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“Lamar Smith’s copyright hypocrisy”

Here’s a bit of free advice: if you want to push overweening and censorious legislation like SOPA, make sure before you do so you aren’t going to later be caught using copyrighted photos without attribution on your campaign website.

That is, hide your own sins before you look to pre-emptively punish everyone else’s. You petty tyrants.

God, how I’ve grown to hate legislators.

35 Replies to ““Lamar Smith’s copyright hypocrisy””

  1. leigh says:

    That Jesus guy had much to say about this sort of activity.

  2. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Smith would be a good one for the Tea Party to make an example of

    pour l’encouragement des autres.

  3. scooter says:

    God, how I’ve grown to hate legislators.

    Really, who needs ’em. Good thing the courts and the EPA are making them irrelevant more and more every day.

  4. LBascom says:

    I was looking for a quote from one of the founding fathers I thought I remembered, warning about government exempting themselves from the laws they pass, but I was unsuccessful. I did find these interesting quotes though…

    Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government. -James Madison

    Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society. -John Adams

    When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more. -John Adams

    The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea. -John Adams

  5. Ernst Schreiber says:

    OT: Silly Mom! Kidney transplants are for real people, not your retard daughter Lebensunwertes Leben kid.

  6. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Mo’ betta Madison:

    I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution. And if that be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for a consistent and stable, more than for a faithful exercise of its powers. If the meaning of the text be sought in the changeable meaning of the words composing it, it is evident that the shapes and attributes of the Government must partake of the changes to which the words and phrases of all living languages are constantly subject. What a metamorphosis would be produced in the code of law if all its ancient phraseology were to be taken in its modern sense. [emph. add.] And that the language of our Constitution is already undergoing interpretations unknown to its founders, will I believe appear to all unbiased Enquirers into the history of its origin and adoption. (James Madison Letter to HGenry Lee, June 25, 1824,” in The Quotable Founding Fathers: A Treasury of 2,500 Wise and Witty Quotations from the Men andWomen who Created America, ed., Buckner F. Melton Jr. (Dulles, Va: Brassy’s, 2004), 48 quoted by Mark R. Levin, Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto (NY: Threshold Editions, 2009), 37.)

  7. happyfeet says:

    me too I hate them more than canned asparagus

  8. Danger says:

    Sexual harassment: Today’s Salem witch trials

    (Herman Cain had too much class to respond)

  9. LBascom says:

    Canned asparagus is like canned spinach, only it makes your pee stink.

  10. leigh says:

    Canned asparagus is bad bad bad. My mom once tried to sneak canned okra past us. Not a chance.

  11. motionview says:

    I’m not quite sure how Jeff feels about this EBL but I think you are self-linking a bit much. At least leave the links whole so we can see if you’re pointing to your blog.

  12. bh says:

    I had the same thought as motionview. (A few times.)

    You seem very affable, EBL Maybe you’re not aware of the etiquette. Better to just join the conversation and link your best posts when they’re relevant.

  13. geoffb says:

    The exact quote paints a slightly different picture.

    Here’s the quote: “If I had to vote in South Carolina, in order to keep this thing going, I’d vote for Newt.”

  14. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Not exactly a ringing endorsement, eh?

  15. dicentra says:

    Congress should not be allowed anywhere near DNS.

    No one should. DNS is sacred. Who in the hell do they think they are?

  16. dicentra says:

    Damn fools haven’t the faintest idea how the Internet works. They don’t know the difference between a router and a rutabaga, much less the complexities and centrality of DNS.

    This pisses me off like you can’t imagine. How dare they put their filthy little paws on something they can’t even begin to fathom!

    Stupid moneyed interests. I get intellectual property rights. I buy my MP3 files. I Netflix instead of bitstream. But they’re going about this all wrong: the tools exist to identify a domain owner in seconds, and they can go ahead and go after the pirates that way. Or they can use technological innovation to prevent ripping disks and suchlike.

    But no, the free, easy-to-use ARIN Whois tool must necessarily be trumped by the tools we hired to represent us.

  17. happyfeet says:

    EBL is a funny cow with a hairstyle me I heart the fashionista cows

    someone has to

  18. EBL says:

    I just thought you would dig those links so I provided them.

    No Sarah’s endorsement is not ringing. But she made her point. And while an endorsement of Santorum would have been better, an endorsement of Newt keeps the race going.

    And than you Happyfeet for commenting on my hair. It is my best feature.

  19. bh says:

    It’s cool, EBL. No problems.

  20. Ernst Schreiber says:

    We’ve been outbid Di.

  21. cranky-d says:

    Our elected representatives don’t know how to keep their damn hands off of anything. They don’t ask themselves, “Why should we do this?” They ask themselves, “Why shouldn’t we do this?” and you can bet they cannot think of a reason not to frel with anything.

    Lamppost. Rope. Some assembly required.

  22. BT says:

    So what does a bill like SOPA cost the rent seekers. 10-20-30 million? And we wonder why DC is broken.

  23. Squid says:

    What gets me is that they really don’t understand what they’re dealing with. The hardcore pirates have the tools and resources to quickly set up a parallel, shadow network that doesn’t rely on DNS. It wasn’t so long ago that we saw separate public and private networks working in parallel, until the September That Never Ended gave us the truly Interconnected Network that we have today.

    SOPA, at its core, is just gun control for the digital age. The government will make sure that it controls who and what gets disseminated among the law-abiding citizenry, while the outlaws (and the OUTLAW!s, I should hope) ignore the legal strictures and continue doing what they want.

    We’ve seen where this road leads. When the laws are widely perceived as unjust and arbitrary, the citizens lose respect for the law, the lawmakers, and the law enforcers. The result is Greece, if you’re lucky, or Venezuela, if you’re not.

  24. dicentra says:

    The result is Greece, if you’re lucky, or Venezuela, if you’re not.

    Or the Congo, on a really bad day.

  25. dicentra says:

    Our elected representatives don’t know how to keep their damn hands off of anything.

    GET YOUR FILTHY PAWS OFF MY INTERNET, YOU DAMN DIRTY APE!

    Love how little of that I had to change to make it relevant.

    I’m not really happy with Mike Lee’s statement on PIPA:

    PIPA has yet to make it to the Senate floor. When the bill went through the Judiciary Committee (on which I sit), I made clear that, if it reached the floor it in its current form, I could not support it. PIPA is a moving target at this point because some of the bill’s supporters, recognizing that many Americans are concerned with some of its provisions, are considering making adjustments to alleviate those concerns. My staff and I are working with the bill’s sponsors to encourage them to make the necessary changes. Unless those changes are made, I will vote against PIPA.

    Because that implies that he WOULD vote for the bill in some form.

    Not good enough, Senator. Not good enough.

  26. Ernst Schreiber says:

    A sensible point from the always level-headed Glenn Reynolds:

    You can scorn bought-and-paid-for shills for Big Media like Lamar Smith and Chris Dodd. But the real problem isn’t their lack of morals, but an oversized government that inevitably lures people with loose morals. When government has the opportunity to make or break industries, industries will find people to lobby it to make their industry, and break their competitors’. [emph. add.] The solution is to return the government to its — much, much smaller — intended constitutional scope.

  27. sdferr says:

    Reynolds seems to have some sort of classical liberal infection there. He should get that looked into, before someone else has it looked into for him.

  28. dicentra says:

    My fax-o-rama for the day (emphases original):

    Senator Orrin Hatch
    Senator Mike Lee
    Rep. Jason Chaffetz

    18 Jan 2012

    RE: PIPA/SOPA

    Gentlemen:

    Do NOT vote for a bill that touches DNS in any way whatsoever!

    I can guarantee you that there’s not a soul on Capitol Hill who knows the difference between HTTP and HTML or could distinguish between a router and a rutabaga, much less know how DNS functions.

    And I can further guarantee you that the moneyed interests who want their intellectual property protected through DNS blocking would rather buy a law than develop the technology to impede copyright infringement—it is, after all, cheaper to use the gubmint as goon squad than to actually innovate or to change with the times.

    A friend recently commented:

    Our elected representatives don’t know how to keep their damn hands off of anything. They don’t ask themselves, “Why should we do this?” They ask themselves, “Why shouldn’t we do this?” and you can bet they cannot think of a reason not to frel with anything.


    Don’t you DARE imagine that Congress Needs To Act in this matter.
    You do not. Copyright laws are already in place. It’s Hollywood and other buggy-whip manufacturers that need to invest in the future, not the law.

    Sen. Lee stated that he wouldn’t vote for PIPA unless certain revisions were made, but he did not state what those revisions were.

    Don’t revise: reject. Reject out of hand. Tear out root and branch. Kill it with fire. To permit tampering with DNS in one dubious instance is to open a Pandora’s box of unimaginable consequences.

    That the U.S. Congress would even permit such an outrageous bill to be considered is despicable. Besides, the hackers will get around your tinkering anyway, leaving the rest of us censored and tyrannized.

    Sorry for not giving you named credit for the quote, cranky. I’ll take the 3am knock on the door this time around.

  29. cranky-d says:

    I don’t need named credit. I just wish I had worded it better.

  30. dicentra says:

    This is good news: http://t.co/fqnZLTL0

    Hatch withdrew his co-sponsorship, but he did say “it’s not ready for prime time.”

    Cripes, Orrin, just kill it with fire. Hands off!

  31. SDN says:

    The result is Greece, if you’re lucky, or Venezuela, if you’re not.

    I’m aiming for the second or third coming of Robin Hood, myself. The answer wasn’t to knock off King John, or even the Sheriff; the answer was to make the typical man-at-arms and tax collector thoroughly aware that leaving people alone enhanced life expectancy. They don’t have enough cops or troops to guard all of them.

  32. Pellegri says:

    And then this happened.

Comments are closed.