U.S. To Introduce Draconian Anti-Piracy Censorship Bill

Google, Yahoo join opposition to rogue website legislation

 

I was amazed (and proud) at how many websites ran the Anti-Censorship Day banners. They were everywhere yesterday. Liberal sites, conservative sites, newspapers, blogging tool sites, you name it...it was just everywhere.

Bloomberg reports on the online campaign yesterday:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...day-makes-an-online-statement-the-ticker.html

Read the above and you'll see just how tough this will be to actually become law. The number of "Statements of Support" for this bill is comical, follow the news link above to find out just how many supporters of the censorship measure have contributed their thoughts to the House Judiciary Committee.

 

The US govt is the most corrupt in the world... THIS IS JUST ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF THEM TRYING TO RUN THE WORLD!

 

From House Judiciary Committee Makes SOPA Hearing a SOPA Lovefest (via):

 

Well sure, no shock there. That's how politics work. It's much easier to get your way by padding pockets and promising support. In fact, that's about the only way to get your way, whether you're a member of Congress or an interest group.

@Dude111: You are seriously, seriously in need of an education. I mean, your statement can't even be laughed at, it's that terribly pathetic.

 

Wonderful. I hope it pays off. I've been telling people about it.

 

reply from a senator

 

Lol, I knew that response would happen. I spoke with contacts about it myself and they both laughed and shuddered at the stupendous disaster that will come with the passing of the bill. They laughed because, being a part of the government, they're used to these imbecile moves and the fact that Congress runs very little. The real power is in the hands of the very same types of interest groups that are pushing this crazy thing through.

Once the gravity of the situation kicked in again, and we all sat around thinking further ahead, there were a few pale faces amongst us. The groups know exactly what they are doing, but I don't think they realize just yet that, if the bill passes and is interpreted and enforced exactly the way it is written out, they're committing suicide over the long term. Hollywood, the music industry and more, are so desperate to right their sinking ship, that they're willing to take any and everyone with them to the bottom.

This isn't good for anyone, and the truly sad thing is that it won't even stop the things it is being created to stop.

 

I'll never understand how they think that garbage is worth pirating. Calling that trash "Intellectual property" is a total contradiction in terms. I'll never understand what people see in most of that stuff. Most of what's called comedy, I'd call stupidity. Given a choice, I'd rather hear the noise of industrial equipment than some of that stuff they call music or entertainment on TV. People should just boycott this trash and let the entertainment industry sink. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if their long term plan here is to use anti-piracy as an excuse to search peoples computers, phones, etc.

 

Industrial noise was a 1970s-1980s "musical" genre.

 

You're a bit behind on things, as that is already the case. All the media industry wants out of this bill is to pocket more money, it's never been a moral issue, ever. For the government though, it's about power and control, and yes, they do and will continue to use anti-piracy to gain more control, just as they used anti-terrorism. Sept 11th and Napster gave the government and these groups the backbone to follow through with measures like this and everything else being commonly done now.

They always wanted the control, and were going to pull the trigger, but these two situations allowed them to speed up the process. There are some good people both in Washington and in these industries. They mean well, and they see these measures for what they are. Unfortunately, they are being shut up and overruled. Fasten your seat belt, the ride is going to get nuttier.

 

They had total control before commercialization of computers, internet and crypto. Virtually all communication was surveiled. But academia and Silicon Valley rebelled, and They lost big in 90s Crypto War. Coming 10s Crypto War will be very crazy, I agree.

 

Business Software Alliance withdraws support for Stop Online Piracy Act

 

Perhaps they smell the flames of the pyres they would all be burned upon? Or perhaps this is good PR and behind the scenes it's a different story.

 

Kaspersky leaves Business Software Alliance

 

Lawmakers release draft alternative to Stop Online Piracy Act

 

Two Congressional Staffers Who Helped Write SOPA/PIPA Become Entertainment Industry Lobbyists - Techdirt
GOP aides head to K St. for tech war - Politico.com

 

Mr. Gross notes: "Opponents of SOPA and PIPA say court orders to block domain names could lead to cybersecurity problems as Web users try to circumvent the blocks." Some googling yielded -http://nenolod.net/did-icann-really-seize-torrent-finder-com-or-was-it-verisign/ Although torrent-finder.com was seized late last year, whois still returns its true nameserver, and its nameserver still returns its true IP address! It doesn't respond, but I wonder how long it did. More googling yielded -http://www.cdt.org/files/pdfs/Perils-DNS-blocking.pdf But how would users distinguish real sites from phishing sites? Maybe that's what Mr. Gross means by "cybersecurity problems". Another great resource is -http://viewdns.info/research/inside-the-dojs-domain-name-graveyards/

Edit: See -http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1942154 for comment by David Ulevitch, OpenDNS founder.
Edit: I just discovered Firefox extension MAFIAAFire Redirector.

 

Internet Pioneers, Security Experts Send Letter to Congress Blasting SOPA

 

The entertainment industry and government sheep want to get their greedy hands at everything, at the expense of everyone else. The must GTFO before corrupting one of the last free frontiers.

 

Thread similarity | overlap suggest merge with one or the other.

 

DeSopa Firefox Add-On Lets Users Circumvent SOPA Restrictions

 

To make a cake disappear you must first cut it apart.

 

An interesting keynote speech from Cory Doctorow at the 28C3/Chaos Computer Congress in Berlin, "The coming war on general computation." in which he depicts the fight against SOPA as a mid-level mini-boss fight instead of the end-boss fight it might seem at the moment.

'The last 20 years of Internet policy have been dominated by the copyright war, but the war turns out only to have been a skirmish. The coming century will be dominated by war against the general purpose computer, and the stakes are the freedom, fortune and privacy of the entire human race.

The problem is twofold: first, there is no known general-purpose computer that can execute all the programs we can think of except the naughty ones; second, general-purpose computers have replaced every other device in our world. There are no airplanes, only computers that fly. There are no cars, only computers we sit in. There are no hearing aids, only computers we put in our ears. There are no 3D printers, only computers that drive peripherals. There are no radios, only computers with fast ADCs and DACs and phased-array antennas. Consequently anything you do to "secure" anything with a computer in it ends up undermining the capabilities and security of every other corner of modern human society.

...And on the network side, attempts to make a network that can't be used for copyright infringement always converges with the surveillance measures that we know from repressive governments. So, SOPA, the U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act, bans tools like DNSSec because they can be used to defeat DNS blocking measures. And it blocks tools like Tor, because they can be used to circumvent IP blocking measures. In fact, the proponents of SOPA, the Motion Picture Association of America, circulated a memo, citing research that SOPA would probably work, because it uses the same measures as are used in Syria, China, and Uzbekistan, and they argued that these measures are effective in those countries, and so they would work in America, too!...'

From Boingboing.net link, video link, transcript link.