
The nightmarish SOPA hearings - elliottcarlson
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/post/the-nightmarish-sopa-hearings/2011/12/15/gIQA47RUwO_blog.html
======
jacques_chester
For some time now it's been clear to me that as society grows ever more
technical, it's leaving legislators behind.

At the same time, the background of lawmakers has increasingly narrowed.

In Australia, for example, it used to be commonplace for the Parliament to
contain people whose first careers were as teachers, farmers, train drivers,
engineers, small businessmen and so forth.

Not any more. Today it's an almost wall-to-wall collection of law students who
were all groomed by party machines. Go to uni, join political club, graduate
and work in minister's office/a union/a politically-connected law firm, get
pre-selected at the local branch, elected to Parliament.

At no point has this person a) studied something other than law or b) held
down an ordinary job or run a small business. I imagine the pattern is similar
elsewhere.

And so our law making bodies are filled with folk whose main skill is forensic
disputation. This is problematic when technical debates are held because
politicians are often mistrustful of experts outside their circle of loyalty
-- because for any expert I can procure, someone else can get an expert to say
the opposite.

Having experts inside the circle of trust is golden. The classic example is
the banning of CFCs. Margaret Thatcher's undergraduate degree was in chemistry
and so she understood the mechanisms. In turn she was able to assure Regan
that the phenomenon was real and serious and the rest is history.

I have for some time toyed with the idea of forming a non-partisan
organisation whose purpose is helping STEM professionals to get elected.
Please contact me by email (check my profile) if you are interested.

~~~
cpeterso
Perhaps the House of Representatives should be populated like a jury. Hundreds
of regular "Joe Citizens" are randomly selected and then voted on each year.
No more career politicians selling out citizens for kickbacks. No more career
politicians not doing their job because they are on the campaign trail seeking
reelection.

Then revert Senate seats to be appointed, not elected, positions. The Senate
and President will (hopefully) squash crazy ideas that may escape the House.

William F. Buckley said, "I'd rather entrust the government of the United
States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than
to the faculty of Harvard University."

~~~
mahyarm
The Canadian Senate is appointed, and as a result it's mostly become a
rubberstamping organization. Almost every time the senate approves whatever
comes out of parliament to the point where many Canadians don't even know of
it's existence.

I don't know how the jury mechanism will prevent people selected abusing their
position much when they have it. Or even worse being quickly manipulated,
since the house is a law creating body.

~~~
yuhong
Well, the House and Senate consists of 100+ people with about equal power, and
there is also the separation of powers between branches.

------
msluyter
Nice post from Felix Salmon on the topic:

[http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/12/15/do-any-
real...](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/12/15/do-any-real-people-
support-sopa/)

He makes the point that virtually no average citizens support this (either
they're against it or they don't know anything about it.) People often worry
that congress fails when they can't agree on anything, but this makes me think
that the time to really worry is when they do agree. When they disagree,
they're at least probably mirroring the electorate.

~~~
Jgrubb
Well put. Lately I worry the most when Dems and Repubs find something that
they can slam-dunk agree on.

~~~
vinhboy
Example: NDAA

~~~
jrockway
And the PATRIOT Act, and the DMCA.

~~~
luriel
And Prohibition (aka the War on Drugs).

------
mbesto
I watched roughly 2-3 hours of the hearing. I could be wrong, but I thought in
general there was actually a bi-partisan agreement that they needed experts in
on the conversation. Unfortunately it didn't mean much when it came to voting
on amendments (as most were shot down).

Where it got interesting is when Mel Watt came out and said "We all know that
everyone in this room on both sides has enough resources to pull in experts
that will aid their side of the argument equally, so we're going to get into
the same mess we did when we talk about derivatives being the most evil things
on earth by one party and the saving grace by another". Good point, but the
difference here is that not all parties that are for SOPA have purely
financial incentives as the banks did.

~~~
Iv
> Where it got interesting is when Mel Watt came out and said "We all know
> that everyone in this room on both sides has enough resources to pull in
> experts that will aid their side of the argument equally, so we're going to
> get into the same mess we did when we talk about derivatives being the most
> evil things on earth by one party and the saving grace by another".

That's truly frightening. "We have no clues and we both invite biased experts
so let's just disregard facts and vote according to our ideology."

It is OK for a politician to vote on laws about things he does not completely
understands, the catch is that the JOB of a politician is to know WHO to ask
to get an expert advice. If they can't do that they are simply not fit for the
job. The rush without reason should indicate to them that something screwy is
happening. Yeah, "screwy", come on, politicians can not even identify THAT ?
It is either gross incompetence or conspiracy. Since the W Bush administration
I no longer bet on which one is the correct option.

~~~
billswift
That Bush bit is a little biased, Clinton was just as bad. Both had loose
screws and power grabs, they were just in slightly different places. Go read
Bovard's books, _Feeling Your Pain_ and _The Bush Betrayal_ , then tell me
that you could see any significant differences between them.

~~~
Iv
Clinton was bad, but GWB was dumb. I was almost a 911 conspiracy theorist
because I refused to believe this level of incompetence was possible. Under
Clinton a carefully crafted incident was more likely than a "ooops"

------
Timothee
I've listened to the hearings a little bit today and in particular I heard the
amendment about not removing the ability to target IP addresses. Listening to
him, it just made sense: one address can be the front of multiple websites,
one website can have multiple IP addresses, addresses are moved around
dynamically, etc. We all know that and his explanations were _very_ clear.

So I was a bit confused when later on I was hearing a lot of "No"s. Had I
missed the vote for that amendment and they were voting on something else?
Nope. They were just denying common sense.

I'm not even sure how they would do it on a per domain basis. What about
subdomains? One guy posts something on his Tumblr and all the Tumblr's go
down? I'm sure they have no idea what that means and would just say "take down
all the sites!"

On another note, though I don't mind the term generally, I was annoyed by them
referring over and over to "nerds". "I'm not a nerd", "Bring in the nerds"…
It's fine in some contexts but in the context of discussing a law, I think
"technical experts", "people who have a clue" is more appropriate.

~~~
jacques_chester
> So I was a bit confused when I was hearing a lot of "No"s later on.

A common political tactic is to automatically vote "no" for anything you don't
understand or for which you have not received instructions from
factional/party leadership. After all, it might a trojan horse that undermines
your own goals.

~~~
Timothee
It just made me wonder what the point of having these hearings was. I'll admit
I'm not very familiar with the process.

But it looked like it was the time to present why such and such amendments
should be added, and then vote on it. If they can't decide on the spot, why
have the vote on the spot then?

That particular amendment was especially surprising to me because of how
obvious it is (for us "nerds" that is), and because his explanation was pretty
clear. But I know what you're saying, it's not how the game is played…

~~~
jacques_chester
Most political business is done behind closed doors; the speeches and votes
are mostly performance art.

There's a great deal of exchange between politicians in different countries --
the International Parliamentary Union, various politically-aligned groups like
the International Democratic Union and so on. Plus exchanges for young
aspiring politicians. So practices and techniques tend to pop up all over the
world. Maybe the "Default to No" came from Australia, or Britain, or the USA.
I have no idea.

~~~
jerf
Defaulting to no is just common sense. It's a lot easier to undo a no than to
undo a yes.

In a similar vein to Heinlein's idea of creating a house of legislature whose
only power it is to repeal laws, I have thought that one of the underlying
problems we have with government is this one-way trap of legislation; once a
thing is enacted, it pretty much stays enacted forever. There's virtually no
equivalent way to get something off the books. It's no wonder we just have
more laws and more laws and more laws; how would the opposite result occur?

~~~
mahyarm
I've read in various new acts saying "such and such section in this act does
not apply/ is void/ etc". It's a purely cultural problem preventing this, not
anything written in law as far as I know.

~~~
jerf
Certainly there's no technical problems with it, but there's clearly a
practical problem with it. Laws are rarely simply removed. Clauses may be
struck, future laws may rewrite (and inevitably expand!) past laws, but it's
very, very rare for something to simply be unambiguously removed. When's the
last time the government simply eliminated an agency, for instance? It's not
zero, but it's one of those cases where simply the fact that one must _hunt_
for an exception to argue against the point is something I'd cite as evidence
for my point.

------
noonespecial
Just remember to add "in the United States" to the end of each dire
prediction. Try it:

SOPA will cause rampant censorship of the internet... _in the United States_.

I am a US citizen, currently living in the US, and I hate this, but even so,
it makes me feel better to remember that there's a big, big world outside our
borders. If the US flies off the rails on this, I fully expect the rest of the
world to shrug and move on. The internet and the Americans have been closely
intertwined since the beginning but I don't expect it will always be that way.
The America that created the internet is more or less gone now. Its time for
the rest of the world to step up.

~~~
Udo
The UK, France and Germany will follow suit within a few months. I'm German
and I'm absolutely certain our politicians and lobbyists are already working
on their own version SOPA which they'll introduce as soon as the US is done.
You guys need to understand that you're the Western precedence society.
Whatever you do, we'll copy it, especially if it's something authoritarian
(which is kind of "our thing" here in Europe anyway).

Another problem is that it doesn't matter how many times a SOPA-like law is
stopped in time. It will simply return as many times as needed until it
finally passes. And once legislation passes, it becomes immortal.

~~~
noonespecial
I wish I could wave a big flag and yell "don't follow us! we're as lost as you
are". To top it all off, we've not exactly been doing an exemplary job of
finding our own way of late.

------
eegilbert
SOPA is horrifying. No doubt about it. But it's funny how many people I meet
who share this view, yet think Congress is perfectly capable of regulating
just about everything else. Because Congress understands that stuff. Like
economies. Those things are simple. </LibertarianThursdays>

~~~
scarmig
By the same token...

SOPA is horrifying. No doubt about it. But it's funny how many people I meet
who share this view, yet think giant multinationals are the best suited
institutions for running the world. Because media conglomerates have our best
interests at heart. Like our rights. Those things are universally respected.
</SocialDemocratThursdays>

Yeah, yeah, libertarians don't believe corporations should corrupt the
political process, reign supreme, etc. For that matter, though, neither do
people on the Left think government should make bad corrupt laws.

------
ajtaylor
I tried watching the hearings but I couldn't stay awake through the reading of
the bill. My heart goes out to the poor clerk who had to read it out!

"There ought to be a law, I think, that in order to regulate something you
have to have some understanding of it."

Ne'er were truer words written. Why on earth do we allow people who have no
real understanding of technology to regulate it so closely? It's a train wreck
in the making, one you'll be hard pressed to avoid should this bill get
approved.

~~~
shadowfiend
The problem is simple: how do you define having understanding of something? :)

~~~
ajtaylor
Let's start by being able to talk about the basics like IP addresses, servers
and domain names? The baseline doesn't have to be very high to weed out the
ignorant.

------
mattvot
I've been watching all of this for the last 3-4 hours.

I am amazed at how most of the committee do not want to hear from experts, and
ignore the facts with a quick dismissal like "Oh, I'm not a nerd, I don't
understand, but what I do know is that piracy is theft and we must stop it.".

How can they not listen to the experts?

EDIT: Here's a livestream <http://www.justin.tv/unearthed365#/w/2249527504>

------
zmmmmm
What is it about technology that makes people proud to announce they know
nothing about it while simultaneously assuming positions of authority and
power over it? At least in other domains people put up a pretense of having
knowledge about areas they are taking crucial decisions on. Something about
technology and especially the internet seems to evoke this phenomenon.

~~~
chipsy
A sort of myopia seems to be rife through all the specialist fields - STEM,
medicine, law, and politics all host individuals with a nasty combination of
elitism and borderline-religious opinions. Whether or not they've actually
studied the subject is irrelevant - everyone from the least educated bumpkin
to the foremost authority may speak on it, and everyone else will take their
opinions with a grain of salt and continue with their existing ideology,
rather than try to dissect the logic.

Worse yet, it's possible for people to study the subject and still exhibit
strong myopic symptoms. This is the origin of cargo-cult programming(to name
one example).

------
ck2
I am not sure if you see the same ads as I've seen on TV lately from SOPA
sponsors but it's pretty darn obvious that the only reason this bill exists is
that the lobbyists simply paid for it to be created.

Like the "Patriot" Act they have no clue what exactly they are voting on, and
I don't think they care, they are doing what they are bribed to do. The
hearing is just theater, it's meaningless, they've already decided to get in
on the take.

~~~
srl
To be clear, nobody bribed anybody on PATRIOT; it's just that the folk in
congress apparently lack the rest of the country's visceral suspicion of the
phrase "national security".

------
masonhensley
Does anyone have a list of where each representative is leaning on SOPA?

Edit: some reps against sopa, for an open internet:

@RepJohnCampbell

@jasoninthehouse

@RepLloydDoggett

@USRepMikeDoyle

@RepAnnaEshoo

@RepZoeLofgren

@jaredpolis

------
firefoxman1
My local congressman, also a co-sponsor and co-author of the SOPA bill, held a
public phone conference the other night. You could press 0 to enter a queue to
ask a question, so I did, but after 2 hours I was tired of waiting and I had a
term paper to write so I gave up. I kind of regret it now, because I wanted
everyone to hear just how little he, a co-author, knew about the subject. He's
not one for listening to his constituents. I had already written him a letter
and tried to call his office and no reply for either.

~~~
jrockway
I always get replies from my Congresspeople. Unfortunately, they're usually
along the lines of "SOPA will save America from sinking into the ocean" or
some similar bullshit.

------
dreamdu5t
Thank God for government regulation. I'm so glad we have progressives like the
Democrats and Republicans in office to curb the evils of industry.

Without regulation the Internet would be monopolized by big business and
criminals will prey on your children.

Good thing the State is there to protect us. Don't forget to pay your taxes,
and have a happy holidays!

------
antihero
It's weird, it seems like there's an amendment suggested, with lots of reason
behind it, but fuck it we're going to say no anyway. WTF.

------
evoxed
Has anyone seen the TV ad? "Illegal downloads on foreign websites, stealing
AMERICAN jobs......"

It was frighteningly manipulative.

~~~
slowpoke
I'd say that piracy creates way more jobs than it does destroy them. Maybe not
only American jobs, sure, but we live in a globalized world. Nationalism won't
do away with that, either.

Also, who's loosing their job, really? RIAA lawyers? Entertainment industry
bureaucrats? Excuse me for being snarky, but oh no what a tremendous loss for
society!

------
nyellin
"We have had no hearings and no testimonies on the technical issues"

\- Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, 20:15
(<http://www.justin.tv/unearthed365/b/302702510?>)

------
balloot
I highly recommend contacting your Representatives/Senators immediately. It
amazes me that both of the California Senators are cosponsors of this turd. I
would think they are among those who can be swayed.

~~~
thebigshane
They are easily swayed (as they all are), but remember Hollywood is in
California.

------
TheCapn
I've sort of viewed the entire circus in a defeated light. If SOPA goes down
another version will crawl up either on its own or stapled to the "think of
the children" act of 2012, 2014, or whenever they get enough campaign funding
to draft it.

But what does that mean for Hackers? I think with enough work we could make a
network off of the regulated lines. I live in a rather sparse city and even
now I can throw a ball far enough to hit the next techy over. Push comes to
shove we could have a mini network several blocks wide that doesn't touch a
single www link.

Wireless is almost ready, security is probably the biggest issue right now but
the technology is available, just not affordable. But what about the tech
giants against the SOPA? If "push comes to shove" would they fund a new
network that has less control?

Then at what point is the government allowed to intervene? If a sizable
network was built from the ground up separate from the internet are they
allowed to slap down regulations? I want to say no because they didn't fund
it, but then at the same time what's really stopping them? If they're able to
throw SOPA through, convincing these dweebs that a private uncontrolled
network is not worthy of SOPA2.0 would not be difficult to do.

Can I get some hacker-friendly input? I know a lot of us here are software
oriented but I'm certain I'm not the only one that lurks this site with
background in network provisioning.

~~~
CountHackulus
Something like this was done in the Cory Doctorow book Little Brother. It's
surprisingly relevant to the SOPA discussion.

------
kylek
Looks like a big joke to some people in the room!

<https://twitter.com/#!/SteveKingIA/status/147371129177255936>

~~~
sukuriant
Bad link, please update?

~~~
rl1987
"We are debating the Stop Online Piracy Act and Shiela Jackson has so bored me
that I'm killing time by surfing the Internet."

------
VonLipwig
I think this is a really good analysis of what is going on in Washington. I
have always found it worrying when politicians walk into a field which they
have little knowledge about and try to pass laws. Anyone can become an elected
official and the power they yield over things they have no background in is
scary. In the UK a person can effectively go from University >> Elected
Official >> Misc Support Roles >> Secretary of State. Or... Student >> MP with
1 or 2 staff >> An advisor to someone >> Budget of billions, hundreds of
thousands of employees.

In business you would work your way up. Employee >> Supervisor of Employees >>
Manager with budgets >> Area Manager >> Country Manger >> CEO. You gain
responsibility as you go. MP's do not have this. They fall into a job which
they are almost never qualified for. Some do OK. However.. if you look closely
at the majority you will see mistakes that anywhere else would see them fired.

In the states these dubiously qualified MP's are now looking to legislate an
global network as a single nation... I am sure that some of them cannot even
comprehend what the Internet is.

------
bprater
I haven't listened to the hearing, so I'm curious (and slightly facetious) --
when the RIAA inevitably flags videos on YouTube that are using copyrighted
music -- will it be legally fairly simple for the industry to request a DNS
take-down of the whole site? Will site owners have any recourse or will they
just wake up in the morning and be completely out of business?

~~~
dangrossman
The problem is that there's not going to be a government attorney that will go
to a judge and ask for the seizure of youtube.com.

This will only be enforced against sites that are small or controversial
enough that it won't cause general outrage when they're disappeared from the
web.

Yet the looming threat that someone _could_ remove YouTube from the web will
be enough to keep the next Google from buying/creating the next YouTube.

~~~
jaylevitt
Eh? SOPA has a private right of action.

~~~
dangrossman
You're right. SOPA does so much it's hard to keep track of. I'm barely able to
keep from turning off my TV while listening to the hearings.

------
Shenglong
Too bad we don't have some sort of upper age limit on electing officials.

~~~
Achshar
Why the downvotes? If we can have a lower limit then why not upper limit. They
may have an advisory status but voting rights should not be given to "old"
people.

------
jrwoodruff
Can someone who is following this more closely than myself (as in actually
watching this on CSPAN) please post the names of all the senators,
representatives and other elected officials who are blithering idiots in
support of this.

I would like to vote any of them that may be in my district out of office as
soon as possible.

Thank you.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
I found a list of sponsors of SOPA and PIPA: <http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-
bin/bdquery/z?d112:HR03261:@@@P>

<http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:SN00968:@@@P>

------
tomkinstinch
What will it take to elect technical people to public office?

~~~
forensic
Technical people will need to grow some balls and stop treating politics like
a dirty word

------
jderick
The real issue here is corruption. That's why you keep get these ridiculous
bills. Lessig explained the issue in a recent post:

[http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/13119510676/me-mia-on-the-
sopa...](http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/13119510676/me-mia-on-the-sopa-soap-
opera)

------
zotz
I greatly enjoyed reading this thread and peoples' well-expounded opinions on
history and the Constitution. I can't add much but this quote seemed apropos.
The author was a US Senator from South Dakota during the critical period of
the late 19th-early 20th century.

"Two per cent of the people of the United States own sixty per cent of the
property of the United States. Yet they produced none of it. By legislation,
by craft and cunning, by control of Congress and the courts, they took to
themselves what others produced. Sixty-six per cent of the people of the
United States own five per cent of the property of the United States. Yet they
produced all of the wealth and have none of it. Why do not the producers of
this wealth have what they produce? Because the making of the laws and the
control of the courts is in the hands of those who do not work, and this has
been true from the beginning of the Government. The convention which framed
the Constitution of the United States was composed of fifty-five members. A
majority were lawyers—not one farmer, mechanic or laborer. Forty owned
Revolutionary Scrip. Fourteen were land speculators. Twenty-four were money-
lenders. Eleven were merchants. Fifteen were slave-holders. They made a
Constitution to protect the rights of property and not the rights of man, and,
ever since, Congress has been controlled by the property owner, and has framed
laws in their interests and their interests only, and always refused to frame
any laws in the interest of those who produce all the wealth and have none of
it."

TRIUMPHANT PLUTOCRACY by Senator Richard F. Pettigrew, 1921 pg.407

------
nirvana
I think the heart surgery analogy is excellent. I would never, unless it were
an extremely dire situation with no doctors, attempt any kind of surgery on
someone. Nor would I ever start dictating to doctors how the perform their
procedures.

Yet that is what government does, day in and day out. They regulate industries
which work in ways they don't understand, and they do it primarily for
political motivations.

The MPAA may want tools to fight piracy, but to politicians, who don't really
care about piracy, this is an opportunity to have something to campaign on,
and it gives the government more power.

More power means more prestige and more money for them, if not now, in their
post career lives when they lobby, etc.

More regulations gives them more control over industry- the power to threaten
to make the regulations even worse, or the threat that their opponent will do
that if they don't get re-elected (so please give generously!)

I don't think these people are "well intentioned". They don't actually want to
help anybody. Theft is already against the law. SOPA won't change that, it
won't stop piracy, and its not criminalizing piracy.

No, they're politicians. And they're not even _corrupt_ politicians. This is
simply the nature of what they do. They pass laws, they shake down industry,
and they get paid for passing ever more laws without regard for the impact of
those laws.

Hell, when those laws cause massive destruction to the economy, what do they
do? They turn around and say "Well, If we'd been able to pass the law _I_
proposed, this wouldn't have happened! Here, we need to rush into force even
more regulations to make sure this never happens again!"

There's a famous(?) libertarian author by the name of L. Neil Smith who's got
a saying that's very applicable here:

"Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure."

I hope we stop SOPA. But the lesson I would hope a lot of you take away from
this is that SOPA is not an isolated incident, it is one of thousands of
incidents, most of which go by completely unmentioned each year, where the
system works to undermine human rights and make people's lives worse. These
guys aren't corrupt, the system is corrupt.

The constitution, in the enumeration clause and in the Bill of Rights,
attempted to prevent this. The enumeration clause limits the powers of the
federal government to _only_ those enumerated in the constitution.

Regulation of the internet, or communications of any kind, is not an
enumerated power of the Federal Government. This means that when the federal
government does this, it is doing it without authorization. Further, the Bill
of Rights forbids congress from engaging in censorship. SOPA clearly
authorizes censorship so they're also in violation of the Bill of Rights.

These words in the constitution, in this day and age have very little teeth.
The PATRIOT act runs afoul of them as well, but nobody has succeeded in
getting it overturned.

The situation will continue to get worse. Even if SOPA is defeated-- this
isn't the first attempt-- it will come back in a few years.

I think that the only possible solution is a technological one. I think that
the only way to to fight them is with technology and disobedience to the very
idea that they have the right to restrain speech or control the internet.

The courts will not help us, and they certainly won't, and every election is
so stage managed that nobody who actually knows the difference between a
domain name and an IP address will ever get elected.

Help us with technology, its our only hope!

~~~
shadowfiend
Wow. I hate SOPA. But I'm sorry, you are so wrong about some of your
Constitutional reading. I'll ignore the remarks about economic disruption
because of regulation because they seem to veer a bit too far from the topic
at hand.

“Regulation of the internet, or communications of any kind, is not an
enumerated power of the Federal Government. This means that when the federal
government does this, it is doing it without authorization.”

What? In what universe could the Internet NOT be considered interstate
commerce? Or international commerce? It is both! There is no argument
whatsoever that you can make that says it is not Constitutional for Congress
to pass laws about the Internet, especially piracy, which is the very essence
of interstate and international commerce.

“Further, the Bill of Rights forbids congress from engaging in censorship.
SOPA clearly authorizes censorship so they're also in violation of the Bill of
Rights.”

Unfortunately, this isn't as straightforward as you make it seem. The
Constitution doesn't just say you can't limit speech. There are years of
jurisprudence and years of common law precedent that form the true vision of
what the First Amendment means today. The fact that you can't falsely yell
fire in a theater is a typical example. And there are even other parts of the
Constitution—including the right to pass laws to protect “To promote the
Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors
and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and
Discoveries”. All of these temper the First Amendment, as the First Amendment
tempers them. You can't just ignore them because you disagree with a law.

Thus, while I think SOPA is a terrible, terrible law, and that its
implementation would be catastrophic to the very progress that the Congress is
claiming to promote, I don't know that it is unconstitutional, if they truly
believe (as some may well do) that it will promote this progress. To ignore
this gray area dilutes one's argument to the point of being inconsequential in
a true debate about this horrible piece of legislation.

“I think that the only possible solution is a technological one. I think that
the only way to to fight them is with technology and disobedience to the very
idea that they have the right to restrain speech or control the internet.”

I agree that disobedience is a solution. Indeed, it is and has always been the
ultimate and only solution when the government ignores and harms its people.

"Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure."

Thus the irony that groups have never successfully lived without one for any
measurable period of time. Government is another word for hierarchy. We may be
approaching a time when we can break free of hierarchy, but I do not think we
are there yet.

~~~
nirvana
The federal government does not have the power to regulate interstate
commerce, as you're describing, under the constitution. The federal government
has the power to ensure that no states forbid the importation of other states
goods, or apply duties or tariffs to them. You're using "regulate" in the
modern form and applying it to language that was written when the term had a
different meaning. "Well regulated militia" means a militia free of
encumbrances such that it can be functional, not one with a lot of extra-
legislative rules applied to it. This is logical if you think about it- if
they wanted the militia to be regulated, they would have laid out the ways he
militia should be regulated, or at least enumerated the power _to_ regulate
the militia, in the enumerated powers clause. They did not. Further,
"regulations" as we commonly understand them, are forbidden by the
constitution, which explicitly denies the legislative branch the power to
delegate its power to unelected bodies or to other branches.

The fist amendment states, _"congress shall make no law abridging freedom of
speech"_. Blocking access to websites clearly violates that. Thus congress is
explicitly in violation of the constitution, without regard to anything any
court might say. Further, US Code 18-242 makes it a crime (a felony if one is
armed) to violate the constitutional rights of any citizen. This means that
passing SOPA would be, itself, a crime, at least in my interpretation.

The "shouting fire in a crowded theater" example does not refute the
protections for free speech. In that case, the crime is not speaking the word
fire while inside a theater, but in causing a panic, which is quite different.

I'm sure the word "Fire" can be heard, often shouted, on broadway quite
regularly, when the author of the play included it in the dialogue.

I suggest that you take some time and read the constitution in its entirety.
In fact, even better would be to get one of the many books that cover its
writing, including citations of the intents and comments of the writers and
past editions. The constitution is quite readable and quite explicit.

It is also quite different from the result after "years of jurisprudence" and
precedent, which, like I pointed out in my original post, suffer from the
intrinsic corruption endemic to government.

As Lysander Spooner once said, "either the constitution authorized such
government as we have, or it has failed to prevent it." No ruling of any judge
can overrule what is said in the constitution, and the constitution does not
need to be interpreted very much, it is quite straight forward.

The reason it is this way is that the founding fathers were no fools. They
knew judges and politicians would use emotion, expidents and pressures to try
and change the system for their ends. It is a testament to their foresight
that the system has lasted as long as it has, but they knew it would
ultimately fail.

Thus they wrote a constitution that any american could read and comprehend,
and they were quite clear that americans needed to take up arms against their
government to ensure that the government remained restrained by the
constitution:

"The tree of liberty must be renewed from time to time by the blood of
patriots and tyrants, it is its natural manure."

To the extent that our government bears little resemblance to the one outlined
by this document, our government is one that is _not_ authorized by the
document, and thus wholly illegitimate. No amount of laws or court rulings can
change this.

To the extent that this divergence has persisted, we as a people have failed
to uphold the vigilance that was required of us.

Hierarchy simply means an arrangement between people with division of roles.
Corporations are hierarchies but they are not governments.

There is a key difference. Governments impose their will on those who are
subjugated by force, with violence. If you're subject to the rule of a
government you don't have a choice, even when the government is violating your
rights (as it would be with SOPA).

This is not the case with corporations, as employees, customers and owners of
corporations all participate in the hierarchy on a voluntary basis. You are
free to boycott them, resign your position, or sell your shares, if you
disagree with the policies of the corporation.

You have almost no recourse when you disagree with government.

People can live in peace, and they can do it without governments, and they
have successfully for centuries, under quite a variety of arrangements. The
only reason for the prevalence of government we see today is the technology of
warfare gave small bands of people the power to conquer and subjugate larger
populations.

But it is not the natural state of man, any more than other forms of slavery
were a natural state when they were more prevalent.... and slavery in the form
practiced in the United States in the past, and elsewhere in the world has
lasted essentially as long as governments.... for exactly the same reason.

~~~
shadowfiend
“You're using "regulate" in the modern form and applying it to language that
was written when the term had a different meaning.”

The meaning of language, as with the meaning of law, evolves with the times.
It's irrelevant what they meant in 1787. In 1787, landowners were a minority
of the population, we were barely figuring out how to make machines, the
concept of a calculating machine was a century away (ignoring, admittedly, the
abacus), and communicating from one end of the then-tiny-by-comparison US to
the other was a multi-day affair at best. Everything had a different meaning.
Judicial review and amendment are the two processes that exist to help the law
evolve with the times. What I am stating isn't my own interpretation of the
regulation of interstate commerce, it is the current interpretation as the law
of the land. I'm sorry you have a problem with that, but that's what the
amendment process is for.

“Further, "regulations" as we commonly understand them, are forbidden by the
constitution, which explicitly denies the legislative branch the power to
delegate its power to unelected bodies or to other branches.”

You are once again acting as if judicial review is nonexistent. Your love of
the Constitution evidently excludes a love of the underlying system that
carries it forward, even though these are part and parcel of the package of
American government. You don't get one without the other. If something is
interpreted incorrectly in your mind by the Court, the thing to do is to amend
the Constitution to make it clearer what the correct interpretation is.

“The fist amendment states, "congress shall make no law abridging freedom of
speech". Blocking access to websites clearly violates that. Thus congress is
explicitly in violation of the constitution, without regard to anything any
court might say. Further, US Code 18-242 makes it a crime (a felony if one is
armed) to violate the constitutional rights of any citizen. This means that
passing SOPA would be, itself, a crime, at least in my interpretation.”

If you argue that there is no power to regulate interstate commerce in the
modern sense, obviously this follows. However, you are factually wrong, as
current interpretations of the Constitutional allowances on interstate
commerce clearly allow regulation of the Internet. Again, this is not to
mention the Constitutional allowances for copyright enforcement. At which
point, free speech is a much less clear argument, as it clashes with other
provisions in the Constitution. In these cases, it is up to the judicial
system to decide where that blurry line is.

The argument being made for SOPA, not that I agree with it, is that piracy is
harmful to the creators of Art, much like the panic would be harmful to the
people within a theater.

“It is also quite different from the result after "years of jurisprudence" and
precedent, which, like I pointed out in my original post, suffer from the
intrinsic corruption endemic to government.”

There it is again.

(a) The Constitution _does not stand alone_. It stood alone for as long as it
took to people to start interpreting it in court. The very fact that the
meaning of the document has evolved makes it obvious that despite how readable
and explicit it may seem to be, there are many nuances to be found.

(b) It is not 1787. It will never be 1787 again. Things change. The
Constitution has some great concepts that we have moved away from and should
perhaps move back towards, and it has some really shitty concepts that we
tossed by the wayside, and good riddance. But to hold it up as a golden
example of everything that was ever right with this country, and state
repeatedly that if we only returned to its silken word everything would be
glorious once more, is... Just incredibly frustrating.

"The tree of liberty must be renewed from time to time by the blood of
patriots and tyrants, it is its natural manure."

We do need periodic reminders that Thomas Jefferson could be a total nutcase,
so thanks for that. The fact that he spoke the words doesn't make them
scripture (and yes, I am getting more sarcastic as the arguments turn more
religious).

“Hierarchy simply means an arrangement between people with division of roles.
Corporations are hierarchies but they are not governments.”

Corporations only have no consequence if you can find another job once you
leave. Arguably the current recession is an excellent example of a place
where, for many people, corporations are like government, insofar that you
have a choice of working for the corporation, or starving. Except you won't
starve, because the government will provide some modest attempt at letting you
survive.

That said, you bring up governments and their imposition via violence. Yes. As
it turns out, a hierarchy is meaningless if there is no enforcement of the
decisions made higher up. In the case of government, your recourse is to leave
your country and its government and go elsewhere. Especially as a US citizen,
that is easier for you than it is for other people.

I do want to see the examples you have of sustained, government-less
establishments. I suspect that it will reveal more about what you define as
government than it will new insight on the human condition.

\-----

All of this said, by the way, I don't necessarily think SOPA is
Constitutional. It seems like it may very well not be (or perhaps more
accurately _should_ not be), and I don't like it one bit. But your dogmatic
interpretation of the Constitution, and your lack of acknowledgement of the
entire judicial infrastructure that keeps it functioning and evolving, is just
as harrowing.

~~~
mkr-hn
The quote is more reasonable in context:
[http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/96oct/obrien/blo...](http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/96oct/obrien/blood.htm)

He's referring to this: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays_Rebellion>

------
rorrr
I'm voting against every fucker in my district who supports it. That's the
only non-violent way.

~~~
rajbot
Additionally, you could also boycott all the products of SOPA backers such as
the MPAA or RIAA.

Unfortunately, every time I try to explain to my friends that I don't want to
see a Pixar movie and would rather see a movie at an indie theater instead, no
one seems to really understand what the problem with Pixar or Disney or Sony
or UMG is.

It turns out, almost no one cares about the DMCA or SOPA or Protect-IP or
anything that requires more than 30 seconds to explain. It is quite
depressing...

~~~
jasonlotito
> Additionally, you could also boycott all the products of SOPA backers such
> as the MPAA or RIAA.

And by that, you mean the artists and actors and directors who the MPAA and
RIAA claim to speak for.

~~~
rajbot
Are you trying to imply that by seeing an indie film, you are somehow not
supporting artists and actors?

~~~
jasonlotito
No, not in the least. I'm obviously referring to artists and actors that
belong or work with these groups.

------
gcb
Why is everyone so worried about SOPA?

patriot act has already passed.

------
BrandonM
It's rather interesting to see members here proclaim in one breath that
legislators are money-grubbing old-fashioned idiots who are just out to make a
bunch of laws, and in another remark complain of them calling people "nerds".
Other groups garnering mentions are corporate, capitalist monsters and
economy-destroying bankers.

As I see it, the biggest problem gripping our country right now is a refusal
to understand someone else's point of view and come to a reasonable solution
that is pretty good for everyone. All we seem to have are multiple sides
shouting over each other, simultaneously ignoring everyone else and
complaining that no one is listening to them. It is as though somewhere along
the way we forgot how to be reasonable adults and have normal conversations.
People cease to be caricatures when you understand their concerns and
motivations.

I agree that some of the SOPA proposals are way out of line, and I also agree
that people passing laws without a full understanding of the ramifications are
not helping matters. But _we_ also are not helping matters by trying to
oversimplify everything and fit everyone and everything into neat little
boxes. That's simply not how the world works.

There's no fundamental reason why Google can't provide media companies and
luxury goods manufacturers with easy tools to report issues of copyright and
counterfeit goods. Sure, it will cost development money that should be borne
by those who stand to gain from the tools, but those are details. The point
is, working together we actually have a chance to solve problems. Shouting
past each other and appealing to authority (read: lobbying Congress) is never
going to solve anything.

So let's try to understand the problems and work together to solve them. It's
ludicrous to expect that kind of behavior from our politicians but not to
exhibit it ourselves.

~~~
TheCapn
You're right when you bring up things like "confirmation bias" where people
believe "my opinion is just as valid as your facts" but that is the problem
we're seeing here.

It has nothing to do with the fact that one side may not understand one
another, that's the point of debate: to persuade the other or a group. What
we're seeing here is one side plugging their ears and shouting "LALALALLA"
when the opposition tries to create a point.

We simplify stuff for the less tech oriented to help them understand. This
committee sitting for SOPA doesn't understand the internet yet they're trying
to regulate it. When someone with knowledge comes along and wants to make an
analogy to something they will understand they have none of it!

I understand your points but you're viewing everything through rose coloured
lenses. What you want is unattainable because you need complete cooperation
from all sides; if even one player breaks the rules then the whole system
crumbles back to where we are now. Sure Google could provide those tools but
the moment one party doesn't get their way (probably because it wasn't fair to
the others) they'll go shouting to congress to make it happen, just like we
have now. DMCA wasn't enough for MPAA/RIAA so they're in the back pocket of
the government to make it worse. Hell, look at what's happening between UMG
and MegaUpload right now!

