
SOPA 'shelved' until consensus is found - Geep
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2012_01/putting_sopa_on_a_shelf034765.php
======
DanielBMarkham
I would urge extreme caution about reading too much into this article.

I (I'm a political junkie) saw Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) on TV
yesterday. The message I got from his body language, nuance, and phrasing was
something like "Obviously people who are elected from heavy technology areas
are feeling a lot of heat. There's still a lot of support, though. Let's see
if we can tweak this in such a way as to pass some kind of compromise."

Maybe that's just Reid trying to keep the RIAA cash cow alive, not sure. But I
was fairly certain that what I was hearing was a tactical retreat, not a
strategic surrender. Not by any means. My money says next time they'll have
some language in there that could be interpreted a bunch of different ways (to
prevent informed debate), and they'll wait until the last minute and sneak it
into some other bill that is a "must-pass."

~~~
mattwdelong
What scares me most is the fact that everyone knows this tactic. Write an
absurd policy, debate it, offer an alternative and jam it down citizens
throats.

We know this, yet there is not much that can be done about it. Aside from the
obvious, running for Senate and using your vote, what can be done to stop it?
Someone with the right amount of money and enough motivation can pass just
about anything, given enough time.

I think, instead of protesting SOPA (or the next bill), people need to devise
a method or position themselves so that they're in the right places to protect
the average Citizen from such policies. These bills will just keep coming.
Screaming from the side line is no longer effective.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
If the president were to have the line-item veto, where he could approve of
certain parts of a bill and veto others, we could hold him personally
responsible whenever bills get loaded up like this. As it is, they can pass
what they want and nobody is responsible. That's clearly not the way the
system was designed to work. The entire purpose of representative democracies
is that while representatives can freely vote against their constituents, the
constituents also can throw them out of office based on the representative's
decisions.

I've seen this same problem play out in a variety of contexts, and it looks to
me like the line-item veto is the only thing that will prevent this corruption
of the system we're seeing. While this idea has been a pet cause of
conservatives for some time, it looks like supporters of liberty have just as
much or more skin in the game as fiscal hawks.

Play out the following scenario in your head: it's late in the year, no budget
has been passed by Congress (again), and suddenly some third-rail social
program is running out of money. Congress passes a law to help the orphans and
grandmothers, everybody climbs on-board with huge majority votes, and way in
the back section is another version of SOPA.

If you're the president, what do you do? Note this is a much different
political scenario than just threatening a veto -- this is asking if you're
willing to risk pissing off huge special interests groups just to make a much
smaller number of nerds happy. It's political math, and it works quite simply.
You sign the bill, make a public speech about how bad the new SOPA is, and
life goes on. If you're smart you send out mailers asking people to donate so
you can get rid of the thing you just signed! One party will pick the "side"
of SOPA, the other party will pick the other "side". In fact it doesn't matter
whether you really support or oppose the bill, whoever paid for it got it
passed, huge numbers of politicians got to oppose it, and the public can't
point the finger at anybody. There's nobody to throw out of office. There's no
feedback loop. The system is broken.

In my mind the only thing that is going to fix that is the line-item veto. A
lot of state governors have it. I think it's about time POTUS got it also.

~~~
rgrieselhuber
In effect, doesn't the President already have line item veto? If there are
items he doesn't agree with, he should signal that he will veto until they are
removed.

~~~
jbooth
That requires a lot from the President and oftentimes they'll be on the losing
end of that political battle. On the recently-passed NDAA for example (which
explicitly made it legal to detain people without trial, and hopefully will be
struck down by the courts), it was passed as part of funding the military,
sending out soldier paychecks, etc. Fox News is already (wrongly) accusing
Obama of wanting to undermine our troops all the time, and people are already
sick of pointless squabbling over routine funding matters in DC. Obama would
have been the political loser from vetoing the bill, the Republicans would
have known it, and they probably would have just kept passing the bill and
forcing him to veto it until he caved.

~~~
dantheman
Obama originally objected to the NDAA because it limited his powers too much,
not because of the indefinite detention clause.

The Administration strongly objects to the military custody provision of
section 1032, which would appear to mandate military custody for a certain
class of terrorism suspects. This unnecessary, untested, and legally
controversial restriction of the President's authority to defend the Nation
from terrorist threats would tie the hands of our intelligence and law
enforcement professionals. Moreover, applying this military custody
requirement to individuals inside the United States, as some Members of
Congress have suggested is their intention, would raise serious and unsettled
legal questions and would be inconsistent with the fundamental American
principle that our military does not patrol our streets. We have spent ten
years since September 11, 2001, breaking down the walls between intelligence,
military, and law enforcement professionals; Congress should not now rebuild
those walls and unnecessarily make the job of preventing terrorist attacks
more difficult. Specifically, the provision would limit the flexibility of our
national security professionals to choose, based on the evidence and the facts
and circumstances of each case, which tool for incapacitating dangerous
terrorists best serves our national security interests. The waiver provision
fails to address these concerns, particularly in time-sensitive operations in
which law enforcement personnel have traditionally played the leading role.
These problems are all the more acute because the section defines the category
of individuals who would be subject to mandatory military custody by
substituting new and untested legislative criteria for the criteria the
Executive and Judicial branches are currently using for detention under the
AUMF in both habeas litigation and military operations. Such confusion
threatens our ability to act swiftly and decisively to capture, detain, and
interrogate terrorism suspects, and could disrupt the collection of vital
intelligence about threats to the American people.

[http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/legislativ...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/legislative/sap/112/saps1867s_20111117.pdf)

~~~
jbooth
What? Break it down for me here, in what way is he arguing for more quote
"powers"? The power to not indefinitely detain people? That's a really brutal
one, favorite of dictators everywhere. I shudder at the thought of someday
being not-detained.

I mean, I really don't want to carry Obama's water on this one given that he
did sign the bill, but you're just engaged in some sort of silly deliberate
misinterpretation of the paragraph you quoted.

~~~
dantheman
My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that the military detention
provision would stop the rendition program because "terrorists" would be in
military custody instead of allowing the flexibility that they currently have:

"Specifically, the provision would limit the flexibility of our national
security professionals to choose, based on the evidence and the facts and
circumstances of each case, which tool for incapacitating dangerous terrorists
best serves our national security interests. "

I think this entire law is bad, but I'd prefer a well defined bad law than one
that allows lots of discretion.

------
danieldk
Isn't this the point where 'the people' should not sit on their laurels, and
launch a proposal to make a law that does exactly the opposite: protecting the
digital rights of citizens?

I am asking because (also in the EU) we are usually happy when some draconian
law does not make it, but there's rarely an attempt to push for legislation
that secures the rights of internet users.

~~~
jrmg
What would your proposed law say? Congress can't make a law that says that it
can't make a SOPA-like law in the future (or, at least, it would be
meaningless, since future legislation could repeal it).

~~~
muuh-gnu
There should be a way for the people to veto a law in a referendum, like in
Switzerland. That way politicians would be more cautious passing laws which
they know that the public probably won't like and probably will veto.

The current US system only provides "checks and balances" between political
parties, so when one party cracks up (meaning, gets bought by special
interests and turns against the people) we only can pray that the other party
will come to the rescue. But when both parties agree and team up against the
people, i.e. when there is a political market failure like in the case of SOPA
(or ACTA), theres no way for the voters to defend themselves.

It is not another law that is needed, but a general possibility to override
unpopular laws.

~~~
rbanffy
> a general possibility to override unpopular laws.

We have to be very careful with this. Sometimes a very popular law is exactly
what you don't want. There are vast areas where a law mandating the teaching
of creationist superstition in science classes would be immensely popular
while a law forbidding it would be very unpopular.

~~~
jules
Such is democracy, the least bad system we have. Overall it would probably
lead to laws that are more in your interest, as opposed to in the interest of
people who lobby for laws.

~~~
rimantas
Democracy is not simply "the rule of majority".

~~~
mikecane
Democracy is exactly that. Which is why our Founders gave us a democratic
republic instead.

~~~
rimantas
Nope. It is not exactly „the rule of the majority“. It is the rule of the
majority with respect to the interests of minority.

------
dangrossman
They're certainly trying to get in front of this story before the 18th. I hope
none of the sites planning to protest drop those plans.

Politicians and lobbyists know well that the public has a short attention span
-- a few weeks of quiet and most of the discussion will have died down. When's
the last time you read about protesting the full body scanners and patdowns of
children at airports?

Even if these bills are shelved now, they'll be back later this year.

~~~
sp332
There's so much crappy IP legislation right now, we could easily switch to,
say the Research Works Act <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Works_Act>
which would put some taxpayer-funded research results behind paywalls. [edit]
It's effectively double-dipping, getting paid once to do the research and then
again if you want to actually read the results.

~~~
impendia
Wrong, we researchers are not double-dipping, just because the publishers are
charging exorbitant sums doesn't mean we see a dime of it.

------
mgkimsal
While watching the MSNBC video yesterday, Cotton's repeated assertions that
this only applied to 'foreign sites' bugged me. From the SOPA text:

\--------------

    
    
        (a) Definition- For purposes of this section, a foreign Internet site or portion thereof is a `foreign infringing site' if--
    
            (1) the Internet site or portion thereof is a U.S.-directed site and is used by users in the United States;
    
            (2) the owner or operator of such Internet site is committing or facilitating the commission of criminal violations punishable under section 2318, 2319, 2319A, 2319B, or 2320, or chapter 90, of title 18, United States Code; and
    
            (3) the Internet site would, by reason of acts described in paragraph (1), be subject to seizure in the United States in an action brought by the Attorney General if such site were a domestic Internet site.

\--------------

So, a foreign site can be 'u.s.-directed' and used by users in the US. Doesn't
sound very 'foreign' to me at all. Sounds an awful lot like 'domestic'.

Yes, I'm sure there's legal interpretations of these words that I'm not aware
of, but it sure as hell reads to me like when they say "foreign sites" they're
not meaning 'foreign' in the sense that anyone in the US would reasonably
understand.

~~~
thebigshane
The Manager's Amendment clarifies that language.
[[http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/HR%203261%20Managers...](http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/HR%203261%20Managers%20Amendment.pdf\]\[PDF\])

Since it _is_ still all legalese, I'll paraphrase (IANAL): a site who's domain
name is registered by a registrar outside of US jurisdiction, OR if there is
no associated domain name: an IP address of a server outside of US
jurisdiction.

------
Maxious
Excerpts from Rupert Murdoch's reaction <https://twitter.com/Rupertmurdoch>

"So Obama has thrown in his lot withSilicon Valley paymasters who threaten all
software creators with piracy, plain thievery."

"Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them. No
wonder pouring millions into lobbying."

"Sure misunderstand many things, but not plain stealing. Incidentally google
blocks many other undesirable things."

"Seems like universal anger with [POTUS] from all sorts of normal supporters.
Maybe backing pirates a rare miscalculation by friend Axelrod."

~~~
snprbob86
"Incidentally google blocks many other undesirable things."

That statement really pisses me off. It also really pissed me off when some
politician was like "Google has the technology". Presumably both were
referring to SafeSearch and related technologies.

These people have no idea what they are talking about. Blocking porn is an
entirely different problem than blocking copyright infringement. Identifying
an image as nudity is a task that software can do effectively and that can be
crowd sourced in a straight forward manner. Anyone could, without consulting
any external source, classify pornography.

However, the same is not true for infringement. The same companies who want
their content off of YouTube are publishing free content on YouTube. Google
has bent over backwards to block as much infringement as they can and to
provide copyright holders the tools they need to manage their intellectual
property rights. But the fact remains: you must consult an external source to
classify infringing video. Furthermore, fair use is has complex and subtle
requirements which are impractical to police using software, crowd sourcing,
or enforcement staff.

~~~
mcherm
As I would say if I got 5 min to testify before a congressional committee:

"Gentlemen, it has been suggested that, since Google and others have built
technology to detect and block pornographically explicit pictures and videos,
that they could build technology to block copyrighted pictures. This is simply
not true. Please bear with me and I can demonstrate this. [show two pictures]
Can you tell which of these is pornography? It's like Justice Stewart said: 'I
know it when I see it'. [show two identical pictures] Can you tell which of
these is a copyright violation. [pause] You don't have to peer TOO closely,
they are absolutely identical. But the author signed contract allowing me to
duplicate and display copies of the one on the left, and did NOT allow me to
duplicate and display copies of the one on the right. Determining whether
something is a violation of copyright requires one to know details how a court
would evaluate fair use exceptions, as well as knowing the details of
contracts between two third-parties you may not even know. This is not
difficult, it is impossible."

------
gerggerg
Ok fellas, we still have some serious work to do.

If it's not already painfully apparent, our current batch of representatives
are completely ineligible to pass modern legislation. They're not idiots,
they're not morons, they just don't have the relevant backgrounds to represent
us anymore. The times have changed around them, and their skills and
background are no longer effective or relevant enough.

We need to work hard to get new representatives on the hill that understand
and respect technology. The only way non oppressive legislation even stands a
chance is if we have representatives that understand the workings of the
internet and don't say things like "let google just hire some 16 year old wiz-
kid to fix it".

Seriously. It's no longer ok to be a representative and not understand the
internet. It is a fundamental part of commerce, free speech, assembly,
religion, education, etc. and it's outright dangerous to have people in office
who don't understand it attempting to control it.

It's up to us to get relevant, modern representatives in office. We just need
to work together and do it.

------
ctdonath
Caution is warranted: "shelved" bills all too often are left there untouched
until circumstances warrant slipping them, or a palatable functional
equivalent, through unnoticed. It's not dead, it's resting.

~~~
camiller
As they say ... "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" - Wendell Phillips

------
alan_cx
Heh, first post here. Hi.

Although I'm from the UK, I have been following this with keen
interest,particularly as US authorities are able to pluck our citizens from
our country on mere suspicion.

Just to say, and Im sure you all know it already, you have not won, keep
pushing and pushing until there _is_ a law, but a fair just one. I don't want
such laws, but there are inevitable. Just be sure they are laws that work
fairly and properly.

I think the thing to do now is for the community to create and propose its own
law(s) and push that on the politicians. Present a credible alternative. Get
the legislation we want, not what they want. Perhaps some one needs to set up
a site where the on line community can collaborate in putting together a
workable solution.

Any way, congratulations for winning the battle, just remember that we still
have the war to win.

~~~
marshray
Welcome to HN!

The problem is that US legislation can be changed in lot of weird ways between
the time its introduced and when it's passed. For example, there could be
popular support for a "Protecting Net Freedoms" act and something good could
be introduced. But the special interest lobbyists would likely get a large
amount of edits in, and the "provisions" added for "protecting
(children|national security|the environment)" and "creating jobs".

So at the end of the day, passing a "Protecting Net Freedoms" act would likely
be worse than the status quo (which in the US is still quite good IMHO).

~~~
alan_cx
Sure. I just mostly think that net folk should lead the debate and and offer
something positive. Something that the general public can understand and
support. That has to be the way forward.

------
daimyoyo
Good. This is an important victory but the people behind SOPA won't go away so
easily. I've always viewed SOPA as more of a litmus test to gauge where
Americans stood on copyright enforcement. The next bill the industry tries to
get passed(and there will be another) will likely be much more subtle than
SOPA was. So let's celebrate, but we must remain diligent. This was only the
first round.

~~~
kamjam
You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it. \- Margaret Thatcher

------
toyg
I applaud the US political system for being better than the UK counterpart in
this instance.

The copyright mafia tried the exact same trick in the UK two years ago: a bill
was pushed through Parliament on election year, when MPs had to make their
funding rounds and so were more amenable to being bribed... and it passed.

Nice to see US representatives still have a bit more decency (either that, or
Google's chequebook is now much lighter than it was three month ago).

------
dsplittgerber
Awesome, so politians now have two large constituencies to milk: big media and
internet-savvy technology companies/the general tech-savvy public.

See, the only one profiting from this ordeal irrelevant of how it plays out
are politicians. They get to enlarge their power and money base whenever
anyone thinks an issue best be regulated by law.

------
Newgy
This is just a leadership commitment in the Republican House, the U.S. Senate
(controlled by Democrats, and where overall support for SOPA/PIPA seems
stronger) could still take up the bill. There are ways to pass legislation
that circumvent a direct House vote.

It is good news, but I'd wait to see what Senators say this week.

------
waterlesscloud
I like the idea that there should be an active push to reduce the term of
copyright. There's certainly a case to be made that it's unreasonably long,
and that the length does not benefit the public.

Take the fight to their turf or always be fighting a defensive war.

------
math_is_life
Did they really have any choice? After the statement from the White House,
they had to put it on hold because they do not want it to be vetoed. They will
still come back, but they will either wait until they can make the President
happy (which might be hard if he is in his second year and does not have to
run again) or wait to see if Mitt Romney wins.

I just hope that PIPA is put on hold as well and hopefully after the election
things will be better (depending on what types are voted in) and not worse.

------
drivingmenuts
Now we need a way to get rid of Lamar Smith (R-TX). That SOB is just an idiot
waiting to happen. Again.

~~~
oacgnol
I can't believe this guy is representing part of Austin, where many web-based
companies are located. I have to wonder why he authored the bill.

~~~
drivingmenuts
Lamar Smith is a grade-A Republican shitheel who just worries about who or
what has contributed to his campaign slush fund. It would appear that freedom
of speech, to him, is something that should be paid for by the highest bidder.
The level of ignorance this man has shown by authoring this bill and the
amount of selling out he's done to corporate interests, rather than the people
he ostensibly represents, is staggering.

Unfortunately, the Texas Legislature has gerrymandered the state so badly that
he's dug in like tick and will be difficult to remove.

------
bcjordan
> Though the administration's chief technology officials officials
> acknowledged the problem of online privacy

Funny that this Freudian slip has shown up in more than one SOPA article.

------
darasen
Congress will simply throw SOPA in as an amendment to some completely
unrelated bill that people will have a hard time saying no to such as such as
funding for puppies. Then if somebody opposes they can say "what about the
puppies!"

Certainly my example is silly yet unrelated amendments are made to bills all
the time to push one agenda or another.

------
RenierZA
So they're battling online privacy?

Say no to privacy! (or maybe yes to proof reading)

------
jellicle
It just means the congressmen involved are going to go back and get another
hit of money from the copyright industry and then run this through attached to
some other bill.

------
bane
Convenient this happens right before a bunch of sites go dark in protest.

------
maeon3
We need right to connectivity to internet right up there with the right to
vibrate your vocal chords in public and use your ears to detect vibrations in
air. To take away a human's access to these basic things because they are
criminals is unacceptable.

------
shareme
Now they will find a way to tack it on to any budget bill they can to hide
it..as this how Congress really passes laws be very wary

