I'm not sure if people have posted about it yet, but the hearing on SOPA was yesterday, and oh my god do I want to punch so many congressmen in the face.
Basically, it was a bunch of old white guys who knew absolutely nothing about technology and didn't bother to learn. One congressman said "If I had a dime for every time someone in the hearing used the phrase "I'm not a nerd" or "I'm no tech expert, but they tell me..." I'd have a large number of dimes and still feel intensely worried about the future of the uncensored Internet." The main backer of the bill openly confessed several times he didn't understand how the internet works, yet he acted like all the internet engineers opposing the bill were "wrong".
There was also this juicy quote from a reporter that pretty much sums it up: "If this were surgery, the patient would have run out screaming a long time ago. But this is like a group of well-intentioned amateurs getting together to perform heart surgery on a patient incapable of moving. "We hear from the motion picture industry that heart surgery is what's required," they say cheerily. "We're not going to cut the good valves, just the bad - neurons, or whatever you call those durn thingies.'
This is terrifying to watch. It would be amusing - there's nothing like people who did not grow up with the Internet attempting to ask questions about technology very slowly and stumbling over words like "server' and "service" when you want an easy laugh. Except that this time, the joke's on us."
Almost every single amendment to the bill was blocked without any meaningful discussion and it looks like they're rushing this bill out the door despite the consequences just so they can get it over with.
Does this piss anyone else off, or is it just me?
