One congressman's opposition to SOPA worth noting | Hacker News Reader

One congressman's opposition to SOPA worth noting

securityskeptic.typepad.com

123 pointsgapanalysis26 comments

"4. Promote innovation over litigation. Our efforts should be to protect copyrights and trademarks, not outdated business models."

To me, that is the juiciest nugget in the article. From all appearances, the legislators arguing for SOPA and PIPA don't care too much about our complaints about potential legal abuse and curtailing of the rights of American citizens and companies.

I think stating it instead as a market issue might help, sort of like "SOPA is like something the buggy whip industry would have argued for."

>the legislators arguing for SOPA and PIPA don't care too >much about our complaints about potential legal abuse and >curtailing of the rights of American citizens and companies.

I can't decide if this is sad, deplorable, or scary.

Agreed. I considered delving deeper into this but it just turned into a "those evil lobbyists!" rant that no one hear needed to read.

> I can't decide if this is sad, deplorable, or scary.

That's a false trichotomy. It's perfectly possible for it to be all three of these, and I'd say this is a fitting example of that.

Just because a congressman opposes SOPA doesn't make his statements magically profound. Although the direction of his statement is intelligent, his four points at the end are far too vague to be useful.

Phrases like "consider instead promoting approaches that empower users" and "promote innovation over litigation" are nice sound bites, but they're very "safe" opinions. No one's ever going to disagree with them. That makes them lose their usefulness, however, as proponents can easily twist logic to claim that SOPA satisfies those four points.

Not trying to disparage Wyden, but his statement here would be far more useful if it drew a clearer line in the dirt.

>they're very "safe" opinions. No one's ever going to disagree with them.

This is baldly, unequivocally false. There are PLENTY of senators and other opinion leaders who would nod at these points then immediately start to spit out arguments that would sound distinctly like they were arguing against them (while in their mind they were agreeing with them). There is not a "clearer line in the dirt." These are fundamental, ideological differences in what "promoting innovation over litigation" means.

I think you're either trying too hard to be cynical or simply have a poor understanding of how deep the divide is on this issue (among others, of course).

Do you really think that any SOPA supporter is going to say they want to stifle innovation in favor of more litigation?

"There are PLENTY of senators and other opinion leaders who would nod at these points"

This is exactly what I'm saying. While WE know what Wyden intended, the fact that he stated them in the form of vague feel-good platitudes means that it's no different than if he were to just simply say "Be careful with SOPA," which is unhelpful.

In contrast, Zoe Lofgren's early statement that SOPA would be the "end of the internet as we know it" was an admirably bold statement that promoted discussion and rallied opposition.

"I think you... have a poor understanding of how deep the divide is on this issue."

The divide is over whether SOPA is beneficial for the country, not whether innovation or litigation is better. You think congressmen who support SOPA are actually trying to maliciously stifle innovation and suppress rights? I don't know if I'm the cynical one here!

Do you really think that any SOPA supporter is going to say they want to stifle innovation in favor of more litigation?

Well yes, although they wouldn't use those words. They would say something about "defending artists' right to control their music." As you can see, this is completely equivalent to supporting increased litigation at the expense of innovation.

They would simultaneously say they also 'promote innovation over litigation'. When pointed at the contradiction, they'll see no generalization will ever cover every case. Soundbite dismissed. And they are right, because Wyden also prefers litigation over innovation in some cases. Almost everyone prefers that, in specific cases. That's why it's a completely safe opinion to state.

I don't think he's being cynical. The points smell of rhetoric.

"We must be mindful of the precedents set" "Avoid collateral damage" "Promote innovation over litigation"

None of this is actionable against the legislation in it's current form. What you're doing is interpreting actions based on your own bias and joining the dots in your own mind as to what these things mean. You're not seeing the other side, which is frequently the problems with these debates.

Bottom line - I think his heart is in the right place, I just don't see these points as being particularly poignant given the context in which they are being seen from the other side of the debate.

His 4 points are MILES closer to common sense than the majority of what was said at that committee hearing. It sounds obvious to us.. and the committee hearing sounded insane to us.

Wyden's been consistently on the right side of this stuff, he's been an outspoken advocate of Net Neutrality for years.

I don't understand how people can see the complete disgrace that is SOPA, NDAA, and the myriad of other broken laws and think that getting the government more involved in the internet is a good thing. Especially when the problem doesn't exist yet, this preemptive regulation is dangerous. Instead of advocating net neutrality, lets wait till these horrible abuses happen and then decide if we want the government involved.

The Internet is already heavily regulated. Specifically, the problem with letting the "market" sort out net neutrality issues, is that most places have granted franchises to only one or two broadband providers. Since this effectively makes real competition illegal, there must be "balancing" regulations to prevent abuse of the customers.

Some ISPs already throttle certain protocols, and some were forging reset packets to drop connections they didn't want on their networks. Others are on record wanting to charge Youtube for each gigabyte of video they delivered to a customer. We can pass consumer-protection regulation now instead of waiting for ISPs to implement their stated plans.

I think it'd be better to advocate that we remove the government granted monopolies and handouts than try to add piles of red tape to the internet, and open it up for censorship and other controls by special interests.

Which government granted monopolies and handouts, specifically?

In many municipalities cable companies are granted a monopoly.

http://www.fff.org/freedom/0598d.asp http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/cable-franchise-ref...

In "many", yeah, but that's more a product of market forces than anything else. I happen to have negotiated one of these contracts from the municipal side, and we didn't have a monopoly, we played the companies against each other, because we were an attractive enough market to do so.

You're proposing more state/federal oversight to insure that municipalities don't give away monopoly rights?

What recourse do your constituents have if they have different criteria for picking an ISP than you did? Why remove the "market forces" in the first place?

Typically, monopolies are granted in exchange for running service to unprofitable customers, anyone who wouldn't normally be connected. So those consumers are pretty undeniably better off. If there isn't something like that in the offing, competent town leadership would presumably use their attractive market position to make cable companies compete to provide service.

You do know that without the "government granted monopolies and handouts" there never would have been an Internet in the first place, right? Even putting aside the research dollars, AT&T would have, among other things, happily strangled the (end user) modem in its cradle had they been allowed to.

Yeah, after we get a bunch of entrenched interests dependent on the practice, it'll be much easier to change things than if we had outlawed it to begin with.

If you're in favor of anti-trust regulation, you're in favor of net neutrality. The rest of your post is a red herring, all you need for SOPA is the commerce clause. If we posit that that's not going away, all fundamental questions of "more/less government" are really beside the point.

I'm not in favor of anti-trust legislation.

> lets wait till these horrible abuses happen and then decide if we want the government involved.

In other words, wait until the RIAA/MPAA/etc negotiate a functional equivalent of SOPA with the major ISPs and payment networks and then decide whether or not not legislation about it is needed? Doesn't sound that different from passing SOPA and seeing how it works out, does it?

For easier dictation to congressional aides over the phone:

http://tinyurl.com/wyden-sopa

He's a Senator, not a congressman. Although both chambers are "Congress", the title Congressman refers to a member of the U.S. House only.

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