Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The 19 Senators Who Voted To Censor The Internet

techdirt.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 91 posts

Re: The 19 Senators Who Voted To Censor The Internet

#31

Post by SageRaven »

lhnn wrote: post #15

Would a website dedicated to providing IP addresses to websites whose domains were seized be seized? Just have a directory on an IP-address-accessed server and you've circumscribed the law. Nevertheless, this law is farking redonkulous. Aren't there already processes for removing illegal content from websites? Surely shutting down domains isn't the most effective way. There must be some alternative, nefarious motive…

A web registry of seized domains seems kind of pointless when it's really easy to set up guerilla DNS servers that provide the information far more efficiently to clients.

I'm not sure of their current status, but AlterNIC and OpenNIC are/were two major non-official name registries.

Then there's .onion and other darknets to consider.

This battle is far from over; we're just seeing the first few open skirmishes at this point. If something this draconian came into law and brought down sites of any major popularity, I wouldn't be surprised to see either alternative DNS infrastructures or even a new torrent-like protocol to provide censor-proof DNS-like services crop up to totally disrupt such stupidity.

Re: The 19 Senators Who Voted To Censor The Internet

#32

Post by [deleted] »

lhnn wrote: post #15

Would a website dedicated to providing IP addresses to websites whose domains were seized be seized? Just have a directory on an IP-address-accessed server and you've circumscribed the law. Nevertheless, this law is farking redonkulous. Aren't there already processes for removing illegal content from websites? Surely shutting down domains isn't the most effective way. There must be some alternative, nefarious motive…

[deleted]

Re: The 19 Senators Who Voted To Censor The Internet

#34

Post by davidj »

maybe its about time to start boycotting the businesses that resides in the states where these senators are elected to represent. After all, all these senators are doing is representing the will of their constituents. Their constituents want to censor the internet and we should boycott them. I can't vote against any of these senators because my state wasn't a supporter of censoring the internet, but I can vote with my wallet.

Re: The 19 Senators Who Voted To Censor The Internet

#35

Post by ataggart »

G_Wen wrote: post #3
stevejohnson wrote: post #2

I'm extremely surprised to see Franken on this list. Wasn't he outspoken against this sort of thing?

Yes, he was a pretty big advocate on net neutrality: http://www.alfranken.com/index.php/splash/netneutrality http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/08/19/can-al-franken-save-net... http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20011587-503544.html http://colorlines.com/archives/2010/08/600_convene_for_broad... Edit more links: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/07/senator-inte... http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/media/se…

More evidence that "net neutrality", like "reform", is a fill-in-the-blank phrase meaning whatever one thinks it means. In this way listeners to a politician speaking automatically fill in the blank with whatever they personally would support. That the actual legislation the politician implements might be anathema to the ostensible supporters is a humorous side-effect.

Re: The 19 Senators Who Voted To Censor The Internet

#36

Post by BrandonM »

btilly wrote: post #17
MBlume wrote: post #9

California senator Dianne Feinstein, who appears on this list, also sponsored Consume But Don't Try Programming ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Broadband_and_Digital_... ) back in the day. As long as she's on the ballot, I'll be voting for her Republican opponent, however loathsome.

I am almost in the same boat. But this time around the Republicans ran Carly Fiorina. I'm sorry, but if you're going to run a businesswoman on her record, don't run one who did that much damage to her company (HP), who got fired by her board, and who was universally agreed to be so bad that the stock shot up on the news that she was finally gone. As much as I disliked Boxer, I didn't want to find out the hard way how…

To steal a bit from Jack Black and make it my own:

Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach, teach gym. Those who can't teach gym go into politics.

Re: The 19 Senators Who Voted To Censor The Internet

#37

Post by DanielBMarkham »

Very interesting.

Wonder what all of these senators have in common? It doesn't look like party, section of the country, or left-right leanings.

Usually when you get a wide dispersed group like this, the next thing to do is look for businesses and organizations (either inside the senator's state or not) that use money and votes to heavily lobby. Wonder who would lobby for this?

Just thinking aloud. I don't mean this to be a slam of the senators -- they're incompetent enough without my slamming them -- just trying to figure out if there is a commonality.

Re: The 19 Senators Who Voted To Censor The Internet

#38

Post by jparise »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #37

Very interesting. Wonder what all of these senators have in common? It doesn't look like party, section of the country, or left-right leanings. Usually when you get a wide dispersed group like this, the next thing to do is look for businesses and organizations (either inside the senator's state or not) that use money and votes to heavily lobby. Wonder who would lobby for this? Just thinking aloud. I don't mean this t…

They are the current members of the Senate Judiciary Committee: http://judiciary.senate.gov/about/members.cfm

They don't really have anything else in common other than their committee membership.

Re: The 19 Senators Who Voted To Censor The Internet

#39

Post by dskhatri »

plusbryan wrote: post #28
jws wrote: post #11

The bill in question is COICA – "Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act" EFF has this to say: The main mechanism of the bill is to interfere with the Internet's domain name system (DNS), which translates names like "www.eff.org" or "www.nytimes.com" into the IP addresses that computers use to communicate. The bill creates a blacklist of censored domains; the Attorney General can ask a court to place any…

I'm shocked and ashamed that California's own Feinstein appears on this list.

Why are you shocked? The entertainment industry is centered in Los Angeles.

Re: The 19 Senators Who Voted To Censor The Internet

#40

Post by dpatru »

BrandonM wrote: post #36
btilly wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am almost in the same boat. But this time around the Republicans ran Carly Fiorina. I'm sorry, but if you're going to run a businesswoman on her record, don't run one who did that much damage to her company (HP), who got fired by her board, and who was universally agreed to be so bad that the stock shot up on the news that she was finally gone. As much as I disliked Boxer, I didn't want to find out the hard way how…

To steal a bit from Jack Black and make it my own: Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach, teach gym. Those who can't teach gym go into politics.

I heard it this way:

If you can't do, teach,

If you can't teach, administrate,

If you can't administrate, go into politics,

If you can't get elected, go to work for the government.

Post reply on HN