
The 19 Senators Who Voted To Censor The Internet - yanw
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101118/10291211924/the-19-senators-who-voted-to-censor-the-internet.shtml
======
jws
The bill in question is COICA – "Combating Online Infringements and
Counterfeits Act"

EFF has this to say: _The main mechanism of the bill is to interfere with the
Internet's domain name system (DNS), which translates names like "www.eff.org"
or "www.nytimes.com" into the IP addresses that computers use to communicate.
The bill creates a blacklist of censored domains; the Attorney General can ask
a court to place any website on the blacklist if infringement is "central" to
the purpose of the site._

They go on to list sites which might be affected, including HN's own little
darling, Dropbox.

~~~
plusbryan
I'm shocked and ashamed that California's own Feinstein appears on this list.

~~~
WildUtah
Feinstein has long been known as a censor, an opponent of civil rights and
human rights, an open shill for industry, an advocate of unnecessary war, a
proponent of police and government against the Bill of Rights and privacy, and
generally opposed to the individual or small business whenever government and
powerful institutions can be privileged instead.

I wonder often why California insists on keeping her. She almost always votes
right on the environment and reproductive rights, I guess. You folks could do
a lot better, though.

~~~
akozak
Let's be clear which industry though, because clearly Internet services are
now an industry in themselves.

------
marcusbooster
Keep in mind a committee vote is just that, a vote in committee to move the
bill along.

Sometimes a legislator will like the overall bill but see some problems and be
assured by the patron that they can come to an agreement. Sometimes they
absolutely hate the bill and know it will die, but they'll move it along just
to get the opposing party on record so they can embarrass them in commercials.
Sometimes they just move it along in because they have a deal with the patron.
It's all politics as they say.

------
MBlume
California senator Dianne Feinstein, who appears on this list, also sponsored
Consume But Don't Try Programming
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Broadband_and_Digital_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Broadband_and_Digital_Television_Promotion_Act))
back in the day.

As long as she's on the ballot, I'll be voting for her Republican opponent,
however loathsome.

~~~
btilly
I am _almost_ in the same boat. But this time around the Republicans ran Carly
Fiorina.

I'm sorry, but if you're going to run a businesswoman on her record, don't run
one who did that much damage to her company (HP), who got fired by her board,
and who was universally agreed to be so bad that the stock shot up on the news
that she was finally gone. As much as I disliked Boxer, I didn't want to find
out the hard way how much worse Fiorina could be if she was given access to
power (again).

~~~
BrandonM
To steal a bit from Jack Black and make it my own:

Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach, teach gym. Those who can't
teach gym go into politics.

~~~
dpatru
I heard it this way:

If you can't do, teach,

If you can't teach, administrate,

If you can't administrate, go into politics,

If you can't get elected, go to work for the government.

------
stevejohnson
I'm extremely surprised to see Franken on this list. Wasn't he outspoken
against this sort of thing?

~~~
G_Wen
Yes, he was a pretty big advocate on net neutrality:
<http://www.alfranken.com/index.php/splash/netneutrality>

[http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/08/19/can-al-franken-save-
net...](http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/08/19/can-al-franken-save-net-
neutrality/)

<http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20011587-503544.html>

[http://colorlines.com/archives/2010/08/600_convene_for_broad...](http://colorlines.com/archives/2010/08/600_convene_for_broadband_town_hall.html)

Edit more links:

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/07/senator-
inte...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/07/senator-internet-
gatekeepers-biggest-threat-to-free-speech.ars)

[http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/media/sen-al-franken-
gets-...](http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/media/sen-al-franken-gets-serious-
on-free-speech-net-neutrality/19184783/)

[http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/10/08/20/sen-al-
franken-...](http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/10/08/20/sen-al-franken-we-
have-free-speech-problem)

Yes, America does have a free speech problem.

~~~
ataggart
More evidence that "net neutrality", like "reform", is a fill-in-the-blank
phrase meaning whatever one thinks it means. In this way listeners to a
politician speaking automatically fill in the blank with whatever they
personally would support. That the actual legislation the politician
implements might be anathema to the ostensible supporters is a humorous side-
effect.

~~~
Natsu
Well, originally (that is, somewhere before the term Net Neutrality was coined
& lobbyists were hired), there was this plan by the big telecoms that they had
recently announced.

They were going to slow down internet traffic to sites, especially big ones
like Google, unless those people gave them money. There was no talk about
infrastructure, just a naked money grab, and this was in a speech to others in
the telecom industry that I don't think they expected so many people to hear
about. After that, there was mass outrage from everyone from the ACLU to the
Christian Coalition. Everyone was united: this was naked extortion.

Then people banded together and started calling it "Net Neutrality." And the
lobbyists were hired.

The unraveling began when they started questioning what people would do about
it. The debate changed from "this is horrible! how can the telcos do that!" to
"there needs to be a law!" vs. "we can't trust the government to regulate the
internet!"

Sadly, I think both positions are correct, but for different reasons. But by
creating a rift and pitting people--people who were all outraged by this
horrible plan--they've kept us from doing much of anything at all to stop
them. The free market won't do much good against a natural monopoly, but we
really, truly cannot trust the government with too much power.

So, in spite of the fact that pretty much everyone was outraged by these plans
for middlemen to hobble our internet connections, we've been pitted against
each other by lobbyists.

Lovely, huh?

~~~
jbooth
Pretty standard -- just throw enough dirt into the air, everyone throws up
their hands, and the media "reports the controversy".

------
DanielBMarkham
Very interesting.

Wonder what all of these senators have in common? It doesn't look like party,
section of the country, or left-right leanings.

Usually when you get a wide dispersed group like this, the next thing to do is
look for businesses and organizations (either inside the senator's state or
not) that use money and votes to heavily lobby. Wonder who would lobby for
this?

Just thinking aloud. I don't mean this to be a slam of the senators -- they're
incompetent enough without my slamming them -- just trying to figure out if
there is a commonality.

~~~
jparise
They are the current members of the Senate Judiciary Committee:
<http://judiciary.senate.gov/about/members.cfm>

They don't really have anything else in common other than their committee
membership.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Got it. I missed the judiciary tie-in.

Then I think a much better headline would be "Senate Judiciary Committee
Unanimously Votes In Favor Of Internet Censorship Bill" since the unanimous
nature of the vote is the real story here.

Very strange that there were no dissenters. Anybody have a line into what sort
of testimony the committee heard? Either an extremely persuasive case was made
or there is some other part of this story that we are missing.

~~~
xorglorb
> or there is some other part of this story that we are missing.

"Campaign Contributions" and access to a resort in the Bahamas.

------
kinghajj
If this does pass, couldn't we just set up alternate DNS servers which include
the blacklisted domains?

------
sdh
It would be easy enough to get around a DNS ban. Especially since they can't
stop people from using whatever name server they choose or mapping IPs locally
themselves.

~~~
gnaritas
While that is technically true, to 99% of the population, that is deep magic.
They'd find a way to charge you for hacking for changing your own hosts file.

------
pasbesoin
Several disappointments, including in my state. I guess it's time to break out
the letter writing.

Of course, Democrats (of whom I note several prominent figures) have long been
whores to big media.

------
natmaster
I honestly do not understand people who cite the first amendment to the
constitution as reasoning, but think the second amendment is antiquated.

(Note: They don't mention the second amendment in this article, I'm merely
referring to the fact that I don't hear uproars like this when it is
violated.)

~~~
burgerbrain
I honestly do not understand why people bring up completely tangental issues
while discussing politics.

(Note: They usually don't mean to detract from the topic being discussed, but
that is without fail what happens when they derail the conversation.)

------
thethimble
The linked article is a bit biased.

Although I'm still vehemently against the item in question, the real bill in
question is the "Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act"
([http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20023238-38.html?tag=cnetR...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20023238-38.html?tag=cnetRiver))
which involves with maintaining a blacklist for domains associated with
piracy. Although this is still clearly censorship, it isn't what the title led
me to believe (across the board censorship like China).

Still, Dianne Feinstein just lost my vote for the coming election :(.

~~~
Natsu
I don't think there's ever been a blacklist that wasn't abused and if there
is, I haven't even heard of it. For reference, look to the Australian
blacklist, wherein they banned all sorts of sites that had nothing to do with
the alleged purpose of the blacklist.

By all rights, this should be stricken down as being in conflict with the 1st
Amendment, but I don't know if the current crop of Supreme Court Justices
would be amenable to that or not.

------
pintojohn2134
I'm gonna start doing stuff to prevent these 19 people from being elected. For
a start, I'm gonna make a website, I'm a coder, any designers here who'd be
interested in making a site dissing these 19?

~~~
bean__
I'm in. Send me an email at no.no.I.am.Spartacus[[at]]gmail[[dot]]com.

------
joshes
The fact that numerous law professors were rebuffed speaks to the growing
anti-intellectual sentiment at the highest reaches of this nation.

------
Towle_
Extra Credit: Why aren't the senators' party affiliations listed?

~~~
noarchy
Because it doesn't matter. Quite often, those parties are two sides of the
same coin.

If they didn't list party affiliation on ballots, people would instead vote
based on what? The names they like most? That's about how informed some voters
are, unfortunately. It takes effort to get informed, and the entities that
should inform them, often fail to do so.

~~~
1337p337
(D)s, (R)s, and other letters in parentheses next to names are the sort of
things that influence how people vote, and in articles like this, they affect
future votes.

That said, it is somewhat sad that the informed citizen is a more rare voter
than they used to be. The ballot in my state was so long that I had to make a
cheat sheet to avoid having to memorize all of the names. I suspect that for
non-partisan offices, a lot of people did just vote for names they like. If
elections weren't so costly, it might be objectively better to hold local,
state, and federal elections on different days, so that people who show up to
vote for a president or a governor don't just mark the rest of their ballot
without knowing who they're voting for.

These are all senators, though, so it can be assumed that they were mostly
elected by people who at least had heard of them.

------
Osiris
Why couldn't a website just advertise their IP address? If it's just blocking
DNS, there's nothing stopping people from going to the website directly via
IP. If this does pass, it seems to me that sites like thepiratebay.org would
just advertise their public IP so you could easily google it and find an
alternate link to it. The only issue would be if they had to move servers, of
course.

As someone else posted in another article, there are plenty of ways around
this law that it will have very little impact.

------
iwr
Would this system block websites at the IP level or at the DNS level?

Doing it at the DNS level would mean you could roll your own DNS or use a non-
US DNS provider.

Doing it at the IP level would mean the ISP reverse-lookups IP addresses back
into domain names and checking against a list of banned addresses. This one
could only be bypassed through proxies.

------
jdavid
Bills like this allow for the technology to be put in place for broader
censorship. Even though in theory protecting copywrite is good, it's also very
scary to think the government has a big large red button to block any website
they want, maybe even without oversite.

------
davidj
maybe its about time to start boycotting the businesses that resides in the
states where these senators are elected to represent. After all, all these
senators are doing is representing the will of their constituents. Their
constituents want to censor the internet and we should boycott them. I can't
vote against any of these senators because my state wasn't a supporter of
censoring the internet, but I can vote with my wallet.

------
ashedryden
I'd like to take this space to apologize on behalf of my state, Wisconsin.
Can't believe my beloved Feingold voted for this :(

------
phlux
AL FUCKING FRANKIN SIGNED THAT??????

~~~
protomyth
I really gotta ask, why are you surprised? He is very, very friendly with big
media. He even got the other MN Senator in on that one. Do we really expect
him to vote against his friends?

------
lhnn
Would a website dedicated to providing IP addresses to websites whose domains
were seized be seized?

Just have a directory on an IP-address-accessed server and you've
circumscribed the law.

Nevertheless, this law is farking redonkulous. Aren't there already processes
for removing illegal content from websites? Surely shutting down domains isn't
the most effective way.

There must be some alternative, nefarious motive for this legislation, and I
will tell all my friends who in my state voted for this joke of a bill.

~~~
SageRaven
A web registry of seized domains seems kind of pointless when it's really easy
to set up guerilla DNS servers that provide the information far more
efficiently to clients.

I'm not sure of their current status, but AlterNIC and OpenNIC are/were two
major non-official name registries.

Then there's .onion and other darknets to consider.

This battle is far from over; we're just seeing the first few open skirmishes
at this point. If something this draconian came into law and brought down
sites of any major popularity, I wouldn't be surprised to see either
alternative DNS infrastructures or even a new torrent-like protocol to provide
censor-proof DNS-like services crop up to totally disrupt such stupidity.

~~~
scarlson
Or we could all just use international proxies and/or TOR.

