Dear Lamar Smith & House Judiciary: Have You Learned Nothing From SOPA? | Hacker News Reader

Dear Lamar Smith & House Judiciary: Have You Learned Nothing From SOPA?

techdirt.com

45 pointscasemorton29 comments

> In other words, they did the exact opposite of what the SOPA experience told them they should do.

No, from a strategic point of view, they did exactly what the SOPA experience told them they should do. Which is that if a generous contributor wants a possibly controversial bill passed, it has to be done as quickly and as quietly as possible. Or at least quickly enough to leave no time for an opposition movement to gather some serious momentum.

Exactly. Lamar Smith is even going to get reelected. Some lesson.

I wonder - how comes one idiot can put to work so many people?

How the heck does a bill pass silently? If you're in congress, isn't it your friggen JOB to check the agenda every day? How hard is that? Can you just magically say "okay by the way we're voting on this right now" when your buddies are around and the other team's people arent?

You are assuming that either team red or team blue didn't want the bill to pass. By "silently", I think nickolai meant without any media fanfare.

It's time the tech industry got proactive in stopping this.

If there was a campaign for statutory licensing for streaming videos (in the same way there are statutory licenses for streaming music) then the MPAA would be forced to play defence instead of constant attack.

Remember when SOPA occurred the biggest problem in Washington was that the tech lobby had no counter proposal. It's time to fix that.

The problem is that the true tech counter is 'leave the Internet the hell alone and let progress take its course', and an organization where success is measured by amount of rules imposed on the world can never understand this concept. Any proposal that is politically palatable has to kowtow to controlling the spread of information, and is thus just supporting competing regressive interests.

> The problem is that the true tech counter is 'leave the Internet the hell alone and let progress take its course'

Right. Can we put that into some sort of legislative form that would have to be overturned in order for the MPAA and friends to have it's way? Some sort of net-freedom legislation?

Lofty ideals of freedom are always overridden by immediate tangible exceptions. Constitutional amendments are supposed to be immune from lesser statutes, but yet most of the Bill of Rights has been deprecated.

Which leaves us with the very specific decriminalization of copyright infringement. I don't know how you're going to get any popular support behind that, given that much of even the tech community is unable to see the fundamental contradiction between communication and copyright (with many startups basing their business around the restricted flow of information!).

I think effort is better spent writing software to make the politics moot, but good luck to you!

>the Bill of Rights has been deprecated.

Things aren't so black and white. You could argue that we should be allowed to yell fire in a crowded building, but most people agree that should be discouraged.

As for all information should be free, obviously you would have an exception to restrict the flow of your private information. And then what is considered private...

"Fire!" has nothing to do with the speech, and everything to do with the induced actions. The first amendment is also a terrible example, as it foolishly says 'congress shall make no law', and thus has little meaning to begin with. An actual example is how civilians are prohibited automatic weapons but meanwhile they're standard issue to individuals in the military. People would like to think USG is bound by logical rules and so invent complexities to cloud their understanding, but the fundamental truth is that a straightforward, simplistic reading of the Bill of Rights shows that it has little bearing on modern society.

As to copying, the problem lies in trying to restrict the flow of information between two consensual parties based on some notion of third party control. This arises from privacy (that you're trying to assert would not exist). As actual policing of private copying is impossible, we end up with selective enforcement based on bad luck or personal vendettas, which is immoral. Reality should drive the model, not vice versa.

Native Americans tried that about 150 years ago and it didn't turn out well at all.

Let's think about something for second: The MPAA was originally started way back when in response to threats from Washington about wanting to regulate motion picture content.

The intent of the MPAA film ratings system is to be self-policing on the industry the group lobbies for. Obviously time and modernity has seen their raison d'être evolve into something even more self-interested and defensive than for visible public benefit, but why can't Google, Wikipedia et al do something similar?

I'm thinking of like campaigns designed to educate people about not just CC, GPL, but all kinds of copyright, attribution norms, and what not.

And yeah, Google and the rest should probably include some stuff that is just obviously flagrant piracy in things like Panda updates, filtering mechanisms, etc without being asked. (gasp, horror of horrors, I know)

They should NEVER be forced to, but they should be proactive about it, show that they are, and like the MPAA did once upon a time show Washington, Hollywood, and the rights holders they can police themselves fine without Government intervention.

Smith can go away tomorrow. The IP lobby is not. These people are embedded into the U.S. DOJ and elsewhere. It's not going to stop.

*edits for punctuation, line breaks

From the other thread: "The bill has been held already after two SOPA opponents-turned-cosponsors of this bill withdrew under fire, led by Ernesto Falcon of Public Knowledge and much of the activist anti-SOPA crowd. Total time since word first broke: ~2 days. These things /can/ move quickly, which is why I'm paying attention to it for the startup community.

We're engaging with Rep. Issa and Chaffetz's office to express our continued concerns.

Contact Troy Stock at Rep. Chaffetz's office $firstname.$lastname@mail.house.gov

I don't have a staff contact yet for Rep. Issa's office, but I'll update when I do.

I'll note that the startup community fucked up.

We had a decent opportunity to knock out Smith in the primary. We failed to engage. We lost $350k, left it on the table, when a PAC approached local organizers, offered the money if we had been able to identify 15,000 potential Lamar Smith opponents in the district. Campaigning 101.

We were raising money for ads, and failed to do this basic foundational work, meaning we failed to get the money, which knocked off at least one major incumbent in Texas that day (Silvestre Reyes).

As it is, know how much SOPA was worth? Five percentage points, with Lamar going from 83% in '10 to 77% in '12 during the primary.

EDIT: Look for an update today from TechDirt, assuming Masnick can confirm on the record our reports that the bill has been held from further action at this time.

EDIT2: Also, the IP Attache bill is apparently near-copies of pages 70-78 of SOPA, though I haven't verified this."

All legislation is essentially fund-raising at this point.

Lamer Smith has probably learned that he can get more money out of RIAA/MPAA by almost succeeding than actually succeeding, but I'm a cynic.

I seriously doubt his constituents even know what he's up to.

Exactly! It's not about his constituents.. It hasn't been one person, one vote for a long time. Money talks...

Going to be blunt. We can't keep this up every time a new bill appears. At some point, we are going to get exhausted and he will win. I think it is us who haven't learned anything. Instead of getting upset, we should be focused on funding his opponent and getting him out of office. He is going to do what he is going to do because his electorate is okay with it.

UPVOTE this if you believe in changing things or DON't if you want to whine.

> UPVOTE this if you believe in changing things or DON't if you want to whine.

Kindly leave that crap on Facebook.

No. I am sick of seeing these posts on here. Stop complaining over and over again. It is childish. If you don't like the bills coming across the line, put down your macbook pro, and go out and start making calls and getting people to vote differently.

If you are here to complain on a weekly basis, then yea, take it to Facebook.

If you try to tell me how to use my votes, I'll downvote you.

As for your comment, in a perfect world that would be what we should do. But thanks to gerrymandering, he's never going to be voted out of office.

Trying to out-fund Lamar Smith will only escalate the battle (which we cannot win). We must instead focus on de-funding him much like Rush Limbaugh has been abandoned by his sponsors.

There are a lot of millionaires and billionaires in the business world discussed on HN. An organized lobbying effort could indeed be a contender against the forces motivating Mr. Smith. I read a story of a study in the last couple of years that calculated the lobbying cost of some big vote was in the very low 5-figures.

This will fundamentally change nothing. You are basically using the same (money) tactics as the persons you oppose and therefore part of the problem of the entanglement of money and politics. The fact that you are "justified" or "right" in your political stance doesn't change that.

Real change, I fear, will have to be sought in your elective processes. And it will undoubtedly be a long and painful process.

Dear America, Have you had enough of your Government yet?

I would argue, it's not about the government. It's about how American politics has become so mutated and corrupt...

There are three stages in your reintegration... There is learning, there is understanding, and there is acceptance.

Well, not to be blunt, but going back a 100 years or so gives me records of senators openly complaining that some of their highly esteemed colleagues have been put in their seats by the railway companies or companies dependent on tariff walls.

And it kind of begs the question, why doesn't it ever change? It seems to me that at the end of the day the majority is not dissatisfied enough to do away with election spending, adding pork to bills, the super-pacs etc or to at least alter the elective process in any fundamental way.

What is there for him to learn from? He's still getting lobbyist money, and we're still not doing anything about it.

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