Internet Defense League To Be Deployed Against CISPA 71
yanom writes "Slashdotters may remember the launch of the Internet Defense League, a network for website owners that would allow for the replication of a media campaign similar to the one that took down SOPA. Now it plans to spring into action in response to the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, which is now making it's way through Congress. The IDL wants its members to embed anti-CISPA banners into their websites, which will be activated tomorrow, March 19th."
A banner (Score:2)
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As long as people think like you it won't.
Re:A banner (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, this may strike down the bill, but it shows how they really feel about it.
The death of Aaron Swartz wasn't enough to show them that they lost their humanity.
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Really? What sort of organism was that?
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But.....but....the "Mission Accomplished" banner stopped the war....right?
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will not stop Congress.
True, they won't stop anything if no one is there to post them.. better yet, when they're holding them up in an organized and peaceful demonstration of solidarity. Banners tell 'The Powers That Be' exactly how the crowd feels. A banner that censors Google's logo or Wikipedia's website probably has more effect because it's making people aware of issues within the USA when they're half a world away --quite possibly dealing with the very same issues in their country.
Education (Score:2)
Re:Education (Score:4, Funny)
And how medical operations work. And how financial investment works. And how farmers grow things. And...
The list goes on and on. It's ridiculous to insist politicians have knowledge of everything. Were they to spend that much time learning about the things they legislate on, they would have zero time to actually pass any laws...
Wait.
You're a genius, and I create you Viscount uberbrainchild of the Internets.
Re:Education (Score:5, Insightful)
What *is* ridiculous is that you elect people to make extremely important decisions when they don't have any clue about the subject matter. What is more ridiculous is that you allow them to make such decisions again and again even though many experts and many more have already pointed out how clueless this is, and after that re-elect those people to go on.
> And how medical operations work. And how financial investment works. And how farmers grow things. And...
Yes, exactly. That's why they get voted into office, and why we need many of them: So they get a clue about the topics they decide on, and so they can veto clueless or malicious decisions of other representatives.
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Re:Education (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that they just end up listening to the pressure groups, who are basically an unelected elite selected for their capability to make every minor problem seem like a moral crisis that spells impending doom for civilization as we know it. I don't know the general fix for that, but politicians with at least a little knowledge of the areas they are legislating in seem to be better able to resist them.
Re:Education (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly this. The sequester is a prefect example. The big arguments against it are this its ill timed, and second that its indiscriminate. I won't speak to former because its off topic but the later illustrates your point. The sequester is not bad solution because its indiscriminate; that is in fact the only reason why even the very very minor spending reduction it amounts to could be accomplished at all.
Sure in a perfectly sane world we would identify the least effective, most out dated, most abused, least needed programs and make cuts there. Our government has [d]evolved to a point where it can't accomplish that anymore though. The first is it really is actually a hard question the number of budget items is mind blowing, coupled with the fact that you could never guess in may cased what services an agency, office, ..., actually provides without conducting weeks of interviews. The second more germane reason to this discussion is that every line item is someones sacred cow, or gravy train.
If you eliminate one of those line items those people suddenly have a big interest in hiring one of the lobbyists to go wine, dine, and blow (or provide blow to; depending on the members preferred forms of recreation) enough CONgress persons to get the legislation amended. Naturally these guys no how to spin it too. Even though as a libertarian I am pretty convinced our government has become a dangerous corrupt mess and only its ineptitude spares us real horror; I still believe most legislation is originally enacted with good intentions. So when you talk about any one item it always sound reasonable. "It only costs a few million and think of all the undernourished bullfrogs that get a second chance at life; oh and TEH JOBS!; also we can't let TEH TERRORISTS WIN!"
It becomes impossible to make the argument anyone thing will really benefit the bottom line. You can't justify causing one group so much pain to accomplish so little, in the way of reform. People just are not wired to see how a million here, and million there add up to a trillion. The numbers are just separated by to much magnitude. If on the other hand you indiscriminately cut everything. You make everyone suffer some loss, but not enough to justify the cost of a lobbying effort and maybe less able to afford it.
The same applies to industry issues. The IP lobby has gotten used to just getting ever stronger protections whenever any new technology threatens them. You'll never convince anyone they should be made to give anything they have up. If we all stick together and remain universally opposed to enacting new protections, and continue to frame the debate about being pro-freedom though we can probably block legislation like this. Do it long enough and the market will out grow the current players. They will become marginalized and nobody will care about them because disruptive technologies will have replaced them in our daily lives. Just like nobody much cares about laws regulating horse cart safety; other than small pockets of Amish here and there.
Re:Education (Score:5, Informative)
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It's been two months, and you know how much the sequester has affected real Americans?
Not at all.
I know at least 40 people [gazette.com] who would disagree with your assessment. You can expect more companies to feel hits like this as the full effects of sequestration start to kick in.
I'm sorry, I just do feel any sympathy for government workers having their pay reduced. I just don't. People who work for the government and universally people who couldn't make it in private enterprise due to a lack of talent and skill, and so decided to take the government route where they don't have to worry about being any good at what they do in order to get paid.
How many government employees do you know personally?
Re:Education (Score:4, Insightful)
As Bastiat pointed out so eloquently in That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen [bastiat.org] your $800 per month is what is seen.
What is not seen, is the $800 per month that this no longer costs your neighbors.
All government spending is not evil, and all public works aren't bad. But it is a mistake, a fallacy, to think that taking $800 per month from your neighbors so you can spend it is somehow good for the economy, or your neighbors.
When we must engage in public works, we should do so - hold our nose and accept the necessary evil. This, however, should never be mistaken for economic activity. That is an illusion.
It is worth taking a hard, critical look at yourself and what it is you do. Is your job really justified? Maybe so, perhaps you are a civil engineer or water treatment specialist, I have no way of knowing. Only your conscience can guide you when you wake up in the morning and greet your struggling neighbors, look them in the eye, and know that they are paying for you to do what you do.
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But it is a mistake, a fallacy, to think that taking $800 per month from your neighbors so you can spend it is somehow good for the economy, or your neighbors.
With the way taxes are structured in the US, what you're basically doing is taking $800/month from some buy who makes $50M per month, with no benefit to them whatsoever. The alternative is to move from a society where the top few percent own 80% of everything to a society where the top few percent own 99.99% of everything.
The average American simply isn't capable of providing an "economic benefit" using the kinds of definitions you are employing. So, you can either hand them money, or let them starve. Th
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What *is* ridiculous is that you elect people to make extremely important decisions when they don't have any clue about the subject matter.
If the US government actually followed the Constitution, it wouldn't matter, because there would be very little they could do to screw things up.
It's only because of two hundred years of bending the meaning 'for a good cause' that they've reached the point where they can do so.
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It's only because of two hundred years of bending the meaning 'for a good cause' that they've reached the point where they can do so.
This is why every time I hear a politician talk about "Interpreting the Constitution," I run like hell in the other direction.
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heck why not? if it can be accommodated without major social/financial issues?
Re:Education (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe every person in congress should be required to take a few lectures on how computers work and what the internet is?
Or maybe... people should stop voting for fools simply because the fool holds the "correct" view (take your pick) on abortion or gay marriage. The "issues" that decide elections these days are, by and large, not the ones that actually affect our lives. This is by design, a design crafted and paid for interests that are definitely not aligned with those of the electorate.
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It's a smokescreen to get elected, and make the other guy look out of touch. When will people figure this out?
In the U.S. we've got to stop electing the "cool" guy who would be fun (and interesting) to sit and have beers with, rather than a leader
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"When will people figure this out?"
Never.
Not Quite (Score:5, Informative)
They are, however, looking for new members, and want THEM to add the alert code.
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They are, however, looking for new members, and want THEM to add the alert code.
Added :)
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I'll join up to, even though my site has an average daily traffic of somewhere between zero and.. aw, who the hell am I kidding - it's zero.
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Thought... and analytics.
I presume the IDL keeps track of which websites have the code, so they can say, "X number of web admins support our cause! FTW!"
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A client of mine has agreed to let me add the code to the site for his gun shop... couldn't think of a more appropriate industry to jump to the defense of the First Amendment.
How to actually do something about it (Score:4, Interesting)
How do you do anything about this when your district's congressman [house.gov] is completely opposite your views on almost every issue? Especially when you didn't vote for him. Any letter writing would go to the technologically-clueless equivalent of /dev/null.
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Congressmen don't want stronger opponents. Become strong and be willing to support his competitors.
It's a good idea, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: playing defensively is a losing game (Score:3)
Your comment gave me an idle interesting passing thought. All this stuff is starting to feel like a Stratego game. In classic Stratego pieces of equal rank remove each other, but I seem to recall that in one of the anniversary editions they introduced a variant rule that in clashes of equal rank, *the attacking piece wins* (through power of surprise/initiative/momentum etc.) I like that as a concept. That's what seems to be happening in the Copyright War. Yes, we kicked out SOPA, but they just shuffle the p
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Oh, I do often treat life in gaming terms, but that particular example lurked in my mind for 20 years and today it became useful to haul out.
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the Internet Defense League is doing good work, but playing defensively like this is a losing game.
The IDL has to win every fight. The promoters of this sort of legislation only have to win once.
Its just like terrorism.
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"It's not enough to kill bad legislation, like CISPA it will just keep getting reintroduced - we need to be supporting good legislation."
Right. These power-mad creeps are conducting a relentless assault on our civil liberties and forcing us to pay them while they do it. I don't think there are any legislative barriers anymore. When they blatantly ignore The Constitution, what other laws can hold them back?
The only solution I see is to strip the federal government down to about 20% of its current size an
Aaron Swartz (Score:5, Interesting)
Aaron Swartz [wikipedia.org], not only was he very vocal about SOPA, he was at the centre of the fight against it.
I called all my friends, and we stayed up all night setting up a website for this new group, Demand Progress, with an online petition opposing this noxious billâ¦. We [got] ⦠300,000 signersâ¦. We met with the staff of members of Congress and pleaded with themâ¦. And then it passed unanimously.â¦
He won that fight, but then it meant he got the government's attention. That's how it works, you are just part of the crowd until they see you as one of the leaders and then they hammer you until you can't go any longer. He lost all of his money in that legal battle, obviously the government can just throw everything to defeat you if you are the enemy. He could have ended up in prison, just like Bradley Manning [wikipedia.org], but he went a different route.
You and your government, the relationship is not what you were brought up to believe it is.
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On July 19, 2011, the grand jury's indictment was unsealed. It charged Swartz with wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer and recklessly damaging a protected computer
SOPA happened in 2012, later.
This is not a big evil government purposefully stamping out someone they hate, it wasn't even because of the bribes Hollywood et al paid to set up SOPA. It was because the government and specifically the prosecutor didn't give a damn about ruining people's lives.
Were it a conspiracy rather than reckless prosecution of trivial crimes, that would be reassuring. Were
obvious (Score:5, Interesting)
Where is the banner on /.?
Re:obvious (Score:4, Funny)
Where is the banner on /.?
Don't worry—it's scheduled to be posted a week after the campaign is over and will be duped from Reddit.
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When I read "Internet Defense League" (Score:1)
I'm not the only person who thought of this [imdb.co.uk], right?
The constructed language Cispa (Score:3)
What's wrong with using a made up language [prismnet.com]?
But seriously, Herman Miller was using the "Cispa" name for something before Congress.
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What's wrong with using a made up language [prismnet.com]?
But seriously, Herman Miller was using the "Cispa" name for something before Congress.
Quick! To the Copyright Lawyer Cave!
Feedback (Score:2)
Reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_Intelligence_Sharing_and_Protection_Act [wikipedia.org] , the people quoted for the 2013 version seem to voice the same concerns as last year's version. I think CISPA is a shining example of lobbyists power over congressmen, they seem to be forcing them to introduce a bill they pretty much know will be opposed in a similar manner. Do I even have to take a stab at who could be lobbying such a thing?
Simple fix (Score:2)
Ban all bills with a name that ends in "Protection Act"
Make it personal.... (Score:1)