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Would Obama Veto SOPA? Extremely Doubtfulfrom the too-much-money deptI usually like the work of Arik Hesseldahl, who's pretty sharp in his reporting, but it appears he may have waded into a subject where he doesn't have much knowledge, in arguing that Obama would likely veto SOPA should it pass out of Congress and land on his desk. Arik's summary is that Obama "likes the internet," so he'd probably veto such an anti-internet bill. No offense to Arik, who perhaps just wanted a quick holiday post on the subject, but that shows little understanding of the history of Obama on intellectual property issues, or the many, many signals that the administration has been giving over the bill. In fact, the signals suggest pretty strongly that if the bill landed on his desk today, President Obama would sign it into law with little hesitation -- and declare it a victory for the economy and American jobs.
...Now, we’re pretty sure that the MAFIAAFire and Newzbin2 people can be trusted not to stab web users in the back, but what will happen as soon as sites start getting censored under SOPA is that software created by Gods-knows-who will come onto the market with grand promises of re-enabling access to sites. Some of these new breeds of tools will do as they say and will definitely come with fairly innocent adware to generate some revenue for their creators. Many, however, will screw over anyone who dares to install them. Malware, scamware, viruses and phishing attacks will all play their part. These practices have been happening to a certain extent in the file-sharing space for a decade already, but domain censorship will give the conmen a much-needed boost.....
A little-noticed section of the Stop Online Piracy Act could make it illegal to distribute Tor and other software that can "circumvent" attempts by the U.S. government to block pirate Web sites. The controversial Hollywood-backed copyright bill allows injunctions to be filed against "any" person, nonprofit organization, or company that distributes a "product or service" that can be used to circumvent or bypass blockades erected against alleged pirate Web sites such as ThePirateBay.org. "It looks like SOPA would outlaw Tor," says Markham Erickson, an attorney with Holch & Erickson LLP who runs NetCoalition. The trade association opposes SOPA and counts Amazon.com, eBay, Google, and Yahoo among its members.
@Hanz... i cant watch youtube vids very well over dial (often not at all -- which includes your link... got a transcript of that?) but the same US gov that created SOPA also created TOR.... how well that'll mix (other than being an international laughing-stock) i dunno... You maybe able to find what you want at:http://mirror.fem-net.de/CCC/28C3/Otherwise contact Chaos Computer Club tell them that you only have a landline modem and ask them to provide you with a DVD of the material presented at 28C3:mail@ccc.depresse@ccc.dehttp://events.ccc.de/congress/2011/wiki/WelcomeOtherwise send by private message me your postal address and I will burn and mail a DVD to you. There are about 2 GB video available. Hans
Speaking to political publication Roll Call, SOPA sponsor and House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) took shots earlier this week at critics of the bill that has gained as much bi-partisan opposition as it has support."The criticism of this bill is completely hypothetical; none of it is based in reality," Smith said in a statement to Roll Call. "Not one of the critics was able to point to any language in the bill that would in any way harm the Internet. Their accusations are simply not supported by any facts."
In a leaked letter sent to Spain’s outgoing President, the US ambassador to the country warned that as punishment for not passing a SOPA-style file-sharing site blocking law, Spain risked being put on a United States trade blacklist . Inclusion would have left Spain open to a range of “retaliatory options” but already the US was working with the incoming government to reach its goals.
