

Sen. Ron Wyden: PIPA/SOPA Is a Congressional Wake-Up Call - ttt_
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/01/wyden-pipa-sopa-wake-up/

======
beloch
During an election, it may not always be clear which candidate voters will
choose, but it is absolutely certain that those candidates need a lot of money
just to get on the ballot. As a result, the U.S. government's course has been
charted by lobbyists and their money for a very long time now, and that isn't
likely to change unless the U.S. starts capping campaign contributions per
donor like other nations do. (This is actually a very good idea!) So how
important is public opinion really? Not very important at all, in the long
run. Yes, PIPA/SOPA met heavy opposition, but will the same bill with a
different name get the same response next year? How about the year after? What
about a dozen different bills that incorporate all the bits and pieces of
SOPA/PIPA separately? Paid lobbyists will always win in the long run.

Internet companies like google are being threatened with crushing government
regulations just as Hollywood was in the 1920's. Hollywood's response was a
combination of heavy lobbying and just barely enough self-regulation, in the
form of the production code, to escape government regulation. The code was
abandoned in the 60's, but Hollywood hasn't let up lobbying since. It's
arguable that they have actually achieved a form of regulatory capture when it
comes to copyright laws. e.g. The funny coincidence between how long
copyrights last and the age of Mickey Mouse.

The real wake-up call that SOPA/PIPA has provided is not to the public, the
government, or to the MPAA/RIAA. It's to companies that rely on the internet
for their revenue. That revenue dwarfs Hollywood. Literally. Regardless of
what the public wants or what lobbyists say, legislation like SOPA/PIPA would
have a far larger negative impact on the U.S. economy than burning Hollywood
to the ground. So why aren't there lobby groups sticking up for internet
freedom? Why was PIPA/SOPA only stopped by a grass-roots movement? The money
is there. Far more than the MPAA or RIAA could ever muster in fact.

My prediction is this: ISP's, google, etc. now know that Hollywood is gunning
for them. They're going to fight back with their own lobbyists, and they have
a _lot_ more money. The next decade is going to be dark indeed for the
MPAA/RIAA. They have awoken a juggernaut.

~~~
nextparadigms
The problem is those lobbying money keep rising up, too. From what I hear
Obama plans on raising $1 billion for his re-election campaign. That means in
the future other candidates will try to raise a lot more, too, and so on.

This is bad. I think we need to limit how much any single individual or entity
can pay for a campaign. Elections shouldn't be decided by who raises the most
money, and according to a statistic 98% of those who won elections also had
the most money. I really believe that needs to end somehow.

Unlimited donations from single individuals/companies just means that much
more power will held by those single individuals and companies, and you can
bet that the first thing the politicians will do when they get in office is to
pay back thoe money.

~~~
khafra
But that would abridge our first amendment rights, because money is speech.
Although for some reason, the police didn't see it that way when I tried $100
worth of talking a lady on the street corner into going on a date with me.

------
swombat
> _While some have derided the events of last week as a departure from the way
> we do things in Washington_

What? Who?

> _If members of Congress better understood the digital world, they would know
> that downloading a digital good from a foreign site is no different than
> importing goods from a foreign country_

WHAT? HOW?

Note: I realise this is supposed to be one of the good guys who gets it. This
makes that second statement all the more worrying!

~~~
mattmanser
Can you be a bit more specific about the latter? I don't really get what's so
wrong with that.

~~~
awj
From the recipient's perspective, the two are pretty drastically different.

Importing goods from a foreign country involves some rather substantial
regulatory burdens along with the more mundane timing/transportation issues
associated with the travel distance.

Pulling data off a foreign website is no different for the recipient than it
is anywhere else. Even the issues created by the physical distance are
relatively minor. This comparison doesn't recognize that difference.

------
illumin8
I'll tell you what should be a huge wake up call to most congressmen: When I
was petitioning my 2 senators on PIPA, I found that their web form for
constituents to submit letters were truly terrible. Each one required that I
pick a category for my letter. Only one of my two senators even had
"Technology" as a category that I could choose for submitting a letter.

One of my senators, Richard Blumenthal, had no category for Technology or the
Internet. I had to file my letter under "Other." When a US senator doesn't
even have an option for his constituents to talk to him about the Internet,
you know they just don't understand technology. The Internet is probably by
now the largest conduit through which money flows globally, outside of ForEx.
These dinosaurs ignore it at their own peril.

------
ahi
Congressional job approval rating has been hovering around 10% for quite some
time. Worse than Nixon during Watergate. The powerful incumbents responsible
for the clusterfuck will remain in power. The swing seats will continue to be
passed back and forth, perhaps a bit more quickly. That is the nature of our
two-party republic.

~~~
frankydp
We need term limits so badly. Most any business would atrophy with the same
leadership for 3 decades.

~~~
tsantero
I've always felt a little conflicted regarding term limits. While they are one
possible solution for cutting dead weight, the problem is you also end up
needlessly firing people who do a good job.

~~~
meow
Not to mention there won't be much of an incentive to work better (at least
when they near their end of term).

~~~
InclinedPlane
To play devil's advocate: potentially that just means that elected officials
would spend more effort running for different positions. House reps. near
their term limits would be more likely to run for senate. Senators would run
for governor/president. Etc.

------
chernevik
C'mon, everyone understands "the central role that the Internet plays in their
constituents’ lives", more or less. What they don't understand is how the
Internet _works_. I doubt that before last week there weren't more than a
dozen Congressmen who could explain DNS, never mind think through the
implications of filtering. All of that was for the "experts", whom Congress
turned to for "assurances" that everything would be okay. The media were
scarcely better.

So they're no better than their experts, who are, hello, conflicted, or / and
cherry-picked by conflicted players.

If we really want to get out of this lobbying complex, we might insist that
our representatives demonstrate some actual knowledge before they legislate.

------
wmeredith
I certainly hope so. Thankfully, the cat is out of the bag on the US
Government (and most government's, it seems) shutting down or controlling the
internet.

------
philipmorg
Congress isn't like a business with a bad review. It's like a business with a
bad review and they can censor the medium where the bad review appears.

------
EvilLook
And this shows further why Congress would want to restrict access by the
people to the Internet. If they can get control in place that makes it like
cable news where unpopular opinions are buried or shouted off the Net then
they can pass SOPA, PIPA, NDAA, ACTA, or whatever the hell else they want
without people having the Internet to inform them what is going on.

~~~
redthrowaway
The presence of the Internet didn't do anything for the NDAA, and it didn't do
anything for ACTA until it was too late. The revolt we saw on the web over
SOPA/PIPA was unique.

Anonymous was up in arms over ACTA years ago, but we didn't achieve much
beyond taking down a few sites for a day or so and making a few videos whose
grandiosity would have made Newt proud. If we really want to ensure that the
Internet can be mobilized again, we would do well to analyze the last
mobilization and determine what made it different. Here's my stab at it:

1) A lot of people were pissed off about SOPA for a long time before the
blackout. SOPA stories started to dominate Reddit and HN, and Wikipedia was
talking about a blackout long before anyone else did.

2) Engagement from politicians like Wyden, Issa, and Lundgren with SOPA
detractors when all seemed lost gave hope, and made it seem like it was
possible to have an effect. We would do well to keep lines of communication
with these officials open, and repay their hard work when election time rolls
around.

3) Popular opinion coalesced around a blackout long before any site had
announced one. SOPA detractors were talking about how to get big sites to
particilate in a blackout way back in early December.

4) Someone set a damned date. Though it was widely ridiculed on HN, some
random redditor said, "we're doing it on January 18", and that was that. The
moderators of r/SOPA agreed to black out that subreddit on the 18th, then when
it was announced that Alexis would be testifying before congress on the 18th,
the reddit admins followed suit. Setting a date on reddit finally kicked the
Wikipedia discussions into high gear, and the rest of the dominos followed.

5) We had public figureheads like Alexis and Jimmy Wales to liaison with Old
Media and congress. The importance of this can't be overstated. Alexis put a
(freakishly tall and charismatic) face on the internet, and we can't ignore
the effect of that on old media.

6) Obvious, but worth noting: we had large organizations participating. People
at those organizations semi-independently decided that a blackout was a good
idea, and some announced they were taking action long before it was what all
the cool kids were doing. Special props to Ben Huh on this; the Cheezburger
network was one of the first outside of reddit and Wikipedia to join the
blackout.

7) The owner-as-user: thousands of smaller sites, whose owners/operators are
far more Internet addict than industry titan, decided to put their livelihood
on the line and join the blackout. This one will hit the game theory wonks
hard, as it's the complete opposite of the Tragedy of the Commons. A bunch of
people, whose independent actions wouldn't have made much difference, acted
together to have a huge impact. They acted against their own individual self-
interest (the blackout wouldn't have noticed their absence if they didn't
participate) in pursuit of the common good. This is both laudable and
noteworthy.

8) Perhaps most worryingly, the blackout was unprecedented. This means it will
likely be exceedingly difficult to do again. The impact of any future action
will likely be greatly reduced as it won't have the same novelty. We're really
going to have to find a way around this if we plan on being able to rally the
troops for a future fight.

------
maeon3
Congress wants tax revenue on websites hosted in foreign countries. The
website hosting the site will be taxed on click through and the Web will have
more "this site is not available in your country" messages. This is how net
neutrality dies in the night. Taxing IP by import duties and surcharges. We
built the most powerful tool on the planet, and governments everywhere are
trying to claim sole ownership of it so they can tax it and control it until
it is as politically acceptible as fox news. My freedom to visit sites
anywhere in the world will be going away. I suppose it is inevitible, humans
in power are extremely territorial and don't like to share like the
enlightened individuals who built the internet do.

A globally free medium of data exchange limited only by bandwidth mostly
unhindered by any powerful nation will be an enlightened blip on the timeline
of the human race.

