Piracy act debate getting ridiculous

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 12/20/11 | James Temple

[SmithL]

As Congress debates nothing less important than the future of the Internet, our nation's leaders are applying all the intellectual rigor you'd expect from a 'tween selecting a smart phone.

Her primary philosophical considerations are, of course, what will her friends think and what will her parents pay for? And so it goes for the House Judiciary Committee.

A markup session for the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act last week devolved into high school drama, replete with name calling and a stubborn refusal to let the nerds talk. The debate, if you want to call it that, could resume as early as Wednesday.

This column has repeatedly pointed out how the bipartisan bill designed to battle Internet piracy undermines critical legal protections that foster online innovation. Even after some recent improvements, it still grants copyright holders enormous power to cut off access or funds to sites they determine are infringing, with too little judicial oversight or due process.

Meanwhile, a growing chorus of Internet infrastructure experts believe that the specific mechanisms for blocking sites - such as inserting false information into the domain name system - could introduce technical problems and security vulnerabilities.

In other words, the bill could chip away at the underpinnings of the most transformative technology and economic force of our age. But you wouldn't sense the weight of these issues by watching the behavior of our elected officials.

Late last week, Reps. Steve King, R-Iowa, Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, and their party colleagues managed to grind the session to a halt as they exchanged taunts that boiled down to: You're boring. Yeah, well, you're offensive! Nu uh, you're out of order!

[af_vet_rr]

I have a bad feeling this thing will get passed. Too much of an opportunity to be able to shut down just about any website without recourse, including websites like Free Republic.

[itsahoot]

Like Justice, you get the government you pay for.

[molson209]

most of the old farts in congress don’t even know what the internet is

[1776 Reborn]

It is always comforting knowing people with no expertise in a subject are in charge of it. ;-)

[FourPeas]

Ridiculous indeed. Thankfully the gov't bill writers don't understand the internet or the creativity of hackers. I've been reading about The Pirate Bay Dancing and DeSOPA, as well as other proxies. T'will be interesting to see how the control freaks in DC respond to it.

[Bobalu]

There is only one way to control the internet and that is to criminalize encryption.

If encryption exists then efforts to control the network will simply cause a process of evolution whereby secure anonymous systems of data transfer get more and more sophisticated.

Given the simplicity and security of high level encryption that now exists the encrypted data systems will always stay far ahead of attempts to control them.

I see a future where most data flows through untraceable, unstoppable, indecipherable distributed networks and where anonymous digital payment and access level earned by reputation reign supreme. This will mark the total breakdown of attempts to control digital piracy... the content owners would just leave this all alone if they were wise.

[zeugma]

I see a future where most data flows through untraceable, unstoppable, indecipherable distributed networks and where anonymous digital payment and access level earned by reputation reign supreme. This will mark the total breakdown of attempts to control digital piracy... the content owners would just leave this all alone if they were wise.

Look up "Cypherpunks" on google. The archives of the mailing list are located in several places. This was discussed at length 15-20 years ago. "Blacknets" are an interesting topic, as well as "Anonymous remailers"

If you really want to see how powerful and "somewhat disturbing" you can get with this stuff, look up "assasination politics".