131–140 of 269 posts
12:19PM central time - The chairman, Rep. Smith, was asking whether this bill would impact our ability to implement DNSSEC. He seemed legitimately concerned that it could weaken security on the internet. I have no idea whether there's any basis for concern, but I'm sure we have some DNSSEC experts here on HN. Comments?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re joking, right? Who would you propose is more qualified to draft the word of the actual laws than lawyers? What lawyers are at their essence are experts in law—the word ‘lawyer’ even has the word ‘law’ in it. It's like asking a team of developers to get together and vote on whether a problem is best solved by writing more code or doing nothing. Who would you ask whether code needs to be written, then? The lawye…
Actually this is an established theory. Here's Dr Clifford Winston, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution chatting to Prof. Russ Roberts of George Mason University about the conflict of interest when lawyers make our laws. They also cover the bar system maintaining artificial scarcity among lawyers, thereby inflating legal fees. http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/09/winston_on_lawy.htm...
Reps now bitching that Google's senior management is not in the room. FUCK YOU, SENATOR. Those people deliver more value per day than you will deliver in your entire career as a public servant. Oh god: "Why not hire some whiz kids?" What a goddamned fool. "We have the brainpower in this country [to design a machine to distinguish copyrighted works from non-copyrighted works]." Actually, no, we don't. Fair use is a th…
Reps now bitching that Google's senior management is not in the room. FUCK YOU, SENATOR. Those people deliver more value per day than you will deliver in your entire career as a public servant. Oh god: "Why not hire some whiz kids?" What a goddamned fool. "We have the brainpower in this country [to design a machine to distinguish copyrighted works from non-copyrighted works]." Actually, no, we don't. Fair use is a th…
"We have the brainpower to take this on." We do? As a non-technical senator, you can make that engineering claim with confidence?
The woman from Google was brilliantly concise, and her explanations made absolutely perfect sense. They were countered with "horse is out of the barn" type popularisms, volkish garbage from ignorant senators to their totally illiterate constituency.
So much for the last pocket of growth in the American economy; it's gonna be shut down, destroyed. Smarties need to think countermeasures, and let these idiots root around in their own shite for a few years learning that they shouldn't deign to dictate what their betters have the "brainpower" to solve if they themselves can't figure out how.
Interesting point about reordering search results to favor known-legit content distribution channels...roughly: "Can we get Google to put Netflix above TPB in search results?" If this is still a terrible idea, it's not an obviously terrible one.
It's terrible in that a lot of the times smaller organic sites are much more relevant than big-box "trusted" sites. That's why organic search algorithms are good. Furthermore, there's a terrible burden for startups moving into certain spaces if suddenly you can't get ranked because you're not a Trusted source. Plus, controlling search engine neutrality or listing position is not the business of the government or righ…
Does that help your concerns about effects on unknowns, startups, etc? All the non-sketchy results should still be organically ranked, right?
12:19PM central time - The chairman, Rep. Smith, was asking whether this bill would impact our ability to implement DNSSEC. He seemed legitimately concerned that it could weaken security on the internet. I have no idea whether there's any basis for concern, but I'm sure we have some DNSSEC experts here on HN. Comments?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the reps asking questions seem legitimately interested in making the bill suck a lot less That seems like a large part of the problem; they treat it as a foregone conclusion that the bill will pass, perhaps with a bit of tweaking. This bill needs to die. All bills should have the presumption of failure, with a very high bar to get them to pass, not the other way around.
The problem is the "think of the children" argument will come back to haunt them come next election season.
12:19PM central time - The chairman, Rep. Smith, was asking whether this bill would impact our ability to implement DNSSEC. He seemed legitimately concerned that it could weaken security on the internet. I have no idea whether there's any basis for concern, but I'm sure we have some DNSSEC experts here on HN. Comments?
DNSSEC is a bad idea that will damage the Internet. I think it's irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
Zoe Lofgren's statements were really good, and her criticisms of the way the hearing was structured (5 for, 1 against, no engineers) were compelling. Her question of, "How many sites would you want to see taken down?" and the dodging is telling, too. And Darrell Issa did a phenomenal job calling into question the need for the legislation because of the function of the ITC & usefulness of administrative law solutions…
"Stealin' is stealin' and thieves are people we oughtta deal with!" "If I had my way I'd lock all three of ya in a room and don't come out until you agree." "As a consumer I can't tell who's a thief and who's not a thief. What can Google offer this bill that would allow Google to sign on to this bill?" How is "Google signing on" the key issue here? Is Google the gatekeeper to basic constitutionality in legislation no…
Seriously, I have the sickest feeling in the pit of my stomach. These congresspeople don't understand what's going on AT ALL, and the deck is already stacked against anti-SOPA activists. They don't seem to be even discussing the constitutionality of what they're suggesting.