Ask HN: Hate SOPA? What technological solutions do you propose?

3 points·andrewhillman··6 comments

Techies have been extremely vocal about how bad SOPA is for the Internet. How about proposing an alternative with technology in mind?

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I don't think it's a technology issue. The US government needs to address SOPA as a trade issue, and work on establishing bilateral agreements with other countries. (i.e. piratesite.co.uk has been found in US court to be in violation of US copyright, UK needs to enforce the ruling, and vice-versa).

I'm of the opinion that asking that question is almost akin to asking what technological solution should be used to give Russian organized crime your credit card numbers, if malware with a keylogger in it is bad. I don't think the problem SOPA purports to address is a legitimate problem, and to the extent that it might be, plausible solutions to it that don't involve setting more reasonable priorities would be bigger problems.

Ron Conway seems to think there's a solution within technology (2:45 mark of this clip) http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/18/tctv-live-at-sf-vs-sopa-the...

I've been more considering technological solutions to the problem of governmental reform. The machinery of government could use some repairs.

Piracy is not a big enough problem to deserve a legislative solution.

Yeah! The second part of a prima facie case for policy change is to show that the proposed solution solves the problem. The third part is to show that the proposed solution doesn't cause more problems than it solves. That would be "cost/benefit analysis".

Show us that a problem exists, that someone gets harmed, and how much that harm amounts to. And please, don't use propaganda techniques. You'll just look bad.

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