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[Dragonchampion]

Hello, everyone. Whether you liked it or not, there was a controversy happening. One that would take away our internet as we know it and make it so governments had complete control of it.

One man stopped this.

http://www.examiner.com/progressive-in-portland/oregon-senator-ron-wyden-saves-internet-from-censorship-bill-coica

[Internet Kraken]

It seems kind of silly to attribute this to just one man when so many people did oppose such a bill.

Also, this should probably be moved to the appropriate board, since I don't think Ron Wyden is a dwarf.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

COICA sets up a system through which the US government can blacklist a pirate website from the Domain Name System, ban credit card companies from processing US payments to the site, and forbid online ad networks from working with the site. It passed the Senate Judiciary Committee 19-0 this week.

Passed ninteen to zero?! Do these people even have to read the Constitution before being put into office?!

[ECrownofFire]

Fuck yeah! My state is actually doing something useful for once! I just hope that it actually accomplishes something. Republics are fun like this aren't they? Going back and forth on issues like this.

COICA sets up a system through which the US government can blacklist a pirate website from the Domain Name System, ban credit card companies from processing US payments to the site, and forbid online ad networks from working with the site. It passed the Senate Judiciary Committee 19-0 this week.

Passed ninteen to zero?! Do these people even have to read the Constitution before being put into office?!

They probably had to do a paper on it in college, but beyond that, I doubt it

[Leafsnail]

So... is he filibusting it?  I'm not entirely sure how these things work.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

He's basically stalling the bill for a few days, and Congress only has a few legislative days left in this year. This will give him and his supporters several months to build up a majority against such an obviously bad idea.

[Karlito]

So, is he actually have to go up on the Senate floor and talk for 8 hours or what?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Well, he could do that, and it might win over a few people in the process, but all he really needs to do is declare a fillibuster and not have Congress vote to cloture him before the legislative year is up.

[Leafsnail]

You need 60 senators to break a fillibuster, right?

Could luck, reps .

[Karlito]

Well, he could do that, and it might win over a few people in the process, but all he really needs to do is declare a fillibuster and not have Congress vote to cloture him before the legislative year is up.

I figured it was something more like this. The Senate is weird.

Although, taking a look at who's on the committee, this is the kind of thing I could see generating some cross party support.

[cog disso]

The COICA is one of those bills that has been written for over a decade, and they keep trying to slide it in whenever they think they have a chance at passing it. There's a lot going on in this bill that isn't about copyright infringement, it's basically a Lego block add-on to the Patriot Act that would make it retroactively legal to do things that are already done illegally.

Furthermore, COICA is not the main threat to web neutrality, as the "let's not immediately shut down the internet" option immediately following the failure of it would be to make it legal for internet providers to "stratify" their services, so you'd have to pay more for downloading anything at all.

[Urist Imiknorris]

Hooray for

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Aqizzar]

Although, taking a look at who's on the committee, this is the kind of thing I could see generating some cross party support.

It's bizarre I know.  The Judiciary Committee is like The Asshole All-Stars, and that they managed to pass anything nineteen to zero is pretty disheartening.  It's not the OH NOES CENCERING TEH INTERNET aspect of these bills that worry me, it's the complete disregard for due process.  All it would take is an official allegation of copyright infringement and your site is blacklisted off American registries and banned from credit-card business.  It's not hard to imagine how fast that would turn into a mountain of business warfare.  Which I guess means it'd be on the books for a year or two at most before being obliterated in the Supreme Court, but that's no reason to tempt fate.

[tehstefan]

I'm so proud to be an Oregonian today. So proud.

[Leafsnail]

Don't any of them see parallels with the great firewall of China?

Also, as far as I can tell, this would allow the American government to arbitrarily nuke even foreign sites.  Might cause problems.