Wow, it's only being made worse. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), from what I can tell, is adding the payment processing blockage suggestion from Google in the last hearing, without removing any of the terrible, terrible components already in it.<p>The entire speech, too, was full of equivocation and mass confusion: sawdust breaks have exactly NOTHING to do with SOPA. Equivocating on physical goods and digital goods, when it comes to safety, is asinine.<p>Edit: HOLY HELL. Melvin Watt (D-NC) just said almost exactly: "A free and open internet is not unduly compromised by these changes to stop theft and piracy online." . . . "Trusting private rights-holders against foreign infringing sites will allow us to stop the compromise of US citizens and the influx of compromised goods." . . . "We need to be just as aggressive on the internet as we are with brick-and-mortar stores." . . . "This bill allows us to get into the internet." . . . "My perspective, as an old country boy, we need parallels on the virtual world to what we have in the real world." YOU ALREADY HAVE THEM!!!<p>Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) is up: please save us. YAY! "The integrity of the Internet is very much at risk." . . . "Especially disturbing given that today is the anniversary of the First Amendment." "The internet is not lawless. Breaking the law can already be punished, just like the physical world. But we have shut down illegal conduct at the source. The government has never tried to use the network itself to prevent illegal conduct . . . This will be historic, and not in a good way. Once the government has a taste of this power...expanding it will be irresistible. The US Government has never tried to monitor mail to prevent some sort of illegal content from being sent." Support this congresswoman!<p>Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) reminding us all that NOBODY was qualified to comment on DNSSEC issues. Good scenarios, including phishing-style attacks mimicking SOPA-takedown-esque redirects.<p>Howard Berman (D-CA) argues that "we can't stop the foreigners from stealing" argument. But that's always been the case, whether physical or otherwise. We can't stop a foreign company from making, say, fake Nike clothes and selling them in South Africa. You <i>can</i> work with foreign governments to shut them down according to their own laws. And once again, Zoe Lofgren nails it in her response: "This is the beginning of the balkanization of the internet."<p>Chaffetz (R-UT) says, "Let's get some nerds in the room." "How can you support a bill that will dramatically change how the internet works without understanding what it does?"<p>Alright, back to work. But this doesn't seem like SOPA's being fixed in ways that are important.
Mr Chaffetz is my new hero. More politicians should raise the issue of people not having a clue what they're on about. Even better, raising it eloquently.
I want some questions answered by the proponents, lobbyists and Congresscritters backing this thing:<p>1. Why do you need to avoid due process? The lack of oversight (by the courts) is what makes this like censorship in China, Iran, etc. With SOPA, all anyone need do is <i>claim</i> copyright infringement against some web site and it gets shut down and blacklisted-- correct or not, the targeted site owner is censored off the internet and cut off from their income simply because someone pointed a finger. That's bullying, plain and simple, and it's unacceptable.<p>2. What punishment is included for abuse of this lack of process? Without punishment, corporations can censor competitors, politicians can censor opponents, governments can censor citizens simply by alleging infringement against them.
I've been sitting in a hotel lobby for literally 24 hours over the last two days. There have been two different news stations playing this entire time. I have heard news coverage of all sorts of topics, but nothing discussing SOPA.<p>In fact, the only thing I've seen was an ad (presumably by the MPAA or RIAA) saying that piracy costs jobs, concluding with the phrase "Stop Online Piracy." How is it possible that neither of these stations even mentioned SOPA? Is there really that little public interest in the topic? They're talking about apple cider recipes right now.
Wow, a guy admitted that he doesn't know if he wants to use modern technology, yet he's expected to make an informed decision about this. We're pretty fucked.<p>I rage-quit watching the video after about 2 minutes.
Mr. Chaffetz is kicking ass pointing out that they have not taken into account any of the technical issues. "It's like performing surgery without a doctor." "Bring in the nerds."
This saddens me. I just saw Polis attempt to grant an exemption for University run DNSs (something already in place for businesses). The amendment was rebutted with a meaningful argument. Then I watched 20 minutes of completely mislead arguments such as people thinking like this would mean universities could freely violate copyright, post copyrighted material without legal consequences, and anybody at a university is immune from prosecution when downloading copyrighted material. It was eventually voted down. Ugh, clueless people...
I honestly wonder how many people in that room actually:<p>1) Understand what this girl is saying,<p>2) Understand what they are about to vote on,<p>3) Deserve to vote at all<p>God bless America!
Watching this makes me realize that we don't need new regulations... we need new leaders... leaders who can compete and are knowledgeable on a global scale.
Why should we obey physical boundaries? Internet should be for people across national borders. If anything, we should establish our own government for the Internet that actually knows and understands what they're talking about.
Something that pro-members of this panel seems to miss is that it requires the creation of a mechanism to enforce the provisions of this bill, and that mechanism can be abused far beyond the scope of this particular bill.
Quick, someone file a copyright complaint against the broadcast and get it shut down! We can't risk public knowledge of this hearing, er, I mean, <i>IP infringement</i>, getting out!
In watching the live stream there is some young-ish woman speaking so fast in order to get through the particular amendment she is (I'm assuming) required to read verbatim, and in such a monotonic tone, that I can't understand the reason for doing so. The people listening surely can't be retaining what it is that she is saying. It would be much more prudent if (gosh forbid) everybody involved had done their homework, read up on the appropriate amendments prior to this hearing, and came prepared to discuss and debate merits.
Ya know...kinda like what we all had to do growing up. Do your homework.
BTW, there's a woman furiously typing away on a blackberry with an iPad in her hand and a man on an iPad who are both on camera directly behind this woman speaking. I rest my case your honor.
Holy F___ what a bunch of idiots. Chaffetz , Lofgren and Polis seem to be the only ones who gets this. We are totally screwed if this moves forward. DMCA made worse.
I am a n00b to politics but why is that girl speaking so furiously? No one is/can understand that. They should do some debate. That seems to be useless.
If you're on a Mac, it seems that Chrome probably won't work. Open up Safari and click on the video stream link (<a href="http://mfile.akamai.com/65764/live/reflector:39480.asx?bkup=39655&prop=n" rel="nofollow">http://mfile.akamai.com/65764/live/reflector:39480.asx?bkup=...</a>) For me VLC opened the stream then. You could probably directly open it in VLC as well, but that isn't what I did.
Are there any sites out there keeping track of how Congressional reps will vote? I just got a letter from my Senator saying she supports SOPA (and turns out is a sponsor of the bill). Gillibrand-NY
We will need a medium to discover what sites cant be visited so we can reproduce the blocked sites over the black-market under-the-table internet. A place where we can read about opinions and objectives that have not been approved by the riaa and mpaa for public showing.<p>Our internet is turning into fox news, with talking points, narratives, brainwashing and censorship. Not on my watch!<p>Do a google search for fox news sopa. Guess how many articles reporting on some of the most important legislation on the Earth today? I saw zero. corruption meter reading 100.<p>Who is up for rioting if this passes?