How SOPA & PIPA Could Hurt Scientific Debate 100
mwolfam writes with this pointed excerpt from a piece at the Huffington Post by Los Alamos National Laboratories post-doc researcher Michael Ham, who makes a slightly different case than most for the reasons that SOPA and PIPA should be stopped: "Simply put, The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) currently under development in Congress will provide a rapid way to sentence websites to death without the need for pesky things like trials and juries. Much to the surprise of nobody who understands how the Internet works, these two Acts will have absolutely no effect on digital piracy, but they will create an environment where freedom of speech could be severely curtailed, large companies can execute competitors, and scientific data can be hidden from the public."
I see an explosion in European web-hosting (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I see an explosion in European web-hosting (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you forgot ACTA. SOPA and PIPA are just the US instances of the ACTA virus.
They expect the EU (and actually the whole world) to have them too. If not... well you saw how they managed to get a UK citizen extradited to the use over this shit, and how they got Spain, Finland and Belgium already infected.
Of course they will never manage to reach their goal. Since that is physically impossible. (Unless they put DRM chips in every human's head, we can still e.g. have one person read the information, tell it to somebody else, who then types it in.)
And of course we will still not be affected in the slightest, since we already have countries that have such total censorship (China, UAE, etc), and they use VPNs at $5 a month to circumvent *everything*. (Hell, there are cops who will pay you to tell them how to get porn. They are humans too, and if it's about porn, their side is clear. ^^)
So they have no chance of ever succeeding.
But for the cattle majority, they don't have to. Since those are passive life-forms. Who don't have their own perception of reality, but instead get it from their opinion makers. So all that is needed, is for the dumb masses to believe the lies and delusions, and they will have control over most. (Some say: Unless the masses feel the need for porn. Then the revolution will start. ;)
Same as those people in North Korea, who honestly believe that when they touch an American flag, their hands will rot off. (Remember the Daily Show interview about the guy who gets people out of NK.)
It's all about assumed reality nowadays. Not actually sensed reality.
And the problem is, that apparently, we, the good people, are not secure in ourselves to get the masses' perception to change. Maybe because other than the media industry, we don't live off of cocaine. (I've worked in the EU music industry, and I swear on my dick and my mothers' life, that there is no such thing as a business deal without cocaine and preferably hookers and booze in there. It's an old boys network on drugs.)
So let's kick the Dunning Kruger effect [wikipedia.org]'s ass, and fix the mindset of the masses!
Re:I see an explosion in European web-hosting (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you forgot ACTA. SOPA and PIPA are just the US instances of the ACTA virus. They expect the EU (and actually the whole world) to have them too.
Yes they do [cablegatesearch.net]. Sadly.
Just like they expected EU and the rest of the world to either look the other way or join them in their other wars.
Re:I see an explosion in European web-hosting (Score:5, Informative)
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Can't tell if you've been paid off or brainwashed.
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I think if you actually looked at the legal situation in Europe, you'd come to a different conclusion.
Re:I see an explosion in European web-hosting (Score:5, Informative)
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Based on my understanding from reading SOPA, it seems that either I am very misinformed or almost every single commenter on the thread is. SOPA specifically mentions that its draconian policies are only to be applied to domestic-facing foreign websites. It then goes on to define a foreign website as any website that isn't a domestic website, and mentions that domestic websites include any website listed on an american based registrar. This implies that all .coms and .orgs are exempt from SOPA as they are li
As expected. (Score:2)
When the truth is less interesting than the story, the story usually wins.
Be that as it may, legally-enforced Internet filtering is still censorship. People want to be able to trade information with each other, and when an authority steps in to silence them, they rebel. This is just basic human nature (as the inclination for those with authority to step in and stop people from doing anything that might threaten said authority, whether it is just or not).
All of this has happened before and this will all ha
Re:An idea... (Score:5, Interesting)
Thy tried that with the "recordable media tax" that applied to things like CD-R and DVD-R media, and to mp3 players in some countries. It was lobbied for by the music industry because "obviously" people buying recordable media would be burning illegally obtained songs so to compensate them for their "obvious" losses they got a cut of all CD-R sales via a price hike.
Of course this didn't stop them suing people anyway...
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Which is kind of why no one takes them seriously. Their own actions are highly hypocritical.
Re:An idea... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this wouldn't work because it would "normalise" piracy. People who do not currently pirate would reckon that that they had paid for anything they wanted to download. so that they were free to do so. This would mean that piracy, instead of being 90% by people who would not by the media if they had to pay, would be done by everybody.
Example from a childcare business who had problems with parents being late to pick up their children after work. They tried charging for overtime, and found that the problem went up, not down: people reckoned it was OK to be late if they were paying for it. (from Freaconomics, I think).
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Yeah that example is from Freakonomics, but the important part of the takeaway was that they made the overtime fee too small, and the cost-benefit analysis made it worth more just to be late. The conclusion was that the fee needed to be higher. I think it we a daycare in Israel.
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Example from a childcare business who had problems with parents being late to pick up their children after work. They tried charging for overtime, and found that the problem went up, not down: people reckoned it was OK to be late if they were paying for it. (from Freaconomics, I think).
Well, that's a bad example. They should've charged enough to cover the additional staffing during the overtime period. Then everybody wins - parents get the extra time they need, staff gets overtime pay opportunities, and the business gets more profit!
after a 2nd strike, self nuked (Score:3)
Re:after a 2nd strike, self nuked (Score:5, Insightful)
The US is hellbent on the way to being a "nuclear damage zone", to be routed around. Inside, people will need a encrypted channel to a "neutral" server outside the US in a freer country to surf from.
More like some, extremely influential people, groups, and companies are hell-bent on having the US control the entire internet. But don't be thinking that it's a US only thing. It upsets the established order - just like printing. Whether they'll succeed or not is another thing. I'm not expecting Facebook, eBay, Amazon, PayPal or climate change deniers to step up for net neutrality. For that to occur we'd need a change in education which won't happen over night. As long as people believe "terrorism" is not something police should deal with then we'll just have another war - this time on "piracy" or "threats to US jobs".
Note that printing was invented a long time before Gutenberg.
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Whether they'll succeed or not is another thing. I'm not expecting Facebook, eBay, Amazon, PayPal or climate change deniers to step up for net neutrality. For that to occur we'd need a change in education which won't happen over night.
Hopefully, you're right: once younger generations who grew up with digital media and the internet rise to positions of power, the rules will change and the insanity will ease. That said, I have a lawyer friend under 30 who ran for office in his state legislature and he is just as willfully ignorant about technology issues as the Senate and House champions of SOPA/PIPA. That doesn't give me much hope for the future.
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I've met people who thought having a "fake" email address was "email fraud". Early 20s.
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Doesn't matter what side of the fence you're on with regards to the climate debate.
I made that reference with regard to government control of what scientists were/are allowed to say.
I'm of the belief that you can't try and invalidate data that shows elevated temperatures by claiming the temperature measurements are artificially elevated by having recording stations near roads, power stations, and airport *and* simultaneously claim that producing heat doesn't have an effect on the immediate environment.
so where should one go? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to know where that mythical country is that respects your Internet privacy and doesn't subject you to damage from arbitrary and invalid copyright claims. I haven't found it, but I'd sure like to move my server there.
Internet connections in Europe are subject to monitoring without a court order, you may end up having to pay fines for mere allegations of copyright infringement without due process, the government can place viruses on your computer to monitor it, and many forms of speech that are legal and protected in the US are illegal and subject to prosecution in Europe.
Re:so where should one go? (Score:5, Informative)
I'd like to know where that mythical country is that respects your Internet privacy and doesn't subject you to damage from arbitrary and invalid copyright claims. I haven't found it (...).
Sweden. You should try PRQ.se, they host TPB. But they also offer Dedicated servers and Tunnels and anonymizers.
Re:so where should one go? (Score:4)
I have my doubts. Sweden is subject to EU data retention directives (even if they have been dragging their feet implementing them) and permits warrantless wiretapping (backed up by a huge supercomputer). Sweden also has hate-speech laws that have been used to stifle free speech, and has used DNS filters to make sites inaccessible. And the Pirate Bay fate suggests that they are subject to similar copyright enforcement as other nations (the second largest damage award went to a German company, so this isn't just US-driven). In what way is it better than other nations? Furthermore, how well does Sweden protect the rights of foreign customers?
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Thanks; that's worth looking into. Chile seems to be doing well (economic freedom, etc.) on other indicators as well.
Fear not, this will not be a real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, those acts are a good thing. In reality they will only hurt American companies and consumers, not the rest of the world. They will however drive business and entrepreneurship away from USA, basically allowing the US economy to implode, and thus when the companies get hurt, their wellsponsored congresspuppets will vote in another act to stop this madness.
Good thing money equals speech in some areas, isn't it?
Re:Fear not, this will not be a real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, this is incredibly common whenever Slashdot discusses something. Slashdot when into hysterics when they found out about Trusted Computing. Nowadays, most of them use locked-down cell phones and game consoles every day, without a single complaint, despite how that was going to destroy computing as we know it. When Slashdot heard about RFID, the entire website ground to a halt, as the paranoid conspiracy wing took over the submission queue. People were advising you to microwave your new clothes. Slashdot was advising people to microwave their new clothes. I am not making this up. According to Slashdot, the government was going to use RFID to track people (or, less commonly, corporations were going to track people, but that didn't sound ominous enough, so it was a minority conspiracy). I eventually stopped reading Slashdot for a few years, because it just got so crazy here.
Now, we've got SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA. Everyone knows these are bad laws. However, Slashdot has to go into hysterics yet again, making it that much more difficult to convince anyone that they truly are bad laws. When you've got one person over here saying, "SOPA is a bad law, because it will shift responsibility from users to site administrators", and you've got a whole crowd of geeks, frothing at the mouth, screaming, "SOPA WILL KILL THE INTERNET!!!!!!!!!11111", people will just tune out the rational person and write off everyone. This article is part of the problem. Instead of rationally and dispassionately explaining the issues, it starts screaming bloody murder, coming up with wildly improbable edge cases, in an effort to get people riled up and ready to protest. The examples that he uses are laughable, at best. They read like the sorts of wild conspiracy theories that usually come from anonymous users on Slashdot.
I think that I hate "push technology" more than the average Slashdotter, but, then again, we'd all say that. I'm that guy from The Onion who doesn't own a television. I can't stand the thought of the Internet turning into some kind of passive, non-interactive experience like TV, where everything is designed for the lowest common denominator, vetted by focus groups and censored for my benefit. However, there's a huge difference between YouTube turning into a promotional tool for major labels (yuck) and the economy imploding, the internet being RUINED FOREVER, and scientific progress being impeded. Will people fight as passionately if you tell them YouTube will get more boring? Will people fight as passionately if you tell them MegaUpload will start validating that all those 700MB .AVI files aren't Hollywood movies? Maybe not. But it's infinitely better to tell people the truth, rather than making up these ridiculous, exaggerated stories about the world ending. My God, you'd think that one stupid law could cause the end of human civilization. I'm sorry, but that's just not possible. If SOPA/PIPA/ACTA pass, the Internet will be a worse place. But it will not cause half the things that people are saying will happen, and I think the public knows this. They're not as stupid as the elitists at Slashdot think. It's like when those cops came to your school and told you that you that marijuana would turn you into a drug addict, living on the streets, sucking cock for a fix. You knew that was bullshit. Well, the public knows that you're spewing bullshit about SOPA, and they're going to tune you out, just like you tuned out that cop.
Re:Fear not, this will not be a real problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Granted. However, in /.'s defense, the people in charge typically have trouble discerning when they've stepped over the line; in fact, it's only when people pick up the proverbial torches and pitchforks that various elected officials care to actually ponder where the language of a particular bill might lead the nation.
And let's be honest: the the vast majority of bills Congress has voted into law over the past several years have been on par with some of the stinkers that Hollywood has been shoving down the public's throat. What we need here is a website like Rotton Tomatoes, but for the various laws that have been passed.
Re:Fear not, this will not be a real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot was advising people to microwave their new clothes. I am not making this up. According to Slashdot, the government was going to use RFID to track people
The fact is the government is tracking cellphones and vehicles with various technologies. The "ridiculous, exaggerated" story essentially came to pass , though RFID wasn't the mechanism. Yes, we have nothing to hide from Big Brother, and yes life will go on even when the internet becomes an exclusively corporate and government domain. It's a good thing we have "sensible" people like you around to help us accept our fate.
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We'll see. I'm sure you'll figure out some way to salvage a way to be proven right, just like you've found a way to justify Slashdot's paranoia about RFID. You're arguing that the basic concept was proven correct ("Someone, somewhere will eventually track us with something"), while I'm arguing that Slashdot's Chicken Little antics made it that much easier for someone to actually track you. The more you scream, "The sky is falling!", the easier it becomes for people to tune you out, as the ravings of a ko
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You're the one engaging in Chicken Little antics-- about Slashdot's alleged Chicken Little antics. You think SOPA isn't any big deal? Maybe you're right. But this isn't about only SOPA, this is about the climate, attitudes, ignorance, and problems that made it possible for such horrible ideas to even come before Congress. SOPA is just the latest battle in this war, the War Against Information. We know quite well that even if SOPA and PIPA crash and burn like a lead Hindenburg, powerful interests will b
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I never said it was no big deal. I'm saying that it's a bad law that will have negative repercussions. I'm a little tired of alleged Chicken Little antics, because every time it's mentioned, someone says that the economy will collapse, the internet will turn into cable TV, scientific debate will be silenced, etc. These are outrageous claims. They always depend on absolute worst case scenarios, but they're presented as irrefutable, immutable prophecies. If you pass SOPA, they will come to pass. What hap
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RFID was not strong enough. If you merit it, you get a gps foot bracelet.
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In reality they will only hurt American companies and consumers, not the rest of the world
Actually, this will hurt the rest of the world. It will fracture the DNS system. It will give countries like China and India an excuse to further their own censorship agendas. It will hurt innovation in the US, which will hurt innovation elsewhere. It will make it hard for people do to business with the millions of consumers in the US.
The Internet is global, so one country attacking the Internet harms everyone everywhere. Do you really think that China's firewall has not affected anyone outside of
. . . and it won't just stop in the US . . . (Score:3)
... it seems that the US is committed to bullying other countries into enacting these laws themselves . . . or else . . .
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Pretty much the only solution.
Treat any DNS information from US systems as compromised until the opposite has been confirmed thoroughly.
What about a type of backup. (Score:1)
This will probably reflect on my ignorance regarding DNS, but why can't we have a website similar to archive.org that resides on a static ip address that everyone knows and that can be used to check the latest archived DNS records.
I'm not proposing domain anarchy. Just something like ICANNBackup.org which resolves to x.x.x.x?
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A fair suggestion, but some issues.
1. To handle the load that server would receive it would need geo-dispersed slaves, with levels of recursion handed-off to lower tiers. So eventually you'd end-up with an analog of the current DNS system. .info domain and administered in... Iran?
2. Who would pay for the hosting and throughput?
3. It would need to be out of the jurisdiction of SOPA, so perhaps a
4. A quick-fix for the SOPA advocates would be to break routing to the nodes in the system. After all, they'll ne
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P2P DNS?
Re:What about a type of backup. (Score:5, Interesting)
A fair suggestion, but some issues.
Aside from the technical issues - the real problem is that the US will just declare war on cyber terrorism - a phrase that can take on any meaning. And any country not on their side....
Don't forget where ICAAN is - or do you think it's an independent organisation like the UN? If Microsoft can go on license raids with Russian police how long before Disney goes on door kicking adventures in Spain. Already ICE has declared war on counterfeit copies of goods that are not made in the US. And a UK citizen is being extradited for something that's not illegal in the UK.
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There are several of them, their IP spread mostly via DHCP.
Doesn't stop there... (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's apply the SOPA logic to other things to... if someone asks you for directions to a bank and they rob it then you should be liable. Farewell GPS and maps, we barely knew thee.
SOPA is a very silly piece of legislation but we already have the US attempting to extradite someone from the UK for hosting links. SOPA just codifies such gross stupidity in US law.
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Let's apply the SOPA logic to other things to... if someone asks you for directions to a bank and they rob it then you should be liable. Farewell GPS and maps, we barely knew thee.
SOPA is a very silly piece of legislation but we already have the US attempting to extradite someone from the UK for hosting links. SOPA just codifies such gross stupidity in US law.
Sadly logic works well in code, but craps out in reality.
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SOPA is a very silly piece of legislation
Legislation doesn't have to make sense, it just has to meet payment criteria.
The people voting on this are old guys in suits, they have no idea what DNS is and have no interest in learning about it. All they know is other suits saying "it'll stop people copying our stuff!" over expensive dinners.
The other suits aren't any better; they actually believe it will stop people copying stuff.
It won't.
Congress Is the Best Party to Police the Internet (Score:4, Interesting)
Because they understand it so well.
Take a look at "Dear Congress, It's No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works" http://bit.ly/vOEEbt [bit.ly]
Senator Ted Stevens described the internet as “a series of tubes;” Rep. Mel Watt of North Carolina "seemed particularly comfortable about his own lack of understanding;" and Rep. Maxine Waters of California stated "any discussion of security concerns is 'wasting time' and that the bill should move forward without question."
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He just happens to know a country with a large and reasonably cheap workforce available for such things, ruled by a government using the Orwell playbook.
Which one, America?
Then target political websites (Score:2)
Just a thought - but if SOPA can be used to silence debate, this must apply just as much to the political as to the scientific process.
I think that if you were to target politician's private websites and any websites associated with congress using SOPA then you might quickly find the act repealed!
Bizzare initials (Score:5, Funny)
SOPA in greek means "shut up"
PIPA in greek means "pipe" or (slang) "blowjob"
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In Spanish it's "soup" and "sunflower seed"
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In Canada they mean "Standard Operating Procedure" and "Picture In Picture", eh?
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For a long time now the 2nd amendment only applies to protecting one's home from trespassers who would do harm.
The second amendment was useless for overthrowing the government the moment military weapons were better than what you could legally own. Just go ahead and try to stockpile enough anything to compete with the military. You will be put down.
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Somalis compared to Americans?? It is a simple balance where any group put into our situation would act no differently. Humans are all relative in their judgements. You couldn't pick a larger contrast in the world-- the poorest and suffering vs the richest and pampered! They can't be fairly compared unless you think in relative terms; and even then none of this is quantitative so it is always going to be a subjective comparison.
Humans don't function on fixed points they operate upon relative distances and
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You haven't seen anything; I can really piss people like you off talking about cultural relativism.
Chicken Little (Score:2)
Could be, might be, possibly, if twisted and abused in the worst ways imaginable by warped and dogmatic minds.
I read the Huff often, but it's just a blog site. There is no fact checking required by their writers, so I take what they say with a HUGE grain of salt.
This article, for example, is a panic-inducing fluff piece with not a shred of evidence to support it.
We GOT our way on SOPA yesterday. Good enough for me.
And that's the idea (Score:1)
If they really want to help the interwebs (Score:1)
SIVA. Now *THAT* would make us safe!
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That would stifle economy. Those poor antivirus companies need their viruses!
Correct me if I'm wrong... (Score:4, Interesting)
...but won't SOPA/PIPA work both ways? Won't MAFIAA online distribution channels be affected as well? I could place my copyrighted work somewhere in comment/review section of their sitesand then cite PIPA to take the online store offline.
I'm assuming that according to SOPA/PIPA, site owner is still accountable for what user posts.
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Good thought, but in this case a new law will be passed next to SOPA. Something like PABO (Protecting American Businesses Online), which will grant big corporations immunity from petty individuals like you and me. For example, it will state that you can only sue for for copyright infringement IF you're a slave, pardon, member of the MAFIAA. Don't try to win against them on their field, it's hopeless.
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A Time to Act (Score:3)
I RTFA and thought it a little theatrical, but on point. So SOPA and PIPA may have or will have a serious impact upon social websites like FB, like Slashdot, like...all of them. I can see it also having an impact on search engines, consumer websites that allows reviews; So what are these companies doing?
Were I head of Amazon or Google or Microsoft or FaceBook or Slashdot I would perhaps be on the phone coordinating some Act to indicate ones lack of support for SOPA, show what the Internet would be like after its law. I read (once) that there was talk to shut down major sites one day to give example to a crippled Internet....Where did that go? Businesses may lose money? They will lose a lot more if SOPA shut them down. (or will "big sites" get special treatment...that would frost some folks)
So, you see, its hard for me to get upset, to rage against the machine, when the major operators of the machine don't really care. Changing a small section of this bill is not a win, getting it canceled is a win. This Ant can call his representatives all day and it will do nothing against the money in their pockets. What will get their notice is when the Web they and their constituents rely on is taken off line for a day.
When I read that the Google boys, Facebook King, Amazon God, Lord Bill et al speak out loudly and long; then I care, its their world, not mine. If the Web (note, not network) shuts down today I'd jones for a bit on missing gmail, not buying online, not posting to "friends". Quickly I'd re-discover letter writing, going to a local store, and actually attempting to talk face to face (no book) with my friends. It's not my web anymore, it is Google's and their ilk. They don't have a problem with SOPA? Neither do I. I'll read about their success in the local paper Newsprint.
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Thing is ... all that will have happened without piracy being affected. At all. It will continue as normal.
Its Just Collatral Damage (Score:2)
The industry funding the laws, and the congress that are going to pass them, really cant see beyond their pocket book and feel that any industry ( or people ) that are harmed are just collateral damage, and really don't give a damn.
Whitehouse responds (Score:5, Informative)
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The Obama Administration is just a bunch of bribed lying son-of-a-bitches like everyone else (except the mad ones) in DC, but people just eat their shit and keep quiet. I mean, what could anyone on the left do? Vote for Ron Paul, haha... ha... ha...
Your are a peasant: STFU (Score:1)
Error (Score:1)
"Much to the surprise of nobody who understands how the Internet works..."
My brain just threw a parse exception.
Off-shore (Score:2)
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They should put sites in Luxembourg. That is where the media moguls hide their money from the tax man. Then Luxembourg can threaten rat them out to the IRS if they try to sue the government.
Block the government (Score:4, Insightful)
All IP addresses assigned to the U.S. government should be blocked by all of the major sites. Let them have no searches, webmail, webdocs, or video's, chat, or voip until they stop trying to break stuff they know nothing about.
What about arXiv? (Score:2, Interesting)
The white house response (Score:2)
Let the old fatcats die already please... (Score:1)
Oh so sad for the RIAA, the days are long gone for when they were able to rip you off for $15 on a cassette or CD by putting one or two of the best tracks on the radio or TV, and then after getting the whole album home for a listen you discovered the rest of album completely SUCKED! Also, there used to be no way to be able to hear anything from any other musicians out there who weren't actively being promoted by a label, and without major label backing there really was no chance of success, so we can thank