
Under voter pressure, members of Congress backpedal (hard) on SOPA - chaosmachine
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/under-voter-pressure-members-of-congress-backpedal-on-sopa.ars
======
ck2
This is not a win and it's not backpedaling.

They don't want to vote on it and have it fail entirely.

They just want to rewrite it a little or slip it past later.

It's not if but when a version of this will pass that will be abused exactly
like DMCA on youtube.

~~~
nhangen
That's exactly what they are going to do. They know that the outcry won't
duplicate itself over numerous iterations, and they'll slip it by when people
turn away for a moment.

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balloot
What infuriates me is that both of the California Senators are co-sponsoring
this piece of garbage. One of them is Dianne Feinstein, who is up for re-
election this year. I'm a solid Democratic voter, but there is no way someone
who sponsors SOPA or PIPA will get my vote.

Even better than phone calls would be the emergence of a non-SOPA supporting
Democrat running against Senator Feinstein. I'm sure the prospect of losing
Northern California to a challenger would get her attention.

~~~
vaksel
we need a 3rd party, or better yet change voting to preferential voting, so
you can vote for who you want and not against who you don't.

that way you can say I like this guy, but in case he doesn't win, I'll settle
for this one

~~~
LeafStorm
Instant-runoff voting. It's already used by many state and local governments,
so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to implement nationally.

~~~
joshbuckler
Instant-runoff is a terrible voting system and should never be used, see
<http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/> . Approval voting is simpler and better.
Condorcet is best except that it is somewhat complicated.

~~~
_dps
I had dug into the math behind this at some point and recall that Borda was
argued (e.g. by Saari's "Basic Geometry of Voting") to be the "best" in the
sense of invariance under impossible-to-satisfy group preference cycles (A > B
> C >A), with Condorcet a close second.

If you have any references arguing for Condorcet over Borda, I would be very
interested to read them.

Edit: For people unfamiliar with the jargon, Borda is ranked-list voting, with
the winner being the candidate with the highest average rank. Condorcet is
pairwise-comparison voting with the winner being the candidate that wins the
highest fraction of pairwise comparisons.

In this jargon, "first past the post" systems select the person with the
highest fraction of being ranked first; this is argued in the literature to be
intimately tied to the two-party dominance in the US.

------
buff-a
A request to postpone a vote is not necessarily an admission that they no
longer believe it the bill to be a good idea. It could be a request to move
the vote till after people have forgotten about it.

------
vm
We're not done yet. Continue to speak loudly as a voter
(<http://www.sopatrack.com/>) and consumer (<http://gizmodo.com/5870241>) and
let's kill this bill once and for all.

------
logn
This is really good news. It actually sort of reaffirms there's at least
something theoretically correct about our government.

While we complain a lot about money in politics, and it is a problem,
ultimately we do have control over them if we pay enough attention.

------
foz
Why is there not a referendum process in national US politics? It seems the
only way to prevent government officials from passing this kind of legislation
is through public outcry on the internet (and mass media, if they listen).
People should be allowed to reject this kind of thing through a real process.
Special interest has a bigger voice than the people most of the time.
Referendums work in Switzerland (usually, let's not talk about minarets).

~~~
rst
Referendum processes are no panacea --- look at the mess they've created in
California. Among other problems, there are referenda that limit tax
increases, which have obvious appeal, and referenda mandating spending on
various good causes, which also have obvious appeal. The problem is that at
this point, so much state revenue is committed to mandates that in crunch
times, everything else gets slashed to the bone, whether it makes sense to do
that or not.

See [http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/who-
kille...](http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/who-killed-
california) for more, particularly the parts on propositions 13 (limiting tax
increases) and 98 and 111 (mandating spending)...

------
ImLou
It seems to be a general trend across countries to get more and more
restrictive on internet access and downloads.

There seems to be a good opportunity to do some good work here - I'm thinking
of things like having a network between personal home routers to effectively
bypass the control of ISPs etc, or encrypted distributed file sharing
networks.

Pain is good thing, it means there is an opportunity to solve it, and the
various petitions against this bill are a good start.

------
pmorici
"It appears that lawmakers are beginning to realize how much damage their
anti-'piracy' bills could cause to the Internet and to Internet-related
businesses,"

Actually, it appears lawmakers are beginning to realize supporting it will put
them in jeopardy of being voted out of office.

------
rd108
don't celebrate prematurely

------
shaggy
This is democracy in action. If the bills don't get passed now, we must remain
vigilant to them being buried in later legislation.

------
iamdave
Awesome, can we get the same done for NDAA?

~~~
toyg
NDAA is already law, iirc. You need a brand new bill to abolish it.

~~~
felipemnoa
Or challenge it in court.

------
kenrik
You need to watch both hands and don't let your guard down.

They will pass this bill with some very bad things in it once they think no
one is watching, just wait.

~~~
forensic
What we really need is a constitutional amendment that forbids government
interference with internet infrastructure. The internet needs to be protected
by laws that recognize it as an essential public utility.

A free and open internet is essential to the safeguarding of freedom of
communication and to the economic health of the world.

Basic internet access must be recognized as a human right.

~~~
jacoblyles
We should get together a small group of people who know what they are doing to
think about what such an amendment should say.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I think this is a great idea. To work, it should be extremely simple.

Just to spitball a bit:

"The transmission of any data owned by one person to another shall not be
infringed by the government of the United States."

Something like this is what we should have had in 1995. Instead, all the
corporate players are now in the place -- it'll be a long, hard fight. Whoever
puts something like this forward should be prepared to be ignored, at least
until they can't ignore you any longer. Then they had better be prepared to be
slimed. There will be all kinds of over-the-top attacks: child pornography,
terrorists, etc. Supporters had better have a strong argument (and supporting
sob stories) in place for when that day arrives.

~~~
Joakal
Take some notes of Freedom of Press for the Freedom of Internet.

The counterarguments can be simpler than you think;

Senator, would you prefer ineffectively blocking child pornography that
paedophiles can work around or allowing children the chance to innovate and
communicate freely for their future?

Senator, would you prefer ineffectively blocking occasional terrorism that
will piss off terrorists or allowing political discussions freely?

Senator, would you prefer blocking piracy or allowing anyone to share their
content freely? DMCA cracks down on this; a catch-22 that the creator must
sell it to claim damages against DMCA notice abusers unless the police charge
them with perjury. Not to mention that the notice is scary not only to creator
but to other people wishing to re-share. The DMCA does not discriminate
against non-commercial sharing.

Here's a good history of anti-Internet measures by USA:
<http://www.rense.com/general85/net.htm>

Here's Australia's version: <http://libertus.net/moreinfo.html>

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Interesting. Thanks.

I liked this thread so much I wrote a blog entry on it. I think it's something
we should start talking about a lot more seriously. The time is getting very
late. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3464227>

