I have been dialoging with some friends who work with Chairman Lamar Smith about SOPA. I would like to share with you some of my thoughts on SOPA and respond to some of their concerns.

If you don’t know what SOPA is this video is a pretty good introduction.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Claim: SOPA only targets foreign websites.

The “inter” part is what makes the internet work. Congress has no idea how DNS servers work or what the technological ramifications of their law would be. Also, what makes a website foreign? My company Castle Media Group has servers all over the world.

SOPA does a lot more than block access to foreign sites. It is part of a very troubling series of laws. The way to stop piracy needs a more nuanced approach. Yet again Congress is trying to do open heart surgery with a chain saw.

Claim: SOPA won’t harm the internet.

I challenge SOPA supporters to find a single founder of the internet who backs this bill. As far as I know, the wizards of the internet reject SOPA to a man. In fact I challenge SOPA supporters to find one person who supports this bill who can accurately articulate what a DNS server is and how the DNS system works. The “Phone book for the web” definition the press uses is unclear and misleading.

Claim: SOPA will reduce online piracy.

SOPA has no solvency. Messing with DNS servers will do nothing to block unique IPs from sending data back and forth. So the result will be an encrypted, underground black market as full of pirated goods as the status quo. If this bill is passed, there would be technological workarounds in place before the bill even took effect. But the harms would persists for decades. Trying to get content off the internet with laws is like trying to get pee out of a pool with a net.

The harms of SOPA are huge. Laws regarding technology inhibit inovation since the laws persist long after the technological landscape has changed. If this bill was harmless, why would so many websites be protesting it?

Claim: 43 “digital piracy” sites generate an estimated 53 billion hits annually.

Be careful anytime anyone uses the phrase “hits” to talk about how much web traffic. A hit is a single server request be it a file, style sheet, a database query, a script, or an image. It is not uncommon for a single page view to generate dozens of hits and for a single website visitor to generate hundreds if not thousands of hits. I would estimate that every minute you spend on Facebook, Facebook gets 250 “hits.” Hits correlate to traffic about as much as RPM correlates with MPH in your car.

A much more valid metric is “page views” or “unique visitors.”

Claim: Online piracy costs America 200 billion dollars and thousands of jobs.

The number about lost revenue is misleading. First it may be based on bad information in the first place. If the estimators are using “hits” as a way of estimating traffic to pirated sites then their conclusions are based on faulty premises. The number is likely made up and not based on any sort of empirical research.

Secondly, the estimators fail to take into account the elasticity of prices. When a commodity is cheaper, people tend to consume more of that thing. Some commodities are more elastic than others. Energy is very inelastic. Entertainment is very elastic. So when entertainment is free, people consume a lot of that entertainment. You probably listen to more Pandora or FM Radio than songs you’ve purchased on iTunes for instance.

The higher prices are the more discriminating people become. Some movies you will wait to rent because you don’t think they are worth the price of a movie ticket, for example.

So to assume that if we could snap our fingers and remove all piracy that people would start paying for all the pirated content the currently consume is false. The money the industry claims to loose are based on growth rates that are completely unrealistic. $200 billion dollars? Really? The entire music industry is only a 20-30 billion dollar industry and the movie industry is not much bigger. There is no way they could have grown that big that fast in a piracy free world. Where on earth do they expect those 100 billion dollars to come from? Would consumers suddenly have more money to spend or would they just consume less media?

The Solution: Fewer Laws & More Innovation

The solution to piracy is technological not legal. Laws lack the flexibility needed to be effective. The Congress chases technology like a two year old child chases a squirrel. Technology adapts too quickly for the laws to do anything but harm law abiding citizens. The most effective enemy to Napster was the Apple iTunes store. Suing Napster (Which did not require SOPA by the way) did nothing the curb piracy. But the iTunes store makes buying legal content so easy that saving $0.99 to pirate a song is not worth the effort. I can listen to a song playing in a coffee shop, use an app to identify that song and then buy it all within three minutes and all on my iPhone.

This sort of inovation is why the music industry just announced growth in sales for the first time since 2004. The movie industry will see similar growth as they embrace “movies as an experience” and make it easier to legally rent internet movies on your TV. If Hollywood put half as much effort into usability as they put into lobbying, we would see a dramatic increase in sales and a decline in piracy. They need to make renting an online movie through your TV easy enough for my grandmother to do it.

Responding to technology should be like our response to speech. The answer to wrong speech is more speech not censorship. The answer to the wrong use of technology is more technology not regulation.

Nerds created the internet, the nerds can manage it. Congressmen should not regulate what they do not understand.

No related posts.

First, Some Perspective

On September 11 2001

• 2,819 people died from terrorists.
• 3,700 people died from abortions.

We have had a 9/11 every day for the last 20 years. If you care about saving lives then terrorism is a distraction.

In 2001:

• 2,824 Americans died from terrorist attacks (2,819 9/11 deaths source + 5 anthrax deaths source).
• 16,037 Americans were murdered by other Americans (source).
• 42,196 died on American roadways (source).
• 853,485 died in American abortion facilities (source).

These numbers are from 2001; the year with the highest number of terrorism related deaths. You are more likely to die from lightning than from a terrorist in an airplane.

Looking at these numbers you should spend more time praying at abortion clinics and going to defensive driving than worrying about terrorists. If you are particularly concerned about saving life, get a concealed handgun. All of these things would be statistically more effective than groping people at the airport.

The The Science of Fear quotes a study that found if a plane crashed in America once per week, flying would still be safer than driving. When terrorism is put into context there is no rational justification for TSA’s invasions.

We are the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. To be free you must also be brave. Safety is not our god.

New procedures degrade our dignity.

Dignity is not a word you hear much any more. Martin Luther King Jr. marched for it. Everyone is born with it. The government wants to take it away.

Could you imagine anything more demeaning than the current TSA procedures? Getting ogled or fondled should not be part of the flying process. This is how the terrorists win: They scare us into abusing each other.

“But don’t other countries use similar procedures?”  You may ask.

Yes. But so what? Just because old world countries abuse their subjects gives us no justification to do likewise. Freedom and justice are what set us apart from the old world. That is why we left. Our ancestors wanted to come to a new world where citizens did not need to fear the government abusing them.

We are free! Why should we long to go back to the “safety” of slavery?

Terrorism doesn’t work.

The goal of terrorism is to strike terror into a population. This is their goal because terrorists lack the ability to actually harm.  They can’t conquer us, and even on their best day they can’t even pass the murder rate. An attack like 9/11 won’t work again. The old advice of “comply with hijackers” is gone. Hijacking only works when the passengers are docile, and the days of docile passengers came to an end when Flight 93 revolted.

Terrorism is not dangerous. Fear is. According to a study by the University of Michigan there were 1,018 additional traffic fatalities in 2001 because people were afraid to fly and, instead, chose to drive.

Terrorists have a very small tool belt. Hijacking doesn’t work and guns don’t work well on an armed population. Anthrax doesn’t work. Chemicals weapons only work when deployed with artillery or an air force. Bombs are really their only tool and bombs are a weak opponent for bomb-sniffing dogs and often require the bomber to sacrifice himself.

Once we decide to not let terrorism scare us, we rob the terrorists of their only effective weapon: fear.

Our Response

After we take a deep breath and stop panicking, this is what I think we should do in response to terrorism:

Bounce back

Our best response to terrorists is to show them they are ineffective. We do this by getting back to normal as soon as possible. This is what they do in Israel. After an attack they get back to business as fast as possible, and it frustrates the terrorists.

In hindsight, I wish we would have let commercial planes fly on September 12th.

Nuclear Protection

Nuclear bombs should be our primary focus. A suitcase nuke could depopulate a city for years. If we were wise we would spend the majority of our efforts on nuclear protection. Fortunately for us, nuclear weapons are heard to deploy by terrorists. Terrorists don’t have rockets or bombers so they need to sneak a Bomb into the country somehow.

Nuclear bombs give off radiation that can be picked up with special equipment. This radiation sniffing equipment is what we should be buying, not strip search scanners. We should have radiation scanners at every border crossing and at every airport. We should develop the technology to make compact scanners for every police car. Squad-car based scanners would more or less cover the whole country.

Airport Security

We should reset to pre 9/11 security and then make the following changes.

Change 1: Profiling – America is not being attacked by old women or small children. The threat comes from a few very specific profiles. People who fit a profile should go through a more strict screening process. Non-citizens should be particularly targeted. Profiling works in Israel and we would be wise to emulate them.

If positive profiles are too distasteful then we should at least use negative profiles. We should stop scanning minors and senior citizens. Has there ever been a terrorist older than 50? I doubt it.

Change 2: Background checks – Non-citizens traveling into and around this country should go through extensive background checks. I know we do this now but we could do it much better. Instead of funding an army of soldiers to topple governments we should have an army of spies infiltrating every terrorist organization in the world. Then when we check someone’s background we will actually have some useful data to check.

Change 3: Dogs – Bomb-sniffing dogs are effective and non intrusive.  I rarely see dogs at the airport. A dog should sniff every piece of luggage that goes onto a plane.

Change 4: Privatization – Airport screening is not a good role for the government.  Let the airlines do the screenings and they will compete on quality, safety, efficiency etc. If American Airlines wants to grope you and Delta doesn’t, the free market would reward the wiser company.

Typically when there is a successful terrorist attack, the airline that is hit goes out of business. Anyone remember Pan Am? The fear of bankruptcy motivates airlines toward quick and effective innovation.

Conclusion

Good policy is based on reason, not on irrational emotions like fear and revenge. If you look at America’s response to 9/11 you will find a lot more fear and revenge than reason. When you look at things rationally you see that changing the government in Iraq does not protect us from Saudi Arabian terrorists. You don’t fight non-governmental organizations by attacking governments. You don’t let terrorists scare you into destroying yourself.

Good policy is based on principles like life, liberty, justice, property and dignity. We can learn from other countries but we need to be careful what we bring over. What makes us different also makes us special.

What do you think? What should our response to 9/11 have been? What do you think about TSA’s new procedures?

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If you plan to vote in the next election or compete in speech and debate I strongly recommend you watch this 8 minute video .

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Sure they can threaten, reward, manipulate and deceive – the tools of Satan and slave owners. But these devices have no power unless the slaves give them power. God endows individuals with certain inalienable rights. He will never take them away and neither will anyone else. They must be given up.

Three hundred years ago as the British colonized North America and they tried to turn the American Indians into slaves. They bought them from the Chiefs and capturing them in battle. But their efforts proved fruitless as the Indians despite floggings and torture refused the yoke of slavery. They would die but they would not work. You could call this laziness but I think they, like Gahndi, knew the truth. There is no such thing as slavery.

The British then turned to the old world where thousands of years of tyranny had trained people that freedom could be taken. Soon the seeds of slavery were planted in America. The weeds from those years still pop up today through racial hatred and distrust. But no amount of weeds can cover up the simple truth that no one can make you do something you don’t choose to do.

Our freedom, contains a challenge. When we stand before God on the Day of Judgment we will be able to offer up no excuses for our choices. The devil didn’t make us sin and neither did God. We choose to sin in full knowledge that what you were doing was wrong.

Through our choices we become slaves to sin. Soon it is all we know. Freedom is easily tossed aside but nearly impossible to regain without death. I can think of no time in history where a people became free without bloodshed. The price of freedom is blood either of peaceful protesters(India) or an army(USA). Someone has to die to relight the torch of freedom.

So while our choices get us into the slavery of sin we cannot through an act of our will become free from sin. Someone has to die. Unfortunately, our freedom allows us go back to the yoke of slavery. We are doing this in America as we pass laws like the Patriot Act and Campaign Finance Reform (both incidentally backed by republicans). And we do this as Christians as we turn back to the detestable practices we once knew.

Paul asked the Galatians why they turned back to the slavery of the law and I must ask Americans why we are turning back to an imperialistic form of government we once so adamantly opposed. Is our goal to become the next British Empire? Have we been eating our national vegetables so that when we grow up we can be like mother England? The sun never set on the British empire. Is this not already the case with our American empire? At what point in the earth’s rotation does the sun not shine on an American soldier occupying a foreign land?

When we give away our liberties we are either killing our children who must die to win them back, or we are forging their chains.

God used Gandhi, a pagan, to humiliate “Christian” England. I can’t help but wonder if he will do the same to us. God is not American and he will never be on our side. But he gives us the ability to choose to join His side. I suggest we should. If you use your liberty to vote, make sure to vote for liberty. Otherwise do the nation a service and use your freedom to stay home.

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