Patterico's Pontifications

1/20/2012

Patterico’s SOPA Protest

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 11:12 pm



You may have noticed that there were no posts here on Wednesday. What you may not have realized is that Wednesday was the day of a massive coordinated protest against SOPA:

Wikipedia went dark for a day. Google hid its logo under a black shroud. And hundreds of other websites darkened their pages temporarily in a massive, coordinated protest against a pair of bills that would step up enforcement of copyrights and trademarks. Wednesday’s demonstration provoked such an intense backlash against the Protect IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act (better known as PIPA and SOPA) that by the end of the week, more than 100 lawmakers had declared their opposition and both bills had been placed on hold.

So in fact, what seemed like sloth on the part of Blog Management here at Patterico.com was actually part of an Online Protest Against Big Government Attempts to Control Free Speech!!

Well, OK. The truth is that I have been in trial and Karl was having Internet access issues. But you have my assurance that, if I had known that I could not post for a day and call it a “protest,” I would have.

Hell, the Occupy Wall Street guys got away with doing nothing and calling it a protest for months!

In all seriousness, this SOPA and PIPA nonsense sounds like a terrible idea. I can’t tell you how often I see bogus claims of “piracy” used as an excuse to squelch speech — and now we want to give the government the power to shut down web sites when some doofus asserts a claim of piracy?

The original versions of PIPA and SOPA would have enabled the Justice Department to seek court orders to seize the domain names of foreign sites that were either “dedicated to” infringing copyrights and trademarks or just facilitating infringement.

Not a good idea at all.

I may have to protest a few more days.

14 Responses to “Patterico’s SOPA Protest”

  1. There are all kids of piracy.

    Hijacking the copyright law and extending terms on old copyrights again and again is as much a theft from the public as any download of a song. In the last 35 years, copyrights on existing works have been extended 40 years, meaning that nothing has entered the public domain since 1975.

    The Constitution authorizes copyrights for limited terms, and 105 years is not limited in any human sense. Sure, the way to deal with bad law is to repeal it, but it should not surprise anyone that bad law gets ignored. Instead of more and more draconian actions to try to enforce the unenforceable, perhaps we need to look at copyright reform, go back to reasonable terms, and rethink how these laws ought to work in the digital age.

    Kevin M (563f77)

  2. Hell, the Occupy Wall Street guys got away with doing nothing and calling it a protest for months!

    OK, that was funny…!

    no one you know (577ce5)

  3. I kept my blog open and posted several items. I’m equally against SOPA and ridiculous protests in general! The true protest is voting against idiots who want to squelch the “glorious anarchy” that is the internet. Obama’s henchmen will be back at it soon with plan B. (There are idiots on both sides of the aisle, however.)
    visit http://psutafalumnigolf.blogspot.com for the world’s top-rated Track and Field/Physics/Golf blog.

    dfbaskwill (c021f2)

  4. Very zen, Patterico,

    narciso (87e966)

  5. The thing which has really got much of the internet in a bother about this is the second order effects. If your site has a link to an infringing site, it’s infringing.

    What what this would do to comments sections is unpleasant to contemplate.

    aphrael (1fc48e)

  6. Also, as an aside, Sen. Gillibrand’s cosponsorship of PIPA has me convinced not to vote for her in November. (On the other hand, while some of President Obama’s henchmen are definitely behind this, it’s hard to describe Rep. Lamar Smith, one of its primary proponents, as an Obama henchman. There’s broad bipartisan support for this dumb law.)

    aphrael (1fc48e)

  7. I’ve always had tremendous respect for Lamar Smith until this SOPA nonsense came about. It’s really undermined by view that he was here to represent my interests (he’s no longer my congressman, but still).

    It’s very, very disappointing that this expansion of government intrusion is coming from the political party I would like to represent a less consequential federal government.

    Also, Kevin’s comment is excellent. Our IP system is anti innovation and all about who has access to the levers of power.

    And frankly, I’ve seen a lot of comments (Albeit from a limited crew of trolls) ignore the copyright policy linked below the comment box. When the conversation heads in the wrong direction (for them) they will spam the entirety of articles they hope will screw up the flow of conversation.

    In this age of complex dirty tricks be the zealots of both parties, I can see blogs finding themselves unable to limit the infringement in their comment sections… making it all too easy for the bad guys to damage their ideological opponents. The end result would simply be a great chilling of commenting. This may seem like quite a stretch, but I think some people would try any combination of ideas until they found something that worked.

    The right answer is to keep criminal law out of the copyright enforcement business. That’s a civil issue. Damages should be kept realistic, too. Ancient IP should become public domain much sooner. Our IP system should protect innovation instead of crush it.

    Dustin (7362cd)

  8. Also, as an aside, Sen. Gillibrand’s cosponsorship of PIPA has me convinced not to vote for her in November. (On the other hand, while some of President Obama’s henchmen are definitely behind this, it’s hard to describe Rep. Lamar Smith, one of its primary proponents, as an Obama henchman. There’s broad bipartisan support for this dumb law.)

    Comment by aphrael

    Yep. This is something for Republicans to be ashamed of. Especially if you know how bad it is. It’s time to take control of the GOP away from the big government folks.

    Dustin (7362cd)

  9. My biggest beef is how the copyright cartel falsely calls piracy theft. Copyrights, trademarks, patents, etc, are granted at the pleasure of Congress for a limited time. Violating that monopoly is properly called infringement.

    Since this monopoly is given by Congress, it can’t be property, which is a Constitutional right like the right to free speech. Rights are not granted by the government, they are held by the people.

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (f83316)

  10. “for a limited time”

    not so limited any more.

    aphrael (1fc48e)

  11. Good point, Bradley.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  12. This seems relevant to this thread.

    Frankly, it is a huge mistake to rely on the cloud as a backup for your files. I used to use gmail for that, but now I keep it all local, and frankly I keep all online storage clear of anything I wouldn’t want everyone on the planet to see.

    Dustin (7362cd)

  13. If this thing had actually passed and they started grabbing foreign domain names or blocking DNS resolution, the next vote at the UN to take over the internet would be something like 156-5.

    Probably led by our BFFs, China and France.

    Kevin M (563f77)

  14. If it does pass, wouldn’t the American internet and everyone who supports it just move to another country, or even become rebels if the protest doesn’t work out? US would become just another grey area to the internet. Well I just doubt the internet can ever be truly stopped.

    Hilda (2e6b26)


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