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Microsoft, Apple and 27 other tech companies backing SOPA indirectly

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Re: Microsoft, Apple and 27 other tech companies backing SOPA indirectly

#111

Post by sreque »

steve-howard wrote: post #14
naner wrote: post #13

Notice that the supporters are software companies and the opposed are Internet companies. Here is a theory I proposed yesterday[1]: Microsoft makes the vast majority of their money selling licenses. So does the entertainment industry. For years these industries (software, music, and video) grew to massive size by exploiting cheap duplication of digital goods and control over distribution channels. Now that further ad…

I have interned with Microsoft in the past, and am scheduled to in the future. Therefore take everything I say with a metric ton of salt. Obviously my opinions don't speak for them. Most corporations put their lobbying efforts behind or against legislation based on what's in their interest. I don't believe that the public can honestly expect them to act any differently so long as their behavior is in accordance with…

You can't force people to make the right choices through legislation. There will always be loopholes and technicalities, and a law system that attempted to do so would be so restrictive of individual freedoms as to be entirely impractical.

If a society stops being composed primarily of good people that make the right choices for the right reasons, that society will crumble, and no amount of legislation will save it.

Re: Microsoft, Apple and 27 other tech companies backing SOPA indirectly

#112

Post by chollida1 »

billybob wrote: post #105
chollida1 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Make a constitutional amendment saying no bill can be more than 15 pages and I guarantee you countless problems will go away. Then no bill would pass. The default for a congress man/woman is to say no. The reason bills are so long is that if you want me to vote yes to your bill then I get to write 2 pages into your bill giving me what I want. Take a 10 page bill get 100 votes and you've got a 210 page bill that has…

I would say that what you describe is a MUCH better situation. If you have 100 small bills rolled into one, it's easier for representatives to say "I voted for this part, not that," or even, "I didn't see that part of the bill." With many smaller bills, it makes the tit-for-tat more explicit. Representatives could still trade votes if they wanted, but we would have more visibility into the process. What's bad about t…

Hmm, that's actually a very good point.

My thinking was that the time to pass a bill would still remain about the same, regardless of size. This means that we wouldn't see as many little bills passed as large bills.

I get your point about smaller bills providing better transparency. That's a very good side effect of smaller bills!

Re: Microsoft, Apple and 27 other tech companies backing SOPA indirectly

#113

Post by rbanffy »

tptacek wrote: post #110
rbanffy wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your boolean logic is flawless. Unfortunately, this is not what we are dealing with. Let's, for example, assume you generously donate a given sum every month, to Greenpeace. According to you logic, nobody can say you support them. Microsoft pays the fees required by their BSA membership and allow the entity to brag abput their membership. The entity's charter is to defend the interests of their members and one of the…

That last sentence is contemptible. Sadly, it fits squarely into the mores of HN commenters, a majority of whom care far less about the truth than they do about whatever nerd narrative they happen to be infatuated with today.

OK. "Shill" is a bit too much, but you have to agree that, from your public persona on HN, you appear to like them better than the average HN'er.

Re: Microsoft, Apple and 27 other tech companies backing SOPA indirectly

#114

Post by Vivtek »

tedunangst wrote: post #51
Vivtek wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any registered candidate would have to get funding for public funding to make any sense. Since the registration is already in place, there you go. If you can't get your minimum signatures to register, you don't get funding. Seems fair to me.

Looking ahead to the next ca election with 2000 candidates... Give each candidate enough money to buy a tv ad and go bankrupt or give each candidate a nickel? I can't envision this system leading to more informed voters.

Yeah, they were real informed last time without public funding. If you guys like to have a circus every time there's nothing I can say about that, but private funding isn't the answer. Because the outcome of that is Governor Schwarzenegger.

Re: Microsoft, Apple and 27 other tech companies backing SOPA indirectly

#115

Post by tptacek »

rbanffy wrote: post #113
tptacek wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That last sentence is contemptible. Sadly, it fits squarely into the mores of HN commenters, a majority of whom care far less about the truth than they do about whatever nerd narrative they happen to be infatuated with today.

OK. "Shill" is a bit too much, but you have to agree that, from your public persona on HN, you appear to like them better than the average HN'er.

In my life I have never had a computer that primarily booted into a Windows OS.

Re: Microsoft, Apple and 27 other tech companies backing SOPA indirectly

#116

Post by imran »

naner wrote: post #13

Notice that the supporters are software companies and the opposed are Internet companies. Here is a theory I proposed yesterday[1]: Microsoft makes the vast majority of their money selling licenses. So does the entertainment industry. For years these industries (software, music, and video) grew to massive size by exploiting cheap duplication of digital goods and control over distribution channels. Now that further ad…

Of all, Apple only supported because steve jobs is not there.

Re: Microsoft, Apple and 27 other tech companies backing SOPA indirectly

#117

Post by billybob »

chollida1 wrote: post #112
billybob wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that what you describe is a MUCH better situation. If you have 100 small bills rolled into one, it's easier for representatives to say "I voted for this part, not that," or even, "I didn't see that part of the bill." With many smaller bills, it makes the tit-for-tat more explicit. Representatives could still trade votes if they wanted, but we would have more visibility into the process. What's bad about t…

Hmm, that's actually a very good point. My thinking was that the time to pass a bill would still remain about the same, regardless of size. This means that we wouldn't see as many little bills passed as large bills. I get your point about smaller bills providing better transparency. That's a very good side effect of smaller bills!

Not sure we'd see fewer bills passed; the cognitive load for each one would be smaller, so maybe they could work faster.

Anyway, "fewer bills passed" could be a good thing, depending on your perspective. The job of Congress isn't to pass as many bills as possible any more than the job of programmers is to write as many lines of code as possible. Less output may be better.

Re: Microsoft, Apple and 27 other tech companies backing SOPA indirectly

#118

Post by rbanffy »

tptacek wrote: post #115
rbanffy wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK. "Shill" is a bit too much, but you have to agree that, from your public persona on HN, you appear to like them better than the average HN'er.

In my life I have never had a computer that primarily booted into a Windows OS.

Interesting. I'm afraid my on-line persona can be equally misleading.

Re: Microsoft, Apple and 27 other tech companies backing SOPA indirectly

#119

Post by tptacek »

rbanffy wrote: post #118
tptacek wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my life I have never had a computer that primarily booted into a Windows OS.

Interesting. I'm afraid my on-line persona can be equally misleading.

Contemptible.

Re: Microsoft, Apple and 27 other tech companies backing SOPA indirectly

#120

Post by snowwrestler »

ahoyhere wrote: post #97
snowwrestler wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To come at that question from the other direction, I sometimes wonder what (if any) anti-piracy bill some tech folks would support. The counter-argument to better IP enforcement often seems to be "change your business model", which is not a policy statement.

Piracy is already illegal. Just like child pornography is already illegal. There is no need to make extra laws about it, and whenever somebody purports to write a law to "prevent" a crime that is already illegal, you can know that that law will contain terrible, overreaching things. There's a reason that there's no law that holds telephone companies responsible for law-breaking which is organized over their wires / c…

Just making something illegal doesn't prevent it from happening--there also need to be laws providing mechanisms for investigation and enforcement.

The phone companies have all sorts of legal duties to law enforcement. If a court orders it, they have to assist with taps, traces, geolocation, call records, etc.

As you say, piracy is already illegal. And we know there's a ton of casual piracy that goes on--see:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/its-official...

So the question is: what mechanisms of enforcement can dampen casual piracy and yet be acceptable to most tech companies?

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