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How SOPA & PIPA Could Hurt Scientific Debate

Posted by timothy on from the debate-is-overrated-certainty-is-better dept.

mwolfam writes with this pointed excerpt from a piece at the Huffington Post by Los Alamos National Laboratories post-doc researcher Michael Ham, who makes a slightly different case than most for the reasons that SOPA and PIPA should be stopped: "Simply put, The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) currently under development in Congress will provide a rapid way to sentence websites to death without the need for pesky things like trials and juries. Much to the surprise of nobody who understands how the Internet works, these two Acts will have absolutely no effect on digital piracy, but they will create an environment where freedom of speech could be severely curtailed, large companies can execute competitors, and scientific data can be hidden from the public."

19 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. I see an explosion in European web-hosting by buglista · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Thanks muchly, our economy needs a bit of a boost right now.

    1. Re:I see an explosion in European web-hosting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I think you forgot ACTA. SOPA and PIPA are just the US instances of the ACTA virus.
      They expect the EU (and actually the whole world) to have them too. If not... well you saw how they managed to get a UK citizen extradited to the use over this shit, and how they got Spain, Finland and Belgium already infected.

      Of course they will never manage to reach their goal. Since that is physically impossible. (Unless they put DRM chips in every human's head, we can still e.g. have one person read the information, tell it to somebody else, who then types it in.)
      And of course we will still not be affected in the slightest, since we already have countries that have such total censorship (China, UAE, etc), and they use VPNs at $5 a month to circumvent *everything*. (Hell, there are cops who will pay you to tell them how to get porn. They are humans too, and if it's about porn, their side is clear. ^^)

      So they have no chance of ever succeeding.

      But for the cattle majority, they don't have to. Since those are passive life-forms. Who don't have their own perception of reality, but instead get it from their opinion makers. So all that is needed, is for the dumb masses to believe the lies and delusions, and they will have control over most. (Some say: Unless the masses feel the need for porn. Then the revolution will start. ;)
      Same as those people in North Korea, who honestly believe that when they touch an American flag, their hands will rot off. (Remember the Daily Show interview about the guy who gets people out of NK.)

      It's all about assumed reality nowadays. Not actually sensed reality.

      And the problem is, that apparently, we, the good people, are not secure in ourselves to get the masses' perception to change. Maybe because other than the media industry, we don't live off of cocaine. (I've worked in the EU music industry, and I swear on my dick and my mothers' life, that there is no such thing as a business deal without cocaine and preferably hookers and booze in there. It's an old boys network on drugs.)

      So let's kick the Dunning Kruger effect's ass, and fix the mindset of the masses!

    2. Re:I see an explosion in European web-hosting by Demonoid-Penguin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think you forgot ACTA. SOPA and PIPA are just the US instances of the ACTA virus. They expect the EU (and actually the whole world) to have them too.

      Yes they do. Sadly.

      Just like they expected EU and the rest of the world to either look the other way or join them in their other wars.

    3. Re:I see an explosion in European web-hosting by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 4, Informative

      Why? SOPA would prevent US visitors from going to such websites.

      --
      Palm trees and 8
    4. Re:I see an explosion in European web-hosting by andydread · · Score: 4, Informative

      By blocking our access to overseas information? Sounds like China. No thanks no fucking thanks. You media people are simply pissed off that people don't want your fucking content any more. You see the Internet as a threat to your control of content. When people are watching Youtube and using Google and Facebook they are not going to the movie theatre or purchasing your shitty content.

  2. Fear not, this will not be a real problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Actually, those acts are a good thing. In reality they will only hurt American companies and consumers, not the rest of the world. They will however drive business and entrepreneurship away from USA, basically allowing the US economy to implode, and thus when the companies get hurt, their wellsponsored congresspuppets will vote in another act to stop this madness.

    Good thing money equals speech in some areas, isn't it?

    1. Re:Fear not, this will not be a real problem by Elbereth · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Unfortunately, this is incredibly common whenever Slashdot discusses something. Slashdot when into hysterics when they found out about Trusted Computing. Nowadays, most of them use locked-down cell phones and game consoles every day, without a single complaint, despite how that was going to destroy computing as we know it. When Slashdot heard about RFID, the entire website ground to a halt, as the paranoid conspiracy wing took over the submission queue. People were advising you to microwave your new clothes. Slashdot was advising people to microwave their new clothes. I am not making this up. According to Slashdot, the government was going to use RFID to track people (or, less commonly, corporations were going to track people, but that didn't sound ominous enough, so it was a minority conspiracy). I eventually stopped reading Slashdot for a few years, because it just got so crazy here.

      Now, we've got SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA. Everyone knows these are bad laws. However, Slashdot has to go into hysterics yet again, making it that much more difficult to convince anyone that they truly are bad laws. When you've got one person over here saying, "SOPA is a bad law, because it will shift responsibility from users to site administrators", and you've got a whole crowd of geeks, frothing at the mouth, screaming, "SOPA WILL KILL THE INTERNET!!!!!!!!!11111", people will just tune out the rational person and write off everyone. This article is part of the problem. Instead of rationally and dispassionately explaining the issues, it starts screaming bloody murder, coming up with wildly improbable edge cases, in an effort to get people riled up and ready to protest. The examples that he uses are laughable, at best. They read like the sorts of wild conspiracy theories that usually come from anonymous users on Slashdot.

      I think that I hate "push technology" more than the average Slashdotter, but, then again, we'd all say that. I'm that guy from The Onion who doesn't own a television. I can't stand the thought of the Internet turning into some kind of passive, non-interactive experience like TV, where everything is designed for the lowest common denominator, vetted by focus groups and censored for my benefit. However, there's a huge difference between YouTube turning into a promotional tool for major labels (yuck) and the economy imploding, the internet being RUINED FOREVER, and scientific progress being impeded. Will people fight as passionately if you tell them YouTube will get more boring? Will people fight as passionately if you tell them MegaUpload will start validating that all those 700MB .AVI files aren't Hollywood movies? Maybe not. But it's infinitely better to tell people the truth, rather than making up these ridiculous, exaggerated stories about the world ending. My God, you'd think that one stupid law could cause the end of human civilization. I'm sorry, but that's just not possible. If SOPA/PIPA/ACTA pass, the Internet will be a worse place. But it will not cause half the things that people are saying will happen, and I think the public knows this. They're not as stupid as the elitists at Slashdot think. It's like when those cops came to your school and told you that you that marijuana would turn you into a drug addict, living on the streets, sucking cock for a fix. You knew that was bullshit. Well, the public knows that you're spewing bullshit about SOPA, and they're going to tune you out, just like you tuned out that cop.

    2. Re:Fear not, this will not be a real problem by misexistentialist · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Slashdot was advising people to microwave their new clothes. I am not making this up. According to Slashdot, the government was going to use RFID to track people

      The fact is the government is tracking cellphones and vehicles with various technologies. The "ridiculous, exaggerated" story essentially came to pass , though RFID wasn't the mechanism. Yes, we have nothing to hide from Big Brother, and yes life will go on even when the internet becomes an exclusively corporate and government domain. It's a good thing we have "sensible" people like you around to help us accept our fate.

  3. Re:An idea... by jo_ham · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Thy tried that with the "recordable media tax" that applied to things like CD-R and DVD-R media, and to mp3 players in some countries. It was lobbied for by the music industry because "obviously" people buying recordable media would be burning illegally obtained songs so to compensate them for their "obvious" losses they got a cut of all CD-R sales via a price hike.

    Of course this didn't stop them suing people anyway...

  4. Doesn't stop there... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Let's apply the SOPA logic to other things to... if someone asks you for directions to a bank and they rob it then you should be liable. Farewell GPS and maps, we barely knew thee.

    SOPA is a very silly piece of legislation but we already have the US attempting to extradite someone from the UK for hosting links. SOPA just codifies such gross stupidity in US law.

  5. Congress Is the Best Party to Police the Internet by pcwhalen · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Because they understand it so well.

    Take a look at "Dear Congress, It's No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works" http://bit.ly/vOEEbt

    Senator Ted Stevens described the internet as “a series of tubes;” Rep. Mel Watt of North Carolina "seemed particularly comfortable about his own lack of understanding;" and Rep. Maxine Waters of California stated "any discussion of security concerns is 'wasting time' and that the bill should move forward without question."

    --
    Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
  6. Re:after a 2nd strike, self nuked by Demonoid-Penguin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The US is hellbent on the way to being a "nuclear damage zone", to be routed around. Inside, people will need a encrypted channel to a "neutral" server outside the US in a freer country to surf from.

    More like some, extremely influential people, groups, and companies are hell-bent on having the US control the entire internet. But don't be thinking that it's a US only thing. It upsets the established order - just like printing. Whether they'll succeed or not is another thing. I'm not expecting Facebook, eBay, Amazon, PayPal or climate change deniers to step up for net neutrality. For that to occur we'd need a change in education which won't happen over night. As long as people believe "terrorism" is not something police should deal with then we'll just have another war - this time on "piracy" or "threats to US jobs".

    Note that printing was invented a long time before Gutenberg.

  7. Bizzare initials by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    SOPA in greek means "shut up"
    PIPA in greek means "pipe" or (slang) "blowjob"

  8. Re:An idea... by AlecC · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think this wouldn't work because it would "normalise" piracy. People who do not currently pirate would reckon that that they had paid for anything they wanted to download. so that they were free to do so. This would mean that piracy, instead of being 90% by people who would not by the media if they had to pay, would be done by everybody.

    Example from a childcare business who had problems with parents being late to pick up their children after work. They tried charging for overtime, and found that the problem went up, not down: people reckoned it was OK to be late if they were paying for it. (from Freaconomics, I think).

    --
    Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
  9. Re:What about a type of backup. by Demonoid-Penguin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A fair suggestion, but some issues.

    Aside from the technical issues - the real problem is that the US will just declare war on cyber terrorism - a phrase that can take on any meaning. And any country not on their side....

    Don't forget where ICAAN is - or do you think it's an independent organisation like the UN? If Microsoft can go on license raids with Russian police how long before Disney goes on door kicking adventures in Spain. Already ICE has declared war on counterfeit copies of goods that are not made in the US. And a UK citizen is being extradited for something that's not illegal in the UK.

  10. so where should one go? by khipu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'd like to know where that mythical country is that respects your Internet privacy and doesn't subject you to damage from arbitrary and invalid copyright claims. I haven't found it, but I'd sure like to move my server there.

    Internet connections in Europe are subject to monitoring without a court order, you may end up having to pay fines for mere allegations of copyright infringement without due process, the government can place viruses on your computer to monitor it, and many forms of speech that are legal and protected in the US are illegal and subject to prosecution in Europe.

    1. Re:so where should one go? by xavdeman · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'd like to know where that mythical country is that respects your Internet privacy and doesn't subject you to damage from arbitrary and invalid copyright claims. I haven't found it (...).

      Sweden. You should try PRQ.se, they host TPB. But they also offer Dedicated servers and Tunnels and anonymizers.

  11. Correct me if I'm wrong... by IronHalik · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...but won't SOPA/PIPA work both ways? Won't MAFIAA online distribution channels be affected as well? I could place my copyrighted work somewhere in comment/review section of their sitesand then cite PIPA to take the online store offline.

    I'm assuming that according to SOPA/PIPA, site owner is still accountable for what user posts.

  12. Whitehouse responds by 7x7 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Obama Administration has responded to the petitions for stopping SOPA, PIPA and E-PARASITE. The good news: They oppose DNS intervention and action against anyone covered by US law. The bad news: They did not address deep-packet inspection or payment processors. https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#/!/response/combating-online-piracy-while-protecting-open-and-innovative-internet