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SOPA 'shelved' until consensus is found

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Re: SOPA 'shelved' until consensus is found

#61

Post by DanielBMarkham »

mattwdelong wrote: post #44
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #29

I would urge extreme caution about reading too much into this article. I (I'm a political junkie) saw Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) on TV yesterday. The message I got from his body language, nuance, and phrasing was something like "Obviously people who are elected from heavy technology areas are feeling a lot of heat. There's still a lot of support, though. Let's see if we can tweak this in such a way as to p…

What scares me most is the fact that everyone knows this tactic. Write an absurd policy, debate it, offer an alternative and jam it down citizens throats. We know this, yet there is not much that can be done about it. Aside from the obvious, running for Senate and using your vote, what can be done to stop it? Someone with the right amount of money and enough motivation can pass just about anything, given enough time.…

If the president were to have the line-item veto, where he could approve of certain parts of a bill and veto others, we could hold him personally responsible whenever bills get loaded up like this. As it is, they can pass what they want and nobody is responsible. That's clearly not the way the system was designed to work. The entire purpose of representative democracies is that while representatives can freely vote against their constituents, the constituents also can throw them out of office based on the representative's decisions.

I've seen this same problem play out in a variety of contexts, and it looks to me like the line-item veto is the only thing that will prevent this corruption of the system we're seeing. While this idea has been a pet cause of conservatives for some time, it looks like supporters of liberty have just as much or more skin in the game as fiscal hawks.

Play out the following scenario in your head: it's late in the year, no budget has been passed by Congress (again), and suddenly some third-rail social program is running out of money. Congress passes a law to help the orphans and grandmothers, everybody climbs on-board with huge majority votes, and way in the back section is another version of SOPA.

If you're the president, what do you do? Note this is a much different political scenario than just threatening a veto -- this is asking if you're willing to risk pissing off huge special interests groups just to make a much smaller number of nerds happy. It's political math, and it works quite simply. You sign the bill, make a public speech about how bad the new SOPA is, and life goes on. If you're smart you send out mailers asking people to donate so you can get rid of the thing you just signed! One party will pick the "side" of SOPA, the other party will pick the other "side". In fact it doesn't matter whether you really support or oppose the bill, whoever paid for it got it passed, huge numbers of politicians got to oppose it, and the public can't point the finger at anybody. There's nobody to throw out of office. There's no feedback loop. The system is broken.

In my mind the only thing that is going to fix that is the line-item veto. A lot of state governors have it. I think it's about time POTUS got it also.

Re: SOPA 'shelved' until consensus is found

#62

Post by ctdonath »

billswift wrote: post #46
ctdonath wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps "Whereas Congress finds the right to free speech includes the ability to discuss unpopular and disagreeable subjects, no person shall be prohibited by law from referencing objectionable/illegal material, including by providing mechanisms for automatic retrieval thereof." At least a repeal would entail the difficulty of repealing opposing & established legislation. There are a lot of laws which would be enacte…

>At least a repeal would entail the difficulty of repealing opposing & established legislation. Nonsense, they do that all the time. A large part of Obamacare and most other large bills modify existing law. New laws simply over-write previous laws.

I'm not saying it can't/doesn't happen. I'm saying it hinders such laws, if not stops them. Obamacare was achieved only after an ENORMOUS fight, at tremendous cost (politically and financially), and is still embattled upon the verge of being overturned. Point is that filling a void is easier than having to empty one first.

Re: SOPA 'shelved' until consensus is found

#63

Post by brandall10 »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #29

I would urge extreme caution about reading too much into this article. I (I'm a political junkie) saw Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) on TV yesterday. The message I got from his body language, nuance, and phrasing was something like "Obviously people who are elected from heavy technology areas are feeling a lot of heat. There's still a lot of support, though. Let's see if we can tweak this in such a way as to p…

Someone on HN posted a link to "Century of the Self" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self

Basic takeaway for me was dictatorships control by abject force, democracies keep things in check by pandering to irrationalism (ie. consumerism and mass media).

My take on this whole matter is perhaps framing this as a desire to protect Hollywood is a bit of a ruse. Wikileaks, the Middle East uprisings, Occupy Wallstreet, etc, are beginning to send a message.

Let's face it, the issues raised by SOPA and Protect IP have been a 'problem' for quite a while now. So why now exactly? And why has the public been almost completely unaware of this legislation? Technology is too enabling and things are happening too quickly. The US government is fearing a threat that things are about to run off the tracks. I consider this bill just one of many that will be coming down the pike in various forms - the meta message simply being a war against technology, or trying to contain it to keep the concept of American life in check. Now that the word is getting out about this a retreat and rethink is in order to figure out how to broach legislation that moves toward this goal. All the other side has to do is frame this as "we're moving toward being like China" and the propaganda machine is thrown for a loop, because clearly, that is the idea to be avoided. Our US concept of prosperity is defined by that contrast. It's the new Cold War. But China isn't the adversary. We are.

Apologies for the conspiracy theorist tone. But yeah, we're just getting started.

Re: SOPA 'shelved' until consensus is found

#64

Post by rgrieselhuber »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #61
mattwdelong wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What scares me most is the fact that everyone knows this tactic. Write an absurd policy, debate it, offer an alternative and jam it down citizens throats. We know this, yet there is not much that can be done about it. Aside from the obvious, running for Senate and using your vote, what can be done to stop it? Someone with the right amount of money and enough motivation can pass just about anything, given enough time.…

If the president were to have the line-item veto, where he could approve of certain parts of a bill and veto others, we could hold him personally responsible whenever bills get loaded up like this. As it is, they can pass what they want and nobody is responsible. That's clearly not the way the system was designed to work. The entire purpose of representative democracies is that while representatives can freely vote a…

In effect, doesn't the President already have line item veto? If there are items he doesn't agree with, he should signal that he will veto until they are removed.

Re: SOPA 'shelved' until consensus is found

#65

Post by mattwdelong »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #61
mattwdelong wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What scares me most is the fact that everyone knows this tactic. Write an absurd policy, debate it, offer an alternative and jam it down citizens throats. We know this, yet there is not much that can be done about it. Aside from the obvious, running for Senate and using your vote, what can be done to stop it? Someone with the right amount of money and enough motivation can pass just about anything, given enough time.…

If the president were to have the line-item veto, where he could approve of certain parts of a bill and veto others, we could hold him personally responsible whenever bills get loaded up like this. As it is, they can pass what they want and nobody is responsible. That's clearly not the way the system was designed to work. The entire purpose of representative democracies is that while representatives can freely vote a…

That's actually laid out quite nicely. And in theory, I really like it.

However, it's kind of like a last line of defense, where the rest of the defense is entirely broken. It's putting all your faith in that last line of defense, and hoping that the right scenario will play out. Eventually, it too, will fail. Still, the first line of defense has to be fixed. With that being said, it's a step in the right direction.

Re: SOPA 'shelved' until consensus is found

#66

Post by pasbesoin »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #29

I would urge extreme caution about reading too much into this article. I (I'm a political junkie) saw Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) on TV yesterday. The message I got from his body language, nuance, and phrasing was something like "Obviously people who are elected from heavy technology areas are feeling a lot of heat. There's still a lot of support, though. Let's see if we can tweak this in such a way as to p…

I didn't see Reid, but I agree. Amongst other things, the last 15+ years have shown us there will be no strategic surrender.

I need to dig into more detail, but everything leading up to this leads me to believe it's just a new round of hand waving, or "duck and cover", until they can find e.g. the eve of another holiday recess to try to ram it through.

And notice, please, that in the midst of this "retreat", they never did present and listen to the technical experts. Do you thing that this is entirely by accident?

Re: SOPA 'shelved' until consensus is found

#67

Post by jbooth »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #64
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the president were to have the line-item veto, where he could approve of certain parts of a bill and veto others, we could hold him personally responsible whenever bills get loaded up like this. As it is, they can pass what they want and nobody is responsible. That's clearly not the way the system was designed to work. The entire purpose of representative democracies is that while representatives can freely vote a…

In effect, doesn't the President already have line item veto? If there are items he doesn't agree with, he should signal that he will veto until they are removed.

That requires a lot from the President and oftentimes they'll be on the losing end of that political battle. On the recently-passed NDAA for example (which explicitly made it legal to detain people without trial, and hopefully will be struck down by the courts), it was passed as part of funding the military, sending out soldier paychecks, etc. Fox News is already (wrongly) accusing Obama of wanting to undermine our troops all the time, and people are already sick of pointless squabbling over routine funding matters in DC. Obama would have been the political loser from vetoing the bill, the Republicans would have known it, and they probably would have just kept passing the bill and forcing him to veto it until he caved.

Re: SOPA 'shelved' until consensus is found

#68

Post by thebigshane »

mgkimsal wrote: post #47

While watching the MSNBC video yesterday, Cotton's repeated assertions that this only applied to 'foreign sites' bugged me. From the SOPA text: -------------- (a) Definition- For purposes of this section, a foreign Internet site or portion thereof is a `foreign infringing site' if-- (1) the Internet site or portion thereof is a U.S.-directed site and is used by users in the United States; (2) the owner or operator of…

The Manager's Amendment clarifies that language. [http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/HR%203261%20Managers...

Since it is still all legalese, I'll paraphrase (IANAL): a site who's domain name is registered by a registrar outside of US jurisdiction, OR if there is no associated domain name: an IP address of a server outside of US jurisdiction.

Re: SOPA 'shelved' until consensus is found

#70

Post by Generic_Name »

brandall10 wrote: post #63
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #29

I would urge extreme caution about reading too much into this article. I (I'm a political junkie) saw Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) on TV yesterday. The message I got from his body language, nuance, and phrasing was something like "Obviously people who are elected from heavy technology areas are feeling a lot of heat. There's still a lot of support, though. Let's see if we can tweak this in such a way as to p…

Someone on HN posted a link to "Century of the Self" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self Basic takeaway for me was dictatorships control by abject force, democracies keep things in check by pandering to irrationalism (ie. consumerism and mass media). My take on this whole matter is perhaps framing this as a desire to protect Hollywood is a bit of a ruse. Wikileaks, the Middle East uprisings, Occupy W…

Well if you're right, that just means EVERYONE needs to speak out against legislation like this, otherwise who knows where the government is going to lead this nation.
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