Sopping Up SOPA

So one of the"back burner stories" of the last few weeks (behind the Iowa caucuses) has been the hearings (in the House) on the Stop Online Piracy Act aka SOPA.  In a move that is hardly surprising to his constituents, Rep. Jason Chaffetz has been making waves up to and in the mark up hearings in the House Judiciary committee.

House lawmakers today(ed written Dec 15) battled over a controversial online piracy bill, with supporters reiterating that the bill will help stop "rogue" Web sites from selling counterfeit goods and detractors insisting that more time is needed to consider such far-reaching legislation.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, suggested that members of Congress might need a tech 101 course.

"Let's bring the nerds in and get this right," Chaffetz said during a markup hearing on Capitol Hill. "If you don't know what DNSSEC is, you don't know what you're doing."

The line while extremely funny, is also extremely sad.  Here we have legislators, many of whom can barely use their own emails, putting forward legislation on a subject that they know nothing about.  One reason why Rick Perry's idea of a part time legislature resonates with so many people.

People who DO KNOW tech and the internet are up in arms about the bill.  There are websites dedicated to boycotting companies supporting SOPA and are working hard to hammer an disconnected disinterested Congress.

The U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee will continue its hearing on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) on Wednesday, not until after Congress' holiday break,as originally believed.

Late Friday, Representative Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican and committee chairman, scheduled a continuation of the hearing to amend the bill for this Wednesday at 9 a.m., even though many members of the committee may be out of town for the holidays. Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican and opponent of the bill, tweeted the hearing announcement late Friday.

At the urging of some SOPA opponents, Smith said Friday he will consider a hearing or a classified briefing on the bill's impact on cybersecurity. More than 80 Internet engineers and cybersecurity experts have raised security concerns about the bill, which would require Internet service providers and domain name registrars to block the domain names of foreign websites accused of copyright infringement...

...Continuing the markup hearing on Wednesday, when many lawmakers had planned to be out of Washington, D.C., "demonstrates a clear desire to continue dodging the questions raised by experts, members, and the public," said Sherwin Siy, deputy legal director of Public Knowledge.

This unwillingness to take expert evidence, listen to constituents, or conduct due diligence in investigating the extraordinary harms risked by SOPA shows a process divorced from representation, responsibility, and reality," Siy said in a statement.

Committee hearings on SOPA were again postponed until January as pressure from opponents stepped up.  And the opposition to this bill is very bi-partisan.

...Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat.

"Our government has always gone after the criminality [on the Internet], but it's never tried to use the communication network itself to make illegal conduct possible," Lofgren said. "If this bill passes with the mandate for domain name and other Internet filtering intact, I think it will be historic and not in a good way."

"I think that once the government has a taste of this power, the temptation to exert an ever-greater amount of control over the Internet through filtering technology will be irresistible," Lofgren suggested.

May high tech "bigs" are also weighing in on SOPA.

Despite the manager's amendment, the Electronic Frontier Foundation this week said it was s till opposed to SOPA.

Smith's concessions "are positive steps, but frankly, the original provisions were so overbroad and poorly written that we suspect the bill's backers had always planned to eliminate them, as a supposed 'compromise,'" EFF's Corynne McSherry wrote in a blog post.

Also this week, the co-founders of top tech firms like Google, Twitter, Yahoo, and eBay penned an open letter (below) in opposition to SOPA.

"We've all had the good fortune to found Internet companies and nonprofits in a regulatory climate that promotes entrepreneurship, innovation, the creation of content and free expression online," they wrote. "However, we're worried that the PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act—which started out as well-meaning efforts to control piracy online—will undermine that framework."

And they are even considering a "black out day" in protest.

It was Google co-founder Sergey Brin who warned that the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act "would put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world." Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Twitter co-founders Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman argue that the bills give the Feds unacceptable "power to censor the Web."

But these companies have yet to roll out the heavy artillery.

When the home pages of Google.com, Amazon.com, Facebook.com, and their Internet allies simultaneously turn black with anti-censorship warnings that ask users to contact politicians about a vote in the U.S. Congress the next day on SOPA, you'll know they're finally serious.

True, it would be the political equivalent of a nuclear option--possibly drawing retributions from the the influential politicos backing SOPA and Protect IP--but one that could nevertheless be launched in 2012.

Just imagine the uproar that would occur should those popular sites go black - even for half a day!  They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned....imagine if that woman can't get to her social media?  Katy bar the door  Then throw in the millions of mothers of teens who are whining that they can't get to their FaceBook and email.  I know I use Google daily in my job.  If that is down - hoo boy.

One way you can make your voice heard is unique - a "Reverse Robocall" service that for $10.00 will call the politicians supporting SOPA and for $25.00 will call all 301 politicians and organizations who are supporting SOPA.  Meanwhile - those of us in Utah can thank Rep. Chaffetz for again fighting the good fight on this horrible legislation.