How to stop SOPA: Don't build it.
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Also even if you could convince all american talent to boycott it, there's a whole world of people out there who don't care at all, and just like America has been happy to sell censorship tech to the rest of the world for years, I'm sure the rest of the world would be happy to repay :) I don't think Indian or Russian programmers are going to give a toss about it if it pays bills.
Ha or you could just buy back equipment already sent to Chian and Iran.
Which sort of raises the point that American talent has already built this equipment and been selling it for years now. It is way past too late for this boycott to work.
I'm not willing to flat out say all the best hackers only want to do startups, but even assuming so, there are still lots of really good career engineers who also probably have no interest in working in a small sexy start up who Cisco can hire. Convincing them all that a nice company job is bad is going to be very hard.
And then there's the fact it's too late and this tech's already been built in america with american talent. They already found the people.
And often these big company products aren't built by the best people. Big government contracts like this have so much bureaucracy to choke the love out of many people. They aren't well written, they are slowly and expensively and they are ugly and horrible but they work. Does this sound like the working conditions that anyone we know would want to work in? Probably not.
Big government projects don't need A* hackers to get out the door sadly and never have.
But even in the unlikely event that e.g. Cisco is able to operate without any smart people, it's even more unlikely the people running it see themselves that way. So they would be worried by something that would make it hard to recruit good people.
Good programmers are in such demand right now that it's hard to imagine any company not worrying about something that would make it harder to hire. I think they'd worry especially about the difficulty of hiring recent grads. To undergrads all big companies look pretty similar; it would be a disaster if there was something that made your company look distinctively worse. It's not too hard to imagine a situation in which there was some sort of blacklist of the worst SOPA collaborators, and undergrads knew and avoided them.
The government in general is probably rarely thought of as sexy and it still gets grads.
I guess I'm decrying this idea because I just do not see it as enough from both sides. I don't see you ever getting 100% of people on board with you and I don't see 100% of sources of software caring. This plan only works if 100% of everyone buys in, as long as one lone group produces the code, SOPA will go into effect. And then theres the fact the tools are already built and at least 10 years old.
This is simply not the solution and any time spent on it is a waste of what little effort we do have that could be vastly better spent else where.
Exactly where? I don't know, I just feel strongly this is not the solution.
As for at least a direction? Look to Larwence Lessig. He's been fighting copy right reform for ages. He was doing it in the 90s and it was getting old. Then after Eldred was lost he kind vanished from that scene. He's now back and he's stepped up a level and is working on Government reform. He realized after they lost that you can't fight in a system that's so broken, so he's now working on System reform instead. If you can spare 10 minutes check out his talk on the Daily show from Dec 13, it does a decent job of summarizing what he's fighting now. Then tell me this is how we can best spend our time :(
I supremely believe we need to step it up at least one level and fight something bigger, this is just a symptom.
Also I believe the world is a sadder harsher and more depressing place and not everyone clings to our ideals like we do. We need a system to take that into account. To be a little more strong handed than "All the hippie flower power new talent won't work for you" because I'm pretty sure there is still more than enough talent to go around to get these jobs done. :(
Also, the Army does get some grads, but not that many. There are a lot of people who join because they did a year or so in College and didn't like it. There are also a lot of people who didn't even graduate from high school. Bottom line, not many people join the Army under ideal circumstances. I personally would consider having just graduated with a CS degree to be ideal. Unfortunately I am one of the ones who didn't graduate from high school.
There are buildings, filled with military research engineers, where the median rank is major and which are a lot like regular office buildings where all the engineers wear ACUs and salute each other in the halls.
EDIT:
Just ot be clear, these folks mostly aren't mindless, but I doubt that they would, on the whole, have any moral objections to implementing something like SOPA. A lot of them would see this as a reasonable way to deal with the Wikileaks of the world.
Also, the military has been increasing their requirements lately. As the war draws to a close, and the economy remains in shambles, more people start thinking about joining the military. This means that the Army can be more selective about who they accept.
I could draw you a venn diagram if you like.
I can't believe in all your experience, you haven't met extremely smart hackers who are also utterly immoral. A situation like this just means they will be worth more money.
You do a huge disservice to the many excellent hackers that work at Cisco. (Even if you have issues with the company's management, they still have some impressive tech.) You don't need to be all over Hacker News to be brilliant.
Comments like these really highlight the myopic perspective that pervades the valley/startup scene. There is a much bigger world out there than you realize.
Edit: For people that think this is difficult - ICE is already doing it quite easily. They contact the company that controls the root domain. For .com, it is VeriSign.
There are a number of intermediate steps between "knowing the name" and "the DNS record gets removed". DNS servers are not yet controlled telepathically, to my knowledge.
And Iran? Syria?
There are already lots of countries out there with tougher laws that have also gotten rid of this companies influences and are able to carry on. And some of them also have successful tech industries despite it.
We need a better solution then revolt of the entitled well off white nerds.
How about instead we pour all our money into counter lobby or governmental reform groups, like what Larwence Lessig is up to these days. That may be the only way to change things.
This idea of a protest is at least a decade too late.
However, the best way to combat litigation damages would be a threat to those same companies from every network that connects to them. i.e. an internet embargo against any company that implements the filtering and changes to the DNS.
At the end of the day networks need to connect to other networks. If a company implements software that filters it, every network that doesn't have the same obligation can embargo those businesses so that those businesses have no choice but to fight the MPAA and RIAA.
Treat those that implement the technology like a cancer and "excise" them from the network.
Following the money is the only way to prevent the technological implementation of SOPA from spreading. There needs to be an equally or more costly financial threat from the anti-SOPA companies.
It doesn't even need to be at the network level. The browser level is sufficient. Chrome, Firefox and Internet explorer (built by 3 organizations that are against SOPA) could all embargo sites at the browser level in the default installations of the browsers. The majority of Internet dollars travel through the browser. The browsers could sniff for DNS systems implementing SOPA and blacklist them. If your DNS implements SOPA then you aren't part of the internet. If they want a browser that supports networks that implement SOPA, let them build it themselves and spend time and money trying to get their browser adopted.
The search engine level is another approach. Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo could reduce the search rank of every site on networks that implements SOPA.
SOPA uses legislation to break the technological contract that keeps the internet together. Break the technological contract and you should no longer part of the Internet.
I think I'm opposed to the term "prostitute" in this context. What if I need to keep my job to purchase medication to keep my wife and children alive, and that medication is prohibitively expensive without insurance?
At that point, I wouldn't be a prostitute - arguably I would be a hostage.
People with the same ethics will be hired to build censorship and be happy to take home the paycheck.
Don't confuse what is necessary with what is merely expedient.
EDIT:
I made a submission about this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3361689
text
''' The world depends on software. We, the world's programmers, write the software. SOPA threatens many things we believe in and care about. Letter writing and traditional means have not worked to stop SOPA. The only alternative is direct action.
In the 1960's direction was sitting on buses and swimming in pools. During the industrial revolution it was strikes in front of factories and rail roads. Occupying may get a lot of news coverage but protesters can be removed by force. No one can make us write code. If we stop, no one can do it for us.
I call for a General Programmer strike. We should set a day. '''
While the world does depend on software, it does not depend on the code you are writing today. If programmers went on strike the world would continue to turn with very, very few problems. In time, of course, things would unravel, but you'd have to be willing to sit through an incredibly long strike.
Also your job would probably be outsourced within a week.
Also, the employees that work at SAIC/Raytheon/federal contracting are already more used to working on things that are morally questionable. Sometimes they're black-box implemented (where each party makes only a small part of it, and it is then pieced together later,) but usually it isn't.
Sorry, pg - I know you talk with a lot of smart people, but you don't have to be too smart to break something. You just have to be venal, and there's never a shortage of venality.
This boycott is doomed to failure from the get-go.
The only thing is that we need a support network for people who refuse to work on it. Like say an employee and Cisco wants to blow the whistle on all the invasive tech they work on or wants to stop working on SOPA-related tech. They need to be able to do that without fearing that their family will go hungry because they wont get a paycheck anymore.
Union dues and donations were used for supporting striking workers. We have things like Kickstarter, Paypal, Bitcoin, etc. I don't see why we can't pitch in and donate to support any hackers who refuse to work on SOPA-related tech.
Its a nice idea, but that is flat-out not true.
The company may be able to replace those workers, but churn could really hurt them.
This is dangerously like a witch hunt. This tool is theirs, not ours.
But I agree we may need better tools to protect the things we hold dear.
Here's a list of supporters for reference:
http://www.thedominoproject.com/2011/12/who-wants-to-break-t...
I figure we only need a few hundred million to get off the ground... How much can I put you down for?
The 60 jobs I provide now, and the 60 jobs I'm hiring for, will vaporize.
And there will be programmers who will do the work required to implement it.
This is not the right way to fight laws. In fact, this is one of the Brocard's -- Dura lex, sed lex -- "The law is harsh, but it is the law." In other words, you must obey the law, even if it is wrong. You must work to change the laws if they are unjust.
I appreciate your perspective, but your last paragraph is frankly absurd. Pretty much every hard-won progressive reform in America was gained through civil disobedience.
civil disobedience of these sorts is just asking to get your ass legally handed to you.
In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, King wrote: "One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law."
This is SOPA. The government has done far worse. And the Internet will survive SOPA, just as it survived the DMCA.
That doesn't mean it isn't horrible. It still needs to be stopped. That's why I went to DC to meet with congressmen to talk about how badly written and reckless it is, but you think I should destroy 120 jobs over it? I don't think so.
Maybe they'll just go this far and stop, and that will be enough interference with the operation of the Internet. I'm sure plenty of people thought that was the case when the DMCA passed.
But getting his business sued out of existence would be a futile, if noble, gesture. The law is technically simple to implement, and it's going to happen if it gets passed.
This whole thread is a fantasy based on the misguided idea that implementing SOPA requires building some Great Firewall of America. It doesn't require that. It's just domain seizure, which already works alarmingly well.
I'm all for engineers fighting, striking, etc. But we need to stop this law now, before it is passed.
If you implement SOPA in OpenDNS a real patriot will make a truly open DNS system.
However, there is a better way to accomplish the goal imho: A truly shitty implementation. Those who are already in the position to implement it would not have to quit; they would instead commit to implementing it in the least-efficient way possible.
As a nice side effect, we will open up whole new disciplines for inefficient coding, and create all sorts of employment as people need big iron to run bad code.
Maybe we could just make it block by default the websites of all the politicians and corporations that support SOPA.
Alternatively, it could be unstable and slow. How long would this law last one Congress realizes that they've completely shut down their own email accounts, their ability to shop online, their children and grandchildren's ability to do their homework? How about when they realize that they've just put a sizable portion of their constituents out of a job?
Fill those warheads full of pinball machine parts.
Once they realize it? Probably a year. Until they realize it? Who knows...
Hmm....
Now that has a chance of working =D
All the tech for SOPA has been build and used for years in countries such as China and Iran. They already have their great firewalls and have had them for a long time.
What's more, a lot of the tech they used was built and sold to them by american companies. This war was lost probably 10 to 15 years ago.
All this bill is about is dog-fooding your own censorship products. ;)
NetApp faces probe into Syrian spooks' use of its storage kit: FAS racks 'used to slurp email' despite export ban http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/10/netapp_syria/
On the flip side, the government may see any organization to halt such as illegal (I don't know what law it would violate, but I'm sure they could find something appropriate to give the organizers a nice cell in Gitmo).
Best idea if asked, is to build it, but do it incompetently (but intentionally). Poor UI, poor filters, bad tests, etc. Obfuscate the code as much as possible. Claim that its for optimization. Write it in an esoteric language that few will be able to audit properly. Pull out every trick in the book. I suppose some could call this sabotage, but it seems one way to do it. The US Government never seems to have a problem with hiring those with a strong record of incompetence.
Unfortunately much of the technology used for censorship in places like China was developed in the US. Refusing to deploy it seems to be the only option. If we already have engineers willing to build these technologies it seems very likely there are going to be engineers willing to deploy it as well.
Unfortunately, someone, somewhere, will be happy to take money to build it.
They're blocking DNS records and IP address? Then why don't we design and build a new system. Using the knowledge we've gained from the Internet v1 we'd be able to do a much better job with Internet v2.
We have to do a lot of work to switch over to IP6 anyhow, so why not just go the whole hog and built a new infrastructure?
If their engineers don't build SOPA takedown tools and their organizations get their pants sued off for the ensuing noncompliance, it's the same outcome. The sites will cease to exist in their current form.
Thanks.
Recall what the net was like before the masses, perhaps something truly free is worth more than whatever you're giving up by not being able to sell coupons on it. Who cares if the masses never come. They just wanted to sell their freedom for a pay cheque anyway.
WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE! ;)
"d00d, Quit being a FUCKING ASS": http://www.pigdog.org/auto/software_jihad/link/2581.html
I know this bill upsets people, but getting fired would be more upsetting to those programmers/engineers.
And then let's not forget the miserably misguided geniuses who created a airborne H1N5 virus in the name of research. Evil comes in many forms.
Or if Google simply shut down it's service for a day? And Youtube, and Facebook et al.
It's an outlandish proposition, but not as outlandish as SOPA.
Governments need to understand that they don't control the internet. The people that do could switch off their parts of it, and in these tricky economic times, a co-ordinated strike by the major players would send a very clear message.
"Back off, or we'll grind the country to a halt and it'll cost you billions".
These politicians are playing dirty tricks. Their mind was made up a long time ago. They'll not be beaten by due process and fairness.
It's one thing to strike when you are the "poor downtrodden factory worker", it's entirely another thing when you are a bunch of "rich white collar smarties trying to control the world".
By "educated", I'm not inferring that that "un-educated" people are stupid or ignorant, simply un-aware of the issue by virtue of not being part of "that world". I would hazard a guess that people with a passion for Wikipedia are probably the kind of people who already know what SOPA is and why it's a batshit crazy idea.
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I've been following the news about SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, for the past couple of weeks. Yesterday there was an interesting development when 83 of the most prominent engineers responsible for creating the Internet signed an open letter voicing their opposition to SOPA. This in and of itself is hardly surprising. Since the law was introduced anyone with a shred of technical acumen has stated that a.) It will not work. The law will not hinder piracy. b.) It will be hugely detrimental to the normal operation of the Internet.
But, this made me think. If a law like SOPA were to be passed, how would it be implemented? How would it be enforced? I think it's safe to say that at some point somebody is going to have to write some code or possibly build some hardware. Maybe some of these technologies can be bought off the shelf from, say, China or North Korea, but at the very least someone is going to have to administer the servers that make this all work. Who's going to do that? The politicians? The lawyers? Entertainment industry executives? No. The task is going to fall to the very people who have been the most vocal opponents of the law from the start. What if they refuse?
If SOPA were to pass and your job would require you to enforce its provisions, you should quit. If you currently work in IT or software development for a company advocating for the law, for a lobbying firm that is promoting the law, for the campaign of one of the representatives sponsoring or supporting it, you should quit. The organization paying you is actively trying to use your skills make people less free. There's a perpetual shortage of talent in the industry, right? Surely, you can find another job that does not require you to be an instrument of government oppression, that does not ask you to dismantle the infrastructure you've spent your career building and maintaining. I know it may seem like a drastic measure, but freedom, as we are so often reminded, is not free. If a free Internet is important to you, you have to be willing to make sacrifices to defend it, or it will cease to exist. Be happy that you can fight for freedom on economic terms instead of having to put your life on the line. If your current position would not be involved in complying with SOPA, but you're in charge of hiring people, you could let it be known that any experience that included building or making technology for the enforcement of SOPA would immediately disqualify an applicant from getting a job at your company. (Assuming, of course that they participated willingly, not the folks I just told to quit their jobs in the previous paragraph.) I don't think this would be unreasonable or unfair. Deliberately building something that nearly every expert in the field has condemned as a detriment to the Internet represents such a staggering lack of professional judgement that it should disqualify you from ever working again in this profession. As engineers we spend most of our education and careers focusing on what we can build, and very little time thinking about what we should built. Unlike doctors or lawyers we (mostly) do not have professional licenses or ethics boards to report to. This does not mean we cannot act unethically, or that we should not consider the social ramifications of the things we make. An engineer who would build the infrastructure to make SOPA a reality should be treated exactly like a doctor who would willingly commit malpractice. He should be blacklisted from the profession.
I know this isn't a foolproof plan. If there's enough money on the table, someone will come out of the woodwork to take the job. If the task receives enough scorn from the rest of the industry, though, you can be sure that it won't be the best and the brightest working on this. Anything that results will be that much less effective for it. Remember politicians and lawyers can bloviate and scheme all they like, but ultimately it is engineers who have to bring their plans into existence. We are the gatekeepers between dreams and reality, and when it comes to the politicians and executives, they need us far more than we need them.
Of course, there are Professional Engineer (P.E.) licenses. But for the majority of Internet related work I believe they are not required. For what it's worth, I do happen to have a PE and work in a field where it's required. It is expected and understood that you would refuse to design something for a client that would be harmful or unsafe for the people using it. Indeed, you would lose your license (and thus your livelihood) if you did so.
Sure there are some more specific details to make it smooth to the end user, but from a technical level it is 3 commands on a service provider router to bring down a public network.
As I understand it, the legislation is far more ham-fisted than simply "borking domestic DNS". More or less, it hands the government -- and private parties having sufficient clout -- the proverbial lead pipe with which to beat you.
Step 1: Block access. Step 2: Criminalize circumvention of those blocks.
Of course, enforcement may be selective. But consider who is doing the selection and under what criteria -- both present and future.
Anyway, most of the people in America and in the world do not have a single clue about changing dnsservers... Heck, most of the times they do not even imagine that a website domain relates to an IP address.
As an example, HTTP uses the "Host:" header which contains the domain name of the website in question. Deep packet inspection could work by recognizing HTTP communication, inspecting the "Host:" header and simply dropping traffic to censored websites.
A better response will be building a technology that cannot be controlled like this. Why not just let the DNS die and replace it with something better? It is a dinosaur anyway.
The problem is we are a bunch of sissies. If there was actually a general strike, would you seriously refuse to go to work until SOPA was stopped? Could you do it? Are you willing to fight for what you believe? If enough of us do it, we will get our way. We have to be willing to refuse to go to work and to cause serious suffering on the part of others until we get our way.
I'll do it, but unless enough people join me it won't matter.
I'm not saying, "Go ahead and work on SOPA." But if we really want to stop it (or any act of Congress), we must do better than such passive-aggressive smoke blowing.
Stall. Stall. Stall.
Edit: just checked, and riaaradar.com is, in fact, gone. And www.riaa.org is still up and running five-nines, thank you.
Money.
In this case, though, people can be hired without anyone knowing about it. If lots of money is offered, someone will take it, and if there is pressure not to do take such a job, they will simply keep it secret who takes the job.
I think what you are saying, which I absolutely agree with, is that any system that relies on people going against their own personal self-interest, in mass, is doomed to failure.
(agreed that it is very rare they work though)