The next SOPA

But I like to watch movies. I think a lot of movies are great--great enough to pay for them. Why should I shoot myself in the foot to keep someone else from shooting me in the foot?<p>This idea that the root cause of all bad legislation is political donations: it's wrong, and not supported by the data. The vast majority of political donations are made by people who are not lobbyists.<p>No one raised more political money in the history of this nation than Barack Obama during his presidential campaign, and the letter from his administration helped kill the bills. How about Rep. Issa and Sen. Wyden? Guess what, they got into office by spending donated money as well.<p>The problem isn't money, the problem is engagement. The tech industry, particularly on the Internet entrepreneurial side, has long prided itself on staying out of Washington. Well, now we see the consequence of that approach: it took a last-minute emergency OMG shitstorm to stop some bills--bills that could have easily been shaped, adjusted, or stopped much earlier if the industry had been engaged and paying attention.<p>The U.S. government is participatory. It will respond to citizen wishes, but only if citizens actively and continuously make their wishes known.<p>And it is inclusive. No matter how much you might think copyright should end, or that the MPAA should just go away forever and die, there are enough people who disagree with you that it's just not going to happen. Internet companies and advocates need to get comfortable with continuously engaging content companies in the legislative process, seeking common ground, and compromising.<p>IP law is not a winnable war. It is an ongoing negotiation that must be managed forever.

Given that the author is Marco (and the article is on HN <i>because</i> it is from Marco Arment), I wonder what his boycott position is regarding Apple? Apple has a long history of supporting draconian IP policies, and has a business model built around controlling what you can do with what you bought. Financially Apple absolutely dwarfs the combined revenue of all of the MPAA realm.<p>I don't mean to distract the conversation or hate on Apple, but it's a very pertinent question -- Marco and friends defend Apple's right to control their devices and their content, but are up in arms about media companies doing the same? Explain the reasoning why one company has the right to limit your freedoms while another doesn't?<p>(*- I will happily provide numerous citations of both Marco defending Apple draconian policies, and Apple supporting jackboot government-backed IP protections)

Marco's heart is in the right place here, but campaign finance reform actually ends up disproportionately empowering media outlets. While various kinds of direct donations to candidates are capped or made more difficult by CFR, newspapers and television outlets aren't banned from writing stories on particular candidates, even up to the day or morning of the election.<p>Because advertising can't happen, but articles can, newspaper coverage under CFR amounts to a (huge) in-kind contribution in the form of PR. And especially when it comes to the MPAA, many of its member companies own media outlets in addition to movie studios.<p>Rupert Murdoch, for example, put the Wall Street Journal and Fox News to work in promoting SOPA/PIPA as that furthers the interests of 20th Century Fox.<p>So because no conceivable campaign finance regulation is going to muzzle the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times during an election, we may have to look elsewhere to check the MPAA's power. I think it's going to have to be something like a souped up version of Xtranormal, which makes production of high quality movies just as easy as distribution of said movies.<p>This isn't that unrealistic. Blogger made production and international distribution of high quality opinion possible with a few keystrokes, which led in part to the ongoing revenue collapse in print media. Video and audio are obviously much more complex on a frame-by-frame basis than text, but I have to believe that authoring tools can get far better than where they are. Make them web based, build in all kinds of samples and templates akin to blogger templates, use some of the new HTML5 toys to make authoring easier and easier.<p>Most of the results will be terrible, but most blogs are terrible. As long as enough high quality open access audio/video content is produced, the MPAA/RIAA will start to face the same financial fate as print media. Producing a technically and ethically superior product will always be more effective in the long run than a boycott.

Campaign finance reform is not a panacea. I notice that it's popular to blame money in politics for everything. Don't like a bill? Any bill? Obviously corrupt politicians are bought and paid for! Why else would they vote for such junk, right?<p>Wrong. SOPA and PIPA to a congressperson and to a large number of ordinary people make sense. The internet seems like a lawless place. To lawmakers, this is infuriating. People in government, left and right, believe in government solutions to most problems. Otherwise why would they work in government? As in most professions, there is a strong bias for action. Action feels like progress, even when the cure is worse than the disease.<p>Even if you got every dollar out of politics you will always see this pattern: lawmakers have one tool, instead of a hammer it's legislation, and all the world looks like a nail.

As I suggested in an earlier thread, why is noone starting a copyright liberalization campaign? If there was a strong political coalition to limit the duration of copyright to 25 years, to limit the use of overly broad patents, etc. it would provide a counteracting force that would force the copyright holders to compromise "in the middle". Instead we are doing boycotts and strongly worded letters, which while helpful, does not really do enough to stop them from steamrolling along with their agenda.

I think he makes a valid point but then gets lost in emotionalism.<p>Here’s the thing. They don’t hate you. The people who work at the companies that support the MPAA absolutely don’t hate you. They simply like themselves and like the money they’re getting now. If anything they’re afraid of you because they think you want to eliminate the way they make a living.<p>The problem is people on the other side don’t agree on what they want. Some want media to be free, some want studios to die and artists and directors to find ways to get paid directly and some just want laws that aren’t as draconian as SOPA.<p>So to the labels and the studios people like Mr. Arment are terrorizing them. Threatening to take their livelihood away while offering no alternative system. That’s why not supporting member companies won’t work. Because it just reinforces their fears.<p>What technology companies and people who are passionate about technology really need to do is suggest an alternate solution. The world works in opposites. Republican/Democrat, Liberal/Conservative, and so on. The only way to deal with the labels is to create another side and coalesce around a common ideology. One that still allows the system that currently creates media to work but which allows people control over their media.<p>Because the one thing Mr. Arment is absolutely right about is this: You haven’t won anything as of now. In fact, what you have done is sent a clear message that laws like SOPA need to be done under the radar from now on and that’s a step backwards not forwards.

<i>it would be more productive to significantly reduce or eliminate our support of the MPAA member companies starting today</i><p>The problem is that any reduction in income to the studios would be spun as "fallout from pirates stealing our IP."<p>Attacking campaign finance is the way to go.<p>edit: spelling

Technology's favorite lawyer, Lawrence Lessig, has a new book out advocating for campaign finance reform. Like most things from Lessig, his arguments are well-considered, balanced and thought-provoking.<p>He includes a quote I found particularly compelling, especially in the light of Marco's link between 'the next SOPA' and campaign finance reform: <i>For every one striking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root.</i> - Thoreau. Marco wants us to strike the root.<p>Book: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress/dp/0446576433" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress/...</a><p>NYTimes review: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/books/republic-lost-campaign-finance-reform-book-review.html?pagewanted=all" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/books/republic-lost-campai...</a>

I don't quite understand.<p>Are people suggesting that congress considers legislation primarily based on campaign contributions and that this is the same for both main parties?<p>So they will only go against legislation proposed by lobbyists if they feel the votes they would lose would outweigh the benefit of those contributions to their next campaign?<p>If that is the case then I'm sorry to say but your entire government system is not fit for purpose.<p>If that is not the case then you should be able to beat these bills with good reasoning and debate alone.

The focus on campaign finance reform is wrong-headed and risks fracturing the internet freedom coalition.<p>America has a strong tradition of individual rights and liberties, stronger than anywhere else in the world. This is especially true regarding the rights of free speech and the free distribution of information. It is possible to build on these principles to create a platform that appeals to a large swathe of the American electorate, an “Electronic Bill of Rights”.<p>We cannot taint this with other pet causes on the right or left. I am looking for allies right now to help push for pro-freedom legislation that will push the middle in our direction. I’ve explicitly written off working with freedom advocates that are too heavily invested in other high-profile political stances with a partisan lean.<p>For this to succeed, we need to reach both the Tea Party and the OWS crowd while not alienating anybody. The good news is that the mainstream is with us. President Obama and all four contenders for the Republican Presidential nomination oppose SOPA. Let’s take this momentum and use it to erect lasting bulwarks to protect internet liberty.<p>Let’s pass something that we can all agree on. Let’s not get bogged down arguing with each other over campaign reform, or other peripheral issues.

&#62; But what will happen when the MPAA buys the next SOPA? We can’t protest every similar bill with the same force. Eventually, our audiences will tire of calling their senators for whatever we’re asking them to protest this time.<p>Isn't this the crux of the problem with the current democratic systems though? If you never communicate with your political representatives, how do they know what you as a voter want? Part of what makes a democracy work is that connection between voters and politicians, but it has to come from us. If enough of us vocalize our concerns, they'll be heard. Politicians want to keep their jobs, and they need votes to do so.<p>Sure it's not perfect (nothing is), and lobbyists easily manipulate the system on behalf of groups like the MPAA, but it's a basic thing that few people actually do to uphold their part of the bargain. That's why the system can continually be eroded with the assurance that even though SOPA/PIPA failed this time, some mutated version will slip by eventually.

A solution I don't see being discussed much is MPAA and RIAA disruption. This is occurring on some platforms like YouTube, iTunes, and Spotify. If artists no longer need to use them as a middleman, they will cease to have money and power. Startups that disrupt these two, and are more profitable for artists, could wipe out this whole issue.

Perhaps the answer to this is to make it more difficult for politicians to sign off on bills. Require some sort of education on the topic at hand before making a decision. If the bill isn't understood by the representative, they shouldn't be allowed to vote. With the current organization of our government, this will never happen. A point that Marco touched on was that we won't be able to rely on protesting every single bad decision that comes our way; people will lose interest and control will eventually be back in the hands of the government. He's right and we need to really focus on the bigger picture of removing lobbying from congress and ensuring that those representing us actually <i>can</i>.

Personally, I think we need to make it so that only registered voters can give money to candidates, with a maximum amount set per contributor. That would automatically disallow all direct contributions from corporations and prevent the rich from having more influence than the poor.<p>(Of course, something like this would probably have to be a constitutional amendment, and I doubt that would ever happen.)

I'm surprised Marco didn't mention the most empirically effective alternative - make our own legislative investments. Where is the tech industry lobbying firm? Are the industry leaders like Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook pumping money into it?<p>Obviously this is a short term solution that ends up making the root problem - money's influence in politics - worse. But sometimes you have to pick between the lesser of two evils. I'd rather have a good set of laws brought about by an unfair process than a bad set of laws brought on because we sat around complaining about how unfair the system is.

&#62; <i>we’re not addressing the real problem: the MPAA’s buying power in Congress. This is a campaign finance problem.</i><p>This is delusional at best. I'm from France, where campaigns are paid for by public money.<p>France: the country that brought you Hadopi and where SOPA-like laws have been in place for a long time.<p>This has nothing to do with campaign finance.

My thoughts exactly. While cutting out watching movies on Netfilx and TV is going to be difficult, I most definitely wont be purchasing any movies on iTunes, at Best Buy or going to a theater to watch them. If the tech community could band together to boycott these three huge money makers for the MPAA, we might see better results.

A boycott is only successful if you know who owns what. Short of selling my HDTV (which would be way popular with my family), I don't see how I can avoid MPAA content.

There will always exist groups of people who want to abrogate the rights of the average person for the benefit of a select class. What makes people think this struggle is unique to the MPAA or the RIAA or even media on the internet?<p>It's time to think about how we can restructure our government to avoid this <i>class</i> of problems, not just the next SOPA. In the words of Eric S. Raymond,<p>"For freedom to flourish, the Internet must be kept free of government control. The Internet needs to be kept free of corporate control, too. But, as we have seen with the DMCA, corporations that want to control the net have to do so by buying bad laws from the government — they can't jail or kill you themselves. Thus, the most important front in the battle is still heading off bad laws and regulations."

"It's not a waiting game, it's a game of poker. Lamar Smith has a royal flush and few people know it.<p>SOPA may pass. It may not. He doesn't care, and it doesn't matter. The MPAA and RIAA started working on their legislative strategy to pass a new anti-piracy bill in late 2010. SOPA was designed to raise the noise. Everyone is playing right into the entertainment industries hand. The lobbyists are laughing manically at the ignorance of the mob. Even Wikipedia and reddit have played into it."<p><a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/old7e/sopa_is_back_it_has_not_been_shelved_and_its/c3i9fqe" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/old7e/sopa_is_ba...</a>

It's a nice thought, but you have to get your cousin, third cousin, your parents, your grandparents and etc to boycott Hollywood too.<p>How do you accomplish this when media is engrained in our daily lives &#38; culture?

We can argue all we want about whether copyright is good or not, but that is the wrong question. The right question is if (enforced) copyright is compatible with the existence of a free internet.<p>IMHO, it is not. Current copyright law means restrictions on the copy of data. A free internet means freedom to interchange data.<p>So either we lose the free net, or we push for a deep reform of IP laws, something like that the law should only restrict for-profit infringement.

A LOT of people have fought very hard for campaign finance reform over the past 20 years I can remember. The result is more money in politics than ever.<p>Supporting campaign finance reform will do nothing. We tried that over decades, the supreme court shot it down.<p>You have two options:<p>1. Constitutional reform.<p>Make it specifically distinguish campaign finance from free speech. No plain law will ever stand with the constitution as it is today.<p>2. Greatly increase the number of representatives.<p>This may be a lot easier as it is just a plain law. At some point we decided too many members of the house would be too chaotic. So we hugely raised the ratio of people to representatives.<p>This favors the lobbying power of interest groups.<p>While individuals still have a lot of influence if they write or in person visit their representative, it is universally accepted that the fewer people are in your district the more influence each individual has. And the opposite is also true. This is why, unlike the senate, the house is supposed to be <i>the people's</i> house.<p>If you dramatically raise the total number of representative you bring power closer to the people.<p>Will this also result in grid lock? Yes! Is that still totally worth it? YES!

"Their bills have had mixed success and usually die before being brought to a vote, but SOPA and PIPA came frighteningly close to becoming law. The internet-wide protest this week seems to have stalled their progress and probably killed them for now."<p>Frighteningly close! One of them was almost scheduled for debate in the Senate! The other almost had a second round of markup in committee scheduled!<p>The reaction to SOPA and PIPA was way overblown. Like the article says, this sort of thing happens all the time, and usually fizzles out. While this bill did have more co-sponsors than most, indicating support, it still only made it to the first verse of Schoolhouse Rock.<p>Somehow it caught on as an Internet meme, though, and got inordinate attention. It was definitely for the best, though.

<i>We can attack this by aggressively supporting campaign finance reform to reduce the role of big money in U.S. policy</i><p>Blaming money for problems in politics is just like focusing on money when running a business -- you're looking in the wrong spot.<p>Money is a <i>result</i> of something, not a cause. There's a lot of money in politics as a result of concentrating so much political power in one place. Just like in a business where the money represents value exchanged, in politics the money represents influece -- big, powerful people in groups that want to be heard. Starting off another holy crusade along the lines of prohibition simply because you've managed to distill your problems into one word isn't going to help anything.

Here it is, the <i>next</i> SOPA, made by no other than Lamar Smith - PCIP Act (Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act), or H.R.1981 - a bill <i>much</i> more dangerous than SOPA 1.0, and very hard to attack because of its name and "intent":<p><a href="http://gcn.com/articles/2011/08/05/protecting-children-bill-could-kill-internet.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://gcn.com/articles/2011/08/05/protecting-children-bill-...</a><p><a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/old7e/sopa_is_back_it_has_not_been_shelved_and_its/c3i9fqe" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/old7e/sopa_is_ba...</a>

Here is the problem with this solution...the sacrifice is too large, from too many people. If I and the entire HN crowd (say 1,500,000 people?) decide not to watch any more movies - while that may depress their earnings a bit...I would think the net effect would be about a 20% reduction in earnings. The vast majority of HNers probably don't buy every single movie they watch.<p>So, the real solution needs to be one that is incremental and can be adopted more mainstream. I don't know what it is, but I don't see 'stop watching all movies' as a realistic goal.

Genuine interest: Marco calls this a 'campaign finance problem', but isn't politicians submitting bills for money usually called 'corruption'? Why aren't the Americans <i>really mad</i> about it?

The best part about stopping to support companies that support the MPAA and RIAA is that they are going to say they are loosing revenue through piracy and not direct consumer withdrawal.

This is why we need to find a technological solution that will make future legislation infeasible or impossible. We need a decentralized DNS and total encryption of the internet.

Also, rather than supporting the MPAA/RIAA industry, try checking out the Blender Foundation, Jamendo, and similar sites that stream or support <i>free</i> content that is licensed under Creative Commons licenses.<p>And of course, since software is as big an issue as creative content, it should be said that the FSF is having a donation drive currently: <a href="https://my.fsf.org/associate/support_freedom" rel="nofollow">https://my.fsf.org/associate/support_freedom</a>

I think campaign finance reform is a good thing in theory, but in practice I feel confident that big money would still find its way into the pockets of our lawmakers with relative ease. In the end, no amount of money can save an elected official if their constituents are determined to see that official ousted. We can't legislate our way out of corruption, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

Another interesting twist (not surprised at all, though). MPAA lied about the number of people being employed by the entertainment industry:<p><a href="http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/images/sopa_busted.gif" rel="nofollow">http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/images/sopa_busted.g...</a><p>The tech industry employs 10 times as many. I'm glad their lies are finally debunked. We need to debunk their "lost revenue" numbers, too.

One good thing that did come out of this - I can't remember people protesting so much, in a united way online, against any issue. Last year it was against oppressive regimes, this year it is against stupid bills. People <i>are</i> using the internet to protest, that is a good thing. Right now, it is more quantity than quality - hopefully that'll change too.

A good way to support said finance reform is to follow Lessig's recommendation (<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-lessig/on-the-significance-of-th_b_831166.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-lessig/on-the-signifi...</a>) and help out Buddy Roemer's campaign.

The real problem is, that the US has no real democracy. When the government did something similar to SOPA in Germany, the "Piraten Partei" got more votes and the bigger parties rethought their plans because of this. But small parties do not have a chance in the US system.

We finally have the initiative. These last years we just reacted to bad laws trying to prevent or at least weaken them. Now we have finally a voice.<p>Let's make this victory a durable one and let's propose a constitutional amendment so that such laws can never ever be brought back again.

Financial reform? Use bitcoin. Ask your favorite artists to accept bitcoin purchases or donations.

hatefully how they ignore such a huge market potential, renting movies online and streaming them... that would be so great and would generate huge profits. But yet they don't and just expect their customers to go to the store and buy a DVD so we can watch it one time and then leave it in our closets for the rest of our lives? Or they want us to drive 20 mins to a rental store each day? Stop ignoring the market potential, try to grow, try to change, try to generate more profit. They don't evolve, but their users do and they don't like it. They are too stupid and old fashioned to see that the way media is spread just changed, all they need is a different approach to their end users.

There should be a constitutional amendment protecting the Internet and its underlying structure. Maybe not today, maybe it's premature, but one day soon this will seem appropriate and needed. It would put the Judicial branch on our side.

You can think about this as a campaign finance problem or as a federal politicians have too much power problem. You don't have campaign finance as a problem if lobbying doesn't do these companies any good.

You know what Ron Paul would say about this... It's not campaign finance reform that's needed, its decreasing the power of the gov't to have so much power. That's the root cause, not the money.

"Eventually, we will lose."<p>That's such a pessimistic statement. With that attitude, some SOPA-like Bill will pass. As an example, if MLK had that attitude, the whole Civil Rights movement would've failed.

Terms limits should help significantly. It would consume a great deal of energy and money from special interests to corrupt ever renewing congress.

I'm pleased to say I despise Hollywood movies and give these studios no money whatsoever. If only the public developed good sense and taste.

I think it would be good if only registered voters can give campaign money to candidates. If they want to call it donations, then so be it. BUT only registered voters can give donations as well.