Oregon Senator effectively kills Internet censorship bill

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/oregon-senator-vows-block-internet-censorship-bill/

by Scott_MacGregor • 16 years ago

189 38 16 years ago

rawstory.com

DevX101• 16 years ago

Send him a thank you for defending freedom of speech on the internet:

http://wyden.senate.gov/contact/

adammichaelc• 16 years ago

Sent. Good idea. Politicians normally only hear from us when we are mad. A nice twist.

aperiodic• 16 years ago

And, if you can at all spare it, donate to his campaign. We need people like this to stay in Washington.

http://www.standtallforamerica.com/

_delirium2• 16 years ago

Well, he did just win reelection two weeks ago (by a large margin), so isn't facing another election until 2016.

ComputerGuru• 16 years ago

Here's what I sent; please feel free to pick and choose. I hope this'll help anyone contemplating sending a letter but too busy to do so.

Dear Senator Wyden,

I would like to thank you for taking a stance for defending freedom of speech in a society that has forgotten what that phrase means. COICA is the digital equivalent of a lynching, allowing people in positions of power and favor to manipulate the internet and limit our freedoms, in the name of limiting piracy. Like similar measures in the past (such as the DMCA, which is the first to come to mind, but many others as well), it is a misguided attempt at reducing piracy at the cost of individual liberties; usually furthered by politicians who don't really understand the way the internet is run and the implications their decision/support would have, or else are trading the constitutionally-protected liberties and freedoms of their constituents in order to please big businesses across America.

We've seen with the DMCA that these measures, first and foremost, don't work. When treating a disease, doctors will try and treat the root cause - simply stifling the symptoms rarely works. But COICA goes even further, and we feel it is akin to treating a flu with radiation and chemotherapy. Thank you for saying "No" to a bill that would have been misused (the DMCA has a history of being used by businesses to shut down competitors and to limit Fair Use) and abused (people pushing through requests to companies and in local courts, taking advantage of the ignorance of many company owners as to their constitutionally protected rights and the definitions of Fair Use) to scare people and organizations alike into giving up their liberties.

Thank you for standing up to freedom in America.

While I'm not lucky enough to be one of your voters (as I do not reside in Oregon), I thank you all the same.

Sincerely,

xxxx

rakkhi• 16 years ago

Just did thanks for the text

m-photonic• 16 years ago

>COICA is the digital equivalent of a lynching

The analogy isn't obvious to me.

known• 16 years ago

I just did. Thanks for the url.

lepht• 16 years ago

Maybe I'm biased as a VT resident, but Leahy (as the co-sponsor of the bill) deserves a little shout-out, too:

http://leahy.senate.gov/contact/

joshes• 16 years ago

Sadly it appears as though the only legislation which unifies both sides of the political aisle (be it in favor of or against a given piece of legislation) is that which is completely asinine and backward. The seemingly basic bills are inevitably deadlocked in recent years.

Then again, that's not entirely unexpected.

nkassis• 16 years ago

I think this is mostly due to the low impact on votes that these kind so of bills have. These bills can usually go undetected.

<spam>I think this again shows that groups like the EFF are invaluable. Donate today! </spam>

_delirium2• 16 years ago

Yeah, sadly I don't think this is a priority for most of the public, and many who do have an opinion support the "shut down the pirates, whatever it takes" approach.

Take Wyden in particular: he just won reelection two weeks ago, 57-40%. If this sequence of events had taken place before the election, would he have won by a larger margin? I think it's unlikely. Probably it would've turned out the same, but if anything it's possible he would've done slightly worse, since his opponent could attempt to portray him as a pro-piracy "extremist" who blocked a bipartisan bill that had passed the relevant committee unanimously.

iwr• 16 years ago

Would this system block websites at the IP level or at the DNS level?

Doing it at the DNS level would mean you could roll your own DNS or use a non-US DNS provider.

Doing it at the IP level would mean banned IPs and reverse-lookups of IPs back into domain names, checking against a list of banned domains. This one could only be bypassed through proxies.

navyrain• 16 years ago

My understanding of it is that US nameservers couldn't resolve banned domains. Anyone with the tiniest bit of technical knowledge could use an untainted nameserver, or run their own. However, the spirit of the bill is terribly misguided, no matter how easy it is to circumvent.

tomjen33• 16 years ago

Thats exactly what they did with the free-speech filter in Denmark (which they said was only supposed to block child-porn). I know at least one dorm where the geeks just changed the DNS servers for everyone.

olefoo• 16 years ago

One of the downsides of allowing legislation like this that imposes compliance requirements on organizations is that it creates widespread law-breaking by the otherwise law-abiding. It can also inadvertently stifle key technical standards. Would you be willing to switch on DNSSEC validation in client side software (browsers, operating systems) if it only talks to nameservers that are compliant with government censorship?

Yes, this is a stupid law, but it's technical implementation is possible because there is a single root for public DNS.

tshtf• 16 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if this was a direct result of the Senator hearing from his constituents about this issue. Regardless, job well done!

flipbrad• 16 years ago

i wish i was a US citizen so I could send him a note of appreciation and some chocolates, or a box set of mad men, or something... this bill would have gone global (and might do, one day)

SkyMarshal• 16 years ago

Please do anyway. I'm sure he'd be gratified to know others outside the US are paying attention, care, and appreciate it. I would.

tmgrhm3• 16 years ago

I'm from England but I still sent him a short email in thanks. Just use something like 90210 for the zip code on the form.

corin_• 16 years ago

I already sent him a message from England, and depressingly 90210 was the first zip code to come into my mind too. (But went with 90017, last ZIP code I stayed in.)

laujen4• 16 years ago

Oregon is 97xxx just so you know :-)

tommi• 16 years ago

"Deploying this statute to combat online copyright infringement seems almost like using a bunker-busting cluster bomb, when what you need is a precision-guided missile," Wyden said.

As far as I understand the article does not explain Wyden doing anything else than saying that particular sentence. How is that effectively killing Internet censorship?

marcusestes• 16 years ago

Individual senators may place holds on legislation and there are only a few woking days left in the congressional calendar this year.

If it doesn't pass this year, it will have to be reintroduced by Lahey next year.

DanielBMarkham• 16 years ago

This is the part of the story where folks acknowledge how great the U.S. Senate is for allowing one member to block offending legislation.

But I doubt that will happen.

brown9-2• 16 years ago

So often the story is that the U.S. Senate has stupid rules that allow one member to block legislation when the legislation being blocked is thought of as a good thing - such as unemployment extension, aid to Haiti, etc.

So it cuts both ways. We should be careful about praising this rule too much since often we criticize it when we like the legislation being blocked.

laujen4• 16 years ago

That is a very good point. It seems like we forget the good uses when bad comes up. (Free speech has the same problem.)

jdp232• 16 years ago

Well done by Senator Wyden! The headline's a little too optimistic, though. The bill will be back next session -- and the new Congress is likely to be just as friendly to the content industries (who are driving the bill). So it's a great time to support Wyden, EFF and others who are on the right side of this issue.

tomjen33• 16 years ago

He was reelected right? So he can block it next congress too.

jdp232• 16 years ago

i'm not an expert on the processes, but i believe it only gets blocked for a finite period of time

laujen4• 16 years ago

Senator Wyden is a good man. I told this story in yesterdays post but I have a friend that used to take the same Portland to DC flights every Monday (to DC) and Friday (to PDX). senator Wyden, even though he had probably earned millions of frequent flyer miles, always sat in coach, always in the same spot.

If any of you were paying attention to the national health care debate, it was Wyden and then Senator Bennett's proposal before Obamacare that made the most sense. In fact we would be much better off if Congress would consider their changes instead of complete repeal.

Oregon Senator effectively kills Internet censorship bill

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