Thread: The Tide Is Turning Against SOPA And We Might Actually Succeed In Stopping It

The Tide Is Turning Against SOPA … And We Might Actually Succeed In Stopping It

Submitted by George Washington on 12/28/2011 12:23 -0500

Washington’s Blog

While a short week ago the Internet censorship bill - SOPA - looked certain to pass, the tide appears to be quickly turning.

Politico notes today:

The conservative and liberal blogospheres are unifying behind opposition to Congress’s Stop Online Piracy Act, with right-leaning bloggers arguing their very existence could be wiped out if the anti-piracy bill passes.

“If either the U.S. Senate’s Protect IP Act (PIPA) & the U.S. House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) become law, political blogs such as Red Mass Group [conservative] & Blue Mass Group [liberal] will cease to exist,” wrote a blogger at Red Mass Group.

***

“Some good news on the SOPA front: Its corporate base of supporters is starting to crumble,” David Dayden wrote at Firedoglake. “GoDaddy is not alone. Scores of law firms are requesting their names be removed from the Judiciary Committee’s official list of SOPA supporters.”

In the blogosphere, the trajectory of the bill seemed set — that it is destined for failure if the pressure of the online community is kept up.

“The dynamic is clear. Once SOPA — and its Senate counterpart, Protecting IP Act, or PIPA — became high-profile among the Internet community, the lazy endorsements from companies and various hangers-on became toxic. And now, those supporters are scrambling, hollowing out the actual support for the bill. Suddenly, a bill with ‘widespread’ corporate support doesn’t have much support at all,” Dayden said.

Conservatives took a slightly different tact, though with similar disdain for the anti-piracy measures.

Indeed, blogger Erick Erickson said that he would encourage a primary for any Republican who supports the bill.

“I love Marsha Blackburn. She is a delightful lady and a solidly conservative member of Congress. And I am pledging right now that I will do everything in my power to defeat her in her 2012 reelection bid” due to her co-sponsorship for SOPA, Erickson wrote at RedState. “Congress has proven it does not understand the Internet. Perhaps they will understand brute strength against them at the ballot box. If members of Congress do not pull their name from co-sponsorship of SOPA, the left and right should pledge to defeat each and every one of them.”

Digital Journal reports:

The legislation, which many are suggesting is nothing less than censorship of Internet content and an assault on free speech, has brought many disparate groups together for the first time, such as ... the Heritage Foundation and Beregrond, a Libertarian website.

***

Several Washington D.C. law firms and lobbying groups were added to a list of corporate supporters by mistake and those who were willing to speak on the record were decidedly unhappy with the House Judiciary Committee. “It’s just incorrect. The firm has no position on SOPA,” Davis Wright Tremaine LLP spokesman Mark Usellis stated to Politico.

Even the White House is looking toward opposing the bill, with a petition on the White House website to veto the bill if passed by Congress. The petition needed 25,000 signatures and so far it has 43,351.

Time to redouble our efforts ... the tide may be turning, and we have a chance of winning

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed...ed-stopping-it

ALIPAC is going to come out hard against SOPA as soon as we are on the other side of our rebuild.

W

Sopa Would DESTROY Jobs and the Economy … So Why are Unions Supporting It?

Posted on December 29, 2011
by WashingtonsBlog

No, Sopa Would Not Save Jobs or Help the Economy … It Would DESTROY Jobs and the Most Vibrant Sector of Our Economy

The promoters of the Stop Online Privacy Act (Sopa) are pretending that it would save jobs and help the economy.
But it would actually destroy jobs and hurt the economy.

No one is going to invest in the next Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Reddit, or YouTube if they know that websites can be shut down after a single unsubstantiated copyright complaint.

The only sector of our economy that’s in good shape is web technology (for example, Google is hiring like crazy right now). Sopa would put a huge dent in the web sector and destroy jobs.

Venture capitalist Fred Wilson notes:

Big companies . . . can afford to defend themselves from litigious content companies. But three person startups cannot. And Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were three person startups not so long ago. If they had not had the protection of the safe harbors of the DMCA, they could have been litigated out of business before they even had a chance to grow and develop into the powerhouses they have become. And venture capitalists will think more than twice about putting $3mm of early stage capital into startups if they know that the vast majority of the funds will go to pay lawyers to defend the companies instead of to hire engineers to create and build product.

A group of well-known law professors say:

SOPA is a dangerous bill. It threatens the most vibrant sector of our economy – Internet commerce. It is directly at odds with the United States’ foreign policy of Internet openness, a fact that repressive regimes will seize upon to justify their censorship of the Internet. And it violates the First Amendment.

Vice President Joe Biden admits:

The digital marketplace of ideas that welcomes every blog and tweet is the same one that inspires the next generation of innovators to fuel our economies. And when businesses consider investing in a country with a poor record on Internet freedom, and they know that their website could be shut down suddenly, their transactions monitored, their staffs harassed, they’ll look for opportunities elsewhere.

The Hill points out:

SOPA is the equivalent of curing a headache with a guillotine. It … would shut down our economy and unconstitutionally erode our most basic freedoms in the process.

Edward J. Black – President and CEO of the Computer and Communications Industry Association – says:

The … legislation will also threaten the growth of the most economically dynamic and technologically innovative sector of the U.S. economy.

***
From an economic standpoint, the proposed legislation promises to saddle one of the U.S.’s most internationally competitive economic sectors with significant legal risk and a massive number of lawsuits — seriously hampering growth of and investment.

TechFreedom argues:

SOPA, regrettably, represents a big step backward in Washington’s efforts to support the digital revolution, one of the only sectors of the economy that continues to grow.

A group of high-powered Internet leaders note:

We are concerned that these measures pose a serious risk to our industry’s continued track record of innovation and job-creation, as well as to our Nation’s cybersecurity.

David Ulevitch – CEO of OpenDNS – points out:

If passed, they will be devastating to the growth of the Internet economy in the United States, will take jobs overseas and will have a chilling effect on innovation.

Andrew Lee – CEO of ESET North America – writes:

This legislation, if passed as currently written, would have a chilling effect on the economy of the United States.

The San Jose Mercury News editorializes:

There are times when Silicon Valley really can help you understand the complexities of legislation that will affect the tech industry – and the world economy. The raging debate over the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act is one of those times. . . . It’s not just the future of the industry that’s at stake here. It’s national security.

The Atlantic argues:

Congress is considering sweeping Internet legislation that purports to target “rogue websites” with the intent of cracking down on the theft of everything from movies to songs to designer handbags. While the goal is laudable, too many innocent websites would wind up in the crosshairs. These bills (the PROTECT IP Act in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, in the House) would do more harm than good to cybersecurity, the Internet economy, and online free expression.

The Daily Caller writes:

The Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) — a bill currently before the House Judiciary Committee — is a threat to America’s ability to lead the Internet, and must be defeated before it has a chance to damage America’s ability to generate jobs and economic growth online.

TechDirt notes:

SOPA & PIPA don’t attack the real problem, do nothing to build up the services that do solve the problem, and won’t work from a technological standpoint. And that’s just if we look at the what these bills are supposed to do.

The real fear is the massive collateral damage these bills will have to jobs, the economy and innovation.

Why Are Unions Supporting It?

The AFL-CIO, Teamsters Union, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and some other unions are supporting Sopa. Their uneducated position gives cover to the other knuckleheads still supporting the bill.

Given that Sopa would destroy jobs and the economy – and is contrary to their members’ and the nation’s interest – everyone should immediately educate the unions and pressure them to withdraw their support.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/...orting-it.html

GoDaddy not only helped write SOPA they are also exempt from it.

Posted on December 24, 2011

UPDATE: This post is currently on Reddit’s front page. Thanks! I’m getting tons of views but not a lot of people are clicking through to the linked article. Be sure to go read it. Don’t just take my word. I’ve also been seeing comments around the internet about this issue which point out that GoDaddy is not specifically named as exempt in this bill. This is true, but that’s not what the article claims. It claims that companies like GoDaddy are exempted and that GoDaddy helped write it.

UPDATE 2: There is a little controversy and confusion in the comments section. The fact that GoDaddy helped write the law and the fact that they are exempt are not necessarily related. We don’t know that they wrote an exemption for themselves. Please don’t jump to conclusions. GoDaddy themselves just say, via their press release, that they helped redefine terms in the law and proposed limitations on DNS filtering, etc. I see where the confusion comes from. But please, read the article I sourced AND THAT ARTICLE’S SOURCES. Again, don’t take my word on any of this. Read things for yourself. It will be made much more clear. Honestly, this post is just blog spam that got lucky on Reddit. The original article that I linked to is what should have been posted to Reddit, but since it was me, I feel obligated to make sure as many people as possible actually read the source. Thanks!

You may have heard about the mass exodus of customers from GoDaddy due to their support of SOPA. You may have also heard that GoDaddy no longer supports SOPA. The problem is, only one of those things is true. While GoDaddy no longer publicly supports SOPA, that is just a PR move. They have not withdrawn official support for the bill, let alone actually come out in opposition to it. But it gets worse. According to [THIS ARTICLE], not only did GoDaddy help write the damn thing, they are also exempt from complying with the law!

Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO), the only member of Congress present at the hearing with any tech experience, having founded several web companies, introduced two amendments: one to exclude universities and non-profits from being subject do having to shut down their own domain servers if accused of piracy under SOPA, and the other to exempt dynamic IP addresses, such as those found on web-enabled printers. Both were voted down.

Polis pointed out that SOPA and Smith’s amendment already excluded certain operators of sub-domains, such as GoDaddy.com, from being subject to shutdowns under SOPA.

“If companies like GoDaddy.com are exempt, why aren’t non-commercial domain servers exempt?” Polis asked.

I was willing to forgive and forget if they actually changed sides and informed Congress of their official opposition to this bill. But they never will. They are too far in bed with the scumbags in Congress who are writing the bill. In my opinion GoDaddy is a lost cause. Let the boycott continue!

http://donttreadonmike.com/2011/12/2...m-it-scumbags/