

An Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the U.S. Congress   - ryeguy_24
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/internet-inventors-warn-against-sopa-and-pipa
An Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the U.S. Congress
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logn
They need to include $2,000,000 checks to each member of congress. That's
about how much the media companies are paying everyone who supports this.

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darkmethod
I'm curious as to where you found this information. Thanks.

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sehugg
[http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=...](http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=Career&cid=N00009918&type=I)

~~~
CamperBob
That's the true horror of the situation. Not only are our representatives for
sale, they're for sale _cheap_.

If the media companies were bribing these clowns with billions of dollars,
that would be one thing... but some of the people who signed that open letter
probably spend more than $2,000,000 on lunch.

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cpeterso
Plus, those monies are simply campaign contributions. How much grift to career
politicians actually pocket?

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Lost_BiomedE
Mostly, they don't pocket it but use it. A congressman is always campaigning
and using those funds to live well doing it. They get the rest a bit less
openly and from fun loop holes like trading insider info.

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Joakal
They should have made a request to not only demand such bills to cease, but to
demand bills that reverse parts of current laws controlling the Internet.

Otherwise politicians will reduce some of the bill, but the bill will still
implement more and more Internet controls [0].

[0] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique>

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davvid
One solution is for everyone to simply refuse to implement whatever stupid law
is passed. Closes #666 (WONTFIX)

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cookiecaper
The problem with this solution is that the government has guns and prisons and
they will use these to compel individuals to do as they say. If every ISP
refused to comply, the feds would make a big show of raiding some significant-
but-not-huge regional ISPs and scare the rest into compliance.

Of course, some of this country's largest ISPs probably like SOPA and similar
legislation because they see it as strengthening their larger source of
revenue: cable television.

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snowmaker
I noticed Vint Cerf specified "signing as private citizen". Does anyone know
why Google tied his hands?

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tlear
As huge corporation Google has to be ready to lose this fight and in that
situation it would be beneficial for them to be on the good side of the
victors.

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mdwrigh2
Except their co-founder signed as the co-founder of the company. I would
assume he's signing as a private citizen to say he's signing because _he_ ,
and not the company he works for, sees it as a detriment.

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spiritplumber
I think it's the wrong approach. How about:

"Dear Congresscritters, we made the internet. It is now everywhere. If you pit
the full force of the law against it -- the law will lose. Do not make
yourselves irrelevant."

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eykanal
I'm sure you're joking, but unfortunately, not only is that approach wrong,
the statement is wrong also. If anyone will lose, it's probably not going to
be the law.

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frisco
I actually don't think so here. You're basically up against the laws of
physics. Information is fundamentally unlike other types of assets, in that
there's no cost associated with copying it and it can be very quickly and
easily be disseminated far and wide. Let's say they manage to totally destroy
DNS, or whatever mechanism they're using to enforce this: the internet isn't
one network, of course, and will detect this as damage and route around it,
even if that means moving to a totally new networking stack.

This is a losing battle on the part of the IP rights holders. In many ways,
that's depressing. But even if they said, "pirate movies and we'll kill you,"
it still wouldn't stop the signal. All of these laws and treaties are bandaid
hacks to stem the tide. Ultimately they won't win, though it may be messy
along the way if they try to govern without understanding this.

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geoffschmidt
The human cost here is enormous. Did drug users win the war on drugs? Well,
half a million of them are in jail at the moment, and it's hard to call that
victory. If you think the same thing can't happen with copyright infringement
given the political will, you're wrong.

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frisco
I don't think the same thing can't happen here at all. I agree with you that
if they really wanted to pursue that path, the human cost could be enormous.
However, we're also saying that if you really wanted some weed, there remain
many avenues available to you to acquire it, despite all that will.

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cookiecaper
Trading movies and music online is a lot different than using or trading an
illegal drug. People actually will stop downloading movies, etc, if it means
going to prison. It is pretty easy to stop yourself from watching movies. It
is not so easy to stop your physical addiction to a drug. The risk/benefit in
the mind of a copyright infringer is on a completely different scale than the
risk/benefit that exist in the mind of a drug addict.

~~~
frisco
I'd bet that the belief of likelihood of prosecution for a drug crime is about
the same as being sued by the RIAA or MPAA for most people. They're aware they
could get in trouble, but it's unevenly enforced and unlikely to actually
happen to them.

Regardless, I don't think the willful infringers are the most interesting
group here. If user generated content really does lead to sites getting shut
down in an unreasonable way (which is probably unlikely to actually happen), I
think it's those groups that would be leading the charge to a next gen
network, not the infringers.

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tlrobinson
This question isn't specific to the letter, but I've been wondering...

Wouldn't SOPA's effects on DNS be negated by simply hosting your sites' DNS
and setting your machines' DNS servers outside the US? Of course this would
have major negative impact on DNS performance.

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rmc
That's what I've been thinking. And I think that's something that should be
promoted more. Laws like this, aren't going to break the internet per se, but
they might break it in the USA. Politicos should learn that laws like this
threaten the USA tech sector. Might as well move your servers & companies off
shore.

~~~
barkingllama
What? Unintended consequences? Those are never something to worry about.

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driverdan
I'm curious where this list of people came from. Some are much more notable
than others. Are they part of a group, have common investors, or what?

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lincolnwebs
Conspicuously absent: Berners-Lee and Bray.

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balloot
Berners-Lee is British. He has been working with the British government on
internet issues. I know this is crazy, but they actually listen to him.

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samstokes
_they actually listen to him_

Unfortunately, not so. e.g.
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/8030467/Inter...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/8030467/Internet-
disconnection-like-being-imprisoned-says-Sir-Tim-Berners-Lee.html)

The Digital Economy Act he is complaining about in that article - which, like
SOPA, included provisions for national censorship in the name of copyright -
passed by a large majority. Most MPs were not present for the debate, but
simply voted according to their party line.

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rmc
_Most MPs were not present for the debate, but simply voted according to their
party line._

That's the case in UK politics. The 'party whip' is used, and only in uncommon
cases is a 'free vote' allowed.

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swordswinger12
This is apropos of nothing, but it's nice to see L. Jean Camp represent my
alma mater.

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zotz
> ... a group of 83 prominent Internet inventors and engineers

This topic is probably the first thing they've all ever agreed on.

