

Netflix creates super-PAC - hornbaker
http://rt.com/usa/news/netflix-sopa-pac-lobby-618/

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powrtoch
AFAICT, Netflix has said nothing about supporting SOPA-like legislation with
this PAC, and indeed has said nothing about FIXPAC's agenda at all. It could
just as likely act as a net neutrality advocate. Stow your pitchforks, at
least for now.

~~~
leeoniya
this. the PAC's agenda could be to pay politicians not to sign these bills,
also.

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Zikes
Other than in this article, and those like it, where exactly does it say that
this PAC will be pro-SOPA? I haven't seen anything at all from Netflix saying
as much.

~~~
dissident
I'm really surprised Russia Today links are even allowed here.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Your nickname suggests you associate yourself with people who struggled for
the right of voicing their opinion; but then you actually suggest some
opinions should be discarded right away without looking on per source basis.

This is amusingly confusing.

~~~
freshhawk
The source is Russia Today. Which, objectively, has an extremely poor track
record of reporting things that turn out to be true.

Maybe the featured story on mind control weapons that are about to turn us all
into zombies that's there today will change people's minds?

Or maybe we do want to discard troll stories from here and The Weekly World
News since they aren't opinions but just link bait.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Funny that you noticed, I went and read the article on zombie rays:
<http://rt.com/news/weapons-future-zombie-media-486/> and it turns out the
article actually tries to debunk the "zombie rays" hoaxes and explain what's
actually possible and what isn't when talking about experimental weapons.

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aaronsw
This is much more likely to be about the VPPA, a law which Netflix believes
makes it illegal to provide social features in the US:

[http://www.hackingnetflix.com/2012/01/netflix-to-testify-
tue...](http://www.hackingnetflix.com/2012/01/netflix-to-testify-tuesday-at-
senate-committee-against-the-vppa.html)

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jack-r-abbit
On the surface, I don't see anything wrong with people/corporations being on
the side of "stopping online piracy". So just saying a new bill is being
introduced to stop online piracy or that a corporation is going to funnel
money to legislators writing it should not be enough to break out the
pitchforks and assemble in the town square. Just because SOPA was a dog turd
doesn't mean that every attempt to stop piracy is going to be the same. If the
next bill fixed all the problems that people had with SOPA/PIPA and still
managed to combat piracy, would that be a bad thing? Is it so crazy to be
against piracy? Isn't piracy illegal?

EDIT: just to clarify... I torrent the hell out of movies and CDs. I just
won't ever claim that doing it today is legal. Would I be sad if it all went
away? sure. But I don't think I'm entitled to any of it. And I don't buy the
"I'm poor... so I _have_ to pirate it" argument.

~~~
bgilroy26
While I agree with you in principle, I think that in the long term, piracy
issues in the United States are going to go the way of abortion.

Just to illustrate what I mean: I personally oppose women's right to have
abortions -- no holds barred -- I think that it's always morally wrong to
pursue the termination of pregnancy as an end and practically always wrong to
pursue it as a means to some other end (although there are cancer treatments
etc that jeopardize the well-being of a fetus that people should not be barred
from pursuing simply based on the potential harm).

On the other hand, it is very clearly a cultural issue. I believe that on a
practical level, to attempt to police abortion would require a Stasi amount of
government effort. If the people want the right to abort, the horse is already
out of the barn, and the job is not the government's to swing the pendulum
back, it belongs to magazine article writers, philosophers, and op-ed
journalists. If they should fail, that's okay. It is more important not to
live _The Lives of Others_ than to save those children's lives, simply because
saving them would not represent a noble Arthurian quest, it would involve
spying on pregnant women and assassinating doctors. Disgusting.

Intellectual property is a patently less important arena of human activity,
but I think in a similar way the policing of the internet should be cultural.
There ought to be a cultural directive not to steal things over the internet
when you're not a college kid anymore. When you can afford something, and it's
reasonably available, I think this cultural directive already exists.

This cultural approach is successful and that's the reason that -- for the
most part -- torrenting and music sales are weakly correlated. Most of the
people that think it's okay to steal things, would not be customers anyhow.

I believe that most of the time torrenting represents charity on the part of
movie studios and textbook publishers and music labels, providing their wares
to those who would not have otherwise been able to afford them, which is not a
bad thing, they're hiring cheap brand ambassadors. The ability to work subtle
complicated questions like this one out is the power of cultural motivation.

TL;DR : When you're talking about the decision to terminate a pregnancy, or
the decision to commit online piracy, the power is entirely in the hands of
the citizen. It is so easy to pirate, it is so distasteful to set a woman's
body against her will. Law-abidingness in these cases requires the cooperation
of the potential "criminals". You cannot pursue justice in these cases through
traditional law enforcement.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
Not that I would ever really want to get into a discussion that just compared
piracy to abortion and I'm not really sure if I should even continue... but
let's gingerly wander down that road for a just a minute. It seems you are
wholeheartedly opposed to abortion but are disgusted with combating it by
means of _spying on pregnant women and assassinating doctors_. I think I am
safe to assume you would be fine with legislation that strictly tried to make
it so inconvenient for abortion clinics/doctors to operate that they would
just opt to stop. Or legislation that just made it illegal to do it. You don't
need to spy on pregnant women to know if a clinic/doctor is doing abortions.

So now let's talk about piracy in the same terms. Spying on internet users to
see what they download would be sort of like spying on pregnant women
(disgusting). Assassinating doctors... well... I don't think there was any
clause in SOPA that involved killing anyone caught with torrents so we'll skip
that part. ;) Shutting down the torrent sites would be along the same lines as
shutting down the clinic/doctors. If that could be done without spying on your
Internet usage, then it seems we have a winner.

I think is about as far as I'm comfortable taking that analogy. Sorry.

~~~
bgilroy26
I think the work of writing a good law in this case would involve identifying
the proper target.

As much as they are the darlings of our young people, sites like sidereel etc
exist solely to exploit the creativity of others for the purpose of gathering
eyeballs. Do you have ideas for how you could make these sites difficult to
run without harming the infrastructure of the internet to the extent that it
isn't worth it to put the law on the books?

The trouble is that the government can already shut down sites like these in
many cases, so the goal isn't to write a law that helps to catch them _at all_
it needs to be enough of an improvement over what we already have to justify
the work to create the law and enforce it.

Just to throw out there, (because it's easy for me to do, I'm not the one who
has to come up with the ideas) but any law that offshore's all of these sites
to more lax countries, but leaves sites standing that are easily accessible
from the US aren't very effective. At the same time, other nation's
sovereignty should not be violated by these laws.

The basic situation is that the ease of communication that the internet
provides means that law enforcement is facing a sisyhean challenge if it plans
to fight this criminality with sticks. The problem is already being solved by
the availability of legal alternatives. Adults feel uncomfortable flaunting
the law and if somebody allows them to avoid that, they will earn attention.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
I think we agree that it would be very difficult to make a SOPA-like law that
had all the good and none of the bad. I have no ideas how to make such a law.
I'm not a law maker. But that is not a reason to fight tooth and nail against
anyone who ever tries to do it. That was really my only point.

~~~
bgilroy26
Hahah, I know. You're right.

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emehrkay
I've been a paid Nexflix users for maybe 30+ months now. I like, love, the
service. This is unfortunate, the only thing that I can do is see how it plays
out over the next cuple of weeks and move my money out of the service if
necessary.

~~~
ComputerGuru
s/cuple/couple/

(sorry!)

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jack-r-abbit
So is this one the truth then? [http://gigaom.com/2012/04/09/behind-the-
netflix-pac-a-broadb...](http://gigaom.com/2012/04/09/behind-the-netflix-pac-
a-broadband-power-play/) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3821854>
(comments)

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hornbaker
More info here: [http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/09/sopa-supporters-
await-...](http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/09/sopa-supporters-await-cash-
infusion-from-netflix-pac/)

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marcamillion
I am confused by this, if this is true.

Can someone explain why they would want to do this?

~~~
Zikes
This most likely stems from a partial support of SOPA in the past, in that
Netflix said something along the lines of supporting some of what SOPA does,
but not supporting the way in which it does it. I'm afraid I can't provide any
sources, as I heard this second-hand myself, but that's how I understand it to
be at the moment.

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lachyg
"what lawmakers consider a dire problem in the States: online piracy."

