Nancy Pelosi, Ron Paul join SOPA opposition

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/strange-bedfellows-nancy-pelosi-ron-paul-join-sopa-opposition.ars

by ajaymehta • 15 years ago

461 74 15 years ago

LeafStorm• 15 years ago

I don't think there was any doubt that Ron Paul would oppose SOPA. Nancy Pelosi's opposition, on the other hand, is somewhat surprising, but also quite promising.

bentlegen• 15 years ago

Nancy Pelosi represents the 8th Congressional District, which is basically San Francisco. She knows who her constituents are.

thomasgerbe• 15 years ago

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Bay-Area-Reps-Slam-Obam...

javert• 15 years ago

Is there any real chance she could fail to get re-elected?

I suspect some other reason for her stance on this (can't fathom what, though).

jessedhillon• 15 years ago

That's the wonderful thing about SOPA -- there's something for everyone to hate in it.

rbanffy3• 15 years ago

I wish all nasty legislation had this...

nextparadigms2• 15 years ago

I expected Ron Paul to oppose it, too. He was also one of the very few who opposed the persecution of Wikileaks.

ceejayoz• 15 years ago

Predicting Ron Paul's opposition of legislation is hardly prescient. Heh.

orblivion• 15 years ago

A guy who praised a leak of secret government documents, running for president and beating half the other contenders, just blows my mind.

cookiecaper2• 15 years ago

As bentlegen indicated, Pelosi serves something of a different demographic. In fact, I think Democrats as a whole will consider this bill more carefully than Republicans because the Democratic base skews much younger and technologically inclined. Republicans don't have much to lose on this front since most of their base doesn't really know how to use the internet.

statictype• 15 years ago

since most of their base doesn't really know how to use the internet

Neither do I identify myself as republican, nor do I support this bill in anyway but these are the types of sweeping statements that make it difficult to have any sort of rational conversation.

(Frankly, I think this whole topic seems like exactly the type of thing that shouldn't be on HN. I flagged it for whatever that's worth)

johnnyjustice• 15 years ago

This is very interesting news, but I am scared that there will be a bit of a backlash against this post because of its political nature, on HN specifically.

How do people feel about Ron Paul's standpoint on Net Neutrality?

JeremyBanks• 15 years ago

Discussion of specific points of Ron Paul's beliefs has always seemed a little pointless to me. If you understand the basic things he cares about, you can accurately guess what his opinion and explanation on almost everything will be. So any discussion of a specific topic is either shallow or derailed into a much broader political discussion.

It doesn't feel productive.

spenrose• 15 years ago

WRT this topic, I tend to agree with you. But Ron Paul is not some Valley Libertarian. Did you know that Ron Paul doesn't believe in evolution?: http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/08/29/307010/the-cont...

More broadly: http://www.tnr.com/article/94477/ron-paul-distorted-libertar...

plainOldText2• 15 years ago

His standpoint is consistent with other libertarian views he has. No regulation. The Internet has worked fine without regulation for so many years. And if your carrier/isp is throttling your connection, switch to a different one.If many people switch then they'll stop throttling. Simple as that.

chrischen• 15 years ago

Only problem is many people, like me, cannot actually switch. Comcast is the only provider in my apartment. No DSL company would hook me up and no other cable company has wires in here.

sp3322• 15 years ago

The Internet has worked fine without regulation for so many years.

Ummmm, no. Markets are segregated and each municipality grants a franchise to a specific company. Most markets in the USA have one cable company, one phone company, plus maybe some wireless and satellite coverage.

ISPs have been given billions of dollars in federal subsidies. Also, there are strings attached to every one of those dollars.

The FCC and FTC have pretty restrictive regulations regarding spectrum usage, how much power you can push over phone lines, etc.

There is a lot of regulation on the internet in the USA, which is why we can't let the market settle the Net Neutrality issue.

rayiner3• 15 years ago

The internet is the product of a government project and has been heavily regulated since its inception.

nickik2• 15 years ago

I think his view is consistent but I disagree. The principal for me is a ISP can not treat diffrent packages diffrent if the pay the same. The should be allowed to offer high speed low latency connection if the wish to.

From a libaralist perspectiv I would argue it like this. The packages you send on the net are your property, the ISP is not allowed to look into it just like I don't want my letters to be opend and treated diffrently if somebody thinks what I wrote is not to importend. The ISP is only allowed to look at the header.

This is a good model for everybody. ISP can offer for example a flatrate that is not to fast and offer some high speed threwput witch you could use for VoIP.

Gormo2• 15 years ago

> How do people feel about Ron Paul's standpoint on Net Neutrality?

I think he has a fairly pro-Net-Neutrality standpoint, which is to say that he opposes legislation that nominally intends to preserve net neutrality while, in practical terms, actually would create a significant threat to the same.

NathanKP• 15 years ago

Has anyone yet made a serious estimate of how likely SOPA is to pass?

I would hope that if our legislative system is so divided that they can't agree on legislation relating to budgets or healthcare, they won't agree on this legislation either.

Not that its a good thing for the legislation system to be so ineffective, but it would seem truly ironic if they agree on something that will hurt the economy, but not on things that will help the economy.

philwelch• 15 years ago

The House did manage to pass a bill upholding the status of pizza as a vegetable: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/18/us-usa-lunch-idUST...

tzs• 15 years ago

They did no such thing. That part of the bill concerned how much tomato paste has to be on the pizza for the tomato paste to be enough to count as a serving of vegetables. The USDA wants 8 tablespoons, and Congress wants 2.

zeruch• 15 years ago

I actually believe pizza as a vegetable is easier to buy than what SOPA portends (plus pizza had the "ketchup is a vegetable" precedent). For that reason, I think its passing will be more contentious.

rdl• 15 years ago

I am assuming it will pass, at this point; I'd be happy to fight it, but at this point I'd definitely be looking at how to mitigate the damage technically, challenge it in court, etc.

There is way more money lined up to support it vs. oppose it, so I suspect going into an election season, a lot of congresspeople will support it for financial reasons.

dennisgorelik2• 15 years ago

New legislation on average tends to hurt more than help.

Fortunately last couple of years US has government gridlock and that helps. A lot.

I hope gridlock in government would help again and SOPA bill would fail.

rayiner3• 15 years ago

This is not remotely true. You hear about the big ones, DMCA, PATRIOT, etc, but most legislation is routine stuff that keeps the country humming along.

Saying gridlock in government is a good thing is like saying gridlock in Google's management was a good thing. We need government and we need effective government.

r00fus• 15 years ago

You make the mistake of thinking the "representatives" in congress are there to represent citizens.

They are there to represent who put them there, their campaign donors (after Feingold and Grayson were defeated in 2010, there are now no congress-critters that refrain from corporate funding).

Their funders by-and-large want this bill to be passed. Whether it's the BSA or RIAA or Big Religion, everyone of those anti-Internet folks is thrilled to see the freedom aspect of the Internet being small enough to drown in a bathtub.

I have a sinking feeling this bill will pass.

Symmetry• 15 years ago

Health care is something that has been an issue in this country for a long time - so everybody already knows a lot of the arguments, has a firmly held position, and people's positions correspond to party lines which means there's more for politicians to gain by fighting over it.

IP stuff, by contrast, isn't something that legislators have strong pre-existing opinions on and its not a partisan issue. And because it doesn't really spend any new money there it can be neatly separated from the overwhelming complexity of the US federal budget and people's intense partisan positions on things like taxation.

Pointsly• 15 years ago

Love this. Thank God.

skrebbel• 15 years ago

Not so fast. I heard God is in favour of SOPA.

ck2• 15 years ago

In all seriousness, all we need is President Obama to say he is for SOPA and it will immediately be voted out of existence.

nextparadigms2• 15 years ago

Sadly, that won't happen, though. Obama and Biden are big supporters of RIAA and MPAA. They were the ones setting up the "voluntary" ISP alert system for people downloading illegal torrents, too.

jerfelix• 15 years ago

I missed your logic. If Obama is a big supporter of RIAA and MPAA, then why wouldn't he come out and say that he is for SOPA?

tomjen32• 15 years ago

That is not going to chang enuch I am afraid. We could always count on Ron Paul to vote against it but there are way too many people in the house for one vote to matter.

cookiecaper2• 15 years ago

The real question is, "Can Barack Obama stand to sign this bill when he relies so heavily on youthful support for election?" Also, "what happens if Republican nominee comes out against it?"

I don't hear much about Obama vetoes, does he just sign everything that hits his desk like Bush?

Nancy Pelosi, Ron Paul join SOPA opposition

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