
SOPA is dead: Smith pulls bill - melvinmt
http://mashable.com/2012/01/20/sopa-is-dead-smith-pulls-bill/
======
jellicle
SOPA is not dead. This is an election year. One incumbent President, 33
Senators, and 435 Representatives all desperately need money. The President
needs to raise upwards of $1,000,000,000. The Senators need to raise upwards
of $10,000,000 each. The Representatives need to raise upwards of $2,000,000
each.

The media industry is awash in money.

This is how your government works: a bill that is either good or bad for a
wealthy industry is proposed, and then the backers go to that industry and
hold out their hands. If sufficient money is forthcoming, the good bill is
passed or the bad bill is not passed. If sufficient money is not forthcoming,
the reverse happens.

The bill will be redrafted, with some mitigating clauses added here and there.
Implementation will be delayed a year or two, to make sure that you'll have
forgotten who voted for it by the time any consequences occur. All of the
Congresspeople who expressed reservations about it will be visited with large
checks. And it will be resubmitted within a few months. A couple of folks who
have been greased especially well will stand up and say, "My concerns about
the bill have been addressed." The new bill will pass. Obama will not comment
on the new bill and will sign it privately, without press coverage.

Your objections raised the cost of this bill for the media industry.
Congratulations, you cost them some money. You in no way affected the final
outcome. To affect the final outcome, you would need to signal that you
represent a large enough sum of campaign money to counterbalance the money-
weight of the media industry. You have not even come close to doing so.

~~~
rcfox
> The President needs to raise upwards of $1,000,000,000. The Senators need to
> raise upwards of $10,000,000 each. The Representatives need to raise upwards
> of $2,000,000 each.

Why?

~~~
redthrowaway
Media blitzes in battleground states don't pay for themselves. Since records
have been kept, the presidential candidate who raises the most cash has won
94% of the time.

~~~
endtime
>Since records have been kept, the presidential candidate who raises the most
cash has won 94% of the time.

Correlation is not causation...I'd expect the candidate best at winning
elections also to be the candidate best at raising money almost all the time.

~~~
rcfox
To be fair, he didn't imply a causation.

~~~
endtime
I think he did, given that he was answering the "Why?" which referred to a
claim of logical necessity: "The President needs to raise upwards of
$1,000,000,000."

------
norswap
"The online theft of American intellectual property is no different than the
theft of products from a store. It is illegal and the law should be enforced
both in the store and online."

How to show you understand not a single thing about the issue.

~~~
TheCapn
I try hard to stretch my imagination and see things from other's viewpoints.
To me it seems the majority of people view piracy about "someone obtained
something that wasn't theirs." _We_ tend to look at it as "I still have what
is mine."

I guess if we look a bit deeper you could stretch the issue to one's
worldview. Are you more concerned with your belongings or what others posses.
Is there a larger inclination to worry about another's success over your own?
Seemingly they're threatened by individuals possessing their products. I'd
like to believe their fight is against commercial pirates but they've shown
too many times that they see individual "pirates" as a threat to their
industry. Public support might weigh in on their side if they weren't so eager
to make average joe a poster boy for their legal matters.

~~~
funthree
Our computers + the internet have exposed information profiteering for what it
is. Abuse of power ensues.

"Information" should not be property under any circumstances except to protect
our basic human rights (i.e. privacy of an individual)

------
ypcx
While we all know that they will regroup and strike again, we also know that
somebody, somewhere out there, has gotten a very powerful message that lead
them to reevaluate the scope of the grip they thought they had on this
society.

Something of a historical importance has happened this week, and we all were
part of it.

~~~
firefoxman1
It's great to realize the voice that the American people really have. The
power of the masses is always far greater than any other force; it's just a
rarely-used power.

~~~
jgn
The voice of concerned Internet users, you mean, not just Americans.

~~~
firefoxman1
Yes, very true. I apologize.

------
steder
As much as I'd love to believe it's dead I suspect the real thought process
here is "Let's rebrand this turkey." They're going to let people calm down and
resubmit the bill next month with a new name.

~~~
iterationx
I suspect they will split the functionality of the bill into sub-pieces and
and pass each one under a different name or as part of a totally unrelated
project.

~~~
jerf
That absolutely works to float things under _media_ scrutiny, especially in
cases like this where the media is all but complicit in the passage of the
law.

I think they are going to find it much harder to sneak things past "the
Internet", though.

They will eventually work out how to do it, given enough time, but I do not
think "business as usual" will actually cut it. We have the many eyes that
make bugs shallow.

~~~
jrabone
What, like the 20-year old telnetd vulnerability was "shallow"? Do not
underestimate the opponent. Embedding nasties in seemingly-innocent bits of
legislation is what politicians are good at. This was the "brute force"
attempt.

~~~
jerf
That's exactly what I was thinking of as what they will do given "more time".
But I still expect them to try a much more traditional "business as usual"
first at least a couple of times, before they realize that's going to be
necessary. That's way harder than what they do now, which they are used to
working very well.

------
sprout

        That is not dead which can eternal lie,
        And with strange aeons even death may die.

~~~
tectonic
Sounds like a line from a poem about cryogenics. :)

~~~
paul-woolcock
It's H.P. Lovecraft

~~~
alexqgb
Yes, and excellent. Bravo.

------
PaulHoule
Untrue statement: "The online theft of American intellectual property is no
different than the theft of products from a store. It is illegal and the law
should be enforced both in the store and online."

It is theft, but it's not quite the same.

If somebody downloads a movie that they could have gotten on a Blu-Ray disk
for $20, that doesn't mean the industry is out $20 -- if the person had to pay
full price, they might not have gotten the movie at all. Downloads probably do
displace purchases to some extent, so it's fair to say that this costs the
industry some lesser number, say $5.

This has to be seen in the context of the ecosystem too. I've neither bought
nor stolen music in the last year -- I just haven't been looking for music
than I haven't already got. This is bad for the music industry, but I'm not
stealing from them.

If a person goes to the theatre with his kids every other week and buys an
optical disk every so often and also illegally downloads a movie from time to
time, the movie industry might not be getting 100% of the cash they want, but
they've got an engaged customer who's spending $80 a month on their products
and who's always telling his friends about movies he likes. If the music
industry tried to tighten the screws on this person because they think they
can get $120, they may end up getting $0, just like the music industry ends up
getting $0 from me... not because I'm a pirate, but because I'm disengaged.

~~~
mrdingle
It's not theft. It's copyright infringement.
<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/theft>

The phrase "intellectual property" is a misnomer. It's like saying "corporate
personhood".

~~~
CJefferson
While I understand why you, and others do it, it gets annoying that people try
to define piracy out of existence, by wordplay.

I get told it's not theft, or piracy, it is copyright infringement. Now there
is no intellectual property.

While I can understand wanting to re-frame the argument, reframing it in terms
of terms much longer (copyright infringement) than the terms everyone current
uses (piracy, theft) looks like a pure attempt to downplay the issue.

Not entirely sure what my point is here. Come up with a short (1 word, no
longer than 7 letters) alternative for copyright infringement, and I might
start using it. I'm not going to start talking about copyright infringement
when having this discussion with my uncle. I'll say piracy.

~~~
mrdingle
Sure, use piracy. We all understand what that means. But I'm not trying to
define it out of existence, I'm trying to use the english language
effectively. It's plainly not theft. And furthermore theres no such thing as
intellectual property. Unfortunately you will never own any of your
copyrightable creations. Your will just own a temporary monopoly on their
reproduction in certain circumstances.

It's as simple as that. Thinking that you own any creative works is
misunderstanding the law and society. Thinking that copying something is theft
of it(or indirectly theft of anything else) is a misunderstanding of the same.

~~~
CJefferson
Thanks for your reply.

I don't really understand the difference you place between physical property,
and intellectual property. My ownership of both is imposed by the government.
Without government support, I am sure I would lose control of both my physical
and intellectual property very quickly (unless, in both cases, I started
shooting people who tried to take them).

~~~
mrdingle
You don't own "Intellectual Property". You own a temporary monopoly on its
reproduction in certain circumstances. But the creative work itself you don't
own. Sure, if you paint a painting, you own the physical canvas, paint, and
wood frame. Those are your property. But the depicted image? You don't own
that. You own its copyright. Which is that temporary monopoly I described
before.

------
freejack
Smith says he wants to wait “until there is wider agreement on a solution.”

I think he'll have a much greater chance of success if he waits until there is
larger agreement on the problem. Both sides seem very confused as to what this
legislation was trying to solve - building a real consensus depends on
building that broad understanding before looking for solutions.

~~~
joe_the_user
Whenever I hear "both sides...", I know a snow-job has begun.

There really aren't two symmetric "sides". Seriously.

There is _one_ faction attempting to impose a draconian, repressive
intellectual property regime at the expense of Internet functionality, free
speech or whatever else.

And there are all the people who oppose this for whatever reason, whether to
save the Internet, save free speech, prevent a repressive regime or even to
preserve piracy. These are "a side". The mouth-pieces of the Hollywood rackets
want to attribute some position to SOPA/PIPA opponents but you really can't.
All you can say that they are opponent for one of the many good reasons for
opposing it.

So just stop.

~~~
freejack
I think you may be attributing motive or position where none really exists.

My point was simply that the chief proponent of this presumes that we already
agree on what the problem is and that we should therefore focus on finding the
solution. I think he's either deluded or disingenuous (perhaps misled or
naive? Possible, but doubtful).

My personal belief is that any SOPA-like legislation in advance of copyright
and patent reform attempts to solve the wrong problems.

------
akmiller
From Smith's statement:

"“The problem of online piracy is too big to ignore. American intellectual
property industries provide 19 million high-paying jobs and account for more
than 60% of U.S. exports. The theft of America’s intellectual property costs
the U.S. economy more than $100 billion annually and results in the loss of
thousands of American jobs."

I would really love to see him break those numbers down and describe how they
got to those exact numbers. Many of the politicians are throwing some big
numbers around so surely they have some type of formula that led them to that
result. If anyone here has any idea please let me know!

~~~
yesbabyyes
[http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/how-copyright-industries-
con-...](http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/how-copyright-industries-con-
congress/)

[http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120104/04545217274/cato-i...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120104/04545217274/cato-
institute-digs-into-mpaas-own-research-to-show-that-sopa-wouldnt-save-single-
net-job.shtml)

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/10/dodgy-
digits...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/10/dodgy-digits-
behind-the-war-on-piracy.ars)

------
spiritplumber
Solution: Eat them.

~~~
rcfox
This is indeed a modest proposal.

------
ori_b
Good. So what are we doing to prevent it from happening again? What can we do
to aggressively prevent SOPA-like legislation from being an issue?

------
Tichy
Was it always about "foreign thieves"?

~~~
cheald
Via lip service, yes, but the actual legislation, no. Section 102 applied to
sites not under US jurisdiction, and gave the Attorney General the right to
effectively censor foreign sites. Section 103 applied to _all_ sites and gave
copyright holders the ability to take action against any website.

------
wavephorm
They'll just slipstream the elements of this bill in with other legislature
once the heat dies down.

