> SOPA puts in provisions that allows the US to control the internet the same way that the PRC does in China.
I'm against SOPA, but the idea that it would permit the U.S. government, should it so desire, to set up Chinese-style censorship of the internet is nonsense on stilts. You can take any power of the government and theorize about what could happen if it ran unchecked: "What if they define talking about Occupy Wall Street to be piracy‽" "What if President Obama declared you an enemy combatant‽"
Our laws don't work that way. For one, when it ends up in the courts, they're going to read it as narrowly as needed to accomplish its purpose (obviously, in this case, copyright enforcement). If the law is stupidly written in such an over-broad way that it can't be balanced against other rights and interests, it will be thrown out. For another, we don't live in a one-party autocracy: We have deep cultural norms favoring rights and freedoms. That permeates not just the electorate, but the people elected and appointed to execute the laws. Obviously we disagree from time to time about the trade-offs to be made, but those very disagreements make it harder for some rogue executive to go off the rails; there's always someone else ready to take his place after the next election.
This is a long way of saying that hyperbole like this is never going to win you a policy argument.
I wasn't intending to speak in hyperbole, although I understand that I may have come across that way. I tried not to dive into too technical of stuff, but provisions to allow control of DNS servers is not something to be taken lightly. In addition, the SOPA model puts the burden of proof on the accused party and allows the alleged infringed rightsholder to suspend their services immediately upon making a claim.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that this is a huge shift in the balance of power which makes it end up sounding like hyperbole.
SOPA can say you have to stand on one leg and recite the pledge of allegiance backwards, but courts will have the final say on what the allowable scope of the law is. The whole point of having an independent judicial branch is that it provides us with a fine-grained mechanism for watering down stupid or even malicious overreach on the part of the legislative or executive branches.
Yeah. I guess in the end I am still speaking in hyperbole whenever I compare it to the Chinese situation. Unfortunately, I feel like the non-technical populace simply won't understand it any other way. There are no comparable systems. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that we have at this time the luxury of broaching this subject lightly. I tried to avoid being heavy-handed about it as much as possible, but I don't know how else to approach it.
I'm against SOPA, but the idea that it would permit the U.S. government, should it so desire, to set up Chinese-style censorship of the internet is nonsense on stilts. You can take any power of the government and theorize about what could happen if it ran unchecked: "What if they define talking about Occupy Wall Street to be piracy‽" "What if President Obama declared you an enemy combatant‽"
Our laws don't work that way. For one, when it ends up in the courts, they're going to read it as narrowly as needed to accomplish its purpose (obviously, in this case, copyright enforcement). If the law is stupidly written in such an over-broad way that it can't be balanced against other rights and interests, it will be thrown out. For another, we don't live in a one-party autocracy: We have deep cultural norms favoring rights and freedoms. That permeates not just the electorate, but the people elected and appointed to execute the laws. Obviously we disagree from time to time about the trade-offs to be made, but those very disagreements make it harder for some rogue executive to go off the rails; there's always someone else ready to take his place after the next election.
This is a long way of saying that hyperbole like this is never going to win you a policy argument.