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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."
Good work!
Do you mean to tell me to tell me that in 2012 the government is actually listening to the will of the people? Man, the world really IS going to end!
As a non-US citizen that's been watching the developments of this closely, I am extremely glad that this has happened. Hell, I'm sure everyone is. Now just need to do something about PIPA, and we can breathe a nice sigh of relief (for a while)
We did it!
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
I hope that the senate will get a clue and cancel it's deliberations also. We just need to keep the pressure up.
Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro
I for one have been in contact with my Rep. and have written letters to both of my Senators. I will also being calling them both today. We're making progress. Let's keep it up.
CALL YOUR SENATORS!!
was*
The people who brought the bill in the first place, are still active; and still receiving funding. More fundamental provisions are called for, to ensure such bills are not tabled in the first place.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
All these posts on Slashdot about how bad the bill is really made a difference!
something like 95% of all proposed laws never see the light of day and are killed in committee. there are all kinds of crazy laws proposed every day and this is what congress is for
examiner.com is essentially a blog, was this the best source for this information? There's no links to a reliable news source, no links to a .gov site or the congressman's announcement, just "hey he blocked it hurray!"
Is anyone else reporting that SOPA is dead?
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
If you keep in defense, this will keep coming with pipa, popa, schupa, schmugga, and eventually they will succeed. The only way to fix this issue, is to go on the offensive, and passing legislation that will prevent such crap, and neutralizing the content industry and its assaults.
google, amazon, ebay et al - its their task. they need to start buying congressmen/senators, and start buying laws, now. Because thats how the capitalist democracies work.
Read radical news here
Try: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2012_01/putting_sopa_on_a_shelf034765.php
-- (this is a sig) My Computer Programming Forumhttp://www.programers.co.nr/
The bill has been SHELVED, not killed. A lot of bills in the past came back after being shelved and got pushed into law when the opposition to it quieted down (e.g. the Patriot Act). Keep up the opposition. Do not let them pass this bill again!
I'm curious whats actually going on? So, distract the populace with a ridiculous bill, meanwhile push thru and organize... what, the war on Iran, or prepare for the collapse and dissolution of Euroland, or maybe its time for the Argentine economy to collapse again, or ... My point is you ram thru an over the top #1 story to overshadow the #2 story, so what is currently the #2 story?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
go to www.house.gov and see for yourself. almost everything congress does is public record and recorded
They just got caught. They'll try again when people are distracted by something else.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Sopa is a piece of shit!
Ha, I see what you did there:
SOPA reversed is APOS, which stands for A Piece Of Shit.
Clever, even if you didn't intend it to be.
Summation 2
The blogger is a bit overenthusiastic at the bill behing shelved. It's far from dead.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I wonder if the entertainment industry will announce a pro-SOPA blackout in response.
Imagine the howls of anguish if The Hobbit was delayed for a few months :-)
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. Many conservatives and libertarians rightly see SOPA has a HUGE power grab, and massive step towards an even more centralized government.
Eric Cantor is very tied in with the Conservative Blogosphere and with conservative internet "consciousness". As such he promised early on to do his best to kill SOPA.
It appears that he has kept his promise. Well Done Mr. Cantor. Well Done.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
I recommend an article that has actual quotes from Darrell Issa (the person who is talking to the press about this). The bill is on hold until the wording is changed in the bill so more people agree with it.
Opening 2 paragraphs from the cnet article:
The latest string of setbacks for supporters of the bills came Saturday when Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the Oversight committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, said that he was promised by Majority leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) that a vote on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) will not occur "unless there is consensus on the bill."
"While I remain concerned about Senate action on the Protect IP Act [a similar bill to SOPA introduced into the Senate last year], I am confident that flawed legislation will not be taken up by this House," Issa said in a statement, according to the blog The Hill. "Majority Leader Cantor has assured me that we will continue to work to address outstanding concerns and work to build consensus prior to any antipiracy legislation coming before the House for a vote."
Its not what it is, its something else.
With the House in majority Republican control and Cantor killing the bill, it doesn't really matter what the Senate does. This happens all the time when the Senate and the House are controlled by different parties. One will pass legislation that the other will never even take up just to be able to tell their voters "we passed a bill on X but those evil guys in the other party in the other side of Congress thwarted us". The only reason the White House was against it is that Obama listened to several of his top IT advisors who strongly came out against it. But in general Congress isn't really smart enough to understand what the legislation is about. It just became so toxic for a variety of reasons (a lot of big contributors on the IT side probably threatened to cut donations if it passed) that it wasn't worth the fight. Democrats have traditionally been more pro-entertainment industry and pro-lawyers than Republicans so I have to admit to being surprised that the White House didn't back it anyway. Plenty of Republicans back the entertainment industry too, they're just slightly less inclined to do so.
By the way, one of my former co-workers said that he did contact his representative in Congress. He did not say who his representative was (most likely it's a Republican) but he said that it was clear that his representative really did not understand the bill at all and was framing it in the simplistic "Let's stop evil job stealing piracy!" terms that the entertainment industry has used to sell it to Congress.
I may disagree with you 95% of the time (or more; who knows!), but if what you say is remotely true (and I have no reason to doubt that), then today I think we are all thankful for what has happened.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
It's January 18 right? So they can still do the campaign, just replace the letters to read PIPA ... unless the Senate version gets pulled tomorrow, also in time to be ahead of the protests.
(Do we still do the protests? Or will people whine "well we already won, so why bother protesting?")
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
PIPA in greek means blow job.
FTA: "...is a good demonstration of how the Internet enables Democracy." Thus ensuring that politicians everywhere hate it and want to kill it,
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
SOPA reversed is APOS, which stands for A Piece Of Shit.
Even more clever, "Sopa" in Swedish means trash.
This is good. The next step is to keep Lamar Smith from getting re-elected. Right now he's running unopposed for the republican nomination in a district that includes parts of Austin, a very techie town. With the right amount of national support for "Anybody but Lamar Smith" he can and should lose his seat over this.
The requested URL
SOPA was as unpopular on the right side of the spectrum as it was on the left
Really? It sure looks like the right wing politicians in our government -- which includes almost all the politicians in Washington (don't kid yourself; we live in a very right-wing age) -- were highly supportive of SOPA. Why would they not be? They give hand-outs to corporations all the time, and they rarely pause to think about the effect on our civil liberties. It was only because of the libertarian element of the Republican party that this bill was shelved; there are just enough libertarians to create a potential problem.
SOPA Is very much a right-wing bill. What could be more right-wing than attacking a system where anyone can communicate equally, regardless of where they fit into the hierarchy of society? The point of SOPA is to curb the free and open nature of the Internet and to reinvigorate the power of established corporations and government agencies -- sounds very right-wing to me.
Or are we only operating under the Fox News definition of "right wing?"
Palm trees and 8
Magic powers stored in his horns? Kabbalistic chanting? FOR GOD'S SAKE don't look behind you, they're coming for you noooooowwwwwwwwww!
Antisemitic nobber.
In saner years you'd be right that it would be stopped. But there's something wrong this time - the push for the bill vs the content was so strong, the strongest I've seen in years. It's beyond "they got caught" - of course they knew they'd be hated for it. But they'd already stated "we want to pass this anyway despite your opposition". So if you'll allow me to go all Monty Python, "it's not dead, it's resting!" Let's assume the senate version rests too.
This situation reeks of a Meta-Campaign. So they'll either rename it, or worse, split the components among other bills so that there's nothing to rally against.
Try this - they're introducing it this time before this election round. Then once the people are re-elected "now they have nothing to lose" so they'll resurrect it next year. Or some such variations on a theme. The point is, just because it's sleeping, it's definitely going to wake up. Except for some surprise fallout, thousands of companies were drooling at how much fun power they stood to gain from this.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
How can a single representative kill the bill?
Because he's the House Majority Leader.
Why is a Jew in such a powerful position?
Because it's America, where even an Anonymous race-baiting Cracker such as your own fine self can get elected to Federal office.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The House and Senate each propose and vote for their own bills. The bills that pass one side, go to the other side. The other side can either vote on that bill as is, or change it and pass that. If other side changes it, then the changes have to be voted on by the first side. If things get stuck, they can appoint a 'conference committee' to attempt to hash out a bill that both the House and Senate can pass.
It is common for the House and Senate to each propose and vote on their own 'versions' of a particular bill - mostly for political grandstanding purposes. (saying 'we're waiting for the other guys to act on that' just doesn't have the same ring to it!) If both bills pass, they 'reconcile' them into one bill, and that's what gets sent to the president to sign or veto.
It's supposed to be the case that all 'spending bills' originate in the House. This is a holdover from when the Senate was a body intended to represent the State Legislatures of the Several States, with the House representing The People. In those days, the federal government had limited taxing abilities, and instead the State governments were responsible for generating the bulk of government revenue, and the feds essentially sent a bill to the States for the State's share of the federal budget (proportional to their total congressional representation). That system broke down when States weren't paying their bills, and when State Legislatures got too tied up in politics to vote on seating a Senator - leaving the Senate short. That's when Senators started getting elected by citizens, rather than by legislators, and that's when they created the federal income tax, allowing the feds to tax folk directly, without the States being able to interfere. So now, now we get city taxes, school taxes, state taxes AND federal taxes. Whoopie!
PIPA is the greek word for "blowjob"
Why is a Jew in such a powerful position?
Because the global zionist cryptarchy decided that he'd make a good frontman, obviously.
Well, either that or he managed to persuade more of the electorate to vote for him than anyone else in his constituency.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
SOPA is not about government control of the media or the economy; it is about the government helping corporations maintain their control over such things. SOPA is about ensuring that the big brands get to remain in control over our lives, and it is a step toward a long-term goal of converting the Internet into a fancy cable TV system, where consumers can only consume. That is a right-wing goal, at least under the standard definition of "right wing."
Yes I know that it is fashionable to describe everything that falls short of libertarianism "socialist," but there is nothing socialist about SOPA, and socialism is not the be-all and end-all of left wing politics.
Palm trees and 8
They'll dust this thing off and pass it during the lame duck session after the election.
PIPA in greek means blow job.
And in Polish it means "vagina".
I know this will blow your mind, but maybe left vs. right isn't the appropriate fight here. Most of us Americans are hung up on it, but maybe it doesn't always apply as much as you would think it would.
The second axis of the political world is corpratism, and corporatism is heavily represnted in both parties. Look at the names of the people pushing this bill. It has nothing to do with party. It had to do with the hugest corporate consitutencies pushing dollars into politician's pockets.
The corporation patches on their suits may be slightly different, but BOTH parties are corporatist. Stop thinking everything is left vs. right or pretty soon there won't be any debate because there will be ONE group in charge and you'll be against the wall if you say you don't like it.
Then why did it have the support of MOST of the republicans?
Hell even many of the current republican presidential candidates have voiced their support for SOPA.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
SOPA is the Sons Of the Patriots Act. It's designed so that information damaging to the interests of the Patriots can be
expunged from the web. Soon only SOP-compliant computer equipment will be available.
No. Just because you know a swearword, it does not fit in every situation.
According to your definition, Spain at the time of Charles V was socialist.
You can blame both sides for this one - sure it was introduced by House Judiciary leader Lamar Smith, a Republican, but co-sponsors include Democrats Howard Berman, John Conyers, and Ted Deutch, amongst others. You would think someone on a Judiciary committee could write a bill that wouldn't trample all over first amendment rights, but Lamar Smith has that one down to an art. This is at least the third piece of legislation I know of that he has sponsored that has been tossed out over first amendment concerns.
Many businesses strongly supported SOPA, including Ford, Pfizer, the BSA, the ESA, NBC, Go Daddy, the MPAA, the RIAA... the list goes on. The problem is, it was business friendly to a fault, giving copyright holders unprecedented power to shut down sites, whether they were violating copyright or not and without requiring proof. There was no way this would ever pass a legal battle in court - it was killed as it needed to be. At least this one was killed before it got to court - congress has done a good job of passing these things and then having them immediately killed.
Now maybe we can wait for the China to bully us by threatening sanctions in the same way we bullied Spain...
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
This is the story of two brand names for politicians. Republicans, and Democrats. These are the Republicans, and these are the Democrats.
In last week's episode, the Democratic President said he didn't want to sign it, but didn't want to veto it either, so he said he'd sign it with reservations, or with a sticky note saying he didn't like it but he'd sign it anyway. And the Republican guy who doesn't look like a turtle said he was going to stop all activity on the bill, effectively killing SOPA. Now it's the Senate's turn, with a Democrat from MPAA, and a Republican who looks like a turtle. Will they pass PIPA? Will it pass with a veto-proof majority? Does it have to get a veto-proof majority because the President never said anything about having problems with PIPA instead of SOPA? And aren't we all kinda surprised and relieved to find our elected representatives listening to us, even if only because it's an election year?
Confused yet? You won't be, after this week's episode of... Soap!
it was introduced by House Judiciary leader Lamar Smith, a Republican, but co-sponsors include Democrats Howard Berman, John Conyers, and Ted Deutch, amongst others
You are apparently operating under the assumption that the Democrats are not on the same side of the political spectrum as the Republicans. The Democrats have shifted so far to the right that by now the best you can get is a centrist. The few democrats that linger on the left side of the spectrum are on the fringe.
Palm trees and 8
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.
I usually look at the political spectrum as left vs right (extremes being "true communism" and "true capitalism" respectively) and up vs. down (authoritarian vs libertarian). I would agree that SOPA is not left vs right, but rather Up vs Down. SOPA is strictly an authoritarian measure, giving more power to the state to control its citizens.
It's corporate welfare, possibly on the scale of the "too big to fail" banking and auto industries bailouts. The supporters of this bill wanted the government to be thier own copyright police at taxpayer expense.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
SOPA Is very much a right-wing bill. What could be more right-wing than attacking a system where anyone can communicate equally, regardless of where they fit into the hierarchy of society? The point of SOPA is to curb the free and open nature of the Internet and to reinvigorate the power of established corporations and government agencies -- sounds very right-wing to me."
For some definition of "right-wing" that is so broad as to be mostly useless. (Unless your point is, "what's considered 'left' in the US would be viewed as center-right anywhere else".) It's a "corporatist" bill, and most American Senators and Representatives are in the pocket of corporations, including many of those who pass for "left-wing". The entertainment industry is the primary proponent of this bill. Among the sponsors of the (PIPA) bill in the Senate you'll find such "liberals" and proponents of 'net neutrality as Al Franken (who last year was keynote speaker at Netroots Nation, but I'll bet he has "schedule conflicts" that prevent going to it this year).
Virtually everybody in Washington ("right" or "left", Obama or Bush) wants to keep extending the power of the government, witness the recent vote to extend the "Patriot" act.
In Korean, "Salsa" means diarrhea.
Currently hooked on AMP
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
or pretty soon there won't be any debate
What do you mean "pretty soon"?
There is currently no meaningful debate in American politics, only posturing on superficial or social issues and very strong bi-partisan agreement on:
- Less civil liberties, more state surveillance (NDAA, warrantless wiretapping etc.)
- Interventionist foreign policy, supported by an over-sized military-industrial complex
- Unconditional support for Wall Street (no meaningful regulation)
- Corporate interests always take precedence/outweigh individual citizens' rights and well being
- A political system with a high barrier of entry (unchecked campaign spending, no representation for small parties)
In Argentina there's a comic, Mafalda (still running from the early nineties), where the characters treat the word "SOPA" as a profanity. Sopa actually means soup in spanish.
So... the same as Spanish.
He's publicly said he'd veto it, so sneaking it into a bill is a death sentence for that bill. Romney opposes it too, but I'm a little worried. As has been pointed out in another thread the basic principles of the bill are in line with the right wing's general principle that strong hierarchy is a good thing. Moreover, Obama's actually in a position right now where he can veto the bill and has shown he will. Romney's still just campaigning and could easily flip flop. Obama's words carry more weight because he can actually do it, so he's in a put up or shut up position...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If we can also kill PIPA, we should then try to fix the copyright term. Drug companies are somehow able to make a profit with a 20 year patent. Getting a successful drug to market can take 10 years and up to a billion dollars. Why should a song be copyrighted for 120 years from date of creation?
No, this was very much an interdenominational bill.
No, I'm pretty sure the bills involved were very denominational. Probably $100s.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Despite the media blackout on this issue the Internet publicity mobilized massive reactions to this awful bill.It of course didn't hurt to have some powerful corporate allies like Google and Microsoft.
Just as the later know how to cooperate when their shared interests are threatened, SOPA was fought as much by Progressives as Ron Paul style Libertarians.
If this was a sign to come, and these two grass root powers were to learn to join ranks on other issues that they agree on (i.e. civil liberties, military interventionism, legalizing pot) I'd feel much more optimistic about America's future.
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.
-
And I think it can be argued equally as strongly that the end game to capitalism is fascism. Especially when you have large corporations that more or less have reached critical mass, and are no longer accountable to the people.
Come on now, Slashdot opinions barely percolate out to the rest of the technology-aware parts of the Internet. If anything it was Reddit and their "Operation Pull Ryan" that shook up the discussion. We're Protoss with no carriers. Reddit is Zerg.
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
Don't confuse "conservative" with "Republican." The 2 are not even tangentially related, no matter what Republicans would have you believe. (And if you have any doubt, take a look at the size and scope of the Federal government (and the deficit) under Republican administrations since 1980.)
And yet SOPA/PIPA were/are supported by both of California's Democrat senators and many of its Democrat representatives as well. Right wing bill, my ass.
It depends on your definition of "right wing". If your definition means following the silly idea that there really is a difference between Democrats and Republicans (besides which groups they pander to), and that "Democrat" == "left wing", then you're right. If your definition takes a more global view, then almost all politicians in Washington are "right wing", so the parent is correct.
Depends whose spectrum. What the US calls the left, we would call the center in Europe. What we call the left, the US would call communist, and what the US calls the right we would call extremist puritan nutcases.
Blackout day is still on. I am pleased to share the report that Wikipedia will definitely participate.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Regardless, I don't think there's a large contingent of people who think the Democrats are not really liberals and who also think that Stalin and Pol Pot were good guys.
It doesn't matter if it passes with 100 votes in the Senate, if it's DOA in the House.
It won't see the President's desk.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
You are dedicated to your generalizations and anecdotal based arguments but what would you actually DO to replace the existing system? If you are going to complain you should at least be able to explain in detail how you would change things. All of the Occupy and Arab Spring cheerleaders never thought about what would happen if they succeeded on crashing a system. It would also have been prudent for the Occupy movement to be a little more detailed about what they were protesting against. They may have needed bigger signs to explain their goals but all they have done is protest for the right to protest. History is full of examples of people clamoring for change and then being unable to come up with viable courses of actions after they win the street battle. I'm pretty sure the Liberal/Progressive student groups who participated in the Iranian 1979 revolution did not envision ending up with a theocracy based government whose first act was to kill anyone who disagreed with them. They were so focused on taking hostages and complaining about the US that they allowed the Islamist groups time to organize and implement their plans. Theocratic based governments may be detestable in the extreme but that doesn't mean the people running the scam are stupid. The Islamist were a minority before the revolution started but the ineptitude of others gave them the time to take control of the system. The US removed the Iraqi and Afghanistan leadership to give them a chance to implement change and both of those countries wasted their chance. Iraq started a civil war the day the US left and the same thing will happen when the US leaves Afghanistan.
Those in Egypt and other middle eastern countries are also starting to realize that they should have been a little more prepared just in case they won their glorious revolutions. As it stands now most of those countries are in the process of destroying themselves from the inside. Maybe they will be able to re-build but I don't really give a shit what they do. Thankfully the majority of the US public and both major political parties are against US involvement outside of making press statements and attending UN meetings.
Also, don't confuse "liberals" with "Democrats." The Democrat party of today is not the party of 1950s. Dems are on the side of the corporations, not the working people.
I think, the way it used to work is: the repubs were supported by the corporations, and the dems were supported by the unions.
But unions have diminished in the past few decades. Today practically all manufacturing has moved offshore. So now we have the both dems, and repubs, supported by corporations.
No.
We'd call it the Moderate Right. :-/
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
The bigger the list, the more meaningless it becomes.
What to do? What to do?
Constitutional amendments:
Laws:
Nationalize the following industries (or re-regulate heavily):
That's my plan. Once these things are in place, other issues will probably fall into line fairly quickly.
That is all.
Sounds good to me, but as a resident of Texas I can assure you that the Republicans have the congressional districts quite thoroughly gerrymandered to prevent any opposition to the Will of the The Party from succeeding.
WALSTIB!
SOPA IS DELAYED not cancelled they didn't kill it they are posturing and trying to figure out what to change about the bill before they have hearings on the bill
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120113/23560217407/sopa-delayed-cantor-promises-it-wont-be-brought-to-floor-until-issues-are-addressed.shtml
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
PIPA in greek means blow job.
And in Polish it means "vagina".
And in English, it means "The prince's sister-in-law", which is pretty close to its Polish meaning.
Because that power would just sit back and stay empty, right? It's not like power abhors a vacuum or anything. And it's not like the tiny government you desire would actually be able to do anything to stop it.
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!
The way to make sure this kind of law does not rise from the dead like a zombie in a bad horror movie is to punish the lawmakers who co-sponsored it. If you live in a state or district where your congressman/senator put his name on the respective bills (SOPA or PIPA), write them and tell them you will support/campaign for/contribute to their opponent, even if the bills are dead, just because they were stupid enough to ever think it was a good idea and put their name to it.
If there is one thing they fear more than their desire for campaign funds, it's getting voted out of office. So make this a "vote you out of office" issue, so the next time the entertainment industry comes knocking (and they will), the legislator will tell them to go away.
On the other hand, if you happen to live where your representative was opposed to the bill, thank them for doing it, and tell them you will to everything you can to support them in the next election.
To some degree, it does not matter if you actually do work for their opponent or them or the other stuff, cause likely some staffer will just tally your opinion in a spreadsheet, but you want to show up in the column of "very strongly against" the next time this shows up. They do pay attention to the aggregate opinions.
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."
Wait, where did you find a web browser that doesn't have spellcheck?
It's some new shit called 'Mosaic'.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon