patrick.net

msilenus says

Obama won't back SOPA.

The qualifier in the first paragraph is important: "if it encourages censorship, undermines cybersecurity or disrupts the structure of the Internet..."

Censorship, means the act of an official(s) deciding what speech is permissible.

That's not the issue with SOPA. It creates no government censors whose job it is to discover, investigate, and remove websites that violate some kind of official guidelines on speech.

There was a great cartoon on the front page that showed the connection between Censorship and overzealous enforcement of IP rights, a few days ago.

What SOPA does entail is establishing a system that is so biased towards IP "rights" owners, that it is almost as bad - maybe worse - for free speech than "real" Censorship.

An IP Rights Holder files a complaint, and a US based website is nixed from the internet without a hearing, or even a warning. The entire Onus in the process is on the website owner, who has to fight to get his site back up, the same way the Drug War forfeiture laws work.

I don't think I go out on a limb when I say that Disney probably has a lot more money than Patrick.

*DING*, on the "Censorship" issue, Obama will sign, as it is about IP enforcement, not "real" censorship.

A great friend of SOPA, Lamar Smith, was also quoted in the same article. He seems confident that it will be signed into law:

U.S. Representative Lamar Smith, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said his Stop Online Piracy Act meets the administration’s tests. Smith announced on Jan. 13 that he would remove a provision that would require Internet service providers, when ordered by a court, to block access to non-U.S. websites offering pirated content or counterfeit goods. The bill’s opponents say this could hurt the domain-name system.

In a statement yesterday, Smith said that censorship doesn’t include enforcing laws against “foreign thieves” who steal content.

The domain name issue was a problem (and also, it opens a can of worms about which nation - or nations - can exercise "control" of the internet "backbone", a fight I suppose the US does not want to start right now) Now it's not.

It also means that the biggest offenders, the sites that *DO* abuse US copyrights, mostly located in China, Russia, etc. are immune.

*DING* Structure issue solved, Obama will sign.

I leave the cybersecurity issues for somebody more technologically astute than I to explain. I don't know much about that aspect of the bill, though I dimly remember reading something about how implementation of SOPA may create security issues.

After writing the above, I went and read the WH Blog:

Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small.

The qualifies are different here than the apparent paraphrase in the BW article:

While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.

Freedom of Expression in the United States is not unlimited, of course. Is the government giving more tools to assist IP holders in going after "IP rights violators" a reduction of freedom of expression?

My earlier assertion that aggressive IP Enforcement processes are not being considered a form of Censorship is still reasonable, I think. The freedom of expression generally doesn't exclude the idea that you are "violating IP rights", which is not a "Lawful Activity".

This statement I think encapsulates the WH's position:

That is why the Administration calls on all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors and rights holders new legal tools to combat online piracy originating beyond U.S. borders while staying true to the principles outlined above in this response. We should never let criminals hide behind a hollow embrace of legitimate American values.

Here's what's going to happen. Obama needs to please two industries that are at loggerheads over SOPA: Internet Companies like Google and Facebook on one hand, and the Entertainment Industry on the other. Both big sources of money for his 2012 Campaign as well as the Democratic Party.

The best case scenario for him is that the bill is pushed back past the Elections, and he will use all his charm to convince the voters, the Internet Companies, and the Entertainment Industry he's going to only sign a bill that has the best of what they all respectively (don't) want if he is relected.

It's also the worst case scenario for the public, since a second term Obama won't have to pander to the Techie Voters and Liberal Base and can sign an Entertainment Industry friendly bill without any consequences for himself.

Failing that, he's going to push to water down the provisions that penalize or require onerous compliance for Online Advertisers, Search Engines, etc. At the same time, he's going to let the current SOPA process more or less continue as it is when it comes to websites, to satisfy the members of the MPAA and RIAA --- and DLC Piper.

Oh please. You have to see that someone else could just as easily invert your formatting to get:

That is why the Administration calls on all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors and rights holders new legal tools to combat online piracy originating beyond U.S. borders while staying true to the principles outlined above in this response. We should never let criminals hide behind a hollow embrace of legitimate American values.

Yours is, of course, the typical liberal reaction to victory: scrambling desperately to find defeat in it. From my second link:

Clinton did enjoy one major triumph in his first year, when he passed a budget bill that raised the top tax rate, expanded the earned-income tax credit, created a new national-service program for graduates, and reformed other parts of the budget. This was the progressive apogee of the Clinton administration. Liberals at the time viewed it as a sad half-measure. The focus was on deficit reduction, not public investment, and each iteration of the legislation that worked its way through the congressional machinery emerged less inspiring than the last. “The Senate’s machinations on President Clinton’s budget plan have left many Democratic House members feeling angry and betrayed,” noted a New York Times editorial.

...

Harry Truman has become the patron saint of dispirited Democrats, the fighting populist whose example is invariably cited in glum contrast to whatever bumbling congenital compromiser happens to hold office at any given time. In fact, liberals spent the entire Truman presidency in a state of near-constant despair. ... Liberal columnist Max Lerner decried Truman’s mania for “cooperation” and his eagerness “to blink [past] the real social cleavage and struggles,” attributing this pathological eagerness to avoid conflict to his “middle-class mentality.” (Some contemporary critics have reached the same psychoanalysis of Obama, substituting his bi-racial background as the cause.) The New Republic’s Richard Strout lamented how “little evidence he has shown of being able to lift up and inspire the masses.” The historian Richard Pells has written that in the eyes of liberals at the time, “the president remained an incorrigible mediocrity.”

...

For almost all of the past 60 years, liberals have been in a near-constant emotional state of despair, punctuated only by brief moments of euphoria and occasional rage. When they’re not in charge, things are so bleak they threaten to move to Canada; it’s almost more excruciating when they do win elections, and their presidents fail in essentially the same ways: He is too accommodating, too timid, too unwilling or unable to inspire the populace. (Except for Johnson, who was a bloodthirsty warmonger.)

Rupert Murdoch, on this issue, has his head on straight. He understands that he lost, and has the good sense to be livid about it:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/15/murdoch_twitter_rant_sopa/

msilenus says

The focus was on deficit reduction, not public investment, and each iteration of the legislation that worked its way through the congressional machinery emerged less inspiring than the last.

Interesting times we live in, when tax increases for the purpose of debt reduction is seen by some as a MAJOR liberal/progressive victory. From my view it was a victory in the sense that a President was permitted to do good, but I don't know about "progressive apogee."

I guess when a democratic President is allowed to be successful, which risks the possibility of his one day pursuing progressive policies, or even worse, being reelected, it is a progressive victory of sorts.

In the context of today's Congress, it looks like a coup. To the GOP of 2012, admitting that raising taxes can shrink the deficit is grounds for being drummed out of the party, and any proposal that raises taxes by even one penny is worth filibustering forever. They're men of their word, and they signed their oaths.

I read that passage and was overcome by nostalgia for a saner day.

If you want to understand why attacking the deficit with tax increases is a liberal victory, I recommend reading this piece on tax cuts:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/what-we-miss-when-we-talk-about-tax-cuts/2011/08/25/gIQAwAiftP_blog.html#pagebreak

An obvious corrolary is that closing a deficit with tax increases protects progressive programs.

See also some of these graphs:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/we-read-so-you-dont-have-to-cea-chair-alan-kruegers-inequality-speech/2011/08/25/gIQAlma9tP_blog.html

Government is inherently redistributive when it's funded progressively. Clinton achieved that with his budget.