Has anyone yet made a serious estimate of how likely SOPA is to pass?
I would hope that if our legislative system is so divided that they can't agree on legislation relating to budgets or healthcare, they won't agree on this legislation either.
Not that its a good thing for the legislation system to be so ineffective, but it would seem truly ironic if they agree on something that will hurt the economy, but not on things that will help the economy.
They did no such thing. That part of the bill concerned how much tomato paste has to be on the pizza for the tomato paste to be enough to count as a serving of vegetables. The USDA wants 8 tablespoons, and Congress wants 2.
There is no such thing as a 'vegetable'. Some are leaves, roots, tubers, gourds, stalks. Vegetables have always been an essentially tautological group.
Other fruits considered vegetables include peppers, beans and squash.
I actually believe pizza as a vegetable is easier to buy than what SOPA portends (plus pizza had the "ketchup is a vegetable" precedent). For that reason, I think its passing will be more contentious.
This is not remotely true. You hear about the big ones, DMCA, PATRIOT, etc, but most legislation is routine stuff that keeps the country humming along.
Saying gridlock in government is a good thing is like saying gridlock in Google's management was a good thing. We need government and we need effective government.
I don't see how incomprehensible amount of legalese can help more than it hurts.
Sure there are some useful gems in legal system, but most of the laws are more of a burden.
Yes, we need government, but we need smaller government and smaller government is more efficient.
Government gridlock reduces government and makes it more efficient. Really useful bills still can go through gridlock, but amount of legal junk is significantly decreased.
Less legal junk output results in improving economy. You can actually see that unemployment rate started to improve in 2011 - the year when Republicans took over Congress while Obama (Democrat) still holds President office.
Comparing US Government with Google is not correct, because US Government is much bigger and is pure monopoly, while Google functions in competitive environment.
You make the mistake of thinking the "representatives" in congress are there to represent citizens.
They are there to represent who put them there, their campaign donors (after Feingold and Grayson were defeated in 2010, there are now no congress-critters that refrain from corporate funding).
Their funders by-and-large want this bill to be passed. Whether it's the BSA or RIAA or Big Religion, everyone of those anti-Internet folks is thrilled to see the freedom aspect of the Internet being small enough to drown in a bathtub.
Health care is something that has been an issue in this country for a long time - so everybody already knows a lot of the arguments, has a firmly held position, and people's positions correspond to party lines which means there's more for politicians to gain by fighting over it.
IP stuff, by contrast, isn't something that legislators have strong pre-existing opinions on and its not a partisan issue. And because it doesn't really spend any new money there it can be neatly separated from the overwhelming complexity of the US federal budget and people's intense partisan positions on things like taxation.
I am assuming it will pass, at this point; I'd be happy to fight it, but at this point I'd definitely be looking at how to mitigate the damage technically, challenge it in court, etc.
There is way more money lined up to support it vs. oppose it, so I suspect going into an election season, a lot of congresspeople will support it for financial reasons.
I would hope that if our legislative system is so divided that they can't agree on legislation relating to budgets or healthcare, they won't agree on this legislation either.
Not that its a good thing for the legislation system to be so ineffective, but it would seem truly ironic if they agree on something that will hurt the economy, but not on things that will help the economy.