How does SOPA threaten Stack Overflow?

http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/114005/133693

by sathyabhat • 15 years ago

380 74 15 years ago

meta.stackoverflow.com

bradleyland• 15 years ago

Did anyone ever think we'd see the day where we were using DMCA as an example of the preferrable alternative?

thirsteh• 15 years ago

Yes, but I'm a pessimist. Do I win anything? :(

Big media has scary pull in D.C.

rmc• 15 years ago

Yes, it's strange isn't it? But since the big media copyright lads want to go further than the DMCA, that would imply it was OK. And the USA has the DMCA now, how has the last 10 years been for internet freedom? Not too bad, so it probably wasn't that bad.

quanticle• 15 years ago

How much freer would the Internet have been if the DMCA had not been passed? Think of all the hours YouTube alone spends in policing itself and handling copyright takedown notices and imagine those hours spent improving YouTube or coming up with new video sharing services.

The current copyright regime is tolerable. Tolerable and good are worlds apart.

starwed• 15 years ago

The DMCA was a whole bundle of legislation, and some of its effects were highly desirable -- in particular the safe harbor provisions. Without those[1] sites like youtube could never have existed.

You can read about the various portions of it on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Ac...

Title I includes the anti-circumvention measures, which is what everyone loves to hate, but the act as a whole deals with a lot of other stuff. (Title V deals with copyright and boat hull designs, for instance!)

[1]Or something stronger, tis not like it was perfect!

bdhe• 15 years ago

Although some aspects of DMCA aren't bad, I believe this is also the Overton Window[1] in action. I wonder if all this outrage of SOPA might actually allow the Senate's Protect IP Act (PIPA) to pass "as a compromise".

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

ghurlman2• 15 years ago

Thanksgiving was the cutesy (but needed) Upgrade Your Parents' Browser Day.

$winter_holiday_of_choice should include a Explain SOPA To Your Parents Lunch or something - we need to get as many level-headed against SOPA as possible.

canadiancreed• 15 years ago

Especially since that demographic will probably be the ones that would support candidates that support this bill. Showing what is lost, especially in the freedom area would be a big boost....assuming they want to learn that is.

BoppreH• 15 years ago

Funny how people use "$winter_holiday_of_choice" to avoid religious bias, but end up ignoring the literal half of the planet where the holiday happens during summer. Not complaining, just pointing out the futility of the exercise.

It would have made sense if SOPA was an American problem, but as it stands it threatens the internet for the whole world because of hosting locations and origin of technology companies.

roc2• 15 years ago

> "Not complaining, just pointing out the futility of the exercise."

So you're saying we should go with $solstice_holiday_of_choice ?

Just because they didn't abstract sufficiently doesn't mean that abstraction is necessarily futile.

flyingyeti• 15 years ago

I'm used to seeing a close button on these types of messages on Stack Overflow. Kind of a nuisance to have it stuck there even after I've signed the petition. Maybe if it were a different color, or I hadn't been trained to read all of the yellow status messages on each SO page, it would be less annoying..

kvermeer• 15 years ago

The system messages don't have a close button, they're usually used for important site status updates such as "There will be a short network wide outage starting on date at time for system maintenance".

The use of the tool for memorials to Steve Jobs or for political messages like this is extremely rare.

It's a good thing that you read the status messages. Normally, they're important.

_ea1k• 15 years ago

All of the top notification banners are the most annoying part of SO, IMO. Every time I go there I end up clicking close 3-4 times.

gergles• 15 years ago

The problem is that if they keep using them for politics or for other things that aren't system messages, people will start ignoring them. "Ugh, that's that bar that just shows dumb political messages."

jamesmoss• 15 years ago

This is great but surely we need to be targeting a wider audience? SO is made up of tech enthusiasts, I imagine a large percentage of them have heard of SOPA and understand the issues. However they probably represent a tiny fraction of the population.

Really we need the eBay's, AOL's and Craiglist's of this world to be running campaigns like this, getting the message out to the more casual internet user.

jim-greer2• 15 years ago

Craigslist might actually do it... I doubt AOL or eBay ever would.

jim-greer2• 15 years ago

I tweeted to Craig Newmark and he answered positively - here's hoping: http://twitter.com/#!/craignewmark/status/141604875581657088

notatoad2• 15 years ago

you're absolutely right, stackoverflow is preaching to the choir. but at least they're saying something, kudos to them. all opposition is good.

somebody else here had this idea, and i love it: facebook needs to shut down their site for an hour and replace it with the message "this is what happens if SOPA passes".

alttag3• 15 years ago

I participated in the recent EFF push for contacting elected representatives regarding SOPA. I customized their pre-packaged letter greatly, adding both my experience and qualifications and expounding on the distrust from the tech industry to SOPA.

The response from my (Republican) Congressman was a form letter telling me I was wrong, and regurgitating a the pro-SOPA talking points.

I've been contemplating a rather severe letter in response, but I haven't gotten to it as I don't believe anything I can say to him will be effective.

freehunter3• 15 years ago

Mr Congressman, you have lost my vote forever. Furthermore, I will be campaigning on behalf of $OPPONENT who still believes in freedom and our greatest liberties. The fact that we have great men like $OPPONENT proves American democracy still works.

redthrowaway• 15 years ago

"Lost my vote forever" is, I'm sure, the kind of meaningless spiel they hear everyday. It would likely have the same effect on a congressman that saying "meat is murder" has on me - instant tune-out.

A response informing the congressman of why he's wrong, citing loss of jobs and liberty while threatening innovation, all in the name of an ever-growing government keen to erode our rights in the service of special interests, would likely hit enough republican talking points to at least merit a moment's consideration. Which, at the end of the day, is probably the best you could hope for.

maeon32• 15 years ago

Freedom was not nor ever will be won with words. Freedom is won from the barrell of a gun. words only have power when they are from someone ready to use action if they have no effect.

georgemcbay• 15 years ago

Unfortunately it is incredibly rare to find a match for your hypothetical $OPPONENT that is both electable enough that your letter won't be laughed off and who actually fits the description of being a great man (or woman).

hesitz• 15 years ago

"I've been contemplating a rather severe letter in response, but I haven't gotten to it as I don't believe anything I can say to him will be effective."

I doubt whether anything you say to _him_ would be effective. But why not write a response and then post the three letters (your first, his reply, your response) to a blog or website? If you publicly reveal the weakness of his position it could have some effect.

alttag3• 15 years ago

I'm a bit disappointed the EFF submit form didn't forward me a copy of the letter I sent through their site.

I didn't make a copy, and instantly after sending, wished I had.

jen_h• 15 years ago

My Congressman sent me a form letter thanking me for sharing my feedback about an entirely different issue. I did include the bill numbers and titles, so you'd think an automated system would pick it up, but I guess they're going purely by keywords--and "piracy" becomes "privacy" somehow.

No response at all from my Senators. I assume in three months, I'll get a condescending letter from at least one of them explaining why I'm wrong, just like with TARP and any other issue I bother to contact these folks about.

notatoad2• 15 years ago

the response from your congressman's office was a form letter. the problem with letter writing campaigns is that after the first few most letters get stopped by the aides before they ever reach anybody of importance. congressmen have office hours. stop by and see if you can talk to him about it.

ra• 15 years ago

That's true, but there is a 'hack' to get around that. Generally new questions arriving at the office will not have prepared responses. New text can not usually be written by the staffers without being reviewed.

So, the trick is to raise 2 (unrelated or related) issues in your letter. Issue one is the real issue you are concerned about, and the other needs to be something low profile that will not already have a canned response.

That way a reply will need to be drafted by staffers and reviewed by someone (hopefully the actual politician).

digikata• 15 years ago

I was listening to an interview of Jack Abramoff plugging his new book. Don't know if the book is any good, but one comment that struck me was that, bluntly, campaign donations, all the various perks given to politicians and their staff were bribes. My opinion matches. They're indirect bribes, (mostly) following legal boundaries, but basically bribes for attention if not for outright votes.

What gets a politicians attention is money, and less directly votes - but money can move votes... and people have a poor long-term memory at the voting booth.

I wonder what a open "real-time democracy" Political Action Committee website might look like. Suppose there were tracked tallies of voting intentions, donations, donator "votes" to apply money to issues to be spent on specific campaigns at election time. I imagine you'd want to distribute election targeting data to the PAC voters so they can individually make their resource decisions, maybe to shift their donation to politicians who were most vulnerable in a given district. Sending a politician updates of that summarized data with time series growth might get their attention better than letters. It sucks that we need to bribe your own representatives though...

earl2• 15 years ago

There is a useful response: give $50 to your congressman's opponent, attach a receipt, and vote democrat in the next election. Remember, the only people in the us who matter are voters (especially primary voters), donors, and campaign volunteers.

abscondment• 15 years ago

Personally, I find myself disagreeing with both sides too much for this to be effective at all.

I'm not going to say one should or shouldn't vote Democrat. But, there are too many considerations on which I'm unwilling to compromise to just vote for the enemy of my enemy. Neither party is your friend.

anamax• 15 years ago

> vote democrat in the next election

Why would voting for someone who voted for SOPA help stop it?

Harry Reid, D-NV, senate majority leader, is pushing SOPA as a jobs bill so claiming that it's a republican idea is silly.

http://maplight.org/us-congress/bill/112-hr-3261/1019110/tot... shows that police and firefighter unions are supporting SOPA, as are the teamsters, the electrical workers union, as well as the movie-related groups that you'd expect.

gyardley2• 15 years ago

While your Congressman has probably already made up his mind on this issue, you're not going to help him change it if your communication comes from a 'liberal' organization like the EFF.

Why don't you try writing him while incorporating some more conservative commentary? Here's a couple of links from the National Review, one of my morning reads:

http://www.nationalreview.com/agenda/281962/larry-downes-sop...

http://www.nationalreview.com/media-blog/283537/sopa-battle-...

I'm sure you can find more with a little Google-fu.

One of the more interesting things about SOPA is that both its supporters and opponents are pretty bipartisan. You can't oppose (or support) it by indiscriminately supporting one party or the other.

yummyfajitas• 15 years ago

How is the EFF a liberal organization? Their primary agenda seems to be pro individual privacy, pro encryption, and anti-copyright.

Until 2001, some of those (encryption and privacy) were conservative issues. Now both parties tend to be in agreement and oppose the EFF on all of these issues.

sixtofour• 15 years ago

Post all three pieces somewhere (your letter, his non-response, and your severe response), then call it to the attention of everyone who has the slightest interest in his embarrassment, including news outlets whose only interest is selling ads via controversy.

TomGullen• 15 years ago

Very good, I already had a lot of respect for SO now I have a lot more!

smackfu• 15 years ago

Odd they didn't do this on the day that every other site did. Or has it been up since then?

spolsky• 15 years ago

we're a little bit slow!

ilaksh• 15 years ago

The fact that its even possible for this law to be considered should give people another hint at how dangerous and negligent our "representatives" are. Other obvious hints are apparent also, such as the Patriot Act and about 100 other things I won't mention.

People just need to face reality. Its a corrupt system. The government is full of fraudsters and even mass murderers. I know its hard to accept that, but that's the truth.

The other problem is that its the very structure of our government and society that creates these outcomes over and over again.

We need to do some agile engineering on society, starting from base premises.

devs1010• 15 years ago

The tools are there as is the platform (the Internet), its just a matter of smart people applying themselves IMO, Wikileaks was a good start, I suppose, but too radical and easy to shutdown, there are opportunities to more sustainably build on what they started. Maybe if people could turn their attention away from trying to use their engineering abilities to create crap like what Zynga does (facebook games, etc) and actually try to create some things that are worthwhile and can help society then we would be better off. Of course this doesn't happen as its not necessarily a path to becoming a millionaire and thats what most people seem to think it is important.

brown9-2• 15 years ago

What would you change about the representative form of government?

Any government consisting of representatives of the people will end up proposing and debating laws that certain segments of the population sees as "bad" at times.

It's a test of how well the government works if the people can voice their opinion and have an effect on Congress's debate. If this happens and curtails the law, then government is working.

CamperBob• 15 years ago

What would you change about the representative form of government?

At this point, I'd probably ditch it as unworkable, and replace it with a more meritocratic, less corruptible form.

It's a test of how well the government works if the people can voice their opinion and have an effect on Congress's debate. If this happens and curtails the law, then government is working.

No, it isn't. SOPA is an obvious exercise in moving the Overton Window. The bill(s) that follow it -- including those that will eventually pass -- will seem innocuous by comparison, regardless of their content.

maeon32• 15 years ago

The global internet is quickly becoming a more powerful entity than all the rulers in Congress. Congress will not stop trying to put a leash on it. The more powerful the internet gets, the more you will see Congress trying anything to establish control. Child pornography, digital rights, copyright, Chinese hackers, national security, containing the terrorists, fud... Congress will use military force if necessary if the global internet challenges its supreme authority as global sovreign. Which one day it will.

bluekeybox3• 15 years ago

These kinds of comments may scare away large numbers of level-headed people from standing up against SOPA. Do you honestly think that the emergence of a global super-entity to serve as a niche to all kinds of low-lives is a good thing? Because if you are, then a lot of people who are aware of your position will be against whatever you stand, which of course means that you will lose potentially valuable allies against SOPA.

Let's stand against SOPA, but let's not get too radical while doing it. The Internet is not a savior of "the people" or a second coming of anything. No one will save us but ourselves.

vectorpush• 15 years ago

Do you honestly think that the emergence of a global super-entity to serve as a niche to all kinds of low-lives is a good thing?

Tell us how you really feel. Don't worry though, I'm confident that the government will eventually find a way to expunge all the undesirable "low-lives" from the net.

libraryatnight• 15 years ago

"No one will save us but ourselves." This seems more in support of maeon3's comment than a point against.

sukuriant• 15 years ago

Even the Free and Open Source Movements need a Richard Stallman to be as successful as they have been.

46Bit• 15 years ago

The internet is merely an extension of our global community, with a particular focus on areas with high broadband penetration and large amounts of free time. It's not some sort of super entity.

We are still subject to the same petty and idiotic politicians as always, and will be for the foreseeable future. That's how the world works. The internet celebrates the cult of personality just as much if not more than real life.

16s2• 15 years ago

I was once the registered DMCA agent for a large organization. All of the registered agents are listed on the US Copyright's Office website so that rights holders can look-up the names and addresses to send notices when an IP address within that organization is found to have content that is thought to be infringing (P2P, music, movies, etc).

Fewer than 1 in 10 came to me (the person registered to receive the notices). Subcontractors working on behalf of rights holders would send notices to any email address that they could find. Some went to retired employees, transferred employees, etc. It got so bad that we put a comment in ARIN that specified the agent's contact address to try and stop it. Didn't work.

The DMCA requires a proper notice be sent to the registered agent and grants the organization safe-harbor. It is very well defined. Here is the official list of registered agents (the one and only list... but DMCA subcontractors don't read it):

http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/list/a_agents.html

devicenull• 15 years ago

Most of them are bots, and I doubt your note in ARIN was even being read. They seem to love to look up the abuse contact for an email address, and send their notices there. A large number of them make no attempt to find the registered agent. Sadly, this works for them, since I would imagine most ISP's just forward on the notice to the registered contact.

I wonder what would happen if you ignored a DMCA notice sent to the wrong contact. Would it be invalid?

16s2• 15 years ago

The entire purpose of the portion of the law (DMCA) requiring valid notices be sent to registered agents is so that notice is given to the correct person at the organization so that swift action may be taken to investigate and potentially remedy the alleged copyright violation. How else do you think the organization would know to respond?

Rights holders and their subcontractors can't just email anyone in your domain (the janitor's office) and expect action to be taken. The law (DMCA) is very explicit about this. Notice must be given to the registered agent (PERIOD). However, you should ask your legal counsel what they which to do with invalid notices. Some will want the organization to respond anyway, others won't. It depends on whether or not they wish to waste money spending time following-up on invalid notices. I can tell you this though, a notice sent to janitor@domain.com is not going to stand up in court unless janitor@domain.com is indeed the registered agent.

The point is that if they can't be bothered to obey the DMCA and take the time to look-up the proper published registered agent, why should new laws be considered that let them get away with even worse laziness and accusations?

randymorris• 15 years ago

The whole SOPA and PROTECT IP thing is a power play to leverage the Internet community into a compromise which would allow the acceptance of a removal of anonymous internet usage.

How does SOPA threaten Stack Overflow?

Related Stories