An Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the U.S. Congress

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/internet-inventors-warn-against-sopa-and-pipa

by ryeguy_24 • 15 years ago

276 44 15 years ago

logn• 15 years ago

They need to include $2,000,000 checks to each member of congress. That's about how much the media companies are paying everyone who supports this.

darkmethod• 15 years ago

I'm curious as to where you found this information. Thanks.

sehugg• 15 years ago

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=...

jmcqk6• 15 years ago

That would be an interesting tactic. Could a company like google very publically donate a large sum of money to a PAC and get the results they want? I would imagine if they do it publicly, it could possibly restart the debate on campaign finance.

lincolnwebs2• 15 years ago

Conspicuously absent: Berners-Lee and Bray.

balloot• 15 years ago

Berners-Lee is British. He has been working with the British government on internet issues. I know this is crazy, but they actually listen to him.

recoil• 15 years ago

And Bray is Canadian.

samstokes• 15 years ago

they actually listen to him

Unfortunately, not so. e.g. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/8030467/Inter...

The Digital Economy Act he is complaining about in that article - which, like SOPA, included provisions for national censorship in the name of copyright - passed by a large majority. Most MPs were not present for the debate, but simply voted according to their party line.

_bbs• 15 years ago

I can't find much on Berners-Lee's stance on SOPA. Do you have any information as to why he wouldn't sign this letter?

EDIT: Just realized he is British (thanks to the other reply). Do you believe his silence (if any, again I can't find much on his stance) relates to his citizenship?

sp3322• 15 years ago

Yeah, he's against it. https://twitter.com/#!/timberners_lee/status/137195434794958... which has a broken link, should be https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/opinion/firewall-law-coul...

lincolnwebs2• 15 years ago

There's no citizenship requirement for petitioning Congress, the petition doesn't identify them as exclusively US citizens, this is an issue with international repercussions, and they're prominent figures that even the dolts in the House may have heard of. While nationality is likely the cause, they are no less conspicuously absent.

spiritplumber2• 15 years ago

I think it's the wrong approach. How about:

"Dear Congresscritters, we made the internet. It is now everywhere. If you pit the full force of the law against it -- the law will lose. Do not make yourselves irrelevant."

eykanal• 15 years ago

I'm sure you're joking, but unfortunately, not only is that approach wrong, the statement is wrong also. If anyone will lose, it's probably not going to be the law.

spiritplumber2• 15 years ago

If you make a significant % of the population into criminals, the population's respect for the law suffers and subsequent legislation is more likely to be ignored or bypassed by the population.

(I wonder how many legislators learn at least a little bit of game theory)

frisco3• 15 years ago

I actually don't think so here. You're basically up against the laws of physics. Information is fundamentally unlike other types of assets, in that there's no cost associated with copying it and it can be very quickly and easily be disseminated far and wide. Let's say they manage to totally destroy DNS, or whatever mechanism they're using to enforce this: the internet isn't one network, of course, and will detect this as damage and route around it, even if that means moving to a totally new networking stack.

This is a losing battle on the part of the IP rights holders. In many ways, that's depressing. But even if they said, "pirate movies and we'll kill you," it still wouldn't stop the signal. All of these laws and treaties are bandaid hacks to stem the tide. Ultimately they won't win, though it may be messy along the way if they try to govern without understanding this.

snth• 15 years ago

Not to mention that insulting them is sure to have the opposite effect.

snowmaker• 15 years ago

I noticed Vint Cerf specified "signing as private citizen". Does anyone know why Google tied his hands?

tlear• 15 years ago

As huge corporation Google has to be ready to lose this fight and in that situation it would be beneficial for them to be on the good side of the victors.

mdwrigh2• 15 years ago

Except their co-founder signed as the co-founder of the company. I would assume he's signing as a private citizen to say he's signing because he, and not the company he works for, sees it as a detriment.

nas• 15 years ago

I doubt they did, I expect it was his choice.

moultano• 15 years ago

https://plus.google.com/104233435224873922474/posts/AsjeBDMb...

I don't think they did (or would.)

throw_away• 15 years ago

it seems like everyone on the list who works for a well-known company (twitter, juniper, RIPE) all signed that way.

obtu• 15 years ago

Because this one is the letter from internet engineers. Google had to enter the lobbying game, but the view point of individuals should be more important to a society than the “money as free speech” of corporations.

anamax• 15 years ago

> Does anyone know why Google tied his hands?

Cerf isn't a google officer, board member, or spokesperson. Those are the folks who "speak for Google".

sp3322• 15 years ago

Google (and Youtube, which they own) obviously have a vested interest in seeing SOPA fail. I think it was important for him to note that he's not a representative of their corporate interests. In his own expert opinion, SOPA is a bad idea.

Joakal• 15 years ago

They should have made a request to not only demand such bills to cease, but to demand bills that reverse parts of current laws controlling the Internet.

Otherwise politicians will reduce some of the bill, but the bill will still implement more and more Internet controls [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique

davvid• 15 years ago

One solution is for everyone to simply refuse to implement whatever stupid law is passed. Closes #666 (WONTFIX)

cookiecaper2• 15 years ago

The problem with this solution is that the government has guns and prisons and they will use these to compel individuals to do as they say. If every ISP refused to comply, the feds would make a big show of raiding some significant-but-not-huge regional ISPs and scare the rest into compliance.

Of course, some of this country's largest ISPs probably like SOPA and similar legislation because they see it as strengthening their larger source of revenue: cable television.

driverdan• 15 years ago

I'm curious where this list of people came from. Some are much more notable than others. Are they part of a group, have common investors, or what?

tlrobinson• 15 years ago

This question isn't specific to the letter, but I've been wondering...

Wouldn't SOPA's effects on DNS be negated by simply hosting your sites' DNS and setting your machines' DNS servers outside the US? Of course this would have major negative impact on DNS performance.

ericflo• 15 years ago

I think the bill makes it illegal for a US entity to do that.

rmc2• 15 years ago

That's what I've been thinking. And I think that's something that should be promoted more. Laws like this, aren't going to break the internet per se, but they might break it in the USA. Politicos should learn that laws like this threaten the USA tech sector. Might as well move your servers & companies off shore.

barkingllama• 15 years ago

What? Unintended consequences? Those are never something to worry about.

zotz• 15 years ago

> ... a group of 83 prominent Internet inventors and engineers

This topic is probably the first thing they've all ever agreed on.

swordswinger12• 15 years ago

This is apropos of nothing, but it's nice to see L. Jean Camp represent my alma mater.

An Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the U.S. Congress

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