Posted on 12/16/2011 11:05:27 AM PST by Burkean Buckleyite
Eight hours into Thursday’s marathon hearing on the controversial “Stop Online Piracy Act” not a single amendment proposed by the bill’s critics in Congress had been passed.
In fact, at the time of this posting, all of the amendments introduced by House lawmakers designed to improve the legislation for critics have so far been voted down by a core of SOPA-supporters in the House Judiciary Committee, moving the controversial bill closer toward passage. . .
Another amendment that was voted down was proposed by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA). It would have allowed ISPs to refuse takedown notices that would interfere with the security of the Domain Name System (DNS).
That bill was voted down despite the nearly hoarse pleas from Rep. Issa and another SOPA-opponent, Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO), the only member of the committee with any online technical experience. [emphasis added --Ed] . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com ...
Lamar Smith MUST GO!
This bill if passed into law is the end of FreeRepublic.com .
Within weeks of implementation of the regulatory apparatus legislated in this bill, there will be hundreds of falsified complaints against each and every political website under the Jurisdiciton of the United States of America.
This bill will destroy everything that has been built here on FR and amongst various political and socio-political websites over the last 15 years.
This bill was specifically written to destroy ALL political speech on the internet.
And the Republicans are the ones railroading this through Congress.
It’s all over folks.
this bill is bad news but I think even FReepers have been downplaying it.
True.
Within weeks of implementation of the regulatory apparatus legislated in this bill, there will be hundreds of falsified complaints against each and every political website under the Jurisdiciton of the United States of America. They don't even need to falsify the complaints -- all it takes is for somebody with a grudge or an agenda to upload infringing material (or even fair-use material which can be misrepresented as infringing), and voila! -- instant grounds to cut FR off the Net and prohibit any bank or other financial institution from processing donations to it.
This shows how moronic the GOP leadership is.
This bill, pushed at the behest of Hollywood, does nothing for the GOP. The truth is that the publishers, movie moguls, studios, etc - they’re not about to start treating Republicans better in the press or movies.
So why is the GOP carrying water for these clowns? Unexplained. Why is the GOP willing to engender the fury of the conservative base when this results in the shut-down of various conservative web sites that have enabled any measure of conservative/Republican electoral success? Because the GOP leadership is packed to the rafters with morons and retards, that’s why.
My understanding is that any advertisers for the so-called pirated website may also be held liable & sued. This SOPA is very, very bad. And yes, I do think it’ll be the death of FreeRepublic
Compare the handful of posts on this thread to the dozens of posts on a batch of "light bulb ban" threads.
People have no sense of priorities.
It's much worse than that. Once a site is declared "infringing" after a hearing in which the accuser, but not the defendant, gets to present a case, businesses are summarily prohibited from transferring money to the alleged infringer, with heavy penalties for failure (even inadvertent failure resulting from lack of timely notification) to comply.
With a gun like that to their heads, advertisers and other revenue sources are simply going to abandon small sites as more risk and trouble than they're worth. Only sites that can afford their own lawyers to fight SOPA injunctions after the fact and maintain enough cash-on-hand to survive lack of income while the fight goes on will be able to survive.
Well, there mu$t be $ome rea$on why $uppo$edly con$ervative politician$ will $erve Hollywood intere$ts, but I ju$t can’t $ee what it i$....
SOPA is staunchly opposed by free speech and digital rights advocates, as well as top Internet portals such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia. In anticipation of the hearing, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is conducting a straw poll to gauge Wikipedian interest in a community strike -- a blackout of either the U.S. Wikipedia pages, or even the entire site. So far, 87 percent of respondents are in favor of a strike....IMO, the sponsors of the bill consider the muffling of protest to be a feature, not a bug.Here's a worst-case scenario free speech supporters say is entirely possible: Proxy servers such as those that aided the Arab Spring are also used to stream content that qualifies for copyright infringement. Shut down the proxy server for a SOPA violation, and the voices of protest could be muffled as well....
“And the Republicans are the ones railroading this through Congress.
It’s all over folks.”
It is indeed Ironic as if the republicans are successful most of them will lose their jobs due to the fact that the vast majority of their support base will be shut down using this unconstitutional and easy to abuse legislation.
Just as similar legislation in Canada regarding hate speech was used to persecute political enemy’s by those with the pockets for lawyers.
Many Republican congressmen seem determent going to hang themselves & their supporters with SOPA.
enemies
Where does this bill stand in the Senate? Do they have anyone willing to filibuster it?
When these guys are in Washington long enough, they catch Beltway Disease and become indistinguishable from Democrats.
That's what I never get. This asymmetrical warfare where everyone dumps on conservatives, yet conservatives think political reality or principle dictate that they treat these same people nice. I say bust into their house at 3:00AM and come back out with one of their kidneys. You can't win if you don't fight back.
Beg to differ on that one. Establishment GOP hates grass roots conservatives, so they have as much to gain from shutting down dissent as the [other] socialists to. They think that if they can remove the communication medium, they'd be able to claim conservatism and most (the politically uninvolved) wouldn't notice they were lying. I doubt it, but maybe they're right.
Indeed. They resent the peasants who dare to hold their feet to the fire now and then.
bump
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