Stop the Internet blacklist | Hacker News Reader

Stop the Internet blacklist

fsf.org

143 pointstjr24 comments

It would have been better to just link to the campaign Aaron Swartz has been running for at least a few weeks now.

I've donated a little money and would encourage you to do the same.

It would have been better to submit the demandprogress link a few weeks ago. The OP, however, is more recent, from a reputable organization most of HN already knows, and puts the issue in context with the upcoming election. I'm not sure if a link to demandprogress would have gotten as many upvotes, or a donation out of me, to be honest.

It definitely send me a chill down my spine.

So I donated.

If the idea of the government using technical measures to crack down on copyvio bothers you, Vixie's DNS RPZ mechanism should bother you even more; after all, the government is simply going to find other ways to shut down music sharing services, but RPZ seeks to standardize a method for any company to build blacklists for any reason.

http://www.circleid.com/posts/20100728_taking_back_the_dns/

This seems like a pretty serious thing that I'd want to get behind, but the FSF has freaked out over such stupid stuff before that I don't know if I should trust them.

You should be evaluating whether things are worth supporting on their own merits. Why would you trust anyone else to do your thinking for you?

I think I get where dangrover is coming from. You really want to support an organization that looks through the bills or at the situation and determines if it is really a threat and how much. Most people don't have time to read the bill or the RFPs the Federal Gov puts out (Lord knows, I had to do it for quite a few years and it was time consuming and painful). This is one of the reason people like to find experts who can do the research.

// link-bait type headlines have an effect on belief https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/08/steve-jobs-watching-yo...

> Why would you trust anyone else to do your thinking for you?

Because there are only 24 hours in the day. Seriously, thew world is complex and it's impossible for one person to be an expect on everything. Therefore cognitive shortcuts are necessary.

"Thinking" is not the same as time-consuming research through thousands of pages of bills

If you don't trust the FSF, then try the EFF:

http://www.eff.org/issues/coica-internet-censorship-and-copy...

Its always hard to tell which one of these things is going to be the "serious" one.

I'd like to know of some example of "freaking out on stupid stuff" from the FSF, frankly.

what a lame excuse to not do anything to prevent what you consider a "serious thing"

I wasn't saying it's not a worthy cause, just that the FSF has cried wolf before. Nobody has time to read every page of every bill being considered, so it's not clear without further research whether it's as bad if they say it is.

I'm kind of irritated that Leahy (my former senator) is sponsoring the bill, anyway.

I'm inclined to believe the petition is worth signing just because Leahy seems to have taken over for Fritz Hollings (D-Disney).

I am starting to think that MN's Senators (not House Reps) are going to be overly helpful to big media at the expense of everyone else (one is a cosponsor - not the former actor, maybe some horse trading).

I wonder why the proponents of COICA don't play the child pornography card to justify their filters. It almost worked in Germany last year.

Seems to be working for the Aussies, too. At least their PM played that card, and she doesn't seem to be bluffing.

The article says that ISP's and others would be required to block the domain name. Theoretically you should still be able to access the site using its direct IP address. Of course, this doesn't justify the blacklist, and I certainly don't support it. I'm just thinking that even in the worst case scenario if the bill is passed it shouldn't be completely crippling.

  >  I'm just thinking that even in the worst case scenario if the
  > bill is passed it shouldn't be completely crippling.

True, but that's also justification in some people's minds for taking no action. "Someone else will take action to prevent it, but if they don't then I'll be able to work around it."

They do it little by little. The next bill will be "since we already block the domain name, lets block the service as well."

I remember the days of having a hosts file that was updated and circulated around JANET users. It wasn't much fun.

ICANN has been a big drag on the world wide web for far too long. Perhaps stupid politics like this will be the straw the breaks the camel's back.

And attempting to censor the internet could well be the straw that breaks the US federal government's back. As if there isn't enough anti-federalist / libertarian sentiment bubbling up lately, they want to start following after China's Great Firewall? Smart move...

I'm not to worried. Finally a chance to scare people off of the ICANN controlled root!

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