Sen. Reid pushes Web censorship bill; foe promises filibuster

Sen. Reid pushes Web censorship bill; foe promises filibuster

arstechnica.com

It is showdown time in the United States Senate for friends and foes of S.968, aka the IP Protect Act, which sets up a fast track system for removing websites that rightsholders deem to be "dedicated to infringing activities." On Saturday, senators filed a motion of cloture on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-NV) motion to proceed to the bill.

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While a simple concept in reality, our politicians who love parliamentary procedure enough to alter it, moved to invoke "cloture" to guarantee that their idea of urgency matters, where the people's is politically inexpedient.

The cloture rule originally required a supermajority of two-thirds of all senators "present and voting" to be considered filibuster-proof..... In 1975, the Democratic Senate majority, having achieved a net gain of four seats in the 1974 Senate elections to a strength of 61, reduced the necessary supermajority to three-fifths (60 out of 100). However, as a compromise to those who were against the revision, the new rule also changed the requirement for determining the number of votes needed for a cloture motion's passage from those Senators "present and voting" to those Senators "duly chosen and sworn"....The new version of the cloture rule, which has remained in place since 1975, makes it considerably easier for the Senate majority to invoke cloture. This has considerably strengthened the power of the majority, and allowed it to pass many bills that would otherwise have been filibustered

en.wikipedia.org...

Clearly, some of our representatives have begun to realize that this Act is not the esoteric technical foible they hoped Americans would think it was, and they are now trying to cope with the increased attention this problematic political maneuver represents. The Big Media masters are not pleased...

The point is to defeat procedural efforts to block the legislation. The blocker in question took note of this move on Saturday. Six months ago Ron Wyden (D-OR) placed a "hold" on the proposed law. According to senate lingo, a hold is an "informal practice by which a Senator informs his or her floor leader that he or she does not wish a particular bill or other measure to reach the floor for consideration."

Now Wyden promises to filibuster the legislation when the Senate returns in January.

Oddly, as bad as this move to criminalize information transfer over the internet and provide law enforcement responsibilities and liabilities on ISPs is, it isn't bad enough for this dynamic duo... Wyden and his pal Daryl Issa (R-CA) want the DoJ out of the picture and desire to see the effort handled in a much different way....

Wyden and his House partner Daryl Issa (R-CA) have proposed an alternative to IP Protect. Their Open Act would take concerns about infringing websites away from the Department of Justice. It moves the antipiracy process from the courts and DoJ to the International Trade Commission (ITC).

So those applauding their attempts to block the IP Protect Act might assume they are doing it for the benefit of the millions of Americans who want a free internet will learn in short order that their political champions are 'going globalist."

The proposed law also avoids giving copyright holders any private rights of action against websites. The PROTECT IP equivalent in the House, the Stop Online Piracy Act, was delayed in House committee earlier this week.

A roll call vote is scheduled for 2:15pm on Tuesday, January 24. Three-fifths of the full Senate, usually 60 yeas, are needed to support cloture action.

Today... they decide...

I wonder if what the citizens desire is any more important to them than what is politically expedient, or global-governance friendly?

arstechnica.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

What's disgusting really is that old men who don't know a DAMN THING about internet are trying to regulate it.

And it's not even regulate it, it's KILLING IT.

From their own mouth....
MPAA head Chris Dodd : for the internet censorship bill, China is our model

Wouldn't surprise me if they pass that on Friday while everyone is busy with Christmas...

No surprise Reid wants to supress the dissemination of information . . . he ain't exactly the squeaky clean type when it comes to things electronic . . .

Sen. Harry Reid has won reelection in a tightly contested battle with Sharron Angle. Angle, a strong supporter of the Constitution and small government, appears to have lost despite recent polling that had her up by as much as 3 points.

Reports of fraud and intimidation have circulated for weeks, with early voters complaining of rigged voting machines throughout Clark County.

Residents of Clark County Nevada have reported that upon attempting to vote for Angle they found that Reid’s name had already been checked. This is not surprising as widespread voting fraud has been reported since the inception of the fraudulent electronic voting machines.

TURD

Some people will do anything to prevent the electorate from being well informed and knowledgable.

Originally posted by Vitchilo
What's disgusting really is that old men who don't know a DAMN THING about internet are trying to regulate it.

And it's not even regulate it, it's KILLING IT.

From their own mouth....
MPAA head Chris Dodd : for the internet censorship bill, China is our model

Wouldn't surprise me if they pass that on Friday while everyone is busy with Christmas...

edit on 20-12-2011 by Vitchilo because: (no reason given)

You may have seen this: Chris Dodd Resorting To Outright Lying In A Desperate Attempt To Get SOPA Passed


But if you haven't - I thought you might appreciate it more than most....

reply to post by Maxmars


Thanks for that... And he really said that?

“The entire film industry of Spain, Egypt and Sweden are gone.”

EPIC... I really love foreign movies and seeing this just made me laugh... This guy is just insane.

Spain and Sweden have done GREAT movies over the years... Egypt, I didn't watch many of their movies so I don't know... but Spain and Sweden, they have produced MASTERPIECES...

Hopefully nobody believed his bull.

The MPAA and the RIAA are really scum...

Scraping around on the soon-to-be "Criminalnet" I also ran across some more wonder-factoids:

Two people responsible for writing these bills — the principle writer for the House version and the Senate counterpart have accepted positions for two of the lobbying organizations pushing for the bill.

Namely, Allison Halataei, former deputy chief of staff and parliamentarian to House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith and Lauren Pastarnack, a Senate Judiciary Committee senior aide.

Now Halataei is officially the National Music Publisher’s Association chief liaison to Congress. Pasternak is now the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) director of government relations.

And then there's Chris Dodd who served as a U.S. Senator for 30 years.

Despite claiming he would never accept a lobbying position, the former Democratic Senator from Connecticut is now the Chairman and CEO of the MPAA.

As I have asked again and again.. ARE WE LEARNING YET?

Thanks for the info, Maxmars.

I'm still confused as to why they want to censor the web. The only thing I believe needs to go is anything related to child pornography.

You would think, as much as they monitor everything, censoring the web would make it more difficult for them to find "terrorists". In my mind, I'd think they'd want us to go hog wild about our views and opinions so they could better pick and choose which people are a potential threat.

reply to post by Afterthought


I really don't think the goal is to 'censor' the internet. I think the objective is to have as much control over what is there as they do with other commercial media, thus making it impossible to be on it without them profiting. Of course, that much control means you could censor anything you wish... because at that point everything on there would effectively be 'their' property - which is exactly the premise they use to continue doing business the way they do.....

reply to post by Maxmars


Thanks for explaining that in more depth. I can better see their objective now. Especially the profit angle.

Regarding my concerns, maybe if certain key words were considered inappropriate for the web and someone types said words into a Google search, this person's IP address would be flagged?
Does this make sense?

Try as they may they will not be able to stop the [snip] storm that is coming.

The revelations of wrongdoing and corruption are leaking, and more are on the way, censorship is futile.

Well they gonna try to push it forward in the house tomorrow :
House of Representatives Schedule

Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Markup: H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act

9:00 AM | 2141 Rayburn HOB
Host: Committee on the Judiciary | Full Committee

Why is this man still in office? Everytime one thinks he's done just about all the damage he can do, he comes up with something more outrageous. Is Reid still trying to wipe out prostitution in Nevada, i.e. trying to make snowballs in hell?

He needs to retire...

reply to post by ChicagOpinion


He frauded the election. His son owns the company who owns the voting machines.

I remember during the election, Reid was losing... then a blackout happened and boom, when power came back Reid was winning... Surprise surprise.

Reid STOLE the election.