SOPA - is it so bad?

[Justin Holmes]

I'll get the ball rolling with a controversial position:

Will it be so bad for SOPA to pass? (This is a bit of a devil's
advocate thing; bear with me).

Granted, SOPA is a horrific, draconian measure - essentially contrary
to everything that we stand for in the open source community.

On the other hand, it's pretty obvious that it will be utterly unenforceable.

In a strange way, it might be beneficial to demonstrate that, as John
Gilmore put it, "the Internet interprets censorship as damage and
routes around it." SOPA may be the beginning of the end of the domain
system as we know it. As I see it, this is pure benefit, from a
commercial or free speech standpoint. It also may compel record
numbers to add to communities like Tor.

We have some big and powerful companies and organizations on our side;
these are groups who have long needed an urgent reason to *actively*
resist Internet censorship (ie, at the infrastructural level rather
than political level). Perhaps passage will be the catalyst for this
transition.

--
Justin Holmes

Head Instructor, SlashRoot Collective
SlashRoot: Coffee House and Tech Dojo
60 Main Street
New Paltz, NY 12561
845.633.8330

[heiho1]

I have not yet read the SOPA legislation, just a short blog about it:

http://lifehacker.com/5860205/all-about-sopa-the-bill-thats-going-to-cripple-your-internet

Does anyone have any articles they recommend?

[Piet Delport]

On Wednesday, December 28, 2011 9:54:37 PM UTC-5, heiho1 wrote:

Does anyone have any articles they recommend?

Glyph Lefkowitz (of Twisted fame) wrote the following statement of dissent: http://glyph.twistedmatrix.com/2011/12/im-sorry-its-come-to-this.html

[Aaron C. de Bruyn]

On Dec 28, 2:03 pm, Justin Holmes <jus...@justinholmes.com> wrote:
> I'll get the ball rolling with a controversial position:
>
> Will it be so bad for SOPA to pass?  (This is a bit of a devil's
> advocate thing; bear with me).

Yes, it would be terrible if it were to pass.

...but: Remember how the internet was 'designed' to survive in the
event that a chunk of it failed? The systems are designed to 'route
around' damage. You'll find that the humans that run the internet do
the same thing. Whenever the government introduces some brain-damaged
rule, it will be treated as damage and routed around.

I also have not read SOPA, but have read snippets from various
bloggers. From what I've heard, one part of SOPA is to inject bad DNS
records for sites like thepiratebay.org (and I'm sure eventually
anyone the government disagrees with over free speech, guns,
sovereignty, etc...). DNSSEC will stop that injection and force them
to write new legislation to target TLD owners so they can hijack the
zone. ...ok, so people start using something like P2PDNS--something
the government can't override because it's distributed with no single
point of failure.

Let's say the government starts thinking people who use the word
'xyzzy' are terrorists and they force Google and others to remove
search terms and/or log the information. Enter P2P search like
yacy.net.

You even see this in China where people figure out how to get around
'the great firewall'. Thankfully we won't potentially face execution
for routing around SOPA.

I'd rather not see SOPA pass--but if it does, I don't think it will be
a huge impact. It's just one more small change for users and/or
admins to get their systems running without the SOPA-encumbered
services.

<crazy libertarian rant>For as long as there have been governments,
government has been trying to take freedoms away from people. But
what they don't realize is that we will win in the end--especially in
the United States where the government is of, by, and for the people.
Remember this quote: We the people created the government, and if
necessary, we the people will destroy the government.</crazy
libertarian rant>

[heiho1]

I am in the process of reading the SOPA legislation. It is clear so
far that the legislation targets IP addresses as well as domain names
and so it is a complete attack upon the TCP/IP network layer. There
is no third party obligation to monitor content that I can see. I
feel that participants in this thread would benefit from reading this
legislation to understand the scope of the intent. I will prepare a
synopsis when I have completed my review.

Ultimately the fundamental question is if the US Congress has the
jurisdiction to enforce this internationally. I would suspect not so
the effect would be domestic control, exactly as in China.

[heiho1]

I have read a good portion of the SOPA legislation and cross
referenced at law.cornell.edu for the empowered federal codes.
Overall the legislation does not impose content monitoring constraints
and is aimed at disabling domain name and financial services. It does
provide immunity from suit but that immunity is at a federal level and
thus subject to significant limitations in territorial jurisdiction.

The more interesting intent of SOPA is in the area of public health
under the section 105, titled

SEC. 105. IMMUNITY FOR TAKING VOLUNTARY ACTION AGAINST SITES THAT
ENDANGER PUBLIC
HEALTH.

Legislation is often crafted with hidden intentions and public
discourse is then directed at one portion to ensure that another
escapes notice. Taking this as a typical public policy, I wanted to
focus a bit on the idea of being immune from suit for attacking sites
which one believes endanger public health.

This could be used to pull dangerous products off of the market and I
will not argue against such usage. I want to instead consider the
idea that censoring content based upon possibly false notions of
public health could be greatly endangering to public health. I have
several arguments prepared but I wanted to present this article as an
opening thesis:

http://www.dailypaul.com/205980/the-real-reason-for-sopa-pipa-and-the-ndaa-provisions

I am a Ron Paul supporter so please forgive the originating news
source and consider that such legislation would likely never occur
under a Ron Paul presidency.

Would the thread find a public health analysis of SOPA interesting?
On Dec 31 2011, 2:13 pm, Ted <ted.tie...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have to believe that if this passes it would be summarily shot down
> by the supreme court under the chilling effect doctrine -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect_(law).
>
> Perhaps it is better that a broad law pass now to have its principles
> declared unconstitutional, than for a narrower, more targeted, piece
> of legislation pass that doesn't have as clear of a chilling effect.
>
> T

[Etienne Robillard]

On 01/21/2012 01:17 PM, heiho1 wrote:
> I have read a good portion of the SOPA legislation and cross
> referenced at law.cornell.edu for the empowered federal codes.
> Overall the legislation does not impose content monitoring constraints
> and is aimed at disabling domain name and financial services. It does
> provide immunity from suit but that immunity is at a federal level and
> thus subject to significant limitations in territorial jurisdiction.
>
> The more interesting intent of SOPA is in the area of public health
> under the section 105, titled
>
> SEC. 105. IMMUNITY FOR TAKING VOLUNTARY ACTION AGAINST SITES THAT
> ENDANGER PUBLIC
> HEALTH.
>
> Legislation is often crafted with hidden intentions and public
> discourse is then directed at one portion to ensure that another
> escapes notice. Taking this as a typical public policy, I wanted to
> focus a bit on the idea of being immune from suit for attacking sites
> which one believes endanger public health.
>
> This could be used to pull dangerous products off of the market and I
> will not argue against such usage. I want to instead consider the
> idea that censoring content based upon possibly false notions of
> public health could be greatly endangering to public health. I have
> several arguments prepared but I wanted to present this article as an
> opening thesis:
>
> http://www.dailypaul.com/205980/the-real-reason-for-sopa-pipa-and-the-ndaa-provisions

Thanks. I imagine this would could also require great micro-processing
power to censor/moderate user generated content at the TCP/IP level,
where ISPs may not necessary want to implement any TCP/IP based Deep
Packet Inspection (DPI) measures which could conflict with US/Canadian
federal laws, ie, 1) as regarding to private property intrusion and
monitoring, and 2) as the ability to refute the claims without penalties
is lost with SOPA/PIPA..

See also:

https:/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_packet_inspection/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_packet_inspection

> Would the thread find a public health analysis of SOPA interesting?

Yes, please, as long you keep it informative and updated.. :-)

[heiho1]

Take the example of hydroflurosilicic acid:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/mercola/mercola156.html

One of the points which Jeff Green raises is that a generally toxic
substance was declared safe from a liability perspective. The EPA has
declared water fluoridation as legally safe

http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/basicinformation/fluoride.cfm

In terms of public health related content, one could argue that SOPA
would enable the EPA to shut down the above mercola.com video.
Similarly, a company providing water fluoridation could claim an anti-
fluoridation video is endangering public health.

I think similar issues would arise regarding, say, alternative health
modalities competing with legislated mandatory treatments, all taken
under an umbrella of immunity from counter-suit.

To me, the public health related sections are far more troubling than
the copyrighted material sections. I am copyleft by nature :).

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Implementing such broad content monitoring and blocking policies cannot be made without first entering the
home, similar to MITM techniques, where the internet provider may have to decide forcing the door lock
or deploy a 'back door' for sniffing data from the target site(s) back to the federal government..!