

███ ██ █ ████ everything ███ █████ is █████ ████ ████ fine ████. - blago

███ ██ █ ████ love. █████ ███████ ███ your █████ ████ government.
======
tgrass
For no good reason, a rant:

As far as I know, companies are not held legally accountable when their
database is illegally accessed and consumer data (passwords and emails) are
released to the public. In civil engineering, if a dam fails, the man who
signed his name to the design is held responsible. Legally. And he likely
loses his license. The same is true of doctors and lawyers.

It will not surprise me if the government steps in to create standards for
online security; programmers have not taken steps to self-police.

The same seems true with SOPA. The theft of intellectual property is clearly a
problem. A robots.txt file does not stop someone from scraping your content.
There's been no effective self-policing and in its absence the result is a
Congressional act.

Does the act go too far (by denying due process)? Sure. Might that get scaled
back in the courts? Likely. Has Google, Wikipedia, or any of the countless
sites protesting SOPA offered up an alternative that actually resolves the
problem. No.

I don't support SOPA, but I have a hard time opposing it when this is the
state of affairs it was born from.

~~~
chc
Although I guess it's technically true that "the theft of intellectual
property is clearly a problem", it's unenlightening. Shoplifting and texting
in theaters are also clear problems, but I hope you'd oppose insane laws where
people caught doing those things are publicly hanged alongside their immediate
family. Is the theft of intellectual property such an _urgent_ problem that it
merits an extreme response? That I doubt. We seem to be doing mostly fine with
the status quo. It might be a bit frustrating when your content is pirated,
but it does not call for drastic measures on the scale of SOPA. (And of
course, this is all ignoring the fact that SOPA would actually be _quite
ineffective at stopping piracy_ , and would mainly just act as ammunition for
trolls and anticompetitive corporations. I'd guess that true pirate sites
would generally be less affected by SOPA than the average non-pirate site that
just accepts user-generated content.)

~~~
tgrass
The evidence speaks: it was clearly an extreme and urgent problem to some
parties, hence the act is under serious consideration.

Shoplifting is not only illegal, but much is dedicated to minimizing it.

To claim that SOPA is similar to a death sentence for shoplifting is excessive
hyperbole.

We have drivers licenses and stop signs for our once 'open roads'. Clearly as
a civilization we are capable of allowing oversight. Should it be as severe as
removing due process? Absolutely not.

Should the world of the web gotten out in front of this with an elegant
solution? Yes. It didn't and hasn't.

The reality is similar bills will be pushed until the problem is resolved.

~~~
chc
> _The evidence speaks: it was clearly an extreme and urgent problem to some
> parties, hence the act is under serious consideration._

This is a non sequitur. The fact that something is under consideration does
not mean it addresses an "extreme and urgent problem". For example, the
Gravina Island Highway (the "road to nowhere") was not only under serious
consideration, but was actually built despite the fact that it did nobody any
good. And we've all heard about silly laws, like how it's illegal to tease
skunks in Minnesota. Do you think skunk-teasing is an extreme and urgent
problem?

The fact that an industry group is pushing a bill that would give it massive
power does not indicate that there is actually an urgent problem that needs
solving, much less that the bill is what's necessary to solve their problem. I
mean, if somebody offered me a million dollars, I'd absolutely take it, but
you would be wrong to infer that I'm a million dollars in debt. In this
particular case, many of the numbers the industry associations have thrown out
to show a need have been proven to be outright fabrications, and most of the
others have been shown to be heavily skewed. So not only have they not shown a
legitimate need, but they've demonstrated that their motive has nothing to do
with need.

Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that piracy isn't a problem — just
that I don't see a need for drastic measures.

> _Shoplifting is not only illegal, but much is dedicated to minimizing it._

The _maximum_ sentence for shoplifting in most places is one year in jail.
We're hardly taking SOPA-level countermeasures against it.

> _To claim that SOPA is similar to a death sentence for shoplifting is
> excessive hyperbole._

I don't think so. Jailing people for song covers on YouTube is about as
disproportionate, and SOPA essentially implements the death penalty for
websites that don't have the resources to police user-generated content with
100% efficacy. But at any rate, the point of the comparison is that it is a
_drastic_ solution to a vexing but not-so-drastic problem.

------
brudgers
For no good reason -

This post reminds me of John Carpenter's _They Live,_ and that maybe what we
really need to take care of SOPA is Rowdy Roddy Piper - whose website is,
fortuitously, not blacked out today. <http://www.rowdyroddypiper.com/>

------
whichdan
█████ ██ ████ ███████?

~~~
danudey
Probably Thursday.

~~~
aymeric
No I think it █████ ██████████, don't you think?.

