Rep. Lamar Smith dismisses SOPA critics as "vocal minority"

[Panzersharkcat]

Link.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), the chief sponsor of the ‘Stop Online Piracy Act’ (SOPA), says that criticisms of the controversial legislation are entirely unfounded, and that the online communities that oppose the bill are illegitimate.

“The criticism of this bill is completely hypothetical; none of it is based in reality. Not one of the critics was able to point to any language in the bill that would in any way harm the Internet. Their accusations are simply not supported by any facts,” said Smith in a statement, quoted by Roll Call.

When asked about the burgeoning opposition to the bill from online communities like Reddit.com, Smith added: “It’s a vocal minority. Because they’re strident doesn’t mean they’re either legitimate or large in number. One, they need to read the language. Show me the language. There’s nothing they can point to that does what they say it does do. I think their fears are unfounded.”

There are so many things just factually wrong about Rep. Smith’s statement that it’s hard to know where to begin. So let’s just take his asinine dismissal from the top, shall we?

First, Rep. Smith says that “not one of the critics” could point to specific language in the bill that would “harm the Internet in any way.” No? What about the 83 Internet pioneers — we’re talking people like Vint Cerf, co-designer of TCP/IP; Jim Gettys, editor of the HTTP/1.1 protocol standards; Leonard Kleinrock, a key developer of the ARAPANET; in other words, the very people who built the Internet — who say that SOPA (and the Protect IP Act, PIPA), “will risk fragmenting the Internet’s global domain name system (DNS) and have other capricious technical consequences” because of the bills’ requirement that Internet service providers block domain names of infringing sites.

In their letter to Congress, this group of Internet founders also argues that SOPA “will create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet infrastructure.” If that’s not damaging to the Internet, what is it? To Rep. Smith, it’s nothing, apparently. Hyperbole.

Rep. Smith’s own hyperbole goes against the opinion of former Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Stewart Baker, who agrees with the Internet founders when he says that SOPA will “do great damage to Internet security, mainly by putting obstacles in the way of DNSSEC, a protocol designed to limit certain kinds of Internet crime,” among other repercussions.

Now, in terms of Rep. Smith’s statement that the anti-SOPA crowd is neither “legitimate” nor “large in number,” well, that’s so obviously false, it would be laughable if it weren’t so infuriating.

As we have mentioned before, the list of vocal SOPA opponents includes more than 850 companies, organizations and individual experts who are adamantly against the legislation’s passage — far more than appear on the House Judiciary Committee’s list (pdf) of SOPA supporters. This includes the Internet’s largest companies: Google, AOL, Facebook, eBay, LinkedIn, Mozilla, PayPal, Wikipedia, Twitter, and Tumblr (to name only a few).

The list of SOPA opponents also includes 425 venture capitalists and entrepreneurs — i.e. job creators. The editorial boards of The New York Times and Los Angeles Times are on the list, as are 39 public advocacy groups, nonprofits and think tanks who believe that SOPA will stifle freedom of speech. These are joined by 61 international human rights groups, and 116 academics and law experts from the nation’s top law schools. In short: The list of SOPA critics could not be any more legitimate.

In addition to these industry, human rights, and law experts, the anti-SOPA faction includes countless individuals — voters, as they’re called in Washington, who have sent hundreds of thousands of letters to Congress, and made nearly 90,000 calls in one day to their representatives, as Tech Dirt’s Mike Masnick reports, urging them to denounce SOPA.

For the sake of brevity, we won’t go into detail about Reddit’s apparently successful GoDaddy boycott over the company’s SOPA support, or the countless other less-public actions concerned citizens are taking to fight this bill. But it’s important for those of you on the sidelines to know that when Rep. Smith questions the legitimacy of those who oppose SOPA, he’s questioning the legitimacy of the American people, and damaging the democratic principles upon which this country relies.

In other words, lying liar is caught lying and systematically refuted.

[Satiar]

Is there any platform for face-to-face debate with this guy, that any large corporation (say Google?) could take advantage of? I feel that separated from the congress dog-piling, his entire bill could be neatly deconstructed.

[someone_else]

meh, the entire thing is so completely wrong on so much levels that anyone with a passing IT knowledge could "neatly deconstruct" it.

But it isn't the first time they tell basically the rest of the world to fuck off because they must protect Da Internetz from Piratez. They keep ignoring anyone and everyone. May the ones paying the political pawns for this get nuked by massive boycotts.

[Winston Blake]

First, Rep. Smith says that “not one of the critics” could point to specific language in the bill that would “harm the Internet in any way.” No? What about

[...] “will risk fragmenting the Internet’s global domain name system (DNS) and have other capricious technical consequences” because of the bills’ requirement that Internet service providers block domain names of infringing sites.

[...] “will create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet infrastructure.”

[...] will “do great damage to Internet security, mainly by putting obstacles in the way of DNSSEC, a protocol designed to limit certain kinds of Internet crime,” among other repercussions.

This article refutes Smith in a basically bad way. Smith seems to be demanding a clear, step-by-step explanation of how specific sentences in the act will cause claimed effects, in the same way one can say 'drilling holes in this part of a bridge will weaken it and it will fall down'. The problem is that the global information & communications system is too complex to discuss in that way. How do you explain the effects quoted above to representatives who have no idea what a 'global domain name system' is, or what the term 'key Internet infrastructure' refers to, or what 'DNSSEC' is, or how any of these work?

(As an example of 'overly academic language', I had to look up 'capricious' in the dictionary because I didn't quite get what was meant by 'capricious technical consequences' - apparently they meant 'capricious' in the general sense of 'erratic', not 'whimsical or prone to changing one's mind', as I had read it.)

Basically, the act proposes changes to a system which is so huge and technical that reliance on expert opinions & testimony is needed. Further, the system sprang up so quickly that decision makers did not grow up with it. What to many people is everyday language about essential infrastruture, to them is impenetrable jargon about a strange foreign thing that has infiltrated normal society and is causing all sorts of problems.

So now you have decision makers (who see themselves as 'good, decent normal people') listening to young & rich or young & highly educated experts talk down to them, with apparent contempt and incredulity (e.g. at their not knowing what a stream of silly three-letter acronyms mean, like 'DNS'). The verbs, the nouns, the adjectives - all nonsense poetry. Further, to decision makers, the protests by 'internet communities' are merely an invisible rabble of presumed slight-criminals shouting inaudibly in a space detached from the real world.

Now, as I understand it, PR people from groups like the RIAA have been 'laying the groundwork' for this act for some time. All they needed to do was make simple PowerPoint diagrams which convince the decision-makers that SOPA is a 'commonsense solution'. Then they can say that it will probably be opposed by a vocal minority of alarmists - 'morally suspect youths', 'ivory tower pontificators' and 'pirates and other criminals'. Then the basic nature of the internet - size, complexity, recent appearance - makes it extremely difficult to change these people's minds.

Throwing out more jargon-loaded expert opinions isn't going to help. If SOPA is defeated, it will probably be due to coercive methods, such as boycotts and threats to withhold votes, rather than due to actually convincing decision-makers that it's a bad idea.

[S.L.Acker]

First, Rep. Smith says that “not one of the critics” could point to specific language in the bill that would “harm the Internet in any way.” No? What about

[...] “will risk fragmenting the Internet’s global domain name system (DNS) and have other capricious technical consequences” because of the bills’ requirement that Internet service providers block domain names of infringing sites.

[...] “will create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet infrastructure.”

[...] will “do great damage to Internet security, mainly by putting obstacles in the way of DNSSEC, a protocol designed to limit certain kinds of Internet crime,” among other repercussions.

This article refutes Smith in a basically bad way. Smith seems to be demanding a clear, step-by-step explanation of how specific sentences in the act will cause claimed effects, in the same way one can say 'drilling holes in this part of a bridge will weaken it and it will fall down'. The problem is that the global information & communications system is too complex to discuss in that way. How do you explain the effects quoted above to representatives who have no idea what a 'global domain name system' is, or what the term 'key Internet infrastructure' refers to, or what 'DNSSEC' is, or how any of these work?

(As an example of 'overly academic language', I had to look up 'capricious' in the dictionary because I didn't quite get what was meant by 'capricious technical consequences' - apparently they meant 'capricious' in the general sense of 'erratic', not 'whimsical or prone to changing one's mind', as I had read it.)

Basically, the act proposes changes to a system which is so huge and technical that reliance on expert opinions & testimony is needed. Further, the system sprang up so quickly that decision makers did not grow up with it. What to many people is everyday language about essential infrastruture, to them is impenetrable jargon about a strange foreign thing that has infiltrated normal society and is causing all sorts of problems.

So now you have decision makers (who see themselves as 'good, decent normal people') listening to young & rich or young & highly educated experts talk down to them, with apparent contempt and incredulity (e.g. at their not knowing what a stream of silly three-letter acronyms mean, like 'DNS'). The verbs, the nouns, the adjectives - all nonsense poetry. Further, to decision makers, the protests by 'internet communities' are merely an invisible rabble of presumed slight-criminals shouting inaudibly in a space detached from the real world.

Now, as I understand it, PR people from groups like the RIAA have been 'laying the groundwork' for this act for some time. All they needed to do was make simple PowerPoint diagrams which convince the decision-makers that SOPA is a 'commonsense solution'. Then they can say that it will probably be opposed by a vocal minority of alarmists - 'morally suspect youths', 'ivory tower pontificators' and 'pirates and other criminals'. Then the basic nature of the internet - size, complexity, recent appearance - makes it extremely difficult to change these people's minds.

Throwing out more jargon-loaded expert opinions isn't going to help. If SOPA is defeated, it will probably be due to coercive methods, such as boycotts and threats to withhold votes, rather than due to actually convincing decision-makers that it's a bad idea.

This is why an elected council of old people comprised only of old people is a bad idea. Being older might lend perspective on certain things, though in today's politics that perspective might be more focused on how to get votes and which lobbies to work with and which can be mostly ignored, but with how fast technology can change the world they're dinosaurs on important issues that effect a large segment of people. People who grew up when color TV, or even owning a TV, wasn't common shouldn't be in charge of something like the internet.

[Darksider]

I still think the best way to stop SOPA is for Google, Facebook, et al, to use their "nuclear option," that is, to shut down their services for one or two days with a message explaining the realities of the SOPA bill, what it will do to the U.S. technology sector, and a list of congressmen that support it. They'd all be getting calls by the hundreds from irate citizens who can't edit their facebook pages.

It's really the only way to bring the information to the masses, since most people aren't tech-savvy enough to know or care about SOPA.

[SpaceMarine93]

Is there a good lawyer we can call? Chances are those idiots in Congress are going to pass it despite opposition and we need somebody to go and try and overturn it in the Supreme Court.

Seriously, Rep. Lamar Smith and his fellow politicians are incredibly out of touch.

[SpaceMarine93]

I still think the best way to stop SOPA is for Google, Facebook, et al, to use their "nuclear option," that is, to shut down their services for one or two days with a message explaining the realities of the SOPA bill, what it will do to the U.S. technology sector, and a list of congressmen that support it. They'd all be getting calls by the hundreds from irate citizens who can't edit their facebook pages.

It's really the only way to bring the information to the masses, since most people aren't tech-savvy enough to know or care about SOPA.

No one's going to do that. And generally I think not many people really cares either way

It's a sad world.

[S.L.Acker]

Is there a good lawyer we can call? Chances are those idiots in Congress are going to pass it despite opposition and we need somebody to go and try and overturn it in the Supreme Court.

Seriously, Rep. Lamar Smith and his fellow politicians are incredibly out of touch.

You're over reacting just a touch to this. I think your average politician isn't so blind as to see this as some vocal minority and there are some larger players working against the act. The real worry is them passing PIPA instead as the 'moderate' option.