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Poll: Where do you stand with regards to SOPA/PIPA?

57 points by elliottcarlson ↗ HN
It might seem like a silly question, but after talking to a few people in the tech industry, I have spoken to a few supporters of SOPA/PIPA. I am curious if there are supporters who may not be speaking out due to it not being the popular consensus.

So where do you stand?

37 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 93.8 ms ] thread
chrisdroukas
> I have spoken to a few supporters of SOPA/PIPA.

What company and why? What's a rational defense of SOPA/PIPA?

elliottcarlson
They were speaking independently and from what I can tell, their assumptions are that the prevention of piracy was all that would happen if these bills passed.
bad_user
There are companies that have a legitimate interest in keeping counterfeits off the market, counterfeits that are damaging their brand and that can even endanger the life of customers.

This is one way SOPA/PIPA was sold to some of the companies supporting it. Unfortunately, neither of them are going to stop counterfeits, or piracy.

cheald
I'm heavily opposed to SOPA/PIPA, but I really do think there need to be ways for companies to keep their counterfeit physical goods off the market.

http://www.petzl.com/us/outdoor/news-2/2011/12/22/petzl-amer...

I just think that SOPA/PIPA solves the problem by pointing a nuke at the internet and giving the content industries the launch codes.

steve-howard
Option D: Jaded. I am against the acts, but I think Congress will probably still thumb their nose at their constituents. They'll blather on about "creating American jobs," and recast the voters' opposition as being against that one thing they took out, or as support for piracy, or say things like "senators are supposed to make tough votes that are good for the nation but that none of their constituency supports."
AndyKelley
Why is being jaded mutually exclusive to being for or against the legislation?
steve-howard
It's not, I suppose; I just think that discussion over what we're blacking out, who to convince, what kind of talking points, etc, is rather moot. I'd love to be proven wrong.
greyfade
I confess it would be interesting to see what happens were SOPA/PIPA to pass: As companies fold left and right and unemployment skyrockets... Would SOPA/PIPA supporters still claim they've done good for the economy?
steve-howard
I think the worst-case scenario we're all bandying about is implausible. I don't think we'll be closing down youtube, or even minor content-sharing platforms. I just think we'll see more like what ICE does with filesharing sites: shutting down sites that are probably legal in their home country but that the US doesn't like. That's not to say I think the bills are a good idea; in fact, I don't think there are any technical ways to prevent piracy and I would rather we didn't try. I just don't think life will change as radically as people say.
waterlesscloud
The vast majority of my friends work in the entertainment industry, and I fully support protecting copyright.

But SOPA is over the line, and it has to be stopped.

p0ss
I consider this kind of legislation to be a symptom of a wider problem, even if these bills are defeated, more will come.

Wealth has been held above all other value, and that myopia guarantees an endless succession of ever more retarded policy. Only fundamental electoral and economic reform can stem the global tide of blind individualism. Once you are chasing wealth, there is never "enough", even making a huge profit is insufficient if it wasn't more profit than you made last quarter.

The saddest part is that so much of this greed is no longer even perpetuated by humans, with some %60 of global fast trades being done by algorithms, we have invented heartless entities to worship our corporate gods and to unquestioningly do their bidding.

These companies are not being destroyed by pirating, they are not on the ropes looking for a handout. The content industry is making record profits, pumping out derivitive schlock that is creatively bankrupt and rakes in the cash. But even that is not enough for them, they must have more, they must crush their opposition and monetize everything.

mferrell
The only thing that's really preventing me from fully opposing the bill is just how clearly it's made that SOPA would apply only to sites "dedicated to the theft of U.S. property". I might just be naive, but it seems like the use of SOPA to take down benign sites, as has been suggested, would be blatantly illegal.
the-cakeboss
Those are my feelings as well. I do understand the concern of a precedent being established, but I really do tire of all the hyperbole surrounding this bill. I can't tell how many times I've seen people make the claim that if someone where to post infringing material on to a site like whitehouse.gov, the authorities would have no choice to take it down. Bogus claims are bogus claims regardless of their intentions.

I think the most damage brought by this bill would not be manifested in legal cases, but rather a climate in which people are far more hesitant to take risks on the web, etc.

lambda
Note that the US government has already illegally seized domains like Dajaz1.com, and hasn't given the owners a chance to defend themselves in court. Source: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/12/expert-domai... . Note the Dajaz1.com example; the government used an emergency seizure which is supposed to be used to prevent people from destroying evidence (though there's no way to prevent destruction of evidence merely by seizing a domain name), and then dragged the forfeiture process out for a year with secret court hearings that the owner could not defend themselves, before finally just giving up and giving the domain back because they had no case against it.

SOPA and PIPA are just ways to make this process easier, and easier to apply to domains owned by foreign entities. They don't particularly care about due process or whether or not they hit benign sites in the process.

brg
I am very supportive of the wave of support against SOPA/PIPA from major web players. I am also proud of the wiki foundation for taking a large, and the first very public step. Seeing this, I wish we had such powerful players in the fight when either the CTEA (Sonny Bono Act) was passed or the anti-circumvention rules of the DMCA were introduced.
Stevenup7002
I think this poll might be more useful if you split the "against SOPA/PIPA" option into something like "against SOPA/PIPA, but for alternative piracy legislation" and "against SOPA/PIPA and against any new piracy legislation". I'm in the latter camp.
chimeracoder
I actually would be similarly curious how many people oppose SOPA because it 'crosses the line' (whatever that line is), versus how many oppose SOPA because they take issue with copyright/intellectual property in general (in whatever way).
linuxhansl
I am strongly against SOPA, but I think there are actually more important issues right now (like the military spending act legalizing indefinite detention on suspicion of terrorism).

Man, how I long for the days where the DMCA was what I was complaining about. Nowadays the DMCA seems like a left wing piece of hippy legislation :)

joshAg
"Man, how I long for the days where the DMCA was what I was complaining about. Nowadays the DMCA seems like a left wing piece of hippy legislation"

That's not an accident.

jwingy
See: Overton Window
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(comment deleted)
joshontheweb
If your business model hinges on restricting the flow of information then you are pretty much hosed. That flies in the face of what the internet is. For better or worse, bad or good, thats how I see it. Instead of fighting the current companies need to evolve their businesses to the present state of technology. Anti-SOPA/PIPA
AndyKelley
Let's have a thought experiment. What would the world look like without information ownership?
wladimir
When information is a given, people will focus on the things more important to us than information. I imagine in 2112 (if humankind is still alive...) they will look back at this time and wonder why the hell we were so obsessed with information. Just like we look back at the 1800's and wonder why they were so obsessed with transportation and railroads. We move to the next stage, whatever that might be.
[dead] verroq
Oh sorry, I didn't realise this was /r/circlejerk.
georgieporgie
I am opposed to this bill if only because I'm tired of the endless expansion of laws and powers under the guise of defending us from ill-defined "enemies". As an American, I'm deeply ashamed that we gridlock ourselves arguing about protecting giant media profits, debt ceiling limits, and gay marriage while we bankrupt ourselves with arguably illegal wars, border violence, insane profiteering in the healthcare industry, and while we continue to detain and torture people. The fact that we have technological illiterates attempting to draft these laws is all the more appalling.

So, yeah, I'm against SOPA. :-)

danssig
5 people are actually for it? Surely that must be trolling.
leouznw
same thing that i thought when i saw it
mseebach
Apparently, when polling a sufficiently large population, you're bound to get a small error of weird answers. It's hard to say what the cause is, trolling, error, not understanding the question or something else, but it's why statistical significance matters.