boredguy8

  http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/dear-internet-its-no-longer-ok-to-not-know-how-congress-works-

  http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/dear-internet-its-no-longer-ok-to-not-know-how-congress-works

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.

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!!!

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!

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.

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 can 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."

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?"

Alright, back to work. But this doesn't seem like SOPA's being fixed in ways that are important.

  Graffiti happens at the intersection of ambition and incompetence: people want 
  to make their mark on the world, but have no other way to do it than literally 
  making a mark on the world.

Let me propose, for what it's worth, that a "Banksy!" reply to a statement like the one above is the sort of accidental troll that invites the slow degradation into real trolls. Whether or not Banksy is graffiti or whether or not graffiti is art: these aren't the question of the submission. This isn't to say that tangents are always bad. It's rather that these sorts of discussions quickly turn in to "what color should we paint the dog house?"* That is: lots of firmly-held beliefs with little that can dissuade someone.

So: when posting why someone is wrong, first see if there's a small or trivial way in which you can 'fix' their point. If you can, their point wasn't really broken in the first place.

*I've long been trying to find the original 'why meetings go bad when you're talking about something everyone has an opinion on', but I can't. If anyone can help me out: much appreciated.

But perhaps more interestingly: because people would still have a job to do, they'd use Bing or something else, which would hopefully demonstrate to Washington just how circumventable the legislation is.

  "Now, the true city is in my opinion the one we just described--a 
  healthy city, as it were. But, if you want to, let's look at a 
  feverish city, too. Nothing stands in the way....This healthy 
  one isn't adequate any more, but must already be gorged with a 
  bulky mass of things."

  Increasingly we lose this sense of surprise, so that we are no longer overly
  amazed at anything and, ultimately, find satisfaction in everything—this is 
  what is called historical sensibility, historical cultivation. Stated 
  noneuphemistically: the massive influx of impressions is so great; surprising, 
  barbaric, and violent things press so overpoweringly—'balled up into hideous 
  clumps'—in on the youthful soul; that it can save itself only by taking 
  recourse in premeditated stupidity.

  Caroline continued. "So they learn where the pleasure points are by hook or
  crook, then stimulate themselves directly. And when they get it right, they
  never do anything else. They get everything maximized, tuned up, and they just
  sit there forever enjoying it."

  "Right. Now is a creature that is doing that, not interacting with the world
  at all any more, human?"

  Caroline thought about it. "No."

  "Prime Intellect thinks otherwise. But it has its doubts."

And Darrell Issa did a phenomenal job calling into question the need for the legislation because of the function of the ITC & usefulness of administrative law solutions already in place.

Wow, Dennis Ross (R-FL) apparently doesn't understand that free speech protections apply to the GOVERNMENT, not to business. "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech..." So yes, when Google takes down a site, it's not unconstitutional. When the government does it, in some instances, that is unconstitutional.

"Copyright under the Berne Convention must be automatic" and "Under the Convention, copyrights for creative works are automatically in force upon their creation without being asserted or declared."

Much like sysadmins who make policy exceptions for their non-admin accounts!

Do you have a handy reference?

That's also untrue. I remember being viscerally mad at Yahoo for moving away from Inktomi because Inktomi results were much better for what I searched for...or I had gotten my searches to work for Inktomi. Who cares? Eventually, Google got better, and I started using them.

I use a lot of Google services, but when I search the web I use Google because it works. Searches have very little traction. The only thing it takes to move my searches elsewhere is consistently better results. All it takes for me to try a new search engine is Google not working well a few more times a month.