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Comment by ck2 | Hacker News Reader

Right because enforcement never overreaches and never abuses any weapon they are given.

In the meatspace world, see tasers and pepper spray which are only supposed to be used when a gun would have been, so they are less than lethal - then there is warrantless everything these days, or no-knock warrants on the wrong house from a "tip" and they kill your dog for good measure (happens so often it's a cliche already).

On the net see the DMCA mission creep and the thousands of Patriot Act "cannot tell anyone you were served, not even your lawyer" National Security Letters nonsense.

If someone copies the code to crack bluray or something like that to wikipedia - why wouldn't SONY's lawyers use SOPA to take down all of wikipedia for 10 days?

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Right because enforcement never overreaches and never abuses any weapon they are given.

i didn't say that, and i realize why the bill is dangerous. but to fear that it's suddenly going to shut down a bunch of popular sites overnight and we have to scramble to revert back to an /etc/hosts-over-ftp distribution of addressing is silly.

we should be focusing on stopping the bill from passing first, rather than worry about how we'll get to the pirate bay in a few months.

Sorry that wasn't meant to be at you at all - I am just really upset about all this stuff so much lately that I think I better stop watching the news for the rest of the year.

Reality is we cannot stop it from passing, the people in charge of the committee want it to pass so the hearing is just pretend to go through the motions. In some form or another it's going to pass, so start planning.

Just because it passes the committee doesn't mean it will pass the full house and senate votes, and then it has to pass through the President's veto powers. I'm holding out hope that Congress and the President have heard us and won't make it law.

If all else fails maybe we can get it declared to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. And even if the Supreme Court fails us, then we just have to vote some new people into Congress and overturn the law.

Given how many people in the White House have direct ties to Hollywood, I would count on a signature if it makes it out of Congress.

>then we just have to vote some new people into Congress and overturn the law.

No. Just no. That's so delusional it's not even funny anymore. It doesn't matter who "you" vote into congress, it's the same shit with different assholes. They are ALL corporate sellouts.

What's broken is the current system, where people who have no clue what so ever are allowed to vote on things they do not understand even on a surface level, dismiss the opinions of experts with comments such as "I'm not a nerd so I wouldn't understand" and vote "No" to everything because they've been told to do so.

Stop believing that "the next election surely will change everything". It's bullshit and you should know it. Worse, most people will think that their responsibility is done after voting, sheepishly waiting for the next election where they fall for the same empty promises and banal phrases as they did in the previous election.

Furthermore, even if we get SOPA to be repealed, the same shit will come up not even half a year later in a new disguise, I can promise you that with absolute certainty. As I said, the system is broken, and that is what needs to be fixed. Fighting SOPA and other abominations is just a never-ending battle with the symptoms.

Ok, what do you suggest be done about it? It's easy to complain about how broken the system is. The hard part is fixing it. If you aren't willing to work within the system (i.e. vote, call your representative, run for office yourself, etc...), then what are you going to do?

>The hard part is fixing it.

That's my point. It's impossible to fix it. Representative democracy is broken to its very core. It will inevitably lead to concentration of power towards groups or individuals who do NOT have the interest of the public or the advancement of humanity in mind.

>then what are you going to do?

Exactly what I've been doing anyways: advocate anarchism and technocracy. Only a society focused on scientific progress and advancement of humanity as a whole, centered around knowledge and logic, and opposing all forms of unnatural authority can bring us into the future.

"but to fear that it's suddenly going to shut down a bunch of popular sites overnight and we have to scramble to revert back to an /etc/hosts-over-ftp distribution of addressing is silly"

I'm more concerned that unpopular sites will be shut down. Or never created to begin with.

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