
Oregon Senator effectively kills Internet censorship bill - Scott_MacGregor
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/oregon-senator-vows-block-internet-censorship-bill/
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DevX101
Send him a thank you for defending freedom of speech on the internet:

<http://wyden.senate.gov/contact/>

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ComputerGuru
Here's what I sent; please feel free to pick and choose. I hope this'll help
anyone contemplating sending a letter but too busy to do so.

 _Dear Senator Wyden,

I would like to thank you for taking a stance for defending freedom of speech
in a society that has forgotten what that phrase means. COICA is the digital
equivalent of a lynching, allowing people in positions of power and favor to
manipulate the internet and limit our freedoms, in the name of limiting
piracy. Like similar measures in the past (such as the DMCA, which is the
first to come to mind, but many others as well), it is a misguided attempt at
reducing piracy at the cost of individual liberties; usually furthered by
politicians who don't really understand the way the internet is run and the
implications their decision/support would have, or else are trading the
constitutionally-protected liberties and freedoms of their constituents in
order to please big businesses across America.

We've seen with the DMCA that these measures, first and foremost, don't work.
When treating a disease, doctors will try and treat the root cause - simply
stifling the symptoms rarely works. But COICA goes even further, and we feel
it is akin to treating a flu with radiation and chemotherapy. Thank you for
saying "No" to a bill that would have been misused (the DMCA has a history of
being used by businesses to shut down competitors and to limit Fair Use) and
abused (people pushing through requests to companies and in local courts,
taking advantage of the ignorance of many company owners as to their
constitutionally protected rights and the definitions of Fair Use) to scare
people and organizations alike into giving up their liberties.

Thank you for standing up to freedom in America.

While I'm not lucky enough to be one of your voters (as I do not reside in
Oregon), I thank you all the same.

Sincerely,

xxxx_

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m-photonic
>COICA is the digital equivalent of a lynching

The analogy isn't obvious to me.

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laujen
Senator Wyden is a good man. I told this story in yesterdays post but I have a
friend that used to take the same Portland to DC flights every Monday (to DC)
and Friday (to PDX). senator Wyden, even though he had probably earned
millions of frequent flyer miles, always sat in coach, always in the same
spot.

If any of you were paying attention to the national health care debate, it was
Wyden and then Senator Bennett's proposal before Obamacare that made the most
sense. In fact we would be much better off if Congress would consider their
changes instead of complete repeal.

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DanielBMarkham
This is the part of the story where folks acknowledge how great the U.S.
Senate is for allowing one member to block offending legislation.

But I doubt that will happen.

~~~
brown9-2
So often the story is that the U.S. Senate has stupid rules that allow one
member to block legislation when the legislation being blocked is thought of
as a good thing - such as unemployment extension, aid to Haiti, etc.

So it cuts both ways. We should be careful about praising this rule too much
since often we criticize it when we _like_ the legislation being blocked.

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flipbrad
i wish i was a US citizen so I could send him a note of appreciation and some
chocolates, or a box set of mad men, or something... this bill would have gone
global (and might do, one day)

~~~
tmgrhm
I'm from England but I still sent him a short email in thanks. Just use
something like 90210 for the zip code on the form.

~~~
corin_
I already sent him a message from England, and depressingly 90210 was the
first zip code to come into my mind too. (But went with 90017, last ZIP code I
stayed in.)

~~~
tmgrhm
Yeah it's pretty embarrassing/depressing but there's not really any other
famous zip codes.

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tshtf
I wouldn't be surprised if this was a direct result of the Senator hearing
from his constituents about this issue. Regardless, job well done!

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jdp23
Well done by Senator Wyden! The headline's a little too optimistic, though.
The bill will be back next session -- and the new Congress is likely to be
just as friendly to the content industries (who are driving the bill). So it's
a great time to support Wyden, EFF and others who are on the right side of
this issue.

~~~
tomjen3
He was reelected right? So he can block it next congress too.

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jdp23
i'm not an expert on the processes, but i believe it only gets blocked for a
finite period of time

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joshes
Sadly it appears as though the only legislation which unifies both sides of
the political aisle (be it in favor of or against a given piece of
legislation) is that which is completely asinine and backward. The seemingly
basic bills are inevitably deadlocked in recent years.

Then again, that's not entirely unexpected.

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nkassis
I think this is mostly due to the low impact on votes that these kind so of
bills have. These bills can usually go undetected.

<spam>I think this again shows that groups like the EFF are invaluable. Donate
today! </spam>

~~~
_delirium
Yeah, sadly I don't think this is a priority for most of the public, and many
who do have an opinion support the "shut down the pirates, whatever it takes"
approach.

Take Wyden in particular: he just won reelection two weeks ago, 57-40%. If
this sequence of events had taken place before the election, would he have won
by a larger margin? I think it's unlikely. Probably it would've turned out the
same, but if anything it's possible he would've done slightly worse, since his
opponent could attempt to portray him as a pro-piracy "extremist" who blocked
a bipartisan bill that had passed the relevant committee unanimously.

~~~
laujen
I live in Oregon. Wyden had that election won long before election day. The
focus was in the governor's race here and even Wyden's opponent, a Lewis and
Clark University law professor named Hoffman, admitted the state Republican
party put all its money into the gubernatorial race. The outcome of this bill
wouldn't have made a difference one way or the other.

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tommi
"Deploying this statute to combat online copyright infringement seems almost
like using a bunker-busting cluster bomb, when what you need is a precision-
guided missile," Wyden said.

As far as I understand the article does not explain Wyden doing anything else
than saying that particular sentence. How is that effectively killing Internet
censorship?

~~~
marcusestes
Individual senators may place holds on legislation and there are only a few
woking days left in the congressional calendar this year.

If it doesn't pass this year, it will have to be reintroduced by Lahey next
year.

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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 banned IPs and reverse-lookups of IPs back
into domain names, checking against a list of banned domains. This one could
only be bypassed through proxies.

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navyrain
My understanding of it is that US nameservers couldn't resolve banned domains.
Anyone with the tiniest bit of technical knowledge could use an untainted
nameserver, or run their own. However, the spirit of the bill is terribly
misguided, no matter how easy it is to circumvent.

~~~
tomjen3
Thats exactly what they did with the free-speech filter in Denmark (which they
said was only supposed to block child-porn). I know at least one dorm where
the geeks just changed the DNS servers for everyone.

