"Since then, we've heard legitimate concerns about the impact the bill could have on access to the Internet and about a potentially unreasonable expansion of the federal government's power to impact the Internet. Congress should listen and avoid rushing through a bill that could have many unintended consequences."
Actually, Sen. Rubio and his colleagues got played by the RIAA and MPAA. They were likely told that the "Internet" supported the bill (GoDaddy) and that the scope was limited to foreign sites. Further, incompetent and/or corrupt staff told him it was ok to support. The way it works, most tech staff on the Hill don't actually understand the technology, and also want to lobby for Big Copyright someday.
The result: "no controversy." But I think there's possible lasting damage for the RIAA and MPAA's reputation in Washington, people got burned by this bill.
>much of it occurring overseas through rogue websites in China.
What?
I'm seeing the rhetoric here quickly shifting to "overseas", we're trying to stop "overseas" piracy.
That is so ill-defined. Does overseas mean it's hosted overseas? That it transits through overseas? That the founders are located overseas? The registrar? What if it's on a CDN? What if its a US based company that has datacenters overseas? What if it's a UK company that has US based datacenters?
Make no mistake. The entire site blocking mechanism of this legislation was always intended to target foreign websites. The broad overreaching scope that ignores due process and the DNS provisions, the part everyone has been mad and vocal about are the products of this. But the intent has always been to stop foreign sites.
The Pirate Bay has been the slipperiest fish to tangle with. Every attempt they have made to stop or block it, including alleged manipulation and influence of Swedish courts and law have failed. Because it's a foreign website and we have no jurisdiction over it. So they crafted this law with the intent to have the ability to block Americans from viewing it within America. The way it's worded, it's able to block anything else, too.
So since the outcry and the backlash, they have shifted their narrative to explicitly spotlight those dirty evil foreign interests. But I don't believe for a second that it was never the original goal.
It's called building up a precedent. It's like when a patent troll goes after a bunch of small fish (possibly setting favorable legal precedent along the way), then tries to use that momentum to go after a big fish, using the failure of all the small fish to adequately defend themselves as 'proof' that the big fish are should just give them a bunch of money.
If you go after the big fish first, then a large, competent legal team may just blow you out of the water. Not only that, they may set a legal precedent (that is damaging to you) in the process.
Because ICE has no jurisdiction. All of the ICE take downs are only for sites that sell physical goods (bootlegs, counterfeits, etc.) to people in the States.
I noticed that in the MPAA speech too. Copyright is a social construct, not a fundamental truth. It's not really American's place to set the social standards for other countries.
The rhetoric about SOPA and PIPA has always been centered around foreign piracy. The reasoning is very simple: domestic piracy can already be stopped through the DMCA. "Overseas piracy" is basically just defined as any piracy the DMCA can't stop, because it's not within the United States' legal jurisdiction to do so.
Unlike the DMCA, which seeks to stop domestic IP abuse, the point of SOPA and PIPA are to create barriers between foreign IP pirates and domestic consumers, by requiring domestic gateways (which are under US jurisdiction) to police and filter them out.
Yup. Translation from CongressSpeak: "Lamar Smith (head of Judiciary Committee) had rigged everything just right, but we got caught out, folks, and now there's too much shit flying 'round. Reid, dude, let's wait a month or two and come back when nobody is watching, ok? Don't worry, we'll still cash those cheques."
Lamar Smith is a Representative and not a Senator. His committee has nothing to do with PIPA. If you're going to win this battle, then you need to get your facts correct.
While you are correct about him being a Representative, I don't see anyone saying he did PIPA. He is, however, the one who came out with SOPA, being the House Judiciary Committee Chairman.
Anyhow, I tried to bump you out of grey. It is important to have our facts straight.
The way it will work is the movie and recording industry groups will start pouring in money into party coffers. That should really read "continue pouring...", actually.
The bill will be split into smaller chunks and added as riders to completely unrelated, must-pass spending like the annual Medicare "doc fix", and passed at the end of the session over a two day period along with 1500 other bills. If there's substantial public opposition, and really there won't be because they're passing 60,000 pages of legislation in a couple days on the way out of town, the leadership of both parties will sit down and figure out who needs to vote against it to keep his seat. Amazingly the bill will pass by one vote in both houses, with all the members in a tough reelection fight voting against.
If the blow back is surprisingly bad the Congressmen who voted for it will say "Aw, jeez, I really didn't want to vote for it, but I couldn't allow the Medicare bill to be jeopardized by this one little thing. You don't hate grandma, do you? There's plenty of time to fix it in the next session." Of course the fix will be tied up by procedural moves and then watered down into a runny legislative paste if they can't bury it altogether.
And there you have it. Another piece of crap legislation paid for and passed with the least political impact. You can't say these guys don't know what they're doing.
Politicians are getting the message (which to them, may just be that dropping support is a quick and easy way to gain popularity with its younger constituents)
PIPA is the Senate version of the bill and Rubio is a Senator. He does not have a vote on SOPA. If both passed then they would need to be reconciled into a single bill.
> How many of them will drop support because it's the right thing to do vs. the political thing to do?
Hopefully the same number who initiated support because it was the political thing to do in the first place.
The better question to ask: who in congress has both read and understand the implications of the bills? I'm inclined to think that number is ridiculously small.
I have come to feel this is unrealistic... politics happen. Right and Wrong are mostly subjective..... they always will be..... an entire nation can slowly be turned to accept wholesale genocide as "right".
Whether they chose on their own or based on political pressure from constituents, the public at large needs to be more aware and engaged in what the people they elect are up to if they want to be heard. staying silent and expecting everyone to do what you think is right is not realistic.... though you, of course, try to elect someone who will.
I think he realized how ridiculous Sen.Harry Reid is saying that this bill is all about jobs when in fact the one sector that will mostly affected by this is tech. which is known for creating jobs
Could that be because the Tech industry was pretty much excluded from the committee hearings?