Everything's about to go down the tubes.

Fail. The internet will simply move abroad, and then you will have to promise it a tax cut incentive to return.

BrynnMacFlynn: I do like the suggestion someone made on another site--the instant this gets passed, start bombarding the ISP's with requests to block government websites.

A more effective method would be to target opposing motion picture and music companies.

The internet is designed to route around damage. Censorship is a form of damage. Things will change, but the internet will continue.

BrynnMacFlynn: I do like the suggestion someone made on another site--the instant this gets passed, start bombarding the ISP's with requests to block government websites.


as well as every single company that is working to get this passed or has come out publicly in support of this bill.

starsrift: A more effective method would be to target opposing motion picture and music companies.

I doubt Time Warner is going to block themselves.

It's adorable when old people think they can in any way shape or form stop online content they disapprove of. This is so ridiculously unenforceable as to be laughable.

Good luck stopping someone with even the most basic understanding of how the internet functions. Right now off the top of my head I can think of a dozen ways around this law.

BurnShrike: The internet is designed to route around damage. Censorship is a form of damage. Things will change, but the internet will continue.

An over simplification but basically this.

Heh, i just see the Internet spreading even more beyond the US, with the US being cut off completely and being isolated if this passes. All the big Companies relying on the internet, google for instance, would Completely pull out of the US and setup in other countries, funding connectivity expansion to the rest of the globe. A map of internet activity of the globe will have the same image for america as the satellite pics for north korea at night, Everything around it brightly lit (even china having some lighting) and a Dark spot right where the US is.

Just think of all the Jobs and People they'll drive out of the US then. So much for your economy.

Impasse: I doubt Time Warner is going to block themselves.

Don't deal much with bureaucracy, do you?

BurnShrike: The internet is designed to route around damage. Censorship is a form of damage. Things will change, but the internet will continue.

Cute, but it misses the most important point: what changes do we need to make? How do we create a naming system that isn't vulnerable to these kinds of attacks?

Smoking GNU: Heh, i just see the Internet spreading even more beyond the US, with the US being cut off completely and being isolated if this passes. All the big Companies relying on the internet, google for instance, would Completely pull out of the US and setup in other countries, funding connectivity expansion to the rest of the globe. A map of internet activity of the globe will have the same image for america as the satellite pics for north korea at night, Everything around it brightly lit (even china having some lighting) and a Dark spot right where the US is.

Just think of all the Jobs and People they'll drive out of the US then. So much for your economy.


China has more internet users than the US has people.

censored internet, but still

Smoking GNU: Heh, i just see the Internet spreading even more beyond the US, with the US being cut off completely and being isolated if this passes.

So, we'll be China without the economic power*. Joy.



*aka Best Korea

It really is horrifying that our elected officials are certain they know more than anyone with experience in the field on every issue. Sure, they need a page's help to figure out how to get songs on their iPod, but they totally know how the internet operates and how easy it is to identify copyright infringement vs. fair use and the ability of the host to identify copyrighted materials being uploaded/linked to from their site.

Though to be fair, they know they don't know enough of the details to write these laws: that's why they let lobbyists do it for them and then tell them what it says.

t3knomanser: Cute, but it misses the most important point: what changes do we need to make? How do we create a naming system that isn't vulnerable to these kinds of attacks?

Who needs DNS? It's purely a system to make it easier for humans to navigate the internet. If we scrapped the entire system and built something else not one core router in the world would have to be reconfigured.

t3knomanser: Don't deal much with bureaucracy, do you?

whut? The whole point of Big Media drifting into the ISP realm is so that they can narrow its use to only provide their content while blocking (or throttling) whatever else they feel like. You think the Comcast/Netflix thing was about bandwidth?

They should just put SOPA and a bill banning the idea of "net neutrality" together and pass it all at once. If they want to kill the internet in America, just do it all at once to so we don't have to worry about it.

Then, after 30 years, they'll reverse their decision...well after the damage has been done.

s1ugg0: Who needs DNS?

Who said anything about DNS? We need a naming system, but it doesn't have to be DNS. It will need to be DNS-like, because DNS has such deep penetration; we'll need something that is compatible with DNS at a protocol level.

Impasse: whut?

Do you remember when Fox News sued Fox Network over content that aired on the Simpsons? And then sheepishly realized that they were suing themselves? That's whut I'm talking about. If you don't believe that TimeWarner could be induced to block content from TimeWarner, you're underestimating the power of institutional incompetence.

serial_crusher: I was really hoping this article would have a list of "series of tubes"-esque quotes.

For bringing that up, expect a series of tubgirls in your email.

t3knomanser: serial_crusher: I was really hoping this article would have a list of "series of tubes"-esque quotes.

For bringing that up, expect a series of tubgirls in your email.

Now that's just mean. And lulzy.

t3knomanser: Do you remember when Fox News sued Fox Network over content that aired on the Simpsons?

Well, no, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened. But I still doubt TW is going to be that incompetent as to block themselves, at least for a significant period of time.

Was listening to this for about 5 hours yesterday. One rep on the judiciary panel had the audacity to send this out during the debate.


Which then Shelia Jackson read the tweet out loud during the debate, and called it offensive. Then someone objected to the language and demanded that the word offensive be removed from the record. They argued about this and exactly what was said so they had to call the stenographer up to read the exact content. After a small debate the language was adjusted to something else.

Surprisingly Rep Issa (R) from California had quite a few good arguments and amendments proposed to fix the legislation but they were all shot down handily.

Lastly, whenever confronted with expert analysis of the proposed law, most members of the panel broke into the IANAN defense (I Am Not A Nerd...this was said about 20+ times while I listened) and then accused either the expert or the person reading it of not being tough on intellectual property theft.

/Yes I am a bit light on work right now...

I hate to deflate your outrage, Subby, but they do distinguish them: When he proposed another amendment to target the restrictions not at IP addresses (which, as he noted, can be dynamic and assigned to toasters) but at domain names, it fell just as easily.

Are the usual authoritarian troll shere yet?

Smoking GNU: Heh, i just see the Internet spreading even more beyond the US, with the US being cut off completely and being isolated if this passes. All the big Companies relying on the internet, google for instance, would Completely pull out of the US and setup in other countries, funding connectivity expansion to the rest of the globe. A map of internet activity of the globe will have the same image for america as the satellite pics for north korea at night, Everything around it brightly lit (even china having some lighting) and a Dark spot right where the US is.

Just think of all the Jobs and People they'll drive out of the US then. So much for your economy.

Every morning this week I have seen a commercial on Fox and Friends urging people to call congress and support SOPA to protect American jobs. What utter bull shiat.

Wyalt Derp: Fail. The internet will simply move abroad, and then you will have to promise it a tax cut incentive to return.

exactly THIS. I hope the MPAA suddenly starts generating the economy changing money to make up for our loss as the leader of the online world.

I said it about birth control/personhood and I'll say it here: People who don't know anything about an issue have no business legislating it.

I don't know about you guys, but when I find a goose that's been laying golden eggs, I fark it in the ass until it's dead and leave it laying in a ditch.

None of my representatives are on the committee. I urge everyone else to check if their reps are.

BrynnMacFlynn: I do like the suggestion someone made on another site--the instant this gets passed, start bombarding the ISP's with requests to block government websites.

I like the cut of your jib.

YouHaveDownloaded.com, however, is showing that the bill's supporters aren't so innocent. TorrentFreak, a BitTorrent blog, recently revealed that IP addresses seemingly coming from Sony Pictures, Universal and Fox had been illegally downloading content, ZDNet reported.

An IP address in the U.S. Sony Pictures address range was reported to have downloaded music and the Conan the Barbarian film, while a US Universal IP address was allegedly caught downloading Cowboys and Aliens and the first season of the HBO show Game of Thrones. A US Fox IP address was allegedly caught downloading the J.J. Abrams film Super 8.

Now that's a sticky situation: All three companies are members of AFACT, a coalition of companies fighting copyright infringements.

mrspock42: Surprisingly Rep Issa (R) from California had quite a few good arguments and amendments

I think that's the first time I've read the words "good" and "Issa" in the same sentence (when it wasn't something like "Rep Issa needs a good cockpunch")

Just put the content behind 7 Proxies.

SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, is a bill that, in the name of preventing online piracy of copyrighted work, creates a horrifyingly large censorship authority for the Internet. Among other things, it requiresservice providers (which have come out opposing the bill) to block access to entire sites if a user on the site is accused of copyright infringement.

That cannot possible be true, can it? By that logic, the first time some user puts up ten seconds of some movie to youtube, the entire site would be taken down for everybody. For that matter, it wouldn't have to be copyrighted material, it'd just have to be something the RIAA says is copyrighted. That'd be like locking the front doors to a 7-11 because one single kid was accused of stealing a piece of candy - whether he did or not.

Theaetetus: I hate to deflate your outrage, Subby, but they do distinguish them: When he proposed another amendment to target the restrictions not at IP addresses (which, as he noted, can be dynamic and assigned to toasters) but at domain names, it fell just as easily.

Pretty sure it doesn't make me feel better that they voted the amendment down if they do know the differences but just don't care or don't want to make the distinction.

starsrift: BrynnMacFlynn: I do like the suggestion someone made on another site--the instant this gets passed, start bombarding the ISP's with requests to block government websites.

A more effective method would be to target opposing motion picture and music companies.

That's brilliant. Start a form letter that you independently published something that was stolen by a major studio. Send it out to all ISP's. If enough people do this (for their own works) it would wreak havoc.

Simply put, I like the cut of your sail.

Your country is completely buggered and unless you run a social anti-virus on it, good luck with the next 10 years.

/please don't drag us down with you
//oh shiat, it's already started.

006deluxe: Theaetetus: I hate to deflate your outrage, Subby, but they do distinguish them: When he proposed another amendment to target the restrictions not at IP addresses (which, as he noted, can be dynamic and assigned to toasters) but at domain names, it fell just as easily.

Pretty sure it doesn't make me feel better that they voted the amendment down if they do know the differences but just don't care or don't want to make the distinction.

Upon a second read, I'm not sure I like that amendment anyway.

Karac: That cannot possible be true, can it? By that logic, the first time some user puts up ten seconds of some movie to youtube, the entire site would be taken down for everybody. For that matter, it wouldn't have to be copyrighted material, it'd just have to be something the RIAA says is copyrighted. That'd be like locking the front doors to a 7-11 because one single kid was accused of stealing a piece of candy - whether he did or not.

By that logic

that logic

logic

logic

_^logic

Snapper Carr: mrspock42: Surprisingly Rep Issa (R) from California had quite a few good arguments and amendments

I think that's the first time I've read the words "good" and "Issa" in the same sentence (when it wasn't something like "Rep Issa needs a good cockpunch")

Yup that's what I thought as well, but he appears to know one or two things about internet architecture, which is one or two things more than the whole judiciary panel rubber-stamping the law.

magores: China has more internet users than the US has people.

censored internet, but still

Ah, but they still aren't at the 30% use mark yet. In fact, they are slightly above the World average, which includes third-world shiatholes. The US is just under 80% use, and I think even that number is too low, because it doesn't include people like my father, who doesn't own a computer or smart phone, but who occasionally uses the internet at my house when he wants to look something up.

People forget that despite the huge advances China has made in the past few decades, the overwhelming majority of the population are still dirt poor peasants.