Disagree with both of you. Video and audio are both smooth and free of dropouts, and the testimony of this attorney (who is she, btw?) is clear and informative.
Compared to some other hearings, the reps asking questions seem legitimately interested in making the bill suck a lot less. Time will tell, I suppose, and it sucks that this bill made it this far, but I'd highly recommend watching the feed if you care about the outcome.
For example, your next letter to your elected representative could reference specific content of the discussion rather than rehashing something that was talked about. Nothing says "I care" like "I cared enough to sit through the same hearing you did."
> the reps asking questions seem legitimately interested in making the bill suck a lot less
That seems like a large part of the problem; they treat it as a foregone conclusion that the bill will pass, perhaps with a bit of tweaking. This bill needs to die. All bills should have the presumption of failure, with a very high bar to get them to pass, not the other way around.
They really should. Should the 10 year old girl that posted a video on youtube of herself singing along with a Justin Beiber song be considered a felon and put in jail for 5 years?
There are also heavyweights like Microsoft who are sponsoring the bill. My guess is there are still more money being invested to make this a reality than otherwise.
It must sucks to be a bright hacker that work for Microsoft.
Don't you think people who ought to know better should be opposing this bill? If we could get Bill Gate on board, that would be great. I mean, he already have billion of dollars, why should he care about making more money?
It doesn't look like Microsoft is directly lobbying either way, but the Business Software Alliance has been lobbying heavily in favor, and Microsoft is often considered the dominant player in the BSA.
Microsoft's pro-PROTECT IP [1], though I don't think they've made a statement on SOPA yet. They are, though, as pointed out, a member of the BSA, which is very pro-SOPA.
to the UK works via media player, but at work can not test sound.
This is not looking good brothers on the otherside of the sea. What i read today is a 5to1 debate :/ and i got a horriable feeling the nervous looking girl might be the 1 against :/
You don't need to go that far. Canada! We're not far away and most day-to-day things are the same here.
Also our Supreme Court recently ruled that hyperlinks are like footnotes in a book so publishing a hyperlink to defamatory material doesn't mean you're responsible for the defamatory material (not republication). Sensible ruling. Heading in direction of internet freedom not away from it.
Well I like england for the tea, the weather and the pretty good nature. However friend i dont recommend coming here, the UK takes alot of the US stuff spins it a little and introduces it here. The problem is the UK has no great start-up industry and very few people who have the technical understanding in political jobs to really evulate anything effectivly.
tl:dr, the UK is going the same way. and the core EU (once they kick out the dead weight will be forced to do the same me thinks) every country running their own internet with great big blacklists, that in turn will turn in to whitelists, and soon it will be "you can only view these pages"
It may be that everybody in that room knows the thing is not going to pass but is going through the motions of proposing to satisfy their corporate donors. It may also be that someone is proposing a batshit crazy idea like this in order to see it get shot down. Sometimes Congress seems to even pass laws with provisions that they know will be struck down in the Supreme Court.
I'm listening currently (11:43a EST) and they're quoting cyber security experts about how it could undermine security. From consumer union groups about how it affects consumer safety, from venture capitalists about how it can stifle innovation.
A lady right now is addressing how it's an issue that they don't have any technical expertise on the panel.
It's not ALL madness..
No, that only works against blocking traffic. SOPA would remove the DNS entry from the .COM domain. It's an attack at the DNS level so using a proxy won't work. You'd need something like the MAFIAFire plugin to keep a "shadow" DNS going.
I'm so glad to hear that there's a mild representation from a few voices of reason. Trying to drum up any sort of attention from my Facebook/Twitter list is just frustrating and had left me very disheartened.
That's not the madness of the legislative process.
You'll witness the madness play out when the legislators, having given the plebes their "voice", ignore every single one of them and proceed with graduating the bill to a full vote. Which will likely pass.
If it does pass, there is still a chance (however small and expensive) that it will be ruled against in the courts. The judiciary seems like the branch least impacted by the influence of big-media.
That requires someone to bring a relevant legal case to an appropriately positioned judicial body, which requires a great deal of money, and two sides willing to take it that far.
Hopefully it won't have to come full circle back to YouTube.
The Puerto80/RojaDirecta case seems like it has lawyers who know what they're doing(cough unlike a certain other Harvard-based lawyer cough) - I'm hoping they get a good precedent before SOPA even takes effect
Viacom v. YouTube. The one who complains is listed first.
But yes, it does mean wasting a lot of money on lawyers to fight a very bad law which Google could instead be using to build computer-driven cars, improve machine translation, and to create more high-paying jobs.
Instead, we're getting the broken window version where they're forced to create more highly-paid lawyers, instead.
But how many Little People (i.e. those who can't afford to pay a defense lawyer) will have to roll over and pay up before a court actually gets a chance to strike at the law? That kind of injustice should be stifled before the law ever passes. Should
Pass the House of Representatives. Then a similar bill has to pass in the Senate, which, because of filibuster rules, now effectively requires 60 votes to pass anything significant rather than a simple majority of 51 votes. Once it's passed in both the House and the Senate, the two sides have to reconcile the differences into one bill that both houses then have to pass again. That final bill then has to be signed by the President to become law.
All of this has to happen in an election year, which always makes it harder to pass significant legislation.
There are still lots of places for the bill to die, or at least be weakened significantly, and there's still plenty of time for voters to take action to make their voices heard.
Zoe Lofgren's statements were really good, and her criticisms of the way the hearing was structured (5 for, 1 against, no engineers) were compelling. Her question of, "How many sites would you want to see taken down?" and the dodging is telling, too.
And Darrell Issa did a phenomenal job calling into question the need for the legislation because of the function of the ITC & usefulness of administrative law solutions already in place.
Wow, Dennis Ross (R-FL) apparently doesn't understand that free speech protections apply to the GOVERNMENT, not to business. "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech..." So yes, when Google takes down a site, it's not unconstitutional. When the government does it, in some instances, that is unconstitutional.
I completely agree. Mr. Watts was embarrassing to watch -- his slanted opinion and childish domination of the dialogue was less than coy. I grew sick to my stomach listening to him constantly derail Oyama's statements. He kept demanding terse answers to questions that hardly had any relevance to the matter at hand and only served to make her seem clueluess.
Lofgren came on like a breath of fresh air. Not only did she actually seem INFORMED on the matter, but she did well to reveal that the opposition to this bill is not comprised of greedy tech companies who fear they would lose business, but all walks of Americans who are afraid that this would negatively impact our lives and our economy.
I agree on those two, but unfortunately I haven't heard much encouraging come from anyone else. Two people on a 38-member committee is not a strong showing...
Not so. The Republicans have a large majority in the House at present and the SOPA bill was introduced by the chairman of this committee. That's why the hearing is tilted unusually heavily in favor of the proponents. 'Business' includes all the tech companies who are lobbying uphill against SOPA as well.
The tech companies lobbying uphill are copyright consumers in this context. They are users, and the copyright owners' interests are those being prioritized, and whose interests have been favored in the entire SOPA (and before) movement. That the hearings are tilted in favor of copyright owners is simply public evidence of structural bigotry.
Yeah, like at my firm we used to use capital punishment for motivation but then we were told that we couldn't because of the law so I became a libertarian.
Darrell Issa did a phenomenal job calling into question the need for the legislation
That's refreshing; I'm not always a fan of this guy's work, but I fully agree that this is unnecessary regulation intended to violate the rights of individuals to boost the pockets of the corporate state.
The person speaking now has pointed out that there are 5 people in favor of the bill and only 1 speaking against it. She also lamented the fact that there are zero technical experts speaking.
"I object to this bill in its current form because I believe it fails to use existing tools [injunctive relief] and does a worse job than those existing tools at solving this problem." - Mr. Issa (for the micro-win)
Unclear whether Mr. Issa's alternative bill (yet to be seen, focused on empowering the FTC to issue injuctions) would allow for DNS-based remedies, whether the injunctions would take more traditional forms like fines/C+D/damages, etc.
I'm not able to watch this while sitting at work, but... did they really make the argument that not having SOPA would put soldiers at risk? I don't see how that... I... what?
How unfortunate.
Ms. Jackson-Lee seems to have fallen for the fallacious argument that every file that was downloaded would have otherwise been bought if piracy wasn't a viable option. This does not bode well for the future...
FAIL. Genius, like digital bits, are not zero sum. This isn't digital Highlander; a kid pirating a film does not magically soak up (and away) the genius of the auteur.
Mr Rogs(Ross?) statements are ridiculous and he's not giving the female (lawyer?) a chance to respond and fully explain what he's asking -- and then he switches to CP as a defense in eliminating our free speech on the internet
Did Rep Dennis Ross just say (paraphrased) Mastercard thanks you for your effort? He's a co sponsor of the bill and doesn't seem to have a full grasp on its scope. His examples of why it is good seem very specific and not the majority case.
268 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 326 ms ] threadCompared to some other hearings, the reps asking questions seem legitimately interested in making the bill suck a lot less. Time will tell, I suppose, and it sucks that this bill made it this far, but I'd highly recommend watching the feed if you care about the outcome.
For example, your next letter to your elected representative could reference specific content of the discussion rather than rehashing something that was talked about. Nothing says "I care" like "I cared enough to sit through the same hearing you did."
That seems like a large part of the problem; they treat it as a foregone conclusion that the bill will pass, perhaps with a bit of tweaking. This bill needs to die. All bills should have the presumption of failure, with a very high bar to get them to pass, not the other way around.
[Edit] Kept trying and it ended up working
Edit: Check out the guy in the back on his iphone most likely looking at some form of "infringing content."
Don't you think people who ought to know better should be opposing this bill? If we could get Bill Gate on board, that would be great. I mean, he already have billion of dollars, why should he care about making more money?
1: http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_on_the_issues/archive/2...
This is not looking good brothers on the otherside of the sea. What i read today is a 5to1 debate :/ and i got a horriable feeling the nervous looking girl might be the 1 against :/
Also our Supreme Court recently ruled that hyperlinks are like footnotes in a book so publishing a hyperlink to defamatory material doesn't mean you're responsible for the defamatory material (not republication). Sensible ruling. Heading in direction of internet freedom not away from it.
tl:dr, the UK is going the same way. and the core EU (once they kick out the dead weight will be forced to do the same me thinks) every country running their own internet with great big blacklists, that in turn will turn in to whitelists, and soon it will be "you can only view these pages"
It may be that everybody in that room knows the thing is not going to pass but is going through the motions of proposing to satisfy their corporate donors. It may also be that someone is proposing a batshit crazy idea like this in order to see it get shot down. Sometimes Congress seems to even pass laws with provisions that they know will be struck down in the Supreme Court.
It's just plain weird.
You'll witness the madness play out when the legislators, having given the plebes their "voice", ignore every single one of them and proceed with graduating the bill to a full vote. Which will likely pass.
But yes, it does mean wasting a lot of money on lawyers to fight a very bad law which Google could instead be using to build computer-driven cars, improve machine translation, and to create more high-paying jobs.
Instead, we're getting the broken window version where they're forced to create more highly-paid lawyers, instead.
Pass the House of Representatives. Then a similar bill has to pass in the Senate, which, because of filibuster rules, now effectively requires 60 votes to pass anything significant rather than a simple majority of 51 votes. Once it's passed in both the House and the Senate, the two sides have to reconcile the differences into one bill that both houses then have to pass again. That final bill then has to be signed by the President to become law.
All of this has to happen in an election year, which always makes it harder to pass significant legislation.
There are still lots of places for the bill to die, or at least be weakened significantly, and there's still plenty of time for voters to take action to make their voices heard.
And Darrell Issa did a phenomenal job calling into question the need for the legislation because of the function of the ITC & usefulness of administrative law solutions already in place.
Wow, Dennis Ross (R-FL) apparently doesn't understand that free speech protections apply to the GOVERNMENT, not to business. "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech..." So yes, when Google takes down a site, it's not unconstitutional. When the government does it, in some instances, that is unconstitutional.
Lofgren came on like a breath of fresh air. Not only did she actually seem INFORMED on the matter, but she did well to reveal that the opposition to this bill is not comprised of greedy tech companies who fear they would lose business, but all walks of Americans who are afraid that this would negatively impact our lives and our economy.
*edits for clarity
That's refreshing; I'm not always a fan of this guy's work, but I fully agree that this is unnecessary regulation intended to violate the rights of individuals to boost the pockets of the corporate state.
Unclear whether Mr. Issa's alternative bill (yet to be seen, focused on empowering the FTC to issue injuctions) would allow for DNS-based remedies, whether the injunctions would take more traditional forms like fines/C+D/damages, etc.
"...innocent civilians and American soldiers at risk..."
Who would have thought BitTorrent was such a threat to American civilisation?
FAIL. Genius, like digital bits, are not zero sum. This isn't digital Highlander; a kid pirating a film does not magically soak up (and away) the genius of the auteur.
Nice Highlander metaphor, btw.
Or could always make a #sopa on freenode.
So are those guys still getting paid, or aren't they? Are movies still making money, or aren't they?
Mispronunciation win!