Finnaly! I’m so gald this is out in the open and being discussed because of some citizen activists drawing attention to it.

awww man, this just makes me want to visit reddit. 

He makes a very good point. Congress can’t do a damned thing about things that matter, but as soon as a lobbyist cries about a tummy-ache, they’re all over it. Our government is such a sham.

I’m surprised Libertarians and the Tea Party are not decrying our government’s efforts to have more control over our lives with SOPA.

How can giving the Gov’t the ability to block websites ever be a good thing? Power corrupts and this can and will be abused if it goes through.

Who would have expected the founder of reddit would be so eloquent. Socially awkward penguin is a big lie.

Why would they?  It’s government control that favors a large industry.  

Libertarians and Tea Partiers seem to believe in liberty and freedom until a company cries foul.  Then they’re extending their hands, eager to have them shackled because it serves their omnipotent and omnicient deity: The Market.

Goddamn, kn0thing is a handsome man. 

Apparently you know little about the Tea Party or Libertarians. 

http://www.youtube.com

uh oh! now hollywood can sue THIS site because it has a link to a site with a 5 yr old singing ‘baby got back’… thanx SOPA/PIPA

Just wanted to add my voice to those who are against SOPA and PIPA, and let my representatives
know that any support for this legislation will guarantee my vote against them in future elections.

i urge you all to do the same

I support piracy, don’t talk for everyone. The worlds creativity should be shared freely and openly, not locked up and sold.

This felt like an ambush in the disguise of an interview.  Four SOPA/PIPA supporters that kept interrupting their guest who was trying to explain why these bills were detrimental to his business.  I guess this is how the content corporations are going to try to win this debate.

Maybe you should pay more attention to what’s going on before making claims about large groups or movements of people. Ron Paul (father of the Tea Party and the modern libertarian movement) was the first politician to come out against SOPA, before it was fashionable to. As did his supporters who make up a about 15% of the Republican base.

I’m sorry, I missed your retort.  What was it again?

If you’re talking about that dork in the clip, then no.

Uh, Libertarians ARE against SOPA/PIPA. 

http://reason.com/blog/2012/01/18/some-views-on-sopa-pipa 

Congress can’t create jobs period. All Congress can do is create the conditions for job growth. He made a logic fail.

That you know squat.

Go to HotAir. Many posters are against it and have been. Keep up.

Something along the lines of although you may gain gratification from your nonsensical statement that in no manner addresses the sentiments of the Tea Party or Libertarians. Your accusation simply does not hold water. Just because these people do not support a private economy that is centrally planned by the government does not mean that they support unfair advantage imposed by the government.. the direction this country is headed and the path this country has long been on that both Libertarians and the Tea Party fight against.  Your dribble sounds good but it your argument carries no weight. If you are opposed to unfair advantage granted to Big Business and Wall Street types why don’t you start by learning about the Fed and who it really serves, it’s activity since 2008 and learn for yourself about just who exactly it is that is destroying the middle class of this country.  The Fed serves the Banking and Wall Street interests and not the interest of the people and it never has since its inception.  Bankers for Bankers, it is owned by and run by the banking industry but it independently controls the money supply of this country and has the ability to rob our bank accounts by creating Trillions of dollars over night to do with what it pleases.  If you take a look you will see that it invariably serves banking interests.

Please remember that the Fed was created by Democratic Progressives as they saw it as a way to fund the expansion of the federal government through easy access to debt funding…  I think that it can be easily said that the Bankers were smarter than Wilson and got exactly what they wanted, control of the countries economy and the government.  I don’t know why folks such as yourself hate the message of Libertarians and the Tea Party types in regards to free markets, as since the turn of the century progressives have done everything within their power to not allow the free market system to perform as a free market and they have been successful to that end.

But don’t take my word for it…  Here’s a little clip of an dedicated liberal explaining in part how this has worked over the years.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUpXDZFtEHw 

You dislike the Tea Party and Libertarians for the wrong reasons and it would appear to me at least that your animosity is not well informed. 

Sounds like someone’s splitting hairs.  Of course Congress can’t create jobs.  I don’t think he was insinuating that they could directly create jobs.  He’s saying that under the current conditions, lobbyists > the populace.

Sorry that it sailed over your head.

The only piece of land a pro-piracy argument can really stand on is the fact that the people making these distribution decisions aren’t the actual artists themselves, but middle men, people involved in a dying industry because of the internet. As an artist, I have no problem with someone using my artwork for their own enjoyment for free. But if they begin to sell it, or use it to promote their own business ventures without giving me a cut, that’s where I have to draw the line.

The fact machine is working double-time today!  What a debate!

As someone who has no love for Libertarians or the Tea Party, many of them are.

In fact, it’s one of the few things I think I can agree with them on.

███
█████ █████ ███████ ███ █████ ██ █ ███! This comment has been found in
violation of H.R. 3261, S.O.P.A and Senate Bill 968, P.I.P.A. and has
been removed.

Sorry if the fact that Obama is Wall Street is over your head.

Facts would suit you better.

Obama plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on his re-election bid. I love when liberals try to defend that. Attempt your best shot.

Shouldn’t that be up to the creators? There are plenty of people who’ll provide creative works to the world for free who can sustain themselves doing other things, but what about those who want to earn a living doing something they love? Declaring all creative works should be free is nice in theory, but in practice it would stifle creativity as even creative people need food and shelter. You wouldn’t make someone who worked in a steel mill work for free, that would be considered slavery, people in creative fields need the same consideration.

Now there should be limits to that, corporations should be made to do things with creative works, make them available for people to obtain legally or risk losing them back to the creators or to the public domain, and estates who had nothing to do with the creation of the work shouldn’t be allowed to own the copyrights to it until the end of time like people like Disney would like to.

Grilled? I thought the reddit founder made his case extremely well and was given a chance to express his views, and wasn’t really challenged at all …

Perhaps the guy who wrote the headline got pwned on Reddit once, or a lot more than once.  Perhaps he will be mocked there again tomorrow. 

For one, your rebuttal makes absolutely no sense in this conversation. All of a sudden you’re talking about Obama when Rushy was pointing out your poorly thought out and naive comment.

Secondly, many “Liberals” don’t want Obama back in the White House nor do they support his spending.

And of course he is spending hundred of millions of dollars to be re-elected, it is We The People who have allowed such a thing to occur. Our political system is set up to where dollar signs matter more that most everything else.

Congratulations on failing.

No, get it.  I really do.  You guys are mad at the big daddy figure (the Government,) likely due to an Oedipus complex, which is pretty gross.  You guys should seriously get that in check.  

But you’re ignoring the fact that if your free market were allowed to operate as freely as you claim you wish, SOPA would be the very least of our concerns right now.  SOPA exists because the entertainment industry wants it to.      If they could do it without Congress, they certainly would.  In fact, I’m sure they’d do a hell of a lot more than that.  

I don’t care too much for a large government.  On the surface, I agree with Libertarians:  smaller government is a great idea.  However, upon further inspection, I equate it to Anarchism, because the government is a necessary buffer zone in many cases, and in rare cases such as this one, it gives us the opportunity to oppose the blind will of a market force.

Couple mistakes here – first off, it’s the Stop Online PIRACY Act (not Privacy). Silly Mediaite.

Secondly, Steve Huffman is the other Reddit co-founder, along with Alexis. Not Steve Hoffman like it says here.

Nice way to dodge the subject.  I win.

Thank you for catching that. Fixed.

I get a real “Network” vibe every time I hear one of the anchors/commentators having to open up with “by the way, our company BlahblahblahCorp is for the legislation, and now on to an honest nuanced debate between a gang of people for roughly three to five minutes max.”

Quickly, painlessly, tell congress what you think of SOPA:

http://americancensorship.org/

No rational person wants to see the total demise of government, there is much that the government does that is not only necessary but they are uniquely positioned in our society to perform those functions better than any other entity. That however does not give government license to grow at its current pace or to involve itself into every aspect of our lives.

Look to the current dysfunction of government, this is nothing new, it may have come to a point that is worse than the norm, but it is hardly unusual. Moreover the government is often deceitful in how it presents its programs and motives to the people of this country, and rarely do their programs have the desired outcomes. The only penalty borne for government failure is to the people, the government never pays the price for their incompetence, now we see them spreading this immunity to their chosen friends in the private sector. Please, there is a role for the government to play and it is much more limited than the role that they would have you believe that they should be playing. A free market would be the great arbitrator if it were left alone to function as it should.. Would there be times of distress and of innocent individuals being hurt? Probably so, but no worse than what we have experienced at the hands of a corrupted government, at least in the free markets we would eventually see those bad institutions be punished, which is more than I can say for the current environment that our government has created.

Please do not mistakenly believe that I think that one party is better than another as both have fed and gotten fat at the trough of big government… I may align more with the ideals of one party over another but I have no faith whatsoever of those who control either of the two parties.

It is unfortunate that the news media generally sets aside so little on-camera time for such an important discussion.  I guess it’s better than nothing, but it ultimately reduces the conversation to mere soundbites such that one may as well be reading headlines. Granted, I’m sure a large chunk of their viewerbase has no interest in the SOPA/PIPA discussion and so it’s not in the network’s interest to actually provide a means for nuanced discussion in regard to viewer numbers. Regardless, I’d rather they remove all fluff segments (e.g. Kardashian coverage) to lengthen time for more substantial topics…and to Alexis’ credit, he did a  good job working within such unfortunate constraints. His media appearances continue to improve as he hones his news network craft.

Looks like someone else has a Rushy complex. And a Barry complex? LOL.

If Barry and company deem SOPA a good thing, most of his sheep will all squeal merrily that it is mmm, mmm, GOOOD. Are you a sheep? We all know the answer to that, don’t we?

You mean the same “Barry” (the joke’s old, by the way) who said that he’ll still support other types of regulation against the Internet, though he disagrees with some of the technical workings of SOPA?  No thanks.  I’ll still be against it. Nice attempt at pigeon-holing me, though.

What’s old, Rushy, is references to someone’s drug use that stopped nearly a decade ago, while seemingly being a liberal who cares a whit about celebrity and Hollyweird drug use. The mouthpeices of the entertainment industry, and cheerleaders of Barry 0bama do drugs all the time. Do you show such disdain for them? I think we all know the answer to that. Michael Jackson died of a drug overdose after being on drugs for YEARS, and he died a liberal darling, lionized by the entertainment industry, that LOVES your boy, Barry. How is that pigeon hole, anyway? How’s that guano workin’ out for ya?

Hey, exit question: did your boy Barry dabble in drugs as a pampered abandoned, fatherless boy?

RushyContin. What a cute name! Funny that your boy in the WH is one that did illegal drugs. Drug use that would prohibit any other American citizen from being anywhere near sensitive security information, top secret information, or nuclear facilities in the military. Yet he is your boy. As a liberal.

RushyContin:The fact machine is working double-time today!  What a debate!

You couldn’t debate your way out of a wet paper bag.

George W. Bush, etc.

Sigh…

Just because I like to get a rise out of hard right-wingers doesn’t make me a liberal, simian, and Obama is most certainly not my “boy.”  

Lush Rimbaugh still deserves to be harassed because of his hard line position against drug users, while he was railing some hard lines of his own.  Let’s not forget about his other pill problem (and young boy problem.)  He wasn’t a washed-up and delusional pop icon whom I couldn’t care less about.  He’s someone telling other people how their value system should be structured while doing exactly what he was preaching against.  F*&k that guy.

Okay, so Barack Obama dabbled in drugs as a youth (marijuana, cocaine.)  Splendid.  So did these guys.  Maybe you’ve heard of a few of them:

George W. Bush (Marijuana and Cocaine)
Bill Clinton (Marijuana)
Franklin Pierce (Hashish)
Ulysses S. Grant (Cocaine)
George Washington (Marijuana)
Thomas Jefferson (Marijuana)
John F. Kennedy (Opiates, Barbituates, Steroids, Marijuana, LSD)
Richard Nixon (antiepileptics)

I have nothing against drug use – do what you want with your own body – but I do have something against hypocrisy from fat, obnoxious, loud-mouthed pundits.

Zing!

Eh, at least you’re sincere.  And I’m honestly bored at poking  fun.  

If you think libertarians and tea partiers support this legislation, then you haven’t been paying attention.

I can’t imagine these “journalists” are able to report the story honestly when their bosses are paying millions to lobbyists to support the legislation.

That’s the irony: if SOPA passes, there will be less opportunity to create jobs because small companies and startups won’t have the resources to be able to comply with the censorship requirements of the law, consequently moving those businesses and jobs to other countries that don’t have censorship.

Doesnt matter what Soledad Obrien thinks, Google says 4.5 million people signed anti-SOPA petition today take that VIACOM, COMCAST, MPAA and Rupert Murdoch we dont wanna go back to our couches and get told what we should think by fake Journalists brought to you by Govts. and Lobbyists, on our couch like the old days.We have more real journalists like Jeremy Schahill and Glenn Greenwald that are doing much better work then MSM could ever dream of.

Dude – Him spending hundreds of millions of dollars has nothing to do with PAC money.

Epic fail.

Do you have the same anger with unions and their money?

I think Rush wins since you’re obsessed with him.

SOPA is a bad thing, however the principles that you disagree with conservatives disagree with on merit in regards to other policy choices and we get yelled at.

Again, you’re on the wrong subject. We’re talking about SOPA. Say it with me: S-O-P-A. Stop making me look good.

it’s all those damn banks we saved…. they took our jerrrbs!

if ” Barry” passed this i would note vote for him again. so no MOST OF HIS “SHEEP” would switch the vote to someone else.

he beat you a few posts earlier Ndanielson lol. So WHAT that Obama smoked maybe still smokes POT and maybe snorted COCAIN. who the hell that lived through the 70-80′s didn’t do COCAIN? most of the republicans you’ve voted for probably SNORTED IT UP TOO! saying that he used “illegal drugs” does not do anything. Ismoke pot every damn day. and wouldmuch rather have a “pothead” then a “drunk” in the WH.

this is when all Journalists should write about how horrible it is all at once so that it’s either fire every single journalist there is or do nothing about it.