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Comment by lpolovets | Hacker News Reader

I know there's a lot of cynicism about whether SOPA law is really being abandoned, or whether it's just being temporarily shelved, but I'm really excited about how opponents have banded together, and how organizations like Reddit and Wikipedia have been willing to sacrifice page views and revenue to show their support and to increase public awareness.

In the future, when someone advocates opposing an unjust law and someone else responds that opposition is futile, the anti-SOPA efforts will serve as a compelling and encouraging counterargument.

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The politicians will claim it is dead, then name it something else or not name it anything at all and just tack it onto the end of some other legislation and pass it when no one is watching.

In the USA, they're bought and paid for.

they may be able to keep the people from knowing about it until it happens, but with all this outrage it seems unlikely they'll be able to keep it quiet after the fact. Then they'll have to answer to this behavior come election time.

They don't care. They honor those who buy the lobster dinners and give them 30 dollar cigars. When you vote them out, they'll have several six or seven figure cushy job offers to pick from.

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From wikipedia: In February 2011, despite "repeatedly and categorically insisting that he would not work as a lobbyist,"[22][23] [senator Chris] Dodd was identified by The New York Times as the likely replacement for Dan Glickman as chairman and chief lobbyist for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).[24] The hiring was officially announced on March 1, 2011.[25]

The individuals may end up with six/seven figure cushy jobs, but the party may still suffer long-term consequences.

When you're in politics, money is only good for one thing: buying votes. However, if a force stronger than free t-shirts and pens makes itself noticed, like mass-media reminding people how they got screwed, then interesting things can happen.

I think the main issue here with these people is that the Internet is not controlled so tightly as traditional media. And we are just starting to see the social effects.

the party may still suffer long-term consequences

Two party system, long term is only long enough for the other side to screw up, so 4 or 8 years tops.

That's what sucks. Everyone you pick from (except Ron Paul probably) doesn't really represent you. I think Obama had really good intentions, but then he ran up against reality aka Congress.

I can not imagine anyway in which Ron Paul could ever "represent" me.

I don't think he represents me, but I think he'd actually represent the values of the people who vote for him, which I think is more than I can say about any other candidates.

No he wouldn't. He would represent his own values which differ greatly from the vast majority of citizens.

And he would run into the exact same reality as Obama.

I just think that when Americans' main hope to reform their system is a 76 year old guy running for president, there is a bigger problem.

Granted, this guy is an ideologically pure multi term congressman loved by many people. But if Obama got gray hair from 4 years, I can only imagine what the congress is gonna do to this fiery fellow...

I wouldn't be so pessimistic about it and I'll tell you why.

In democracy the mass-media has traditionally played the role of a fourth branch of government. However in recent times the traditional mass-media companies ended-up too controlled, either by owners that are also in politics, by legislation, or by the sheer pressure of catering to shareholders. But if you think about it, the social changes that the Internet has brought are only starting to emerge.

So IMHO, meet the new fourth branch of government: the Internet. And surely Internet companies can still be controlled, but the Internet is much more ethereal than traditional mass-media ever was and now the whole world is watching. Hello from Romania ;)

I think this is exactly right, @bad_user. The extent to which this is true blew up last Thursday, when Arthur Brisbane, the public editor of the New York Times, went to his readers with a question:

"I'm looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge 'facts' that are asserted by newsmakers they write about."

As Clay Shirky observed, the response was "swift, voluminous, negative and incredulous."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/...

Within 24 Hours, Vanity Fair turned Brisbane from an object of outrage into one of sheer mockery.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/01/Should-emVani...

But the most damning remarks came from readers themselves. The comments on Brisbane's post, and the one from Executive Editor Jill Abramson that followed, were absolutely incandescent.

So yes, the total implosion of the 4th Estate is coming into the open. And that's a very new development. That other big difference is that 10,000 calls to a Senator's office is a lot. So what happens if they ALL get 1,000,000? It's an absolutely off-the-charts response. You know there's opposition. You expect a few grenades to be tossed. Instead, a thermonuclear bomb detonates.

It's entirely possible that the response to Wikipedia's move will be the single largest driver of negative traffic in the history of Washington DC. It's the kind of searing experience that tells previously complacent politicians that, suddenly, they've got a major electoral issue. And not just on this one bill, but on literally everything they do.

I agree with folks who say this cannot end with the derailment of SOPA/PIPA. It has to continue until the flow of campaign cash from lobbyists ends, and the revolving door is welded shut.

Hence the very hostile attitude towards the Internet in government, perhaps.

The real long term consequence that they're afraid of is pissing off enough people that they go form another party. It's happened before.

That strikes me as optimistic.

The most likely move is to slip this authority into a defense/anti-terror bill. It'd be a fairly straightforward exercise in legalese to create wording that grants the government the right to blacklist domains/addresses under the auspices of fighting terrorism.

And while the wording will suggest terrorism, it will be sub-defined to cover illegal enterprises in the aggregate and that, as they say, is the ballgame.

And when that version of the law gets attacked, the defense is the same straightforward jingoism and propaganda that has successfully fended off attacks on the recent, more-egregious intrusions into our liberty.

If people can't see past some flag-waving to get fired up about the executive having the explicit authority to bug your internet connection, search your car, attach a GPS tracker or even unilaterally declare you no longer deserving of your constitutional rights and bundle you off to secret prison, they're not going to see past it to get fired up about what the government might do to their websites.

PIPA is the thing to stop now.

They should capitalize on the momentum and create an organization that can get everyone mobilized quickly in the future.

Politicians kiss up to tiny groups just because they are somewhat influential...think of billions going to subsidies for farmers or even tiny 1 issue groups. Surely together, the tech community is much more influential than them.

I think you're describing moveon.org.

EDIT: I was unclear. "create an organization that can get everyone mobilized quickly in the future." From the wiki page of moveon.org: "They started by passing around a petition asking Congress to 'censure President Clinton and move on', as opposed to impeaching him." It was a single-issue online activism group that grew into an organization known for quickly mobilizing lots of people for political causes. I should have been more specific! :)

There's not a single mention of PIPA/SOPA on that site.

MoveOn.org is a blatantly left-wing organization, whereas supporters of a free Internet come from the left, the right, the center, and the north (Libertarians, if you're using the Nolan scale). Even if MoveOn.org were to embrace the tech community and Internet freedom, they support a whole boatload of other causes that many Internet freedom supporters, myself included, disagree with, and use rather tactless advertising strategies.

If we are going to start an organization dedicated to Internet freedom, it needs to be focused solely on that issue, or at least similar issues such as freedom of speech in the general sense, and not get into the other controversial topics like health care and foreign policy that have the potential to divide us.

You may joke, but I find the Internet to be more libertarian than anything else, and by that I don't necessarily mean the people on it, but how the Internet works.

not exactly, I'm talking more about a group like the NRA or AIPAC or NCAAP...something powerful enough where every presidential candidate has to come in and kiss up to get the group's approval.

Something where a candidate getting rated a C or D or F by the group, means the kiss of death in politics.

And something, with the following to get mobilized quickly to knee cap any bad legislation before it can even get out of committee.

The tech industry makes up a huge part of the GDP...but there is very little unified influence for people to respect it.

I've been on the mailing list for "savetheinternet.com" (run by "freepress.net") for a while now--they pre-date SOPA/PIPA.

Confusingly enough, they're sending out messages now reading "end the SOPA blackout!" that actually refer to the lack of media coverage of SOPA.

This organization is the EFF. If it can't do what you dream of, it's just an indicator that internet freedom is not a hot button issue for a large enough percentage of the electorate.

EFF is powerless, it needs the big tech companies to be it's muscle

SOPA can be left to die on the vine, which was less of a concern than the supporting industries and politicians having such powerful draw on our livelihoods. Whether SOPA, PIPA, etc are alive or not, acts like these -- Wikipedia, Reddit, etc blackouts -- or tech pundits -- Dan Kaminsky (DNS hacker) and Alexis Ohanian (Reddit.com co-founder) on national TV -- still need to happen; the general public needs to know of the grievous acts, passed or not, of industry and their politicians. Otherwise, as we continue to echo, these same groups will create a separate set of laws under another guise and continue to push their ideals.

It's not being abandoned. They are just using the same tactics as always.

* Push a dodgy law to the brink of a vote

* Get the opposers to bluster into obscurity

* Sneak the same legislation in under other laws/names later in the year.

(* Profit????)

They do this all the time.

Page views and revenues would keep to exists if SOPA snuff their site in the future. It's about looking for the long term.

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