each other every name in the book, but once a nominee is selected, all of the losers magically say, "well, of course I'll support him/her! He/She is a fine person!"
It's all about the money and the power: Chairmanships in Congress, lucrative appointments, voting blocks and power brokers. This plays out every two years, and the best we can do is scream, "less filling/tastes great/less filling/tastes great," Dem vs. Repub over and over.
Here's the example that some of you really, really aren't going to like. I know (again, from reading comments) that there are some of you here who supported the Health Care bill, but who are vehemently opposed to SOPA. (For the record, I am in opposition to BOTH.) You can't have it both ways. Every reputable poll ever taken has shown that the American people were strongly opposed to that HealthCare bill, but there were some of you here who said, "yay!" when it passed. You called those who passed it, even knowing that they might be un-elected, "brave heroes."
(Or, a quick conservative example: Scott Brown wins Ted Kennedy's old seat in Mass, and right wingers rejoiced. A few months later, he voted for a treaty that the right wing hated. They attacked Brown and wondered why he had "betrayed" them. What they should have asked was, "what do the people of Massachusetts want?" If he was reflecting their desires, they need to SHUT UP. He represents THEM, not a party or an ideology.)
So, SOPA. If you can convince enough Congresscritters that enough of US care to un-elect them if they vote for it, it can be stopped. But if they (and more importantly, their strategists) convince themselves that they can finesse it, or find some other issue that will cause you to hold your nose and re-elect them, they'll vote for SOPA.
In plain English: some of you who hate the "Repugs" may have to vote for one in November, if your Dem congressman votes for SOPA. Will you do that?
Likewise, my conservative friends: will you vote for a "Demoncrat" if your beloved Repub congresscreature votes for SOPA?
If the answer to either question is, "no" (or even just a little hesitation), you have only yourself to blame. That's the bottom line.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
Our founding fathers declared themselves an independent country and went to war over shit like this. No taxation without representation...are we truly represented in this government? The people? Of course not. It's time to stop trying to play their stupid game, the game is rigged against us from the start. It's time to start flipping boards...
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Revolution is our birthright. The Bill of Rights grants all U.S. citizens the right of revolution by guaranteeing the freedoms that facilitate it, freedoms that our government has been trying to rein in with every passing year. Every branch of this government is corrupt. We have no representation in congress anymore. History has come full circle...
Time to start looking to those 2nd Amendment solutions, boys and girls. Put your trust in God, but keep your powder dry. I never in a million years thought I would see this in my lifetime, but it seems that it is inevitable at this point.
Actually, this is worse than usual--the definition of the willfulness requirement for criminal copyright, technically ambiguous for about a century, will make it absolutely clear that a massive percentage of the American population--even those who have never shared a file in their life--will be felons.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
There will be one good consequence of SOPA: The US will lose control of DNS.
Rethinking email
Is that if SOPA gets passed that it could have positive consequences.
Yeah, like finally waking up a populace that's been asleep for many years. If this shit passes, the U.S.'s days are numbered. If you consider that a positive (and given the nature of our government, I absolutely fucking do) then that's probably about the only positive effect this shit is going to have.
You''ve got to be kidding! If you think SOPA and PIPA are going to "wake up" the populace, you need to adjust your medication. The Patriot Act was *welcomed* by many Americans. If the Patriot Act wasn't enough to wake people up, they're out for the night, bud. Yes, it's sad.
These days if I hand someone a flier and they proclaim "Oh, I don't read" without pride in their voice I consider that a victory. Americans aren't just ignorant, their willfully ignorant. Ask a marketer, and one of the things they'll tell you that works is an appeal against "elitism". There's just about nothing Americans hate than somebody who "knows better then them". Even if they do. On of George Bush jr's biggest political selling points is he was just a dumb as they where; American like to believe there are simple answers to problems and in the myth of 'common sense'.
My recommendation? Focus on living a life where you don't feel the need to drown out the misery in copywrited content. I find most people fall back on movies/music/TV as a way to cope with and escape from the misery that is their day to day lives. Keep needless and unpleasant complications out of your life and to hell with the rest of the world.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I am anticipating a lot of positive consequences from SOPA. More funding for Internet-based businesses, more income for hosting companies from international customers and more interest from foreign companies in selling their products here.
I should probably mention that I don't live in the USA...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Go to http://sopatrack.com/ and take a look at your state,
Here's California
Dianne Feinstein
* $1,298,218 from big media
* $796,581 from pro-PIPA groups
* $244,700 from anti-PIPA groups
Barbara Boxer
* $2,522,816 from big media
* $1,647,015 from pro-PIPA groups
* $1,144,820 from anti-PIPA groups
Here's New York
Chuck Schumer
* $1,465,160 from big media
* $1,191,700 from pro-PIPA groups
* $323,475 from anti-PIPA groups
Kirsten Gillibrand
* $747,991 from big media
* $1,682,667 from pro-PIPA groups
* $882,986 from anti-PIPA groups
Oh yeah it's getting passed,
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Imagine the shit hitting the fan when the Congresscritters realize that SOPA is useless.
They don't care if their legislation is useless. They wrote what they were paid for and until they get paid again they don't give a $hit. "Your government at work for you"
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
"I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she's too young to have logged on yet. Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say 'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?'" --Mike Godwin, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Not a sentence!
I guess it's really handy for them then that they can throw you in some hidden prison forever for just saying that now. By saying that, you could probably be considered by them, a "terrorist". It was no accident they passed that. Nor is it an accident that they plug their ears and want to establish as much control as possible over the Internet or even destroy it by unleashing these thugs loose on it with the ability to destroy it.
This is all about domination and control by the rulers of this country. They watched the Arab Spring and the riots in London and it has them scared. But they are dangerous when they are scared. They are now taking the steps they need to take to preserve their way of life and control over us all. This is no accident, they aren't playing dumb, they are doing as they are told to do by those who control them.
Now here is where it gets interesting. What do we the people do about this? Absolutely nothing, is what we will do. Collectively, we are dumb, fat and happy. We will not for such a puny concept as "freedom" risk our comfortable lives. Sure there are a few disgruntled people, but this isn't 1776, and we aren't going to have a Revolution.
Your lone gunman theory isn't going to work. They will simply just cover it up. They have proven themselves quite capable of controlling the media in this country. The Internet is the only leak they need to plug, and this SOPA bullshit, is just the excuse they need to stick their foot in the door, and then turn off the mechanisms. Once they destroy the free flow of information, they survive. It's desperate, and destructive to humanity, but once you understand that this is indeed a war on us the people, versus those who wish to dominate us, you will understand that sacrificing the Internet means nothing to them.
I will stop here before I end up in a cell next to you. It's a God damned sad day in America when I have to ponder what I am about to post because I fear I might end up in a prison with no rights, or ability to defend myself. Make no mistake, we have cross a line recently. It's official, we are the evil empire. We are the modern Nazis.
What it boils down to is this, once laws become so far gone, twisted and evil, one has not only the moral right to ignore them, but they have the moral duty to resist them to the death. We are talking about pussy Americans though. We've let so much slide, that we have proven to be a collective bunch of dumb pussies. If our founding fathers could see us now, they would cut their own ball sacks off so that they didn't sire descendants this cowardly.
Think about it, we have this "Tea Party", which is a laughing joke at the original Boston Tea Party. Our founding fathers did "terrorist" acts in Boston harbor on tea shipments because they had a tax on them. It was violence over Taxation without Representation, and it's our history of how we carved our freedoms out in blood from the British. Do you think we would get off our asses now over Taxation without Representation? We don't get off our asses when our Constitution is systematically shredded before our eyes.
We are too dumb to see it happening, and even if we do see it, we are a big bunch of pussy cowards and just let it happen. To me this defines us as a people who are collectively a bunch of pussies. And I am not talking about violence, hell, I am talking about how half of us don't even FUCKING VOTE. You talked about the boxes, well damn it, why fuck with the last one, when the other 3 have hardly been touched? Do you seriously think you will have support on the 4th when these pussies will not even lift up a bleat with the other three?
Just whine about it all at the kitchen table, forget the Internet, it's fucked. Go about your life, enjoy what comforts you have while you have them. You are in the Matrix and there is no escape.
Take the Red Pill.
This is the problem. Vapid, ignorant, uninterested people who don't even bother to illuminate the vast empty place between their ears. You mention Nazis. So let's do this by the numbers. WHY WERE NAZIS BAD? Because they were Fascists and slaughtered a bunch of innocent folks. What is a Fascist? Well, Mussolini, a Fascist, said its the corporate state. Why is this bad? Well when a nation's corporations determine the fate of that nation and its people all kind of predictable things, bad things, begin to happen. You see profit is a great thing to motivate people, but as a guiding target for a society, it can lead to dark things. At first everything is great and the society enjoys explosive growth. But soon, the system begins to cannibalize itself. Ultimately the wheels come off, it crashes and explodes, and often a lot of people die. That why we don't like fascism. If you want to know how to tell a Fascist State here are some signs to look at. If you've not been in a coma for the last decade, you may notice that modern day America now has something in common with Germany and sadly its not the love of beer. So your Nazi comment as clever as you might have thought it was echoes a sad and frightening irony.
As for soup kitchens and bread lines, are you brain damaged? Here, try these sites: People in line at foodbank, The State of Poverty in America, What replaced the Soup Kitchens, The real state of Unemployment in America Today, Tent Cities Sprouting up all over the country. One in five children in America today goes to bed hungry. One in six people in this country suffers chronic malnutrition. One in eight is out of work and can't find employment. Entire regions of America have been depressed for so long, they now have names like "The Rust Belt." One in seven people in this country is saved from hunger by food stamps or federal food programs. There are scenes all over the country of people lined up for blocks waiting for food from food banks. There are shanty towns and tent cities across the nation of homeless people who were formerly middle class, and tens of millions of middle class Americans who live a single pay check away from becoming homeless. Food banks are pleading for support, they've never before been required to support so many people and many are on the verge of collapse. Are you so blind and poorly informed that you don't even see the profound state of social collapse around you? Are you sleep walking? Medicated? Either you have no mind or you have no heart, please which is it?
As for the ruling class, the top 400 people in this country now have the same wealth as the bottom HALF of the country, over 160,000,000 people. The imbalance of wealth in America today is greater THAN ANY TIME IN HUMAN HISTORY. That is the ruling class. They have hijacked our government. They have hijacked the media and our sources of free information. They have robbed us of our Bill of Rights and damaged our form of government to the very edge of its ability to be repaired. They are working hard to rob us of our last best hope for human freedom and development, the internet.
I don't advocate violence, and never have, but I tell you now, I am plenty angry. I pray that we find our way back without the spilling of blood, but I have a hard time imagining a bright future with so many like you walking the street today. You scare me more than the despots.