Zoe Lofgren Wants To Slow Down Domain Seizures By ICE & DOJ

GovTechGuy writes "Rep. Zoe Lofgren sat down with Roll Call to discuss her proposal to slow down the seizure of domain names accused of piracy by the federal government. Lofgren turned to Reddit for help formulating the bill, and also discussed whether her colleagues in Congress know enough about technology to make informed decisions on tech policy."

Comments

It's "Zoe", not "Zof"

[ZaMoose]

She "also discussed whether her colleagues in Congress know enough about technology to make informed decisions on tech policy".

This is one of those trick questions, right? I mean, "No, next question." is too easy, right?

Re:It's "Zoe", not "Zof"

[TheCarp]

That is so not true, these people are our best and brightest! Hello.... you think congressmen don't have indoor plumbing? They know how tubes work, they know what happens when you put them in a series. They arn't stupid.

Re:It's "Zoe", not "Zof"

[ZaMoose]

Absolutely. The US Congress contains the best and the brightest graduates of law school that we currently...

WE ARE SO HOSED.

Re:It's "Zoe", not "Zof"

[ZaMoose]

Also a Congressman who worried that stationing more US forces on Guam would flip the island over.

Re:It's "Zoe", not "Zof"

[Quila]

Johnson was obviously joking about stationing too many people on the island. Jackson-Lee honestly asked a NASA official if the Mars Pathfinder had photographed the flag planted by Neil Armstrong. Her office accused those who pointed out her stupidity of racism.

Re:It's "Zoe", not "Zof"

[davester666]

Why are you bringing up the TSA?

A representative of the people doing her job?

[NettiWelho]

Nothing to worry about, MAFIAA has already dispatched a squad to deal with her.

Re:A representative of the people doing her job?

[KiloByte]

Let's see, have we seen MAFIAA's tentacles in action recently?

We can fix this problem

[1s44c]

These agencies of the US government are abusing the DNS system, our DNS system. We should replace or at least supplement DNS with something they can't abuse, something peer2peer. Nothing short of that will fix the DNS abuse we keep seeing.

Namecoin was a good idea but it's not going to work as currently implemented. Maybe something similar could.

Informed Decisions?

[sanosuke001]

Just take a look at Ted Stevens' "series of tubes" comment to see the ineptitude of congress. Lets say, for the sake of argument that Stevens was "dumbing it down" for his peers in congress and he was well versed in techno-babble. He himself felt that it was necessary because he felt that his peers didn't know wtf he would be talking about by speaking intelligently and, therefore, they were not capable of making informed decisions. Now, if we go to the side of the coin where we assume Stevens had no idea what he was talking about, then the person attempting to make an argument didn't know a damn thing about technology and we're still screwed.

I, for one, believe there should be some sort of test you need to pass to prove you have basic understandings of certain things before you can represent others. Or, better yet, choose people in the field to make policy; go to MIT, Stanford, IBM, Microsoft, Google, etc and make a tech representation senate. We don't NEED everyone in the government making decisions on everything; spread out the responsibility to those who are experts.

Physical goods need quick-return as well

[davidwr]

Quoting from the linked article:

âoePhysical goods can be held in escrow or in a warehouse and they wonâ(TM)t necessarily decay or degrade,â

Many goods are perishable. Many that are not are also "part of a process" as well.

Imagine if a small-business brick-and-mortar movie store was credibly accused of piracy and the cops came in and seized ALL of the DVDs and waited weeks or months to return those that weren't reasonably suspected of being pirated. They value of that inventory would likely go down over time, especially for recently released titles.

Imagine if the cops went one step further and padlocked the building. The business would be unable to pay its rent or mortgage and would likely be forced into bankruptcy.

Now, you can argue that a store that is pirating doesn't deserve to be in business in the first place, but that's what we have courts and "due process" for. Let the industry sue for fair damages and injunctions. If actual criminal acts occur, the the government file charges in criminal court. A conviction on any serious charge will shut down most small- and medium-sized companies.

Lofgren Q&A on Tech Policy

[GovTechGuy]

Meant to include this link: http://www.rollcall.com/news/seeing_the_internet_as_a_place_for_freedom_to_flourish-220070-1.html From the post: "I don’t want to critique my colleagues. My degree was in political science, not computer science. So, you have to teach yourself. I spend as much time as possible trying to become a knowledgeable person. I don’t claim to be an expert, but I’ve read a lot of books and I’ve taken some courses on how to do some simple programming. And I actually did some simple programming a long time ago in college. So I’m not an expert, but you need to have at least some concept of how the technology works to avoid making mistakes." --Lofgren