

Reddit PAC aims to kick SOPA's daddy Lamar Smith out of Congress - seminatore
http://boingboing.net/2012/03/08/reddit-pac-aims-to-kick-sopa.html

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r00fus
Bravo. This is action I support (and can support with $$).

Lamar Smith is almost completely corrupt - almost all the bad bills are co-
sponsored by this clown. There are Dems as bad as this guy, but Congressman
Smith seems far more effective in his corruptive capacity than any other
congressman on the hill.

~~~
maeon3
If you were serious about the donating money part, the best way to do this now
(if they havn't already met the goal) is to donate to a billboard sign saying
Lamar Smith is Killing the internet, with a big picture of a noose with a
hashtag: "#unseatlamar":

Proposed picture of billboard: [http://testpacpleaseignore.org/dollar-by-
dollar-we-can-make-...](http://testpacpleaseignore.org/dollar-by-dollar-we-
can-make-a-difference/)

Donation status: [https://secure.piryx.com/donate/EKph3wRp/Test-PAC-Please-
Ign...](https://secure.piryx.com/donate/EKph3wRp/Test-PAC-Please-Ignore/lamar-
smith)

~~~
zht
It doesn't seem like having a picture of a noose in an ad attacking a
politician is a good idea.

~~~
draggnar
It is what humans have done for generations. Heck some parts of the world
still do it. At least we use metaphorical ones. This guy is a crook and
deserves the opportunity to make a lot of money doing something else.

------
tzs
> the Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 (AKA "the
> Spy on Everyone Always Act")

Add Cory Doctorow to the list of authors who write about legislation they
haven't read. What it actually requires is the keeping of IP address
assignment records and the mapping of them to custormer records. A few sites
have claimed it requires keeping a log of all sites actually browsed and data
downloaded and such, but that's completely made up. It's disappointing that
Doctorow apparently gets his information from such sites and doesn't verify
it.

The relevant parts of the legislation are only a couple of paragraphs. Why do
bloggers find it so damned hard to read it for themselves instead of just
repeating what other bloggers write?

~~~
radu_floricica
And this is bad enough. There are plenty of services that could make anonymity
and privacy as part of their offer, and laws such as this make it a moot
point.

Worse, it touches defaults. By default, most sites don't keep IP addresses (no
point really, for most businesses). Changing this opens so many possibilities
for law enforcement, and they are all the kind I'd expect the chinese
government to be happy about.

~~~
keithpeter
The ISPs can, and in the UK there is one of our lovely 'voluntary agreements'
that has the ISP retaining information about web sites visited, but only for 4
days. Police need to move quickly, as they did in the riots last summer.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_data_retenti...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_data_retention#United_Kingdom)

------
cafard
I am reminded of a simile from _The Manchurian Candidate_: about as effective
a rubbing a jar of vanishing cream onto the flight deck of the USS Enterprise
would be in making the carrier disappear.

(Quoted from distant memory--may be the wrong carrier.)

