It was a long fight. I can’t tell you how many times I kept saying that SOPA and PROTECT IP were in trouble. But they’re getting shelved now. Sure, there’s whining about it. And the President still is too cowardly to lead.
Now it’s time to move on to the next step, though, and find a sensible way to attack the foreign infringers, who essentially are free riders on the American copyright system, taking advantage of the scarcity imposed by copyright without themselves respecting the rules that create that scarcity.
You can tell who’s trying to make this into a fight against copyright though, by the way Megaupload is being made out as a victim. When Megaupload in fact was a company that was making big bucks as a place you could stash files for broad distribution without regard for copyright, and they’re rightfully being shut down.
So it’s not surprising that the terror group Anonymous is defending them and attacking the United States of America in the process. This is an anti-American lawless band of thugs that needs to be be made to pay. And they always do get caught. We just have to wonder whether there will be a backlash against an open Internet thanks to that anarchist scum.
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So, Erick Erickson decided to make a big push against SOPA today, again bringing out the primary threat card. I also had a post on SOPA and PROTECT IP today.
We were heard. On the House side, Speaker John Boehner echoed Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and said the committee needs to find consensus before the bill can get a vote. And again, conservatives like Darrell Issa, Justin Amash, and Jason Chaffetz aren’t going to lie down and quit. So as long as Boehner and Cantor are true to their words, SOPA is dead in the House this Congress.
On the Senate side, of the 16 Republicans co-sponsoring PROTECT IP, I’ve received word of six of them changing their minds. Kelly Ayotte, Roy Blunt, John Boozman, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, and Marco Rubio are dropping their support. Moe was keeping track, but I think Ayotte flipped after the posted.
The threat of electoral consequences is all a politician will listen to. Democrats know that the online left won’t lift a finger, so Democrats are still backing SOPA and PROTECT IP, much to Markos Moulitsas’s disappointment. We stood on principle, while Daily Kos just whined. We got results, he got blown off.
Erick even tried to make this a bipartisan thing, where both sides would primary the SOPA and PROTECT IP supporters, but he got crickets.
Lamar Smith remains primary target number one though, as he does his best impression of the Saddam Hussein Ministry of Propaganda. The Allies are not in Iraq! SOPA is still in control of the country! It’s all lies! Also, Lamar Smith is himself an E-PARASITE. Will he resign and report to prison?
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SOPA is dead in the House, says Majority Leader Eric Cantor, until there is consensus. Since there’s never going to be consensus on Internet censorship, Cantor seems to be saying the issue’s dead in this Congress.
The President went mushy on SOPA, Harry Reid and Senate Democrats decided to push forward, but Eric Cantor, Darrell Issa, and House Republicans want to kill the bill. That’s a clear, bright line, folks.
Turns out primary threats matter more than vague protests.
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Some bills become unstoppable in the Congress. They pile up cosponsors, get leadership support, and cruise on through to easy passage. Not SOPA, or its original Senate version, PROTECT IP. They’re in trouble. While the left is fighting these bills with blackouts and protesting, our message is simpler: If you back SOPA or PROTECT IP, we will primary you. That matters.
One guy who has clearly heard us, and is responding to our complaints by urging a slowdown on PROTECT IP, is Orrin Hatch. He’s a potential primary target and he knows it, so he’s listening. It’s refreshing, and certainly puts Hatch over many in Congress on this issue.
Yeah, Free Press and the radicals are hypocrites on this, but SOPA really is a bad bill. Lamar Smith is even talking about removing some of the worst provisions, that’s how bad it is. Patrick Leahy is also talking about bending on PROTECT IP. We’re making progress. Keep it up.
Industry is paying attention, the threat of a vote looms. Erick Erickson made it clear he’d even oppose Marsha Blackburn if she helped pass SOPA. This is serious and we need to be loud and committed to action.
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Nothing in this post shall be construed to impose a belief that Lamar Smith would round up every American into MPAA-run detention centers if Chris Dodd suggested it would be good for big business.
Does that sound like a stupid way to begin a post, and does it suggest that I’m about to say the opposite? Well, that’s how the Manager’s Amendment version of SOPA starts off, claiming that no matter what the bill says, it’s not a prior restraint on free speech.
Of course, restrictions of results provided by Internet Search Engines amount to just that: prior restraint of their free expression of future results. Google and others, under SOPA, are told what they can or can’t publish before they publish it.
Kill. The. Bill.
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It seems like forever ago that Marsha Blackburn challenged Free Press to transparency in the group’s funding. Why should it take eight months to respond if Free Press has nothing to hide?
Keep the Web OPEN. It’s a simple statement, but it’s one I support. The difference between SOPA and OPEN has been made clear to many thanks to Darrell Issa’s leadership. It’s unclear with Christmas coming just when SOPA will be picked back up, but I’m hoping by then OPEN will continue to gain support as the proper alternative.
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Top story tonight is of course the major win by the triple alliance of George Soros and his front groups like Public Knowledge, Sprint Nextel, and the Obama administration’s dual agency of the FCC and the DoJ. Yes, AT&T has given up on acquiring T-Mobile. I believe they will now have to pay a sizable fee to T-Mobile as compensation.
This is bad news for those who respect property rights and for those who favor competition in the market, as Mike Wendy notes at Media Freedom. AT&T will be short of spectrum, as TechFreedom notes, a key reason competition will be reduced. It’s not just AT&T users hurt; anyone who now would not be interested in switching to AT&T due to inferior 4G LTE rollout now suffers from less leverage in the marketplace. That can only result in sustained high prices for 4G Internet service.
When this news broke I was so mad I could burst. But hours have passed and now I’m just disappointed.
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Wednesday night I put off all Tech at Night topics except for SOPA because the critical mark up votes in Committee were coming up. We weren’t supposed to be able to stop SOPA, but we could at least raise awareness, put up a fight, and prepare for the floor votes. And sure enough, the vote to keep the Internet censorship provisions went in favor of censorship 22-11.
Well, it turns out, we managed to slow the process down. After we made our threats to start working on primary challenges over that 22-11 vote, Lamar Smith put off SOPA, halting the current process until next week at the earliest. Stay sharp, but feel good about this delay. The longer we delay, the more we can gain support for the OPEN Act instead of SOPA.
SOPA opponents Darrell Issa, Zoe Lofgren, Jared Polis, and Jason Chaffetz also deserve credit. Why yes, that list does include a Democrat. Just shows how wrong Lamar Smith is to side with disgraced former Senator Chris Dodd and the MPAA on this. Two men who between them have no clue how the Internet works.
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It’s Monday, so it’s time for that weekly self promotion of mine. This week at the Daily Caller I discussed NISO, an information sharing proposal by Dan Lungren that would get government in a role of improving our security online without compromising liberty and innovation.
And now back to SOPA. Now Eric Schmidt realizes we don’t want government to have a huge role online, complaining that SOPA would “criminalize linking and the fundamental structure of the Internet itself.” Yeah, I’d say DNS is part of the fundamental structure of the Internet, and that’s why I support Darrell Issa’s and Ron Wyden’s OPEN Act alternative. They would have us go after infringers abroad rather than attacking the Internet at home.
Jennifer Rubin pointed out that SOPA is overkill, which it is. Effectively undermining the fundamental structures of the Internet just to go after counterfeit handbags and Bittorrent streams of Scary Movie 3? Come on.
Notice how no matter how many people complain about SOPA, it’s always the MPAA with a response? Isn’t that a clue that this bill is being pushed to benefit one specific industry, just a little bit?
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There’s a new story developing. I’ve touched on it now and then, but the pieces are coming together. The FCC temporarily blocked the AT&T/Qualcomm deal to let AT&T buy spectrum using the excuse that they wanted to evaluate it together with the AT&T/T-Mobile deal. Well, the latter deal has been withdrawn from the FCC, so now what’s the hold up?
It turns out that the Obama FCC under Julius Genachowski is looking to change the rules of the game. Genachowski wants to make it harder to for firms to pick up the spectrum they need to serve an ever-growing demand for wireless Internet. He and the FCC are calling it a change to the “spectrum screen.”
Why the timing? Well, it turns out that Democrat commissioner Michael Copps, despite being an ardent supporter of the radical George Soros-driven Media Reform agenda, has spoken out against changing the rules midstream. but it may not matter, as he’s quitting, and his replacement is going through the confirmation process right now in the Senate. Though that replacement may be delayed as Chuck Grassley fights for transparency in the FCC, there are no other obstacles to confirmation foreseen.
So while Copps has made a due process argument against what Genachowski is doing, Genachowski may be counting on Copps’s departure to prevent that from being an issue. With him gone, the Chairman will apparently be free to do what he wants, declaring what the rules will be anytime he wants, picking one set of rules for one company, and another set of rules for another, with nothing to stop him.
Chuck Grassley is fighting for transparency with respect to the FCC and LightSquared. The House Energy and Commerce committee is looking into FCC’s Spectrum Screen treatment. Even FCC Democrats are having to speak up. The FCC is completely out of control, and it’s taking all we’ve got in the Congress just to try to keep up, and to force the Obama administration to submit to oversight and respect the rule of law.
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