

SOPA vote is now December 21 - hsmyers
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57344536-503544/sopa-bill-to-stop-online-piracy-hits-minor-snag-in-house/

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ck2
There must be serious money to be made - or rather already made for the
representatives plowing this through - there is simply no other explanation.
Money is definitely deep in pockets.

Looking at the "donation" list it's to both sides of the aisle and HUGE
amounts, these aren't little $10k donations but $100k and even $1M

I am starting to understand the fall of Rome a little better.

~~~
acabal
I just don't understand how with this bill being so clearly bought by the rich
media companies, why there isn't a counter from the rich internet companies. I
mean if the RIAA can give $1 million to Senator X, then why can't Google give
$2 million to Senator X to ignore the RIAA? Sure it's dirty politics, but at
this point it's just semantics as to who is dirtier.

The media companies are throwing money at Washington to get their laws passed,
and the best Google or MS or Yahoo can do is send some representatives and
give those uncaring congressmen a stern talking-to? Obviously these companies
realize that SOPA will crush an open internet, which is directly related to
their bottom lines. Start lobbying already!

~~~
shutej
How to say this without trolling?

This isn't the RIAA's country, it's not Google's country, it's not Microsoft's
country, and it's not Yahoo's country. It's our country. Until we, the people,
accept our responsibilities and stop this from happening, it will continue to
happen. More corruption is not the answer.

~~~
nitrogen
_How to say this without trolling?

This isn't the RIAA's country, it's not Google's country, it's not Microsoft's
country, and it's not Yahoo's country. It's our country. Until we, the people,
accept our responsibilities and stop this from happening, it will continue to
happen. More corruption is not the answer._

Look at it from this perspective: as a practical matter, _today_ ,
corporations have significantly more power in politics than individuals, and
media companies more than tech companies. If something isn't done _right
freaking now_ , SOPA will pass from committee in _three days_.

There is _nothing_ you, as an individual, or we, as a collective, can do
against the millions of dollars spent on lobbying and campaign contributions
by the media companies in the _next three days_. Talk of what "ought" to be
will not solve the immediate problem.

An analogy: suppose you are poor (or bootstrapping), and you are $150 short of
making rent for the month. Rent is due in five days. You can talk on and on
about how you should have got a better job, didn't iterate on customer
development, etc., but if you don't come up with $150 _right now_ , you will
"die." So, you might go to a payday loan shark, get a cash advance from your
credit card, or sell something to make rent and live another day.

What's my point? When your very survival is on the line _right now_ , you have
to do whatever you can to live to fight another day. That's where we are now
with media companies and the Internet.

------
r00fus
So the delay is just to put it under the radar while everyone is off on
Holiday break?

Devious.

~~~
exDM69
This is a classic dirty trick in politics. Organize an unpopular vote when a
lot of the voters have left for xmas holidays. Just make sure there's a
majority left when the vote is on. As an example: the federal reserve act was
established in the same way on the days before xmas when a lot of the
opposition had already left for holidays.

Since it's holiday season, the news will be a lot quieter than usual and the
public can be left in the dark.

~~~
GuiA
In France, they do the same thing but in August, when pretty much everyone is
away on their summer holidays. Democracy has become a funny thing.

------
foxylad
Well, it's been nice having our US friends with us on the internet, and it's
going to be quieter without them. So long and the best of luck with that
government of yours.

------
orangecat
Ugh. One thing I oddly haven't seen mentioned at all: if it passes, will Obama
sign it? I disagree with him on many things, but he's not stupid, and given
his support base there have to be some geeks close to him that can explain how
awful it is. Of course, his support base also includes Hollywood...

~~~
alexqgb
Obama doesn't give a flying fig about his support base. Sorry to be so blunt,
but that bastard just threatened to veto the NDAA unless the provisions
allowing indefinite dentition of Americans without charge or trial were put
pack in. His base is screaming bloody murder, and the White House remains
utterly unmoved.

Added irony: the Senate passed this abomination on Bill of Rights Day,
_precisely_ 220 years after the (now gutted) Bill of Rights was ratified.

Separately, this same base has been howling about ACTA, which has been
spearheaded by none other than Joe Biden. So no, he isn't going to veto the
censorship bill either. But you better be careful about how you choose to
protest. Obama has also out-Cheneyd Cheney in claiming that the President has
the power to hunt and kill Americans without charge or trial if the Executive
(not the Courts) determines that the 'target' is an 'enemy combatant'.

And what's the standard for making this determination? Top Secret, naturally.
According to Obama, it's all about "remaining flexible". And that brings us to
Christopher Hitchens, who observed that "The essence of tyranny is not iron
law. It is capricious law."

The really scare thing about all this is the prospect of Democrats going into
open revolt, ejecting Obama from the White House, and inadvertently handing
this basket of unspeakable nasty to Newt Gingrich.

~~~
redthrowaway
He's counting on the Republicans selecting someone crazy enough to bring out
his disenfranchised base, and it might just happen. Still, Newt will quickly
calm down after the primaries. He is many things, few of them good, but an
idiot is not one of them. He won't say anything _too_ crazy and risk scaring
up support for Obama.

This election could go either way, and quite frankly I don't give a damn. I
tried the Hope thing with Obama, and I got burned. They can all die in a fire.
The very best I can hope for government at this point is that they ignore the
things I care about (fat bloody chance).

~~~
steve-howard
I sincerely hope Newt doesn't come anywhere close to being our president. He's
set a new bar for hypocrisy.

~~~
mckoss
too late :-(

------
teresko
Someone in CBS News site's comments pointed out an interesting thing: there
were already two bill like that.

"Communications Decency Act" and "Child Online Protection Act", which both
were tossed out by Supreme Court.

~~~
skymt
Both of those bills attempted to create new restrictions on speech. SOPA
simply creates new censorship measures against forms of speech that are
already illegal.

~~~
kijin
New censorship measures which a lot of people believe violate due process.

I can't quite decide which option would be better in the long run:

(a) stop SOPA, only to have similar ideas come up every single year, or

(b) let SOPA pass, then build a case and take it all the way to the Supreme
Court hoping that measures such as SOPA would be ruled unconstitutional once
and for all. If this succeeds, it would set a precedent to seriously
discourage similar ideas from coming up again. The anti-SOPA camp definitely
possesses the financial and legal resources to mount such a challenge, too.
But it would take years, and there's no guarantee that the Supreme Court will
be any more reasonable than Mr. Lamar Smith.

~~~
hillbilly
The SOPA bill states that even if one provision is deemed unconstitutional,
the rest of the bill remains intact.

------
sek
German here, can somebody explain to me what it means when this passes?

As far as i understand it, the US controlled tld's like .com .net are done.
Every time someone posts something on these sites they could be shut down,
what is impossible to prevent by sites like Tumblr and Facebook. Probably for
every domain when the company is US based.

So this will result in a more diverse domain landscape and a competitive
advantage for non-US internet companies.

Or did i miss something?

~~~
_delirium
Really depends on how it plays out. My guess is that there will be some
favoratism and de-facto lenience towards large companies, because no agency
will want to be the one who seized google.com and ruined everyone's day. The
downside is that just opens up a large new avenue for corruption and, even
when not outright corruption, selective enforcement of laws.

~~~
sek
Sounds like a real threat to the valley, could this kill the internet startup
culture?

I tinker with the idea to get there, but i am really concerned now with all
these developments.

------
Mithrandir
> A controversial measure aimed at stopping online _privacy_...

Heh, I've made this mistake too when speaking, although privacy certainly
could be affected by the SOPA.

~~~
jen_h
I wrote my Congressman about my objections to this the bill, and his auto-
responder gave me some bs about understanding my concerns about "Internet
Privacy," not "Piracy." Our tax dollars at work!

~~~
bo1024
That's why I've been calling mine.

------
tatsuke95
What else can be expected from a bunch of old people who hardly understand the
internet? When the internet to you is a search engine, Facebook and typing
URLs into the IE6 address bar, I'm sure SOPA seems mostly harmless.

Let them plow it through committee and play their games. These are tumultuous
times. People, globally, are unimpressed with leadership. This is being
watched carefully by the public. Hopefully it will be a watershed event.

~~~
a-priori
_When the internet to you is a search engine, Facebook and typing URLs into
the IE6 address bar, I'm sure SOPA seems mostly harmless._

The problem is that describes a large segment of the general population as
well.

~~~
keithpeter
Most of the people I see using the Web now type the title of the site they
want to access into Google. Getting them to type an actual address into a Web
browser address bar is hard work.

Good luck over there. In the UK most things are allowed until they aren't (see
the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and its updates).

------
burke
I know it's just a coincidence that they chose the darkest day of the year for
this, but I still find it a little poignant.

------
ceslami
To me, the most shocking about SOPA has been the way it is portrayed in the
media. Imagine reading this passage if you weren't "in-the-know" (as many of
us would like to think we are):

"But most of the major players in the technology industry, including Google
and Facebook, are strongly opposed to the legislation because they say they
would be forced to police their websites for possibly illegal content. Google,
which owns YouTube, says the language is so broad that videos of teenagers
dancing would be banned because of the copyrighted music playing in the
background. And that would stifle innovation, they say."

The media is minimizing the issue to corporate laziness, and thats really not
okay. I sense snarkiness, especially in the last line, and I think an outlet
like CBS has an obligation to do better than that.

~~~
antoko
>To me, the most shocking about SOPA has been the way it is portrayed in the
media......The media is minimizing the issue to corporate laziness....I think
an outlet like CBS has an obligation to do better than that.

The media are the ones that are lobbying for this bill, did you really expect
them to cover it with anything approaching impartiality?

CBS is owned by Viacom. Getting the media to join the fight against SOPA is
not very likely.

~~~
ceslami
I absolutely agree with you. As crazy as it is, most people don't realize that
news programs project the agenda of their corporate parents -- the media just
"speaks the truth."

------
willyt
Here's an idea, might be ridiculous: Can you file court papers electronically
in the US? What if say youtube, wikipedia, etc had a fully automated SOPA
compliance system which automatically filed court papers to have the take down
notice 'reviewed' however that works thereby overloading the system. There
must be some way to reflect the work back at them and DoS a manual process
somewhere in the legal machinery. 'OK we'll do it, but your not going to like
it...' fight bureaucracy with more bureaucracy.

~~~
delinka
Court oversight? In SOPA? Not AFAIK and that's why everyone is so pissed about
this.

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OstiaAntica
It is ironic that the "creative" film and music industry has become a leading
force in suppressing speech and innovation.

~~~
mkr-hn
The artists being represented by these lobbying groups are probably just as
ignorant of the consequences as the legislators.

------
albertsun
There is exactly one bit of news in this story.

"The panel later scheduled a vote for Wednesday, December 21."

~~~
abeppu
Thursday and Friday morning, the sad, small opposition (Lofgren, Issa, Polis &
Chaffetz) did a good job of slowing down the markup process. One frequently
repeated suggestion was that since it was likely that the markup would
continue past the holiday recess and need to be resumed in January anyways,
that they may as well take the time to convene a hearing where actual tech
experts could respond.

Does anyone know, procedurally will it be possible for Lofgren et al to
prevent or delay an actual vote in the committee, or is Smith with his large
support able to force the matter? I suppose, if worst comes to worst, the four
opposing committee members could each agree to impugne the integrity of each
of the others, obstinately refuse to revise their words in the record, take a
break to consult with a parliamentarian, and then relent.

------
hillbilly
I am concerned that a lot of the anti SOPA complaints I've read are fear
mongering, and I want to be better informed. Is there a website to visit that
debates specific line numbers of the bill?

------
Stwerner
The data is freely available of the amount of money raised by different
members of congress, right? I've got an idea for a little mashup to try to
raise money against the backers of this bill.

~~~
tomkinstinch
Maplight.org has the data: [http://maplight.org/us-
congress/bill/112-hr-3261/1019110/dow...](http://maplight.org/us-
congress/bill/112-hr-3261/1019110/download.csv)

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throwaway8890
What is going on in this country?

~~~
russell
Money. Money buys legislators. Money buys institutionalized corruption. The
Supreme court says that organizations can make unlimited campaign
contributions, yet individuals are limited. Until we take money out of
politics, it will only get worse.

------
presidentx
Can someone copy/paste this article? The mobile version is just a big ad that
I can't seem to dismiss.

P.S. Quick, before SOPA takes effect.

~~~
stonemetal
_Republican Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, who chairs the House Judiciary
Committee, decided against holding a committee vote that had been expected on
Friday. The panel later scheduled a vote for Wednesday, December 21._

The rest is a description of SOPA.

