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House Kills SOPA
An anonymous reader writes "In a surprise move, Representative Eric Cantor (R-VA) announced that he will stop all action on SOPA, effectively killing the bill. This move was most likely due to the huge online protest and the White House threatening to veto the bill if it had passed. But don't celebrate yet. PIPA (the Senate's version of SOPA) is still up for consideration."
The presidency, a third of the Senate and the entire House are all up for election this year... may have something to do with it.
Then How about a kickstarter campaign to fund lobbying against these kind of things?
So you're going to discourage politicians from taking money from the IP Barons to pass stupid laws by... giving them money?
If I was a a politician I'd think that was double-payday; I could take money from the IP Barons to put forward stupid laws and then take even more money from the anti-IP lobbyists to vote against it. In fact, I'd be pushing as many stupid laws as I possibly could, to increase the amount of money people would give me for voting against them.
It's like paying software developers based on the number of bugs they fix... while allowing them to introduce as many bugs as they want.
Why? Most people still have no idea what SOPA is, and the timing of this shelving is just perfect -- just before several popular websites were going to try to raise awareness.
Now, let's see what happens with PIPA.
Palm trees and 8
PIPA in greek means blow job.
He'll just call them "RINOs." Republicans are very concerned with the purity of their race. This move today is pure politics. Cantor wants SOPA but not the blame. He'll let the Senate pass PIPA then the House will pass it. He gets everything he wants. He gets PIPA and he gets to blame someone else. I'll give him credit the day he blocks PIPA as well.
Will. Not. Happen.
Corporatism is just a facet of the right wing. Right wing politics are about the maintenance and strengthening of the hierarchy of society, and corporations fit squarely into that hierarchy. Consumers are supposed to consume, and corporations are supposed to produce -- that is the hierarchy that bills that SOPA are meant to strengthen. The entertainment you want, the brand name shoes you wear, all of this comes from corporations. You are a consumer; you are not supposed to be sending copies of movies to your friends, you are not supposed to buy handbags or cosmetics from unauthorized foreign sources, you are not supposed to be able to route your away around the hierarchy -- that is SOPA's philosophy.
It is the difference between the Internet with its peer-to-peer nature, and the cable TV system with its hierarchy.
Palm trees and 8
Some of us actually wrote our congressional representatives. I wrote a letter to mine two months ago. I have no idea if it helped, but lawmakers do talk to each other.
This is a boring sig
I'm a hardcore liberal hippie and even I know that a lot of the hardcore liberal hippies are on precisely the wrong side when it comes to piracy measures. The reason? The entertainment industry is a massive donor to left-wing causes.
The lack of replies and tepid moderation for your comment is indicative of why the political system is broken: people barely care enough to complain, and when told the crisis is over they don't punish the politicians who are working against them.
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
So why don't We The People start labelling our "representatives" in government as either "Corporatists" or alternative stances? If enough people could start labelling groups of politicians I suspect it could redraw party lines and ditch what we call Democrat/Republican. Let's label them appropriately and make it stick.
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But not in the way many slashdotters might think.
Little appreciated here on Slashdot is the fact that SOPA was as unpopular on the right side of the spectrum as it was on the left.
It's more accurate to model political affiliation in 2 dimensions [1], authoritarian/liberal vs. conservative/progressive. If you look at Congress, the problem is that most elected representatives on both sides of the spectrum are authoritarian despite whether they're conservative or progressive... meaning there are almost no true liberals (free love AND free trade, ie, left-libertarians) representing us (one could say they don't represent the people anymore).
By this measure, SOPA was a full-on authoritarian bill. It was popular in DC, because it catered to big business which loves authoritarian legislation (removes uncertainty and easy to game) and it was fully business friendly.
It also highlights the fact that the Internet as it currently stands is a true bastion of liberalism. For all it's warts and dangers, it is a bulwark against the 1984-style authoritarian singularity. We must defend it.
[1] http://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis2
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I think you hit on some good points here.
Slashdot is a totally different environment than a professional setting: there are CEOs, engineers, high school kids, lawyers, etc.. all here posting their thoughts. They all get lumped into the same bin of comments and moderated without regard to those unseen traits (at least, in theory). One day I might mod someone +1 insightful and the next day -1 troll. I don't risk losing my job by doing so. No one opinion is higher than the others, so there's nobody to target with bribes (well, other than the people selecting the stories to comment on). I'm sure there are groups on /. that moderate certain opinions down which is an issue. Still, I think this site is pointed in the right direction at least.
It won't see the president's desk yet.
Criminalization of copyright has been expanding since 1982. (Well, earlier, but at a slower pace before that.)
1890s - Congress criminalizes copyright violations of dramatic works by travelling street performers.
There were also changes in 1908, 1982, 1992 (software companies push for broader criminalization), 1997 (NET act), 1998 (DMCA), etc...
This is on the back-burner because of mobilized opposition. They'll carve out a compromise between the ISPs and Search providers on the one hand and big media on the other, and we'll get more complex legislation that has a similar effect inside of two years.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
If there is one thing they fear more than their desire for campaign funds, it's getting voted out of office.
Unfortunately, they aren't as afraid of that as you would like to believe.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."