“The Stop Online Piracy Act is being constructed to allow a stranglehold on the American Internet. Make no mistake. Its constructors are building it with this intent in mind. Just like the Great Firewall of China, the Stop Online Piracy Act is a misnomer. Hidden behind an innocuous name, the bill’s intent is not to stem piracy as its proponents suggest, its true intent is to control the Internet itself.” McCarthy would be proud.
In regard to the article, if this bill is not intended to try and combat the rampant piracy on the internet, then WTF is it for? I don’t think the entertainment industry has much to gain by trying to build a China-style firewall to curb free speech. Basically, they just want people to stop downloading their shit without paying for it, and frankly, I don’t blame them. If it ends up killing the internet as we know it and screwing up the DNS system, that’s just an necessary consequence as far as they’re concerned.
That being said, I am NOT a supporter of this bill and think that all efforts to try and combat piracy will ultimately fail; I just don’t think this bill has any other purpose than its stated intention.
No, they want to control what people do on the internet to prevent you from even knowing about illegal downloading. Just plain stopping or deterring people from downloading is a different issue for them. Even criminal laws aren’t created to prevent, they are created to deter.
Their hunger for control and power manifested itself in the whole screwed up DRM approach. They just want to extend this idiocy into Internet as well.
Edited 2011-11-21 17:11 UTC
According to Sandia Nat. Lab., SOPA would also affect negatively one of the important upgrades in security, DNSSEC:
“the Domain Name Service (DNS) filtering/redirection mandates in the bills 1) are unlikely to be effective, 2) would negatively impact U.S. and global cybersecurity and Internet functionality, and 3) would delay the full adoption of DNSSEC and its security improvements over DNS.”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/73106069/Napolitano-Response-Rep-Lofgren-…
While it’s clear that this is bad (as in really, really bad) and, once again, the legislators are hiding their real intent behind something that might appear “reasonable” at a first glance, it seems that the author is contradicting himself.
How can the same author write “Supporters of SOPA clearly do not understand the Internet as a medium” and then, just one paragraph down, “The Stop Online Piracy Act is being constructed to allow a stranglehold on the American Internet”?
It’s clear that it’s quite the opposite: they understand it too well and, exactly because they do, they’re trying to lay the foundation for pervasive censorship — the “infringing” sites today and who knows what else tomorrow…
RT.
I don’t think wanting to control a thing and deep understanding of a thing are muturally required. Infact, the desire to control a thing through external forces (laws) often has more to do with not deeply understanding that thing.
If they deeply understood the new market and it’s consumer’s culture, they’d be more interested in working with it to provide more incentives for obtaining content under applicable licenses.
But then, the content ownership industry has consistently attacked every new method of production and distribution since the earliest use of the printing press or common language in church so I won’t be reaching for my “surprised face” any time soon.
Edited 2011-11-23 15:30 UTC
This bill is so draconian and over the top it is likely to fail in the end. But the next bill will be seen as a compromise and will have an easier time passing even though it contains many objectionable items. Of course, Big-Content would love this bill to pass, but I think they’re really just priming the pump for the next go ’round.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. We keep seeing draconian bills on DRM and internet tracking pop up in Congress. Eventually we’ll get damaging laws that are heralded as “compromises” out of it. The proposed law that requires ISPs to keep records of all your internet activity for two years is an example. Eventually it will pass. And it will be praised as good because it doesn’t fund the internet watchers like China employs!