Opinion Piece On CBS Says Chris Dodd Should Be Fired For His 'Intransigent' Position On SOPA/PIPA
from the working-together? dept
Over the last few months, MPAA boss Chris Dodd has been promoting SOPA and PIPA by repeating the refrain that Hollywood and Silicon Valley shouldn't be fighting each other, and they need to work together. However, the reality is something entirely different. By "working together" he seems to mean "the tech community should just agree to everything Hollywood wants, no matter how counterproductive." He's missed no opportunity to exclude the input of the tech industry (and even the wider content industry). This isn't a huge surprise. Dodd has a history of playing fast and loose with the facts, as well as flip-flopping when politically convenient. This includes his promise not to work as a lobbyist just a short while before taking over the MPAA -- a lobbying organization.But it's nice to see that some have finally had enough of Chris Dodd's claims here -- and even from within his supposed "supporters." CBS has been a supporter of SOPA/PIPA, but CBS News has an opinion piece by Brad Chase, about how the tech world and Hollywood need to work more closely together, and the first key point they make is that Chris Dodd has been obstructionist on this point and needs to go:
Like the American Civil War, a polarizing figure is at the heart of the rift between North and South. Whereas Abraham Lincoln recognized the inherent need for a united house, MPAA chairman Chris Dodd has no such noble intent or practical understanding. The intransigent former senator - no stranger to putting self-interest above the cause from his days pandering to the banking industry - has done everything possible to widen the rift between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. He's made a huge mistake systematically shutting the tech industry out of the conversation and trying to unilaterally push through new regulation. The 21st century merging of content and delivery platforms creates a natural partnership in this fight, but Dodd stands in the way. It's time the MPAA gives Dodd a one-way ticket back to Washington.
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Filed Under: censorship, china, chris dodd, pipa, principles, protect ip, sopa, us
Companies: mpaa
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interesting comments about espinel too
The President's "copyright czar" Victoria Espinel is ineffective and secretive. According to a Wired report on a recently announced copyright violation crackdown system, Espinel prefers backroom dealing to open discussion. While the content providers had a cozy relationship with White House officials, leading digital rights advocacy group Public Knowledge was only "sort of consulted at the end." This shady behavior is just the latest by an administration lauded for transparency but unable to back up its rhetoric.
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Re: interesting comments about espinel too
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I think if the MPAA was trying to win a public opinion / media war about something to do with it's actions on some other issue, he might be right. But since the MPAA is literally fighting for their rights, I think he is wrong.
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Fighting for more government granted power, yes. Fighting for their rights my ass. They have those already, and a bunch more the government made up just for them they already have too. They just want more.
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You pirate types are just sounding desperate and silly at this point. You never offer anything rational to the discussion; no wonder people are tuning you out. You just sound like zealots.
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Re: Fighting to be able to protect their copyrights is hardly over reaching.
Whose creativity are we trying to encourage, exactly?
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Most of the rest of the world will have the free internet, while we in the U.S. will have our Government try and tell the rest of the world they should push for freedom and democracy. All the while the rest of the world will be looking at Big Brother rain tyranny over its own citizens.
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Happy to hear the opposing response. SOunds like the opponents have been less than honest in their analysis
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Masnick has been lying to everyone about this "break the Internet" meme, and now he's been busted.
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There has been some action, some organized events (like the phone calling thing), but honestly, without simply point and click tools and the advantage of the anonymous world, most of these people wouldn't have gotten off their duffs for anything.
There will always be people who oppose a new law, they will write their op-eds and their blogs, they will make their little protests, and they will kick and scream. But it's the silent majority that generally carries the day. No matter how much Mike works to find people who oppose SOPA (and aren't directly attached to EFF or it's offspring), the more desperate it all looks.
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I don't think he's working very hard at all to find opposition to SOPA. It's actually quite easy to find opposition.
That being said, I kind of want to see SOPA and PIPA pass. It wouldn't take long for lobby groups to have the USA change the country's name to United Corporations of America. It would just be a formality at that point.
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So then where is your blog of supporters? Oh, that's right, it doesn't exist, because you can't get nearly as many supporters as Mike. That's why you're here.
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Asked and answered repeatedly already. It's easy to get people to fight "against the man" and be all loud and uppity about it (see OWS as an example), but those people are the small but noisy minority in the deal. But if you are judging the popularity of something by the noise alone, then they are the "winners".
Thankfully, the politicians are not generally swayed by noisy little groups, especially when they realize that what they are asking for is a complete breakdown of existing laws.
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What I find so freaking adorable about you, is how easy it is to prove you wrong.
Net Neutrality got similar online support, and it wasn't "fighting against" something, but fighting for something. And a lot of the same folks are involved in this fight.
Care to try again, or shall we just call it a day and note that TAM's got no game, as per usual?
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No, politicians are generally clueless and bought. The following links provide a better explanation
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100408/1003328938.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com /articles/20111217/22470217117/senator-harry-reid-moves-to-approve-protect-ip-begin-censoring-intern et.shtml#c146
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111206/09551716990/as-expected-sopa-supporters-h ate-more-reasonable-alternative.shtml#c320
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111203/00494716961/ some-data-how-much-big-media-firms-are-donating-to-sopapipa-sponsors.shtml
http://www.techdirt.co m/articles/20111214/17420517091/revolving-door-sixteen-former-judiciary-committee-staff-are-lobbying -congress-concerning-sopa.shtml
http://politics.slashdot.org/story/11/12/18/1836249/sopa-creator- in-tvfilmmusic-industrys-pocket
"Asked and answered repeatedly already. It's easy to get people to fight "against the man" and be all loud and uppity about it (see OWS as an example), but those people are the small but noisy minority in the deal."
[citation needed]
and your post was already addressed the last time. Read the responses to your post.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111214/10213817084/call-congress-today-let-them-know-aga in-that-you-are-against-sopa.shtml#c23
"but those people are the small but noisy minority in the deal."
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111219/04440117128/poll-suggests-americans-all-ages-pol itical-positions-locations-all-hate-sopa.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111208/03011717 005/entertainment-industry-still-cant-get-grassroots-support-sopapipa-resorts-to-trying-to-buy-suppo rt.shtml
and I can go on.
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But that is not true, you know it is a big chunk of people who dislike copyright or outright ignore it, that is why you types need more legislation to try and beat people back into obedience.
Anybody can just go out and ask their friends and see where they stand on the issue and everybody everywhere will find out the same thing nobody wants to give security up or freedoms for the likes of "content owners".
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Two words:
Tea Party
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The silent majority is opposed to censorship, you can ask anywhere where any citizen is going to give copyright owners more powers that will result in whole sale censorship of their lifes and they all will say "screw you".
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> carries the day.
If they're silent how do you know which side they support?
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The point is not that websites ordered to be taken down break the rest of the Internet and hence breaking websites that weren't ordered to be removed. The point is that websites being taken down before having an opportunity to an adversarial hearing makes it too easy for people to take websites down without good cause. This, in effect, can be used to remove many websites for little to no reason placing an undue burden on those accused to prove their innocence before having their website reinstated. People shouldn't be guilty until proven innocent, they should be innocent until proven guilty.
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The point is not that websites ordered to be taken down break the rest of the Internet and hence breaking websites that weren't ordered to be removed. The point is that websites being taken down before having an opportunity to an adversarial hearing makes it too easy for people to take websites down without good cause. This, in effect, can be used to remove many websites for little to no reason placing an undue burden on those accused to prove their innocence before having their website reinstated. People shouldn't be guilty until proven innocent, they should be innocent until proven guilty.
No it is you missing the point. The hankie twisting that went on in the Judiciary Committee SOPA hearing was entirely over whether websites ordered to be taken down break the rest of the Internet. I'm glad to see you concede that is not the case, because that contention is being shot full of holes in Washington as we speak.
Your problem is with the due process aspect. FWIW, Rule 65 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure apply under SOPA. So I guess what you most object to is the fundamental fairness of FRCP. That's a real stretch to fix that in a bill.
Everyone knows that the "break the internet" cries were so much hyperbole. As George Ou has pointed out, it will not break the internet except for those sites adjudicated as rogue.
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Which is not the argument being made by the post you were replying to. and the website does build a strawman and shoot it down in ways that I addressed in the subsequent post. and even if the judiciary committee argues something, you're assuming that what they're arguing is representative of the true arguments being made by SOPA critics. It's hard to make that argument when Congress is hesitant to allow critics to discuss the matter with them during these hearings. The fact that a bunch of (clueless and bought) congressmen are arguing something hardly makes their argument representative of the true arguments being made.
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One of my problems is with the aspect that may allow a cite to be taken down before having the opportunity to an adversarial hearing. I have a few other problems, like the fact that potential infringement penalties exceed penalties for false takedown requests. That's unacceptable, plaintiffs are in a better position to know if they hold protections over something than defendants.
"That's a real stretch to fix that in a bill. "
We're not talking about fixing FRCP in general, we're talking about a bill (SOPA) that enables prior restraint before the opportunity of due process. We're talking about fixing that bill so that the bill will not result in such a possibility.
"Everyone knows that the "break the internet" cries were so much hyperbole."
Yes, simply proclaim your position to be true and due away with reason and logic.
"As George Ou has pointed out, it will not break the internet except for those sites adjudicated as rogue."
George builds a strawman and shoots it down. As pointed out, SOPA could potentially cause other problems.
Allowing courts to remove sites before the possibility of an adversarial hearing itself can cause serious problems and hence 'break the Internet' or at least negatively reshape it.
Not providing sufficient disincentive for plaintiffs to file bogus takedown requests, through stricter penalties, encourages them to abuse SOPA to take down content for reasons other than infringement. That alone could cause serious problems. Penalties for bogus takedown requests should exceed penalties for infringement. But SOPA supporters refuse to allow for such a thing because they don't plan to use these laws to stop infringement, they plan to use them to stop competition.
Bad laws are already responsible for breaking everything else. Copy protection laws are broken (they last too long, infringement damages are too high and exceed damages for falsely claiming content that one has no privileges to), they broke broadcasting (self interested corporate interests now have exclusive broadcasting and cableco monopoly privileges, they abuse those privileges to censor criticisms they don't like. For instance, they would never allow Mike to criticize IP over public airwaves or on cable because they know that their position is indefensible in the face of scrutiny). Restaurants and other venues are deterred from hosting independent performers thanks to collection societies that threaten them with lawsuits if they refuse to pay a fee under the pretext that someone might infringe. As a result, outside the Internet, people almost must pay monopoly prices for almost all content. In addition to wrongfully denying me of my right to freely broadcast, the government wrongfully grants a monopoly on content (through copy protection laws) and on the distribution of that content (through broadcasting). The very intent is to deter the creation of permissibly licensed and public domain content. Look around you, everything outside the Internet is broke thanks to bad laws. and those who wanted those bad laws passed made similar arguments that you did. "FCC broadcasting monopolies won't result in censoring free speech". That turned out to be wrong. Now our government wrongfully grants monopoly power over almost everything (ie: taxi cab monopolies) and the public is mostly unaware thanks to the fact that the government has also granted monopolies to communication.
So it's hardly a stretch to say that SOPA will cause huge problems and that it's intended to. So many of our other laws are corrupt, this law looks corrupt (and some of the politicians pushing for it have received massive campaign contributions from those who want these laws), it's hardly a stretch to say that this law is corrupt like all of the many other laws. Government doesn't intend for this law to be socially beneficial, it intends for this law to be corrupt like all of the many other corrupt laws that exist. If government does care about the general public its first order of business would be to substantially repeal our existing copy protection laws by reducing infringement penalties, increasing the penalties for claiming something that one has no privileges to and for filing bogus takedown requests, making copy protection opt in and requiring a centralized database where works can get stored and referenced so that people can better know if something is infringing and so that content can later be released when it does enter the public domain (say, the LOC) for the public to enjoy, substantially shortening copy protection lengths, etc...
The only acceptable course of action congress can take right now is to substantially repeal copy protection laws. Expanding them and their enforcement is not acceptable and it's not in the public interest.
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Well, good luck with that.
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Anybody who understands how it works knows that and you are trying to say it magically isn't the case?
As for your rule 65, does it not apply equally to the DMCA?
Search for "DMCA used for censorship" and see how many hits you get in any search engine of your choice even the distributed ones like Faroo, YaCy, openCola(i.e. Cory Doctorow tech).
If people are forced to use other DNSes to find what they are looking for how this is not going to fragment the actual DNS system and force the halt of efforts to secure the internet?
Quote:
Source: https://www.dnssec-deployment.org/index.php/2011/11/can-fbis-operation-ghost-click-show-dnssecs-extr aordinary-value/
Even the government agents responsible for security are opposed to SOPA.
There is a real choice here to be made, security or economic interests driven legislation with marginal gains?
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2011/1115_cybersecurity_friedman.aspx
You apparently want to put everyone at risk and erode their rights for your own selfish interests and want people to just accept that?
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http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/08/24/zdnets-george-ou-exposed-as-ignorant-microsoft-s hill-zoon/
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and your 'research' isn't any research, it's nothing more than a one sided opinion piece that doesn't really address anything. Instead of posting links, why not discuss the issue. Do you have anything you would like to discuss in particular?
"Yet Paul Vixie is the inventor of DNS filters, so it is self-evident that he does not think his invention is ineffective."
http://www.hightechforum.org/dns-filtering-is-essential-to-the-internet/
Wait ... what? Not all inventions are a success. In fact, most fail. Thomas Edison probably failed many many times before he came up with a successful invention. Will Edison proclaim that all his failed inventions were a success?
"The claim that DNS Filtering can easily be bypassed by content pirates is misguided because it fails to recognize the purpose of DNS Filtering. The purpose of DNS Filtering is not to stop end users from pirating content, the purpose is to stop counterfeit goods and copyright infringing websites from posing as legal sites and charging paying customers for advertising time or direct compensation."
http://www.hightechforum.org/my-dns-filtering-research-before-house-sopa-panel/
No one is failing to understand the purpose of DNS filtering. Everyone understands it just fine. The DMCA had a similar purpose .... how did that work out for you?
"The engineers who are claiming that DNS Filtering would break the security extension standard for DNS called DNSSEC, and thereby break Internet Cybersecurity. This is because a website whose DNS was blocked by court order cannot operate in secure DNSSEC mode. I refuted this argument in my paper, pointing out that the purpose of the court order is to completely break access to those websites whether they were running in non-secure DNS mode or secure DNSSEC mode."
No, you haven't refuted anything ... in fact, you haven't even addressed the argument being made. Instead, in typical IP maximist fassion, you built a strawman and shot it down. Here, I'll even do your homework for you and paste the relevant text from the PDF file.
"Users running secure applications have a need to distinguish between policy-based failures and failures caused, for example, by the presence of an attack or a hostile network, or else downgrade attacks would likely be prolific."
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=protect-ip-technical-whitepaper-final.p df&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.circleid.com%2Fpdf%2FPROTECT-I P-Technical-Whitepaper-Final.pdf&ei=7_PvTubAPNTXiQLm-qHPDg&usg=AFQjCNEhvDIS6NX5w_J9RKW2nWHRn VscVw&cad=rja
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You can keep pointing to George Ou all you want. It doesn't make him any more credible. Look, 83 engineers signed a letter against SOPA/PIPA. Every single one of them have fired people of much greater skill that Ou has ever had. He's a policy wonk, not an engineer.
I know that your side is desperate for a tech champion, but Ou is not going to do it. Trust me.
You're trying to line up a third string little leaguer against the major league all-star team. Lamar Smith can pretend Ou has some credentials all he wants, but it'll only seal Smith's fate. Seriously, using someone like Ou as your go to guy on this is going to backfire for you guys badly. You don't role out the paid-in-full "policy guy who sorta knows a little tech" when you're facing off against the guys who built the internet.
Unless you want to be made to look foolish.
But if you want to go that route, it'll be great to use that against you guys for the next decade plus.
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You nailed it.
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You monopolist types are the ones sounding really desperate, talking about censorship and the end of freedom.
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Dec 19th, 2011 @ 3:17pm
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Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Dec 19th, 2011 @ 3:17pm
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Re: Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Dec 19th, 2011 @ 3:17pm
Nice try, but just fail.
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Re: Re: Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Dec 19th, 2011 @ 3:17pm
"But, this law doesn't follow proper due process"
- it keeps dogs off my lawn
"But it hurts a bunch of other people"
- it keeps dogs off my lawn
"Nobody agrees with your idea"
- it keeps dogs off my lawn
"BUT IT DOESNT EVEN KEEP DOGS OFF YOUR DAMN LAWN"
- it keeps dogs off my lawn
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You mean the rights they have earned through decades of massive lobbying and campaign donations?
You mean the rights that are never, ever good enough for them, so they always want more and more?
Yeah, they should keep fighting, and we shouldn't resist. Give the artists everything they want (well, the people that own them anyway).
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(2) Works for me. I boycott them all already. Nothing new for me to do. Next!
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Outsider's point of view
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Re: Outsider's point of view
Next, talk to someone in China about how well the filter works. You can, you know... because it doesn't. They still employ millions of people in trying, which is fine if you are the government of China. If you're a 2-person startup in Silicon Valley, not so much.
For the DNS zone transfer 102 portion, check out what happens when you throw in peering. You get stuff like half of California can't reach YouTube for a couple of hours, and all because the Pakistani government was trying to block a particular video.
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Perhaps DNSCEC will improve security, but does anyone really believe it is hack proof? If history teaches anything, it is that determined individuals can break anything by exploiting vulnerabities when and as they are identified.
If anything, DNSSEC may provide an additional measure of security, but at a gut level it seems to me that it is not a panacea as many seem inclined to believe.
Even with DNSSEC fully deployed, one cannot escape the simple fact that select sites will continue to be blocked as is the case with the DNS system.
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"We realize that you truly believe that you're doing the country a service by proposing this bill & fighting for its passage. The problem is that you're not; now leave this issue alone & find another cause that actually matters."
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Good advice!
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