Slashdot Mirror
A Free Internet, If You Can Keep It
Kethinov writes "My Congresswoman, Zoe Lofgren, a prominent opponent of the infamous Stop Online Piracy Act, has introduced two bills to the U.S. House of Representatives designed to protect the free and open internet, expand the protections of the Fourth Amendment to digital communications, and protect against the introduction of any further SOPA-like bills. Since these are issues Slashdotters care deeply about, I wanted to open up the bills for discussion on Slashdot. The bills are: ECPA 2.0 and the Global Free Internet Act. Is my Congresswoman doing a good job? Is there room for improvement in the language of the bills? If you're as excited by her work as I am, please reach out to your representatives as well and ask them to work with Rep. Lofgren. It will take a big coalition to beat the pro-RIAA/MPAA establishment politics on internet regulation."
As a euroboy I can only urge you Americans to support politicans like this. Your political system seems bent and broken to me but this is a glimmer of hope at least. Keep fighting for your freedoms, they seem to dictate the direction the rest of us get herded.
This is exciting that a member of Congress is doing this, I will reach out to my local representatives and ask them to support this.
It would be great if I could get my congressmen to do something like this, or even support something like this, but they are so far up the ass of their corporate masters they can brush the CEO's teeth without him ever opening his mouth.
I got here through a series of tubes
My spelling gives it away, probably... I am a Brit living outside the US. But Congresswoman Lofgren's approach is one that would go a long way to winning my vote, if I was living in San Jose and was eligible to vote.
If you are in her Congressional District and you agree with her stance, I would suggest sending her a message of support (let her know that she is doing a Good Thing... she is not a mind-reader, and positive feedback is always welcomed).
If you are not in her Congressional District, I would suggest sending your Congress-person a request to get behind her proposal, and also sending her a letter to say that you support her stance, and you have asked your Congress-person to do the same.
This seems like a throw-away bill. There is no chance it will make it to the president's desk before congress closes for the year and all bills have to start over.
Don't make the Mafia (one "a") look bigger than they are! The last time I checked, the whole global music industry made less in revenue than a single broke German construction company (Holzwinkel) made profit.
And the by far biggest part of that was iTunes.
It's not much different with the other media distribution and artist extortion industries.
They just have a giant overblown ego. (Judging from what I've seen with EMI, SonyBMG, and Warner, my only guess would be massive cocaine abuse.)
And they project that ego over everything, much like a Steve Jobs reality distortion field, so that politicians think the Mafia has some actual relevance.
But 1. who says we can't blow up things just as much, and 2. their bubble only works if you believe in it. Otherwise it bursts quicker than a soap bubble in a nail bomb explosion.
So please don't spread their reality distortions. (Including the one about imaginary property.) Because by doing so, like a Streisand Effect, you're helping your own enemy.
Thanks.
I took a look at both bills. I'm not optimistic.
I would need to dig more into the ECPA 2.0 bill, but there are, at a minimum, some technical problems with the bill's language. The purpose seems to be to abolish GPS tracking, but the language is weasel-y, and it needs to clarify some points such as interaction with state laws.
The Global Free Internet Act appears to do nothing useful. It would create a task force ripe for regulatory capture, and it would probably result in less accountability than having groups continue to lobby Congress. Also, some of the factual statements about the Internet are incorrect, especially when making assumptions about the Internet's "original purpose."
I'm not saying that we couldn't have quality legislation in these areas, but the proposed bills are lacking.
It would be nice to have someone with a degree of credibility look at this legislation and report on how useful it really is. That's exactly the sort of thing that the EFF should be doing. Have they reviewed it?
No....the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to personal email and that is one of the major points of ECPA 2.0. Right now, if your personal email is not in an "electronic communications system for one hundred and eighty days or less," it is receiving virtually no privacy protections at all. Even if it hasn't been 180 days yet, that communication could still be handed over by your service provider. How many governmental requests did Google/Gmail receive this past year....?
The Senator is right (from TFA): "the defeat of SOPA should be more than cause for pride — it must also prompt action to secure the future of the Internet." But this is also about securing us NOW.
MAFIAA? Me. Because I believe that what I create is my own?
I think big media is stupid and has created a ton of problems for itself because it doesn't change it's business model and because it backing these stupid laws (SOPA, ACTA).
I'm a big supporter of eff.org. I don't use Facebook because of privacy issues. But all this doesn't mean that you can take someone else's property.
When the last Harry Potter book came out - do you think it would have been legitimate for you to copy the book, print it and sell it and keep all the profit for yourself?
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
I've been thinking for a little while that it would be interesting to apply the wiki concept of communal editing to legislative proposals. This might be a good opportunity to start, since so many slashdotters will interested. Someone could set up a project and allow anyone to edit the Congresswoman's bill. Then when there is some kind of consensus, it can be submitted to her so she can pursue it further. Any volunteers?
Slashdot is not a game, Slashdot is not a game. Crap, I just lost points.
Zoe appears to be good people. She lead opposition to SOPA and against PCIPA's data retention requirements. I don't like that she supported the Sonny Bono act, but her proposed Public Domain Enhancement Act (Which would require periodic renewal of copyrights after 50 years, though that bill has gone nowhere) redeems her somewhat.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
the problem is that SOPA is a Nuclear Option for IP things.
even if you are not in the US you can still be on the hook for violating it if
1 your internet presence has a edu /net / com extension
2 some US company decides that you violated Their IP
3 any of your business is in the US
4 Your country has treaties that require it to match the US regs
5 Your country has %resource% and the US decides that it needs to be Liberated (with the "corrections" to IP laws of course being part of that)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Lofgren represents Northern California with the tech and Internet companies. They have a monied interest in an open Internet, naturally you'd think that their paid congresscritter fights for that. This bill falls right into that. However, back in 2002 she introduced a bill that would invalidate EULAs. That would seriously anger this core constituency. It really seems that she's looking out for us.
Well, at least in this one respect (she still promotes institutional racism, unequal protection under the law, and flat-out doesn't believe in three of the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights).