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Comment by digitalsushi | Hacker News Reader

While it's possible that he authored his own political website, I would strongly suspect this is a proxy blame. I am all for blaming Lamar Smith as much as the next guy. My issue is assigning a state to an individual when another individual performed the state changing action. The furthest it is fair to place that assignment is shared with the entire group.

edit, apparently downvoting is the same as disagreeing here too. sigh. guess this teaches me to share my honest thoughts and to continue chasing integers.

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I agree that it's unfair to accuse Congressman Smith of directly and maliciously using pirated content. However, the irony of the matter is that under his own proposed bill, the congressman's site would be blacklisted regardless. One reason SOPA is such a bad idea is because it does precisely what you take issue with by assigning the label 'copyright infringer' to the congressman without any due process.

Exactly, that this law is even discussed and brought to public attention is unthinkable.

With this law the accuser becomes the judge and the executioner. It's like the police shooting first, asking questions later. It's like silencing political opposition in the name of progress. It's like detaining prisoners indefinitely without trial ... oh wait!

My issue with SOPA, etc. is the whole "Punish you first, possibly irreparably, then find out if you're guilty later" aspect of it that carries no consequences if it is abused as such.

The entire point of SOPA is to enshrine proxy blame as law, friend.

> edit, apparently downvoting is the same as disagreeing here too. sigh. guess this teaches me to share my honest thoughts and to continue chasing integers.

Sad, isn't it? Some people even seem to think that up/down votes are primarily for rating opinions. Pretty awful idea, if you ask me. I think HN very much needs some kind of discussion on this, and preferably an official policy discouraging it.

Still, it's worth pointing out (from the Guidelines):

> Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

I think he was downmodded because of his spectacular failure to understand that the process of blaming A for the acts of B is exactly the point of SOPA... so complaining that we shouldn't apply to Smith the same process that Smith wants to apply to everyone else looks very short-sighted at best (and at worst, just partisan).

Actually, in this case, we're blaming A for the acts of B, in B's role as an employee or contractor working on behalf and at the direction of A.

In the case of SOPA, when a large user-generated content site is blocked because of one piece of copyrighted content, then individuals A through ZZZZZ are being punished for the acts of a completely unrelated B who just happened to use the same free service they did.

And that is one of the core reason why SOPA is a flawed concept.

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