Senator Harry Reid Moves To Approve PROTECT IP And Begin Censoring The Internet

from the people-vs.-hollywood dept

Apparently ignoring the widespread protests about both SOPA and PROTECT IP (PIPA) from the last few months (and the momentum growing against both bills), it was announced over the weekend that Harry Reid is seeking to override the hold on PIPA put forth by Senator Ron Wyden (along with Senators Jerry Moran, Maria Cantwell and Rand Paul) by seeking cloture. This isn't a huge surprise. Last week Senator Reid had informed other Democratic Senators that he intended PROTECT IP to be the first bill he brought to the floor when the Senate returns for business in January. So, now the cloture vote will happen January 24th, 2012 just as the Senate comes back into session. That means there's a little over a month where Hollywood is going to make every effort it can to get Senators over to its side. They need 60 Senators to betray the Constitution and to undermine a decade and a half's work on online security for a plan that won't actually help Hollywood at all. But, with Hollywood flinging money around DC like they're making record revenues at the box office (which... um... they are), they've already got 40 Senators signed on. That means there's a month to make sure 20 other Senators don't betray their country, their economy and the internet.

The really disappointing part in all of this is that these Senators appear to remain totally out of touch to the public opinion on these bills. They simply look at Hollywood, the US Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO and see dollar signs. These groups fund campaigns, and 2012 is an election season. So, might as well try to make them happy. Public will be damned. Of course, the one way to defeat dollars is with voters. The more constituents who reach out and call their Senators, or (better yet) go and visit them and explain how this bill is a disaster that undermines everything America stands for, the better. So, start calling...

Filed Under: copyright, free speech, harry reid, pipa, protect ip, senate, sopa

Cable News Finally Realizing That SOPA And PROTECT IP Are Bad News

from the here-it-comes... dept

Well, well, well. We've noted in the past that while the serious concerns about SOPA and PROTECT IP (PIPA) have been all over the web and newspapers, they've mostly been mostly been absent from cable news... companies that are owned by the biggest supporters of these bills (the one "exception" was Colbert). But can cable news really continue to ignore the story while so many people are speaking out about it? Looks like the tide may be shifting. On Friday, Fox Business Channel had on Jim Harper from the Cato Institute to explain why these are terrible ideas and how Congress is trying to rush it through despite so many concerns: Similarly, it sounds like MSNBC is planning something as well. Will Congress really still be able to pretend that people don't care about these bills?

Filed Under: cable news, copyright, jim harper, pipa, protect ip, sopa

Alan Greenspan: Failed To Predict Bubble Popping... And Failed In Predicting Home Taping Would Kill Music

from the innovation:-public-enemy-number-1-for-over-a-half-century dept

Even if SOPA passes in its current form, largely intact and full of overreach opportunities, there's no reason to believe this will be the last (or even the most overreaching) legislation crafted at the behest of the content industries.

The -AA's long history of overreaction to various "threats" (read: technological advancements) has been well detailed here at Techdirt. Joe Karaganis opens a recent post at the SSRC (Social Science Research Council) blog with this mystery quote:

Several of these analyses of alleged harm to the recording industry... were presented and debated during hearings on copyright... At each hearing, X presented the results of the most recent analysis done for the recording industry by his firm... [As] in his earlier testimonies, he stated that continued [copying] had grave implications for the viability of the recording industry. Noting that recording-industry releases were down by almost half since ****, and that industry employment had declined... X stated that further growth in [copying] would cause further decline in these industry indicators.

Karaganis asks: "So, who is X and what is the timeframe?"

If it's hard to guess, there's a reason for that. Because of the industries' insistence on turning every new "threat" into a federal case, this could have happened at any time in the last 50 years. Or it could be happening right now. The answer, however, is a bit surprising, considering who is being referenced.

Did you guess: Alan Greenspan in the early 1980s? Bravo.

To say that Greenspan's reputation has taken a bit of hit since stepping down as chairman of the Federal Reserve would be an understatement. To see that he wilfully (perhaps motivated by a donation) pled on the RIAA's and MPAA's behalf does nothing to resurrect his respectability. Karaganis quotes from a recounting of home taping battles, put together by the (now defunct) OTA (Office of Technology Assessment):

By 1986, industry stakeholders...had sponsored almost a dozen surveys and studies, usually to support or oppose passage of home-copying legislation. ... OTA noted:

In the 1985 analysis, sponsored by the RIAA, Greenspan estimated that in 1984, each instance of home taping cost the taper $1.67 per album equivalent, compared with an average retail price of $6.80. On the basis of an earlier report on home taping by the firm Audits & Surveys, Townsend & Greenspan estimated that 42 percent of all home tapings from prerecorded material and 40% of off-the-air (broadcast) tapings would have generated sales, if taping had not been possible. Then, assuming that 40 percent of home taping in 1984 was in lieu of purchases of records or recorded cassettes, the firm estimated 1984 retail losses of some $1.5 billion...

Moreover, as in his earlier testimonies, he stated that continued home taping had grave implications for the viability of the recording industry. Noting that recording-industry releases were down by almost half since 1979, and that industry employment had declined from 29,000 in the late 1970s to less than 19,000 in 1984, Greenspan stated that further growth in home taping would cause further decline in these industry indicators.

This sort of alarmism is very familiar to anyone paying attention. The refusal to recognize the technological advancement as being a possible ally to the industries is shrugged off in favor of panicked statements and questionable numbers. This very refusal to consider the "benefit" side of the argument is called out by the OTA and other industry groups:

Greenspan's two earlier studies had estimated losses...amounting to $1.05 billion for 1981 and $1.4 billion in 1982. The Consumer Electronics Group of the Electronics Industries Association (EIA), the Audio Recording Rights Coalition, and the Home Recording Rights Coalition (HRRC) submitted dissenting comments and testimony disputing these estimates. ... EIA claimed that the analysis for RIAA had ignored the stimulative effects of home taping on sales of recordings, and that some home tapes (e.g. selection tapes made for portable or car tape players) are not substitutes for prerecorded products... A pattern emerges in these debates. The published recording industry arguments and economic analyses deal only with estimates of alleged harms...

Much like the past decade, the RIAA and MPAA have spent an immense amount of time, energy and money attempting to place the blame for their economic downturn solely in the hands of infringers, completely ignoring other surrounding economic factors or the drastic changes in consumer habits. This selective blindness is nothing new:

[I]t's worth noting that Greenspan spent several years trying to pass stronger enforcement laws based on a scare story about a temporary dip in the market, as the cassette displaced the 8-Track and vinyl went into decline (and the US suffered a major recession). Stronger enforcement was a solution to maintaining the revenue levels associated with the LP and 8-Track. And he made this case at the beginning of the greatest boom period in the recorded music industry: the CD era. Now that the CD is dying, our present-day Greenspans are doing the same.

Everything continues to change but the arguments remain the same. The fact that Alan Greenspan delivered these remarks is somewhat surprising considering his later stance on IP issues. In a 2004 speech at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research Economic Summit, Greenspan had this to say, seemingly forgetting his earlier efforts on the home taping battlefront:

"If our objective is to maximize economic growth, are we striking the right balance in our protection of intellectual property rights? Are the protections sufficiently broad to encourage innovation but not so broad as to shut down follow-on innovation? Are such protections so vague that they produce uncertainties that raise risk premiums and the cost of capital? How appropriate is our current system--developed for a world in which physical assets predominated--for an economy in which value increasingly is embodied in ideas rather than tangible capital?"

Greenspan is mostly referring to patents here, but a lot of what he says holds true across the rest of the intellectual property spectrum. There is a good possibility that Greenspan learned something from his earlier experience, recognizing the fact that technological progression tends to displace legacy industries, but it just as often creates new opportunities, provided it is not stifled by antagonistic legislation designed by the legacy industries in order to protect the status quo.

And about that status quo? Whose status quo is really being protected?

As the MP3 replaced the CD, the major labels cut their distribution costs, struggled to keep digital prices at rough parity with the CD, and pocketed the difference. An artist signed with a major label still makes 15-20% on wholesale-no more than for a good deal in the CD era. Many of the indie labels and digital aggregator services, in contrast, return 50-90% of the wholesale price to the artist. It is glaringly obvious that the major labels' 80% wholesale cut isn't sustainable-nor, I will predict, is Apple's 30% retail cut. Piracy was the messenger, not the message.

Costs have decreased across the board, but artists are still getting the short end of the stick. This isn't about them. It's about the labels, studios and their executives. Despite their constant complaints about how much sales have decreased, executive salaries have never been subject to the same downturn. Karaganis quotes The Lefsetz Letter:

Used to be running a label paid well, but it was mostly about the music, the lifestyle. Then, with the advent of MTV and the CD, suddenly Tommy Mottola was far richer than the acts. And Tommy and his ilk started hanging with other rich people in the Hamptons, they felt entitled to their wealth. Such that when Napster blew a hole in the paradigm, everybody was sacrificed but the top guy. The people running the labels are still as well paid as they were before Napster, before the recession. They're keeping up with the joneses, they're in charge, everybody's expendable but them. As for those people still working at the label...they're thrilled to have a job. Glad to be slaves on the plantation.

The arguments are old and repetitive and the rhetoric has expanded past "think of the poor artists" to "protecting jobs" to the outer reaches of credibility, conjuring up victims such as the US military and firemen. And that's because it's not really about protecting artists. It's about protecting industries which have become used to a certain "standard of living" and now the general public can't be as easily duped about sales numbers and executive salaries, all sorts of emotional buttons are being pushed in a very haphazard and desperate manner.

If it's any consolation, there will be more on the way. I highly suspect there will be never be a legislative solution to the problems of the content industries solely because much of the problem lies with the industries themselves.

(H/T - Ulysses)

Filed Under: alan greenspan, home taping, piracy, predictions, sopa

Small Entertainment Web Site Fears SOPA Will Cause It To Shut Down... But ICE Can Already Shut It Down

from the hearing-from-the-entrepreneurs dept

Paul Tassi has an article up at Forbes, where he explains how the blog he runs for a living, Unreality, which covers movies/tv/video games, would be at risk of being shut down under SOPA. Even though his site has nothing to do with infringement, he's still quite reasonably worried:

My site likes to find the best media-related content on the internet. We post photos, artwork and embed YouTube videos that involve things about our favorite movies, shows and games. I always give credit where it’s due, but on occasion, a photographer or artist cannot be located. Under SOPA, should they find their content on my site, they would legally have the right to petition my advertisers to stop paying me, or report me to the government. The same goes for YouTube videos I might feature. Though the content is not mine, as I haven’t uploaded it to the web myself, I am indeed linking to it, and with this new law, I would be subject to the same sort of harsh penalties should the content within be something copyrighted like footage from a game or movie. I am willingly linking to “infringing” content, and under SOPA, can be branded a “rogue site” because of that. Such a classification could cause me to lose everything.

It's not clear if Tassi is in the US. If he is, then he's actually (partially) exaggerating, because as of Monday, SOPA no longer applies to US sites. But that's not good news. Because if he's a US site, then he's already subject to bogus seizures by the government, by which his web site could totally disappear for over a year with no due process whatsoever. Actually, no matter where he is physically, his site -- as a dot com -- is already subject to that kind of censorship. Even without SOPA. All someone has to do is convince a somewhat clueless Immigrations & Customs Enforcement official that his site has lots of infringing content on it -- even if it does not.

I don’t understand the entertainment companies’ end game here. They’ve gone beyond obtuse to straight up maniacal. Do they think if they manage to shut down every bit of copyright infringement on the internet, that sales are going to suddenly skyrocket? Do they think people have some secret horde of cash that they’ve just been waiting to blow on DVDs and CDs, but haven’t because of The Pirate Bay’s existence? If my site can’t link to gameplay videos or movie clips, are my readers going to run out and buy them to see what they’re missing? If they land Unreality on a rogue evil pirate site list, who benefits? I’m suddenly homeless, without any cash to go the movies.

It's a good question. The "end game" is all about control. The legacy entertainment industry built their business models entirely on the basis of the idea that they, not consumers, controlled the market. Everything they're doing is seeking to regain that lost control. As Tassi notes, none of that will actually make people buy more. But that's never what this was about.

Filed Under: copyright, domain seizures, entrepreneurs, ice, sopa

Dear Congress, It's No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works

from the seconded dept

We usually strive to come up with our own headlines for posts on Techdirt, but Joshua Kopstein's post on Motherboard.tv has such a perfect title that we're reusing it here: Dear Congress, It's No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works. The point, which was driving so many of us mad watching the SOPA hearings, is how head-bangingly frustrating it is to see elected officials gleefully admit they don't understand the technology they're about to regulate:

I remember fondly the days when we were all tickled pink by our elected officials’ struggle to understand how the internet works. Whether it was George W. Bush referring to “the internets” or Senator Ted Stevens describing said internets as “a series of tubes,” we would sit back and chortle at our well-meaning but horribly uninformed representatives, confident that the right people would eventually steer them back on course. Well I have news for members of Congress: Those days are over.

We get it. You think you can be cute and old-fashioned by openly admitting that you don’t know what a DNS server is. You relish in the opportunity to put on a half-cocked smile and ask to skip over the techno-jargon, conveniently masking your ignorance by making yourselves seem better aligned with the average American joe or jane — the “non-nerds” among us.

But this isn't about looking cute and folksy. The internet matters. A lot.

But to anyone of moderate intelligence that tuned in to yesterday’s Congressional mark-up of SOPA, the legislation that seeks to fundamentally change how the internet works, you kind of just looked like a bunch of jack-asses.

Kopstein goes into a lot more (worthwhile, go read it) detail about the bill, about the gleeful ignorance of some Judiciary Committee members, and then concludes:

This used to be funny, but now it’s really just terrifying. We’re dealing with legislation that will completely change the face of the internet and free speech for years to come. Yet here we are, still at the mercy of underachieving Congressional know-nothings that have more in common with the slacker students sitting in the back of math class than elected representatives. The fact that some of the people charged with representing us must be dragged kicking and screaming out of their complacency on such matters is no longer endearing — it’s just pathetic and sad.

This is a key point. Unfortunately, I've see way too many people supporting SOPA (especially among the lobbyist crew) act as if this is just some sort of game, where the goal is to "win." That's how DC politics works, but it doesn't take into account the very real impact of the damage that they're doing. If you're regulating the internet, it should at least be a pre-requisite that you are willing to understand the technology, or that you abstain from taking part in voting on (or writing) bills if you don't understand it. It's not funny. It's not cute. It's terrifying and it impacts us all.

So the real question is what is the way forward on this kind of thing? One would be to elect more technically savvy folks to Congress, but that's always difficult (and lots of tech savvy folks would rather be working in tech). Another would be to better educate those who are in Congress. Some of us are already working on that front with things like Engine Advocacy, but having more help and more voices would be a good thing.

Other than that, I think we should just make it clear to elected officials that people won't tolerate them gleefully displaying ignorance on issues that they're about to vote on. When Rep. Mel Watt declares proudly that he doesn't understand the technology, and then says he just doesn't believe the huge group of internet engineers who warn about the negative impacts of SOPA, he shouldn't get a free pass on that. The public needs to let him know that that's unacceptable from an elected official.

Things like this won't change overnight, but by making it clear that such things won't be tolerated by the voting public, we can at least start to influence the debate in a meaningful way. So speak up. When you see an elected official being purposely ignorant or cracking jokes about their ignorance tell them that they need to be educated and help them get that education.

Filed Under: congress, copyright, ignorance, internet, politics, sopa, technology

SOPA Markup Runs Out Of Time; Likely Delayed Until 2012 [Update: Or Not...]

from the clock-ran-out dept

So this was a bit of a surprise. Lots of people expected Lamar Smith to keep the SOPA markup process going until he could get a vote out, even if it was late tonight. But it looks like he ran out of time. With Congress settling it's other business and closing up shop, Smith abruptly ended the markup, saying they'll resume at the next available date -- which likely won't be until late January. They only had time to go through two amendments, the second of which was withdrawn. That was from Rep. Chaffetz who asked that the DNS/IP blocking sections not be put into effect until after a thorough analysis was done by experts on their impact on online security. Somewhat surprisingly, Smith seemed willing to agree to something like this. He came close to suggesting that perhaps they should, in fact, have hearings with some of these experts concerned about the internet blocking part of SOPA (perhaps because he realized that SOPA wouldn't get voted on today). Of course, now we'll have to see what actually happens.

In the meantime, this represents a very brief, but significant, victory for those in favor of internet freedom and against internet censorship in the US. Have no fear, however, that Hollywood and the US Chamber of Commerce will be pushing very, very, very hard to get SOPA approved as soon as possible. This fight isn't over by a long shot, but there does appear to be a brief and thankful reprieve. The momentum is also on the side of those opposed. When PROTECT IP came out early this year, it was seen as a slam dunk. Congress would bend over backwards to grant Hollywood its wishes. The fact that it's getting pushed into the new year is big, big news. On top of that, people have really jumped up on this one. The grassroots efforts have been amazing -- as an issue that normally gets little attention (copyright) has become a very mainstream issue in a matter of months. We keep hearing about SOPA from random and surprising places. This needs to keep up and Congress needs to learn that giving in to Hollywood's short-sighted whims isn't going to go over well with the public.

Update.... Or not. Despite the fact that Congress was supposed to be out of session until the end of January, the Judiciary Committee has just announced plans to come back to continue the markup this coming Wednesday. This is rather unusual and totally unnecessary. But it shows just how desperate Hollywood is to pass this bill as quickly as possible, before the momentum of opposition builds up even further.

Filed Under: 2012, congress, copyright, lamar smith, sopa

How SOPA 2.0 Sneaks In A Really Dangerous Private Ability To Kill Any Website

from the scary dept

I already wrote a big post about yesterday's SOPA markup day one. While we're moving forward on day two, I wanted to call out one key point that was really made clear by an amendment offered by Rep. Jared Polis late in the day yesterday, which hasn't received nearly enough attention. As you may recall, with the "manager's amendment" version of SOPA (i.e., SOPA 2.0), the "notice-and-shut off funding" section of the private right of action in Section 103 was removed. This was good, because we've seen how the notice-and-takedown provision of the DMCA has been widely abused.

However, what most people missed was that the bill effectively sneaks this back into the bill in a much worse form in Section 105, which supposedly grants "immunity" to service providers for taking voluntary action to stop infringement. The true impact of this section was only made clear by Rep. Polis' attempt to limit it, as he highlighted how this broad immunity would likely lead to abuse. That's because this section says that anyone who takes voluntary action "based on credible evidence": basically gets full immunity. Think about what that means in practice. If someone sends a service provider a notice claiming infringement on the site under this bill, the first thing every lawyer will tell them is "quick, take voluntary action to cut them off, so you get immunity." Even worse, since this is just about immunity, there are no counternotice rules or anything requiring any process for those cut off to be able to have any redress whatsoever.

This is scary.

Rep. Polis, quite reasonably sought to limit this section to avoid such a situation. As he noted, anyone can send in a notice under this section, and the service provider is likely to take action to keep immunity. That's super wide open for abuse.

The debate on this point was downright painful. Some of the others on the Committee insisted that Polis' interpretation of the section was wrong. But it's not. Rep. Ted Deutsch kept misreading the law, pretending that because it talks about the "actions" in earlier sections (that you can take to get immunity), it means that the conditions for those actions must be the same (i.e., there needs to be a court order). But the law doesn't say that at all. Others insisted that there needed to be a court order to get the immunity as well.

Let's put this simply: that's ridiculous. And wrong. Very wrong. And anyone who can think for two damn seconds would know it's wrong. You don't need immunity for obeying a court order. Because if you get a court order, you pretty much have to obey (or end up in court). But more to the point, this whole section is about "voluntary actions". Obeying a court order is not a voluntary action. If this section were just about cases where there's a court order, then it wouldn't make any sense at all. It clearly applies to voluntary actions outside of a court order.

The response from SOPA defenders was painful in its cluelessness. Rep. Watt more or less admitted that he thought Polis' interpretation was wrong, so he wouldn't support the amendment. That makes no sense. If Watt thinks the language already says that, what's the harm of clarifying that with the text of the Polis amendment? It makes no sense to refuse to do so. And if Watt and Deutsch really believe that the meaning of 105 is clear and doesn't need any amendments to clarify, they might want to talk to some actual legal experts, because they're analyzing the bill and reading it to say exactly as Polis interpreted it. And since this is a private right in the bill, if lawyers are already interpreting it that way, that means it'll get used that way. So why not clarify? It's mind-boggling.

Perhaps even more ridiculous was Rep. Howard Berman, who, in trying to agree with Watt and Deutsch, made the exact opposite argument and actually agreed with Polis, while claiming he didn't and using that agreement as a reason to vote against the amendment! I'm not joking. Berman pointed out that, contrary to Deutsch and Watt's claims, it made no sense to have an immunity section that only dealt with court orders for all the reasons we listed above. Basically, while Deutsch and Watt pretend that the section requires a court order, Berman proves that it doesn't... and then says that's why he's voting against the amendment. It really was a head smashing moment.

In the end, despite vigorous attempts by Polis and Rep. Lofgren to explain why this was so problematic, the Committee basically just ignored the whole thing and rejected the amendment. End result: SOPA 2.0 contains a crazy scary clause that's going to make it crazy easy to cut off websites with no recourse whatsoever. And this part isn't just limited to payment providers/ad networks -- but to service providers, search engines and domain registrars/registries as well. Yes. Search engines. So you can send a notice to a search engine, and if they want to keep their immunity, they have to take the actions in either Section 102(c)(2) or 103(c)(2), which are basically all of the "cut 'em off, block 'em" remedies. That's crazy. This basically encourages search engines to disappear sites upon a single notice. It encourages domain registries to kill domains based on notices. With no recourse at all, because the providers have broad immunity.

It's this kind of insanity that should terrify people about this bill moving forward.

Filed Under: copyright, immunity, jared polis, private right of action, sopa

SOPA Markup Day 1: We Don't Understand This Bill, It Might Do Terrible Things, But Dammit, We're Passing It Now

from the how-congress-works dept

So, if you weren't paying attention, yesterday was a marathon session of SOPA amendments... It ran for 11.5 hours, with just one tiny break, and it looks like they didn't even get through half of the amendments. I'll get into some more details in a bit, but honestly the single best description of the insanity of these hearings came from The Washington Post's Alexandra Petri, who called them "nightmarish."

If this were surgery, the patient would have run out screaming a long time ago. But this is like a group of well-intentioned amateurs getting together to perform heart surgery on a patient incapable of moving. “We hear from the motion picture industry that heart surgery is what’s required,” they say cheerily. “We’re not going to cut the good valves, just the bad — neurons, or whatever you call those durn thingies.”

This is terrifying to watch. It would be amusing — there’s nothing like people who did not grow up with the Internet attempting to ask questions about technology very slowly and stumbling over words like “server” and “service” when you want an easy laugh. Except that this time, the joke’s on us.

That really describes the situation perfectly. Over and over again the people in favor of this bill flat out admitted that they didn't understand the technology -- and when the various people opposed to it asked why don't they get some experts in to answer some questions, the supporters had no credible response. The DNS and security aspects were completely brushed aside. As Rep. Jason Chaffetz (who is fighting the good fight against this) pointed out repeatedly, there's simply no reason to rush this bill when there are such widespread concerns about it and no one has taken the time to get the answers to key questions.

But the supporters of the bill -- mainly Reps. Lamar Smith, Bob Goodlatte and Mel Watt -- simply wanted to push forward at all costs. They rejected every amendment raised, except two minor ones (we'll get to that in a minute). Amazingly they rejected all sorts of quite reasonable suggestions -- while complaining that those opposed to the bill never had any suggestions to fix it! And yet when those actual proposals were brought up, they were rejected out of hand. It really was pretty disgusting. Goodlatte's responses struck me as particularly inane. He kept rejecting amendments because he feared that the amendment could be abused. The fact that most of those amendments were to prevent the much wider scale abuses guaranteed under SOPA never seemed to occur to him.

In fact, supporters of the bill regularly used arguments that actually could have been turned around on them. They refused an amendment from Rep. Darrell Issa to limit the powers of the bill to those who actually were in the US, saying that it would set a bad precedent for countries like China... and this came just after they were totally outraged that anyone might think that the entire bill itself sets a bad precedent for countries like China. The disingenuous bullshit was really ridiculous.

Rep. Watt was particularly keen to display his own ignorance. He regularly admitted that he wasn't very knowledgeable on technology -- which should have been a reason to recuse himself or to at least ask for more info from experts. Instead, he just insisted that all of the technical experts were simply wrong. Based on what? Nothing. How does someone like Watt get elected when he appears to want to regulate the internet based on pure faith and against what every single expert has said? It's downright scary.

Later, Watt angrily rejected an amendment to clarify some language to make sure it was limited -- by saying that he believed the language already said what the amendment added. If that's true, why reject the amendment? All it would do is make the intent clear. Instead, he said no. That makes no sense at all.

What was clear, from the beginning, was that the SOPA supporters were not there in good faith. They had no intention of listening to reasonable suggestions to fix the bill, and stuck together as a bloc to reject pretty much all of them -- even while admitting their own ignorance. The really sad part was when Goodlatte tried to equate the views of a couple of policy analysts who get money from the entertainment industry, with the views of nearly 100 independent internet engineers who have pointed out how problematic SOPA really would be. Watt and others tried to pretend that because each side could turn up someone who would say something that those views were equal. It's the insane Congressional equivalent of "he-said/she-said" journalism, where you "hear" both sides, but never seek out the truth. That's nuts.

The simple fact is that nearly every single actual credible internet engineer has come out against these bills. There isn't an equivalence where each side can turn up a few people. The scales are completely weighted down against the bills... and many of those people have no associations whatsoever -- even as SOPA defenders insisted that only "Google" experts were against the bill. Stewart Baker isn't speaking for Google. Sandia National Labs isn't speaking for Google.

The real insanity is that supporters of the bill are rushing forward just because they want to pass "something," and they don't seem to care about the consequences.

As for the two amendments that did pass, one was to say that if you "knowingly misrepresented" a claim on a site, you had to pay attorneys' fees. Of course, "knowingly misrepresent" is a very, very high bar that will almost never be met. A similar amendment by Rep. Chaffetz that would also require fees if you failed to get an injunction in court was rejected, because SOPA supporters were worried this would scare people off. As Chaffetz pointed out: that's the whole point. It would scare off those who don't have strong, legitimate claims.

The other amendment that passed right at the end, was from Rep. Jared Polis, requiring the State Department to do a study on the eventual impacts of SOPA. That doesn't change the law really. It just will at least let people check back in on the damage it does a couple years from now.

A few other key points:

• Huge kudos to Reps. Issa, Lofgren, Chaffetz and Polis, who combined to repeatedly point out the problems of the bill and to argue forcefully and compellingly about why we needed to fix these problems. That much of the rest of the Committee ignored these concerns, played them down, or rejected them for silly or nonsense reasons, is really just a statement on the sad state of Congress today.
• I heard from sources that a big time content industry lobbyist was seen hanging out in the "members only" area during the session. If that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about what's going on, then you're not paying attention.
• There was a bizarre elementary school-like fight that went on at one point. Rep. Steve King tweeted early on:

  We are debating the Stop Online Piracy Act and Shiela Jackson has so bored me that I'm killing time by surfing the Internet.

  Rep. Jackson-Lee found out about this and announced that she was "offended," at which point it seemed like a bunch of these old clueless men started arguing about how inappropriate it was for her to say she was offended. The whole session had to pause while they talked to a "parliamentarian" about whether it was okay to use the term "offended," eventually leading Jackson-Lee to change her statement. Yeah. These are the people in charge of making our laws. Scary.
• With the session going on for 11.5 hours, there was a short break for lunch, but for dinner Rep. Lamar Smith offered "four kinds of pizza," but apparently only for other members. Staffers had to sit and starve. Nice of them, huh?

All in all, the process should leave you frightened for our country. This was not an attempt to fix a broken law. It was an attempt to please some Hollywood funders at the expense of innovation and jobs. It's insanity.

That said... if you want to watch more of it today, tune in either at the Judiciary website or the KeepTheWebOpen site and make sure you have a pillow nearby for when you want to bang your head on the desk or wall. Once again, I'll be live-tweeting some of the hearing (don't think I can make all of it) from my personal Twitter account.

Filed Under: bob goodlatte, copyright, darrell issa, dns, dnssec, jared polis, jason chaffetz, lamar smith, markup, mel watt, sopa, zoe lofgren

CCIA Slams Congressional Representatives Who Unfairly Attack US Companies For Speaking Up Against SOPA

from the good-for-them dept

The folks over at CCIA have made a really good point. One of the most offensive parts of the SOPA debate is how supporters of the bill, mainly Lamar Smith, have missed absolutely no opportunity to slam Google at every turn, while at the same time going on and on about how he's just trying to protect American jobs. Google and other SOPA critics are American companies with legitimate concerns. Attacking them by claiming they just want to profit from "piracy" isn't just disingenuous, it's an obnoxious and misleading attempt to avoid substantive debate:

The stimulative efforts of our companies in promoting freedom, democracy and more open societies is matched by no other industry in modern times. In the Middle East and around the world tech companies have stuck our necks out to be true to our principles. In contrast, we can think of other industries and companies that have sometimes worked hard to protect themselves and their markets by propping up status-quo repressive regimes.

Our companies have helped the Arab spring evolve and made it more possible for Russians to protest suspect elections. Our companies have sacrificed profits to withdraw from countries that would use our platforms to violate human rights. The most significant example was the costly decision by Google to pull search out of mainland China - the largest Internet market. That voluntary act, taken because of a commitment to principle and concerns about security and free expression was uplifting to many, though mocked by those for whom profit matters above all else.

It is, therefore, especially outrageous to suggest that any of our companies, and especially Google, who are opposed to this immature legislation do so because they greedily want to do business with rogue sites.

We are also proud that 3 of our members, among the largest US Internet companies [Yahoo, Microsoft and Google] have formed the GNI to defend global Internet freedom and condemn filtering and censorship.

It really is a pretty offensive political smear, considering the widespread opposition to SOPA from all sorts of individuals and companies that have absolutely nothing to do with piracy. Furthermore, even the idea that Google "profits from piracy" is pretty ridiculous. As we've seen from the various cases against sites, these sites make almost no money... and it's extremely unlikely they make money from Google. Most don't even appear to have Google ads, and for those that do, Google only makes money if people click on the ads, and people surfing these so-called "rogue sites" aren't likely to be people clicking on ads.

Filed Under: copyright, politics, smears, sopa
Companies: ccia, google, microsoft, yahoo

Senator Dianne Feinstein: So Out Of Touch, She Doesn't Realize Tech Companies Are Vehemently Against PROTECT IP

from the wake-up dept

In the debates over SOPA and PROTECT IP (PIPA), one thing that has been clear is that neither California Senator has been any help at all. When asked about this, I've been told, multiple times, that despite both being from Northern California, as long-term politicians they're completely ignorant of technology issues, and "follow the money" down to Southern California. We've already written about Zach Carter's excellent behind the scenes report on the politicking behind SOPA and PROTECT IP, but there's one ridiculous tidbit that was worth highlighting to show just how incredibly out of touch Senator Dianne Feinstein is. When asked about this issue, Feinstein appeared totally clueless, believing that the tech industry was fine with the bills:

When HuffPost asked Feinstein, a Protect IP co-sponsor, if it was difficult for her to navigate the bill with Silicon Valley and Hollywood on opposite sides, she responded: "I don't believe that they are. I thought we had reconciled the issues. The bill's been passed out of committee." The response seems incredible given the outcry from Silicon Valley, and Google in particular, but the complexity of the legislation has left many lawmakers vulnerable to K Street spin.

Apparently Feinstein is completely blind to the very vocal outrage from some of the largest tech companies around, including Google, Yahoo, eBay, Twitter, Facebook, Mozilla, Wikipedia and more. This is not someone listening to the people. It's someone following the money.

Filed Under: california, clueless, copyright, dianne feinstein, protect ip, silicon valley, sopa