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White House Opposes Key SOPA Provisions
twdorris writes "Is this an example of our 3-part government actually working as intended? It seems the executive branch doesn't agree with the legislative on a key piece of SOPA. From the article: '"While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global internet," the White House said in a blog post.'"
Fear not, for it was already submitted yesterday with a direct link to the White House's statement. As stated then, the White House gave itself leeway to approve the legislation if the key objections were addressed, so don't think this means the legislation will go away.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111005/10082416208/monster-cable-claims-ebay-craigslist-costco-sears-are-rogue-sites.shtml
monster cable may even try to take down monoprice as well.
Didn't "the White House" also oppose the NDAA, which they then refused to veto?
The NDAA has to be signed into law. It funds the entire military. If he vetoed it, we'd spend the rest of the year watching non-stop ads about how he took away healthcare from wounded veterans and refused to give guns to troops on the front lines. He'd lose reelection in the biggest landslide in history, because frankly, the average voter is woefully uninformed. So to say he "willingly" signed it into law is a vast oversimplification.
SOPA isn't a big omnibus bill. If he opposes provisions in it, he can veto it without all the collateral damage. And it's not like there were specific things he opposed that could be taken out. It was a pretty broad statement: "we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global internet." You'd basically need a complete rewrite to avoid doing any of those things.
They could have ignored the issue entirely if they were planning to let it pass.
No, there is a new government transparency mechanism at the White House https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petitions where you can vote on stuff, or create petitions to vote on, and the ones that get a lot of votes get official policy responses. It is not a mechanism for changes, but it is a mechanism to discover official positions on a wide variety of issues, including ones that would not otherwise get responses.
Sign up, vote on some stuff, and then when the response is published you'll get an email.
The ones that disagree with stuff that already has an official positions are useless, of course.
NDAA is not a good comparison to this legislation.
The NDAA is considered "must pass" legislation. While we can't know for sure what the President would have done had a bill landed on his desk separate from the NDAA, which included its controversial provisions, we do know that they cited the "must pass" nature of NDAA as the reason they reluctantly signed it into law.
This legislation, however is not attached to anything of the sort. It will pass or fail on its own merits. Congress can't use this as pressure, and the White House can't use it as an excuse.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.