When SOPA-PIPA blew up, it was a transformative event. There were eight million e-mails [to elected representatives] in two days. People were dropping their names as co-sponsors within minutes, not hours.MPAA CEO Chris Dodd • Discussing the aftermath of the death of SOPA/PIPA during a speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on Tuesday night. While the former Democratic senator didn’t seem thrilled to discuss the topic, attendees seemed unwilling to let Dodd avoid the subject. Eventually, Dodd did say he felt that portrayals of the bills’ reach was “over the top”, but also said, in no uncertain terms, that they would not return in the future. “These bills are dead, they’re not coming back,” said Dodd, adding, “And they shouldn’t. I think we’re better served by sitting down [with the tech sector and SOPA opponents] and seeing what we agree on.” source
» The key word here is “purported.” Critics of SOPA alleged that the text of the bill was too draconian, and would have allowed for shutting down entire websites for questionable infractions (for example, linking to a message board with a comment that directed users to a site with copyrighted material). Opposition to CISPA, however, comes due to privacy concerns: Critics say the bill allows private companies (such as Facebook and Microsoft which opposed SOPA but support CISPA) to exchange personal information and private data with the government a bit too easily. We’ve still got to delve into the nitty-gritty here, but we recommend you seek out a few different takes on the legislation. TechDirt and Geekosystem are both opposed, GigaOm is so-so, and Lifehacker has a nice rundown as to why Facebook and Microsoft opposed SOPA but support CISPA.
PACs are commonplace for companies that lead a big, growing market and Netflix is no exception. Our PAC is a way for our employees to support candidates that understand our business and technology. It was not set up for the purpose of supporting SOPA or PIPA.Anonymous Netflix spokesperson • In a statement emailed to TPM, responding to the news that “hacktivist”-group Anonymous is calling for a boycott of the company after it announced it would be creating it’s own political action committee. According to the spokesperson, FLIXPAC was not created in order to support or rebuild SOPA/PIPA, but instead to allow the company to influence debates on “network neutrality, bandwidth caps, usage based billing and reforming the Video Privacy Protection Act.” He also called Anonymous’ claims baseless, saying, “SOPA/PIPA are dead anyway.” source (via • follow)
Hopefully that was a one-time experience that came from a lot of different things coming together where a lot of different people came to the conclusion that this was a terrible piece of legislation.RIAA head Cary Sherman • Discussing the experience of SOPA and his hopes that the mass online protests won’t repeat. Yeah, internet, we should prove him wrong — by, for example, spreading this quote!
Here’s how the movie industry would like you to celebrate the Oscars: By handing out a factsheet to the guests at your Oscars party this weekend. This is Creative America, the movie industry group designed specifically to push SOPA and PIPA, by the way.
» But only if you used Megaupload to store them. Megaupload wasn’t just a place to share pirated movies; it also served as webspace for people to store their personal documents, pictures, hard drive backups, and the like. But Megaupload didn’t actually own the servers on which its data was stored—they outsourced that two other companies. Now that Megaupload’s been shut down, its assets have been frozen, and so it can’t keep paying the storage centers their fee. So, according to a letter from the US Attorney’s Office, the two data centers could start deleting the data as soon as this Thursday. That would be a shame for many, many people (although it should have been clear from the outset that Megaupload wasn’t the wisest place to back up one’s data). An attorney for Megaupload says he’s “cautiously optimistic” that they’ll be able to keep the data from being erased.
So, there’s this petition targeting MPAA head Chris Dodd. Here’s the context. Here’s a quote from Dodd:
“Those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,” Dodd said on Fox News on Thursday.
Do with it what you will.
But slow pacing gave the Internet and free speech advocates time to wake up and mobilize, turning what might have been a relatively simple exercise for Mr. Dodd and his allies into a bitter struggle. The delays violated a cardinal rule among professional lobbyists, who generally believe the worst enemy of a proposed law is the legislative clock.
Mr. Dodd said that the entire industry was surprised by the intensity of the objections that arose in the last couple of weeks. “This was a whole new different game all of a sudden,” he said. “This thing was considered by many to be a slam dunk.”
The article points out something interesting: Thanks to a 2007 law, Dodd is barred from directly lobbying members of Congress for two years because he’s a former Senator. He could lobby the White House, but that clearly didn’t work because Obama’s staff went against him. This makes us wonder what Chris could throw at Congress as MPAA head once the rule is lifted. Dodd also suggested tactical errors were at play: With Hollywood the face of this bill and not, say, heavily-counterfeited products, it made things much harder than it could’ve been. To which we say: Save your talk about smoke detectors, Chris. The internet was the issue dealt with in this bill — and poorly.
There is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved.Sen. Harry Reid • Discussing his decision to effectively shelve PIPA for now, while the Senate works through its issues with the legislation. The bill isn’t dead, though, just getting reworked. Reid hopes that Sen. Patrick Leahy, the guy behind the bill, will do his best ”to forge a balance between protecting Americans’ intellectual property, and maintaining openness and innovation on the Internet.” The bill was supposed to face a vote Tuesday, but no longer. It might show up later, though.
Sorry I’m not sorry, Lamar Smith.
(the hill)
While that’s not a total death blow to the idea, it seems that us Internet types led the two bills to get a nice, long vacation. Adios, mofo.
I’m moving back to New York in a few days. Unlike past...
OMG. I got so...
In this week’s Newsweek, a little...
Tumblr this morning. [h/t anne]
#@#$%!.tumblr.com
Here’s a hidden feature that shipped in...
Watch: PCB gets a visual shout out on GMA’s Yahoo/Tumblr...
» Well, that sure worked: During the “great blackout” yesterday, one of the only things you actually could do with Wikipedia was get the information about your local congressperson, so to lodge a complaint against the SOPA and PIPA legislations that were the order of the day. This stripping down to such a basic, singular function proved to have just the effect Wikipedia had hoped for, as evidenced by the figure above; this surge in popular outcry clearly rattled quite a few on Capitol Hill, as numerous former supporters have changed their tunes.
» A great breakdown: Mashable’s dissection of the entire SOPA bill, in case you haven’t read it, does wonders in terms of clearing up what on its face is a confusing piece of legislation. It’s a solid breakdown that cuts through the legalese.
The tech industry says it wants to stop such crimes, but it also calls any tangible effort to do so censorship that would “break the Internet.” Wikipedia has never blacked itself out before on any other political issue, nor have websites like Mozilla or the social news aggregator Reddit. How’s that for irony: Companies supposedly devoted to the free flow of information are gagging themselves, and the only practical effect will be to enable fraudsters. They’ve taken no comparable action against, say, Chinese repression.
Now, let’s take a step back here. Let’s go back to the prior post we put up. Are we gonna have to throw out some motha@*&!in Clay Shirky on ya? The problem is not the law as written. It’s the burden of proof. Basically, you’re going to put any mom-and-pop startup in a position where they have to monitor every single transaction that goes through their site to ensure it doesn’t link to an illegal foreign site. And to twist the issue to make them look like hypocrites for not taking political stances on other things? Come on. This directly affects their bottom line. It weighs them down in bureaucracy. If Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak had to work around barriers like this, they probably would’ve stuck with phone phreaking. The problem here is not the explicit solution; it’s the consequences and side effects.
The Wall Street Journal is a great newspaper saddled by an editorial page written by a bunch of people who haven’t been outside of their bubbles in the past 20 years, buoyed by a subscriber base unlike any other in newspapers, and influenced by one of the more obsessive minds in the business industry. And here’s this board, scolding a sector that bothered to defend itself against a lobbying prowess the best way they know how — through word-of-mouth. These sites that went down today should be lauded for not letting themselves get bullied. Yes, the people who wrote this article? They’re bullies, shouting off in the distance, far away from the crowds.
This is a travesty of an editorial; it damages the reputation of one of the greats.
Copyright 2009-2013 Ernie Smith • Ask us stuff! • E-mail us • Follow us on Twitter • Follow us on Facebook
