SOPA is dead: Smith pulls bill

http://mashable.com/2012/01/20/sopa-is-dead-smith-pulls-bill/

by melvinmt • 15 years ago

227 76 15 years ago

sprout• 15 years ago

    That is not dead which can eternal lie,
    And with strange aeons even death may die.

tectonic• 15 years ago

Sounds like a line from a poem about cryogenics. :)

paul-woolcock• 15 years ago

It's H.P. Lovecraft

steder• 15 years ago

As much as I'd love to believe it's dead I suspect the real thought process here is "Let's rebrand this turkey." They're going to let people calm down and resubmit the bill next month with a new name.

twiceaday• 15 years ago

Exactly. I wouldn't be surprised if a memo went out reading "Distance yourself from the bill for now, we will keep you updated".

iterationx• 15 years ago

I suspect they will split the functionality of the bill into sub-pieces and and pass each one under a different name or as part of a totally unrelated project.

firefoxman13• 15 years ago

That would be the best way to do it :(

jerf2• 15 years ago

That absolutely works to float things under media scrutiny, especially in cases like this where the media is all but complicit in the passage of the law.

I think they are going to find it much harder to sneak things past "the Internet", though.

They will eventually work out how to do it, given enough time, but I do not think "business as usual" will actually cut it. We have the many eyes that make bugs shallow.

abstractwater• 15 years ago

You're probably right. My hope is that they will use this time to do their homework a little bit better, but somehow that seems way too optimistic.

Nemisis7654• 15 years ago

I think you're 100% correct. I wonder what the chances are of them getting input from tech experts on it, though. If they want to get something passed, I think they will need to get the input from industries professionals who know what they're doing. Or else we may just have a repeat of SOPA.

throwawaysnipe• 15 years ago

You're right, and the name has already been chosen: Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:HR01981:@@@L...;

nextparadigms• 15 years ago

You know what the next bill will be called, don't you? Probably something along the lines of "Saving the Internet Act". There actually is one called OPEN, which I do believe was a more offensive way to make SOPA retreat made with good intentions by those who fought against SOPA, but it's one of these "compromise bills", and there are still problems with it. I don't think it's ok to cut the financing of a site before it can even defend itself. You can't just "streamline" the justice process. Everyone needs a fair trial if they are accused of something. The Feds have already abused their power with M

reddit_clone• 15 years ago

Dollars to donuts they tie this with Child Porn or something like that so that no one can vote against it.

spiritplumber• 15 years ago

Solution: Eat them.

rcfox3• 15 years ago

This is indeed a modest proposal.

ypcx• 15 years ago

While we all know that they will regroup and strike again, we also know that somebody, somewhere out there, has gotten a very powerful message that lead them to reevaluate the scope of the grip they thought they had on this society.

Something of a historical importance has happened this week, and we all were part of it.

firefoxman13• 15 years ago

It's great to realize the voice that the American people really have. The power of the masses is always far greater than any other force; it's just a rarely-used power.

jgn• 15 years ago

The voice of concerned Internet users, you mean, not just Americans.

mzarate06• 15 years ago

Important indeed.

Something I'm constantly reminded of is the haste Congress showed in trying to reach a final vote. I sat through 11 and 4 hour SOPA committee sessions (video), and if it hadn't been for strong opponents like Congresswoman Lofgren and Congressman Issa, who literally forced a count for each amendment vote made as a way to help put the brakes on, SOPA probably would have advanced another step.

I'm thankful for the time they helped buy, that ultimately gave opponents the chance to produce the response that we did. SOPA may not be truly "dead", but it's reassuring to know that our voice can have an impact.

alexqgb2• 15 years ago

Indeed. And this goes both ways. The near-miss sent a powerful message to people with a stake in the open internet; one that that led them to re-evaluate the state of their complacence about corruption in Washington.

This is a problem that actually needs to be solved, not just routed around. Like the folks in DC, we need to regroup and strike again. This time, it needs to be proactive. And that's for the simple reason that you can never win by concentrating on defense only.

At this stage, we all understand that it's about the money. Control of Congress is a political football, and it's what's in play between the anti-republican (small 'r') forces of special interests, and people who want to live as free citizens. Most real-world fights don't neatly sort themselves into black and white, but this one comes pretty close.

So far, the sharpest white-side organization I've come across is this one: http://www.getmoneyout.com/ There may be others. In any case, they're all pointing at the same reality: Congress owes its primary loyalty to whoever underwrites its elections. In a free republic, that should mean citizens, and citizens only.

This is over when that's what we've permanently lost or won.

Tichy• 15 years ago

Was it always about "foreign thieves"?

bellaire• 15 years ago

Ostensibly, yes. However, the reality of the situation is left as an exercise for the conscientious reader.

cheald• 15 years ago

Via lip service, yes, but the actual legislation, no. Section 102 applied to sites not under US jurisdiction, and gave the Attorney General the right to effectively censor foreign sites. Section 103 applied to all sites and gave copyright holders the ability to take action against any website.

pwg• 15 years ago

A very good, 14 minute, talk about what it was really about:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/defend_our_freedom_to_share...

norswap• 15 years ago

"The online theft of American intellectual property is no different than the theft of products from a store. It is illegal and the law should be enforced both in the store and online."

How to show you understand not a single thing about the issue.

TheCapn• 15 years ago

I try hard to stretch my imagination and see things from other's viewpoints. To me it seems the majority of people view piracy about "someone obtained something that wasn't theirs." We tend to look at it as "I still have what is mine."

I guess if we look a bit deeper you could stretch the issue to one's worldview. Are you more concerned with your belongings or what others posses. Is there a larger inclination to worry about another's success over your own? Seemingly they're threatened by individuals possessing their products. I'd like to believe their fight is against commercial pirates but they've shown too many times that they see individual "pirates" as a threat to their industry. Public support might weigh in on their side if they weren't so eager to make average joe a poster boy for their legal matters.

funthree• 15 years ago

Our computers + the internet have exposed information profiteering for what it is. Abuse of power ensues.

"Information" should not be property under any circumstances except to protect our basic human rights (i.e. privacy of an individual)

awj• 15 years ago

> How to show you understand not a single thing about the issue.

Ironically, I think your criticism here does the same.

At the end of the day the question really is: "Is someone able to earn money from labor X?" If the answer here is "yes" then they'll keep doing it. If the answer here is "no", they'll do something else. Can we at least agree that it would be a good thing to have music/movies/software/"creative works" available in some form?

The ability to freely duplicate and share creative works make it difficult to produce a "yes" answer to that question. How we as a society currently produce and distribute creative works make a "yes" answer even more difficult than it otherwise might be.

freejack2• 15 years ago

Smith says he wants to wait “until there is wider agreement on a solution.”

I think he'll have a much greater chance of success if he waits until there is larger agreement on the problem. Both sides seem very confused as to what this legislation was trying to solve - building a real consensus depends on building that broad understanding before looking for solutions.

joe_the_user• 15 years ago

Whenever I hear "both sides...", I know a snow-job has begun.

There really aren't two symmetric "sides". Seriously.

There is one faction attempting to impose a draconian, repressive intellectual property regime at the expense of Internet functionality, free speech or whatever else.

And there are all the people who oppose this for whatever reason, whether to save the Internet, save free speech, prevent a repressive regime or even to preserve piracy. These are "a side". The mouth-pieces of the Hollywood rackets want to attribute some position to SOPA/PIPA opponents but you really can't. All you can say that they are opponent for one of the many good reasons for opposing it.

So just stop.

freejack2• 15 years ago

I think you may be attributing motive or position where none really exists.

My point was simply that the chief proponent of this presumes that we already agree on what the problem is and that we should therefore focus on finding the solution. I think he's either deluded or disingenuous (perhaps misled or naive? Possible, but doubtful).

My personal belief is that any SOPA-like legislation in advance of copyright and patent reform attempts to solve the wrong problems.

wavephorm• 15 years ago

They'll just slipstream the elements of this bill in with other legislature once the heat dies down.

jellicle3• 15 years ago

SOPA is not dead. This is an election year. One incumbent President, 33 Senators, and 435 Representatives all desperately need money. The President needs to raise upwards of $1,000,000,000. The Senators need to raise upwards of $10,000,000 each. The Representatives need to raise upwards of $2,000,000 each.

The media industry is awash in money.

This is how your government works: a bill that is either good or bad for a wealthy industry is proposed, and then the backers go to that industry and hold out their hands. If sufficient money is forthcoming, the good bill is passed or the bad bill is not passed. If sufficient money is not forthcoming, the reverse happens.

The bill will be redrafted, with some mitigating clauses added here and there. Implementation will be delayed a year or two, to make sure that you'll have forgotten who voted for it by the time any consequences occur. All of the Congresspeople who expressed reservations about it will be visited with large checks. And it will be resubmitted within a few months. A couple of folks who have been greased especially well will stand up and say, "My concerns about the bill have been addressed." The new bill will pass. Obama will not comment on the new bill and will sign it privately, without press coverage.

Your objections raised the cost of this bill for the media industry. Congratulations, you cost them some money. You in no way affected the final outcome. To affect the final outcome, you would need to signal that you represent a large enough sum of campaign money to counterbalance the money-weight of the media industry. You have not even come close to doing so.

rcfox3• 15 years ago

> The President needs to raise upwards of $1,000,000,000. The Senators need to raise upwards of $10,000,000 each. The Representatives need to raise upwards of $2,000,000 each.

Why?

maeon3• 15 years ago

Talking points on news stations are not free. Elections are popularity contests, the more money you have to buy airtime the more chances you get to get citizens to vote for you.

redthrowaway2• 15 years ago

Media blitzes in battleground states don't pay for themselves. Since records have been kept, the presidential candidate who raises the most cash has won 94% of the time.

jellicle3• 15 years ago

Because they like their job and want to continue to have it next January?

trafficlight• 15 years ago

He's talking about campaign funds. $1 Billion is a little high though.

According to Wikipedia for the 2008 presidential election, Obama raised $779 million and McCain did $383 million. There were 148 canidates and all total the 2008 election raised $1.64 billion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_for_the_2008_United...

bff• 15 years ago

Campaign money also comes from people though, so if enough people care about an issue then even politicians who only care about raising money will respond. A quick google search shows that a large amount of Obama's money comes from individual donors (http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/10/grassroots-donors-sw...) so he has a strong incentive to do popular things.

Someone else posted that people who raise more money tend to win elections, but this could also be caused by the more popular candidate raising more money. People might also be more willing to send money to a candidate if they think that candidate will win since no one wants to waste money on a losing candidate.

logn• 15 years ago

Except companies can't vote... not yet at least. The one thing more important than campaign contribs is votes. Granted money equates to a certain number of votes. But as long as money-votes < protest-votes we win.

bh42222• 15 years ago

But as long as money-votes < protest-votes we win.

Your math is flawless.

Your perception of actual reality is deeply flawed. I envy your idealism.

asnyder• 15 years ago

Yeah, but thanks to Citizens United they can form Super PACs and spend as much money as they want influencing the uninformed, which is just as good as having the ability to vote, if note more as you have the votes of all the people you've relentlessly fooled.

angrycoder2• 15 years ago

What a load of defeatist, pessimistic bullshit. The bill was defeated once, what makes you think it wouldn't be defeated again?

If anything, this weeks SOPA protest finally provided the missing link for slacktivism: when faced a titanic force with enormous amounts of money that seems unbeatable, make friends with another titanic force who's interests are not served by the original monster.

TruthElixirX• 15 years ago

"The bill was defeated once, what makes you think it wouldn't be defeated again?"

Because each time those in opposition much launch a larger more costly campaign and take time out of their normal productive jobs.

Proposing bullshit legislation does not cost the Congressmen/women anything extra, and at times can actually be profitable for them.

They can just bring it up next week and we all have to drop everything again and try to defeat it. Eventually people get fatigued or decide the continued fight is no longer worth it.

jellicle3• 15 years ago

Let's take a look at Obama's statement, which the popular press described as opposition to SOPA:

"That is why the Administration calls on all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors and rights holders new legal tools to combat online piracy originating beyond U.S. borders"

This isn't rocket surgery. And no, Reddit blacking out their site does not qualify as a "titanic force". The total campaign contributions for every single Reddit reader for a year are what, $10,000? Chris Dodd has more than that in his freezer right now.

fufulabs• 15 years ago

No, the efficiency of communicating and organizing a mass protest online is very primitive right now and YET we managed to defeat this bill. 5 to 10 months from now tools will get more efficient, more people will be online, TV and other media will be faster to report Internet happenings thus making us more powerful in pulling out a 'rock' (voter influence) to the lobbyist's 'scissors' (money)

Iv• 15 years ago

Billions lost in advertisement and aimed at corrupting politics... What a waste for the economy.

PaulHoule• 15 years ago

Untrue statement: "The online theft of American intellectual property is no different than the theft of products from a store. It is illegal and the law should be enforced both in the store and online."

It is theft, but it's not quite the same.

If somebody downloads a movie that they could have gotten on a Blu-Ray disk for $20, that doesn't mean the industry is out $20 -- if the person had to pay full price, they might not have gotten the movie at all. Downloads probably do displace purchases to some extent, so it's fair to say that this costs the industry some lesser number, say $5.

This has to be seen in the context of the ecosystem too. I've neither bought nor stolen music in the last year -- I just haven't been looking for music than I haven't already got. This is bad for the music industry, but I'm not stealing from them.

If a person goes to the theatre with his kids every other week and buys an optical disk every so often and also illegally downloads a movie from time to time, the movie industry might not be getting 100% of the cash they want, but they've got an engaged customer who's spending $80 a month on their products and who's always telling his friends about movies he likes. If the music industry tried to tighten the screws on this person because they think they can get $120, they may end up getting $0, just like the music industry ends up getting $0 from me... not because I'm a pirate, but because I'm disengaged.

mrdingle4• 15 years ago

It's not theft. It's copyright infringement. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/theft

The phrase "intellectual property" is a misnomer. It's like saying "corporate personhood".

wisty2• 15 years ago

I guess so. If you could steal the deeds to Harry Potter, then tell the publishers to deposit royalty checks in your account, that would be IP theft. You would have stollen the right to control publication, which is the real IP.

If you copy a movie, that's not the theft of the IP (i.e. the underlying copyright), it's infringement.

Piracy isn't like the theft of a piece of land, it's like trespassing. You don't say someone squatting in your lawn is stealing your lawn, you just say he's a trespasser.

CJefferson2• 15 years ago

While I understand why you, and others do it, it gets annoying that people try to define piracy out of existence, by wordplay.

I get told it's not theft, or piracy, it is copyright infringement. Now there is no intellectual property.

While I can understand wanting to re-frame the argument, reframing it in terms of terms much longer (copyright infringement) than the terms everyone current uses (piracy, theft) looks like a pure attempt to downplay the issue.

Not entirely sure what my point is here. Come up with a short (1 word, no longer than 7 letters) alternative for copyright infringement, and I might start using it. I'm not going to start talking about copyright infringement when having this discussion with my uncle. I'll say piracy.

vidarh• 15 years ago

Theft requires that you deprive the owner of their property. "Intellectual property" is not legally property in any form, and copyright infringement is hence not theft.

That the copyright holders try to perpetuate this fantasy is all the more galling because they often try to attach more limitations to their products via licenses than they would be legally able to if what they sold was not largely predicated on it not being property.

fl3tch• 15 years ago

When Amazon sold Lady Gaga's latest album for 99 cents, the volume of purchases crashed their servers. Even I bought the album, and I'm not a Lady Gaga fan. Why? Because it was 99 cents. It stands to reason, if lowering the price of a good by 90% increases sales 10 fold, then lowering it to zero increases consumption even more. So it's not unreasonable to say that 95% of pirated content would not have been purchased otherwise, and results in zero loss to the industry. It's also the only reasonable explanation why Hollywood continues to make record profits in the face of such "pervasive" piracy.

akmiller• 15 years ago

From Smith's statement:

"“The problem of online piracy is too big to ignore. American intellectual property industries provide 19 million high-paying jobs and account for more than 60% of U.S. exports. The theft of America’s intellectual property costs the U.S. economy more than $100 billion annually and results in the loss of thousands of American jobs."

I would really love to see him break those numbers down and describe how they got to those exact numbers. Many of the politicians are throwing some big numbers around so surely they have some type of formula that led them to that result. If anyone here has any idea please let me know!

eru• 15 years ago

Perhaps they are just copying from each other?

yesbabyyes• 15 years ago

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/how-copyright-industries-con-...

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120104/04545217274/cato-i...

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/10/dodgy-digits...

ori_b• 15 years ago

Good. So what are we doing to prevent it from happening again? What can we do to aggressively prevent SOPA-like legislation from being an issue?

SOPA is dead: Smith pulls bill

Related Stories