

The Internet wins: SOPA has been shelved, but we must remain vigilant - mrsebastian
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/114045-the-internet-wins-sopa-has-been-shelved-but-we-must-remain-vigilant

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genbattle
The timing of this withdrawal seems to fully indicate that the politicians
involved have just tried to flush out their opposition and force them to play
their hand.

Now Reddit, Wikipedia et al. will go dark, but they will not generate the
support they could have if SOPA was still under debate. Now when someone sends
a letter to their local politician, that politician will just send an
automatic reply of "This isn't as issue, we're not even debating this right
now, I don't know what you're talking about.", further confusing the public.

This is just a delay tactic being used to crush the groundswell around the
current SOPA/PIPA bills. They'll come back when all opposition has faded away
to a distant memory. Plus it gives the politicians who were involved plausible
deniability on both sides; they're not dropping it, but they're not currently
pursuing the matter either.

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ajays
All that has happened is the following: the Congresscritters have decided that
an overt, named, Internet censorship bill may not work.

Now look for SOPA to appear as a part of some defense spending bill, or the
debt ceiling bill, or something like that.

Anyone else remember the land shark from the SNL of old? Yeah, SOPA/PIPA are
the land sharks. They'll keep trying.

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swalsh
This is winning a battle, not a war. There is going to be more legislation,
both in the US, and the World.

The internet is unique in that what makes it powerful is it's
interconnectedness. It doesn't make sense for some nodes to have different
rules than others. I believe the internet needs it's own bill of rights, but
it should be presented in an international forum.

It's probably a pipe dream, but the idea of the US being able to take down
international nodes by any method is devastating to me.

~~~
bittermang
Exactly. We haven't won anything and treating it as a victory is dangerous. It
turns us in to a boy cried wolf after we tell everybody it's OK to go home and
put the pitchforks down. Only to start up the hysterics again the next time we
face down dire straits.

We have the momentum, we have people's attention, we need to keep pushing.
Keep organizing. Keep educating. We need to get our lobbying groups in to
Washington and start influencing some legislation that works for The Internet.
Not against it.

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VTfirefly
Leahy (PIPA sponsor) has announced that his chief of staff, Ed Pagano, is
leaving to become Obama's liaison with the Senate. If you carefully read
Leahy's press release and Obama's Response to We the People Petitions, the
only thing that either has backed off on is the DNS language. And is packet
sniffing any better than DNS censoring for freedom on the Internet? I don't
know.

Not saying that the vote will happen on Jan 24, but also not putting any money
on its not happening. Both Pagano and Obama are basketball players, so keep
your eyes on the ball.

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cleverjake
Does this mean that Jan 18th is cancelled?

~~~
AzAngel
There is still PIPA out there. Basically the Senate version of SOPA. Just a
change in focus is all that is needed.

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maeon3
The next battlefield will have a different terrain, I suspect if I wanted to
censor the Web for political power I would strike next at the freedom to
securely encrypt internet connections between devices. We need a right to bear
encryption right next to a right to bear arms, so that a nation of citizens
can mobilize to protect itself from an out of control government.

~~~
anamax
Neither a "right to bear arms" nor "free political speech/press" are actually
all that protected by modern US jurisprudence. ("political" is important -
pornography does have significant protections, far more than political
speech.)

~~~
emmett
What political speech exactly is censored in the US today?

~~~
anamax
> What political speech exactly is censored in the US today?

Take out an ad about a candidate and you'll find out.

There's a whole federal bureaucracy, the FEC, devoted to regulating political
speech. Many states (and some cities) also have campaigning laws.

Citizens United changed this somewhat but ....

