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[MetalSlimeHunt]

This bill is so plainly ridiculous that I could see someone suing before it gets voted on, much less if it becomes law.

Watching Lamar Smith's entire career crash and burn is going to be fun this election cycle. He'll be anathema after all of this.

Problem being, he's in one of the reddest congressional districts in the country. (Despite encompassing a fair chunk of Austin and the University of Texas). He's never pulled below 60% in an election.

Have you seen what some conservative commenters have said about SOPA/PIPA? They literally accused Smith of being a part of the Socialist Liberal Agenda. There is no recovering from that in a red district.

[RedKing]

This bill is so plainly ridiculous that I could see someone suing before it gets voted on, much less if it becomes law.

Watching Lamar Smith's entire career crash and burn is going to be fun this election cycle. He'll be anathema after all of this.

Problem being, he's in one of the reddest congressional districts in the country. (Despite encompassing a fair chunk of Austin and the University of Texas). He's never pulled below 60% in an election.

Have you seen what some conservative commenters have said about SOPA/PIPA? They literally accused Smith of being a part of the Socialist Liberal Agenda. There is no recovering from that in a red district.

That's true. I forget that there's considerable SOPA opposition on the Right as well.

[Tellemurius]

This bill is so plainly ridiculous that I could see someone suing before it gets voted on, much less if it becomes law.

Watching Lamar Smith's entire career crash and burn is going to be fun this election cycle. He'll be anathema after all of this.

Problem being, he's in one of the reddest congressional districts in the country. (Despite encompassing a fair chunk of Austin and the University of Texas). He's never pulled below 60% in an election.

Have you seen what some conservative commenters have said about SOPA/PIPA? They literally accused Smith of being a part of the Socialist Liberal Agenda. There is no recovering from that in a red district.

in his defense they called Obama the socialist presidential candidate which was proven wrong on the daily show.

[MaximumZero]

This bill is so plainly ridiculous that I could see someone suing before it gets voted on, much less if it becomes law.

Watching Lamar Smith's entire career crash and burn is going to be fun this election cycle. He'll be anathema after all of this.

Problem being, he's in one of the reddest congressional districts in the country. (Despite encompassing a fair chunk of Austin and the University of Texas). He's never pulled below 60% in an election.

Have you seen what some conservative commenters have said about SOPA/PIPA? They literally accused Smith of being a part of the Socialist Liberal Agenda. There is no recovering from that in a red district.

That's true. I forget that there's considerable SOPA opposition on the Right as well.

The left and the right agree on something. That alone should tell congress that something is clearly wrong here.

[Criptfeind]

They also agreed it was good.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

No, the Congressmen agreed it was good. You will have to search far and wide to find anyone who isn't part of the entertainment industry or being paid by them who supports things like SOPA.

[MaximumZero]

Ninja'd. What he said.

[palsch]

You all remember SOPA right?
Meet mister Lamar Smith's HR 1981 bill.
Requires ISPs to record all their customers private data flying through the net for 18 months. So now that padlock you see on secured websites is bullshit now.

Wait, how does that even work? HTTPS means the data is encrypted so that no one not on the two ends can read it.

This is more about them being able to track all activity, not data. They want to keep a record of all ISPs assigned to customers. That can be combined with other records to put together a decent record of a persons browsing history. With enough data you can actually get more data this way than by storing the actual data traded (as encrypted data will hide a great deal, but having a complete enough record of exchanges of even encrypted data can tell you a lot).

This is the troubling language;

        `(1) A commercial provider of an electronic communication service shall retain for a period of at least one year a log of the temporarily assigned network addresses the provider assigns to a subscriber to or customer of such service that enables the identification of the corresponding customer or subscriber information under subsection (c)(2) of this section.

Note that the section that refers to is this existing law, which requires;

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(2) A provider of electronic communication service or remote computing service shall disclose to a governmental entity the—
(A) name;
(B) address;
(C) local and long distance telephone connection records, or records of session times and durations;
(D) length of service (including start date) and types of service utilized;
(E) telephone or instrument number or other subscriber number or identity, including any temporarily assigned network address; and
(F) means and source of payment for such service (including any credit card or bank account number),

So this effectively adds a year's worth of temporary IP addresses to your already accessible telephone records.

Timely, if not entirely related, Boing Boing post. Interesting to see those SCOTUS quotes about internet privacy.

[Montague]

This is fucking depressing. Why is there this onslaught of bills aimed at eroding everyone's freedom of late? Do they ever introduce legislation aimed at granting greater freedom, at all? Is this what democracy is doing for us? Are people actually demanding these things? Biting the hand that feeds them and licking the hand that beats them?
 
I'm starting to think that fanaticism really is going to win over rationality in the end.

[Criptfeind]

Do they ever introduce legislation aimed at granting greater freedom, at all?

They do. They just don't get as much attention.

[Nadaka]

Do they ever introduce legislation aimed at granting greater freedom, at all?

They do. They just don't get as much attention.

And they usually get blocked, or modified on the way through.

[KaelGotDwarves]

Long time earlier we had some people talking about the effectiveness of preaching abstinence in various threads. I'd just like to point out that "Birth and abortion rates among U.S. teens fell to record lows in 2008 as increased use of contraceptives sent the overall teen pregnancy rate to its lowest level since at least 1972, a study showed on Wednesday."

The source here.

[Loud Whispers]

Long time earlier we had some people talking about the effectiveness of preaching abstinence in various threads.

And you could look at countries that are pro abstinence/anti-contraception.

Bottom line : Terrible :|

[irmo]

Long time earlier we had some people talking about the effectiveness of preaching abstinence in various threads. I'd just like to point out that "Birth and abortion rates among U.S. teens fell to record lows in 2008 as increased use of contraceptives sent the overall teen pregnancy rate to its lowest level since at least 1972, a study showed on Wednesday."

Note that teen pregnancy and abortion rates have declined almost every year since the 1970s, so this being the best year ever is good news but not exactly surprising.

[Criptfeind]

Do they ever introduce legislation aimed at granting greater freedom, at all?

They do. They just don't get as much attention.

And they usually get blocked, or modified on the way through.

Most things are.