The E-PARASITES act.

Chagen

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/101901-e-parasites-aims-to-eat-away-at-internet-freedoms War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. Funny how the country that was most opposed to Fascism is itself becoming a fascist state.

glennmagusharvey

Dear conservatives,

When you criticize Democrats for being supported by Hollywood, your reason ought to be not lack of moral rectitude nor access to deep donating pockets.  If these are your reasons, you are misguided.

Instead, your reason ought to be this: their support for measures that claim to protect creativity that actually hinder creativity, such as this act.

Accordingly, please hold your fire for those who oppose such barriers to the freedom of creativity.

Thank you from your fellow American,
~GMH

ClockworkUniverse

War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength.

Please stop quoting this for every political thing you disagree with, whether or not it's relevant.

Chagen

It IS relevant when the government is trying to turn America into Oceania.

But hey, I guess we've always been at war with Eastasia.

InsanityAddict

The reason why you don't want to use that analogy is not because you can't make a comparison to Orwell's novel(you can on the basis that (the potential for) state censorship is a theme in Orwell's work), but because a)it's an overused buzzword that paints the user as a political stereotype you don't have to listen to and b)much like comparisons to Nazi-Germany, it turns the debate into a spot the comparisons/differences with a historical situation instead of a focus on the current situation.

captainbrass

This just supports the argument that the US Congress is in the pocket of those who contribute to its members' re-election funds, in this case the media industries. To be fair, various legislatures around the world have been equally as hysterical about internet piracy.

Also, when are they going to stop giving laws vacuous names made up to fit a pre-determined acronym (e.g. the PATRIOT Act) ? Do they actually want everyone to think American politics is run by second-rate advertising executives?  

glennmagusharvey

For what it's worth, while there are a number of Democratic senator co-sponsors of the bill, the one who put it on hold is also a Democratic senator, Ron Wyden of Oregon.

This whole issue has, broadliy speaking, not really become part of the mainstream political debate yet, so you still get odd bedfellows joining forces on these things, such as liberal writer Al Franken and conservative darling Marco Rubio, who are among the co-sponsors.

ClockworkUniverse

It IS relevant when the government is trying to turn America into Oceania. 

But hey, I guess we've always been at war with Eastasia.

What InsanityAddict said, with the addendum that that specific quote has absolutely nothing to do with this, making it somewhat less direct a comparison than saying "Hitler ate sugar."

This is very easy to criticize without buzzwords.

Icalasari

...Good thing I'm Canadian

glennmagusharvey

Oh, and this is why you keep cool websites under wraps, and only share them with people you trust.

Icalasari

^ Doesn't take long for some idiot to blab it to everyone :P

...God I hate the torrent sites that charge you for membership. That's kind of defeating the point for a lot of people...

glennmagusharvey

Or maybe they just feature public torrents that you just need a membership to search.

PrincessApricot

I should talk about this when I go to law school.

In any case, I find that the great disconnect between what the people want and what the government wants is clear evidence that America is a form of pseudo-aristocracy.

Gelzo

Maybe you mean quasi rather than pseudo? If you want to say it isn't a democracy, it's a pseudo-democracy.

PrincessApricot

How about quasi-aristocratic-pseudo-democracy?