Empire of the Iguanadons

A wise man once said: "It ain't over 'til its over." Nowhere has that been proven more true than tonight in South Carolina where Newt Gingrich has emerged with a landslide victory in their Republican primaries. In a race which has seen all manner of stunning results, this should come as no surprise. However, I think it comes as a rebuke of the media attacks that have been ravaging Gingrich all week. The voters of South Carolina saw through the media attack machine and with a loud voice, declared they'll have none of it.

We're also down to 4 candidates as of tonight. Jon Huntsman withdrew, and gave his endorsement to Mitt Romney.
Rick Perry also dropped out, giving his endorsement to Newt Gingrich. A development I managed to completely miss somehow. That damned Oblivion gate problem had me distracted.

Though the results are not fully tallied, the writing is on the wall. So I'll get right to it.

With 90% of precincts reporting, as of 7:00PM PST:

Newt Gingrich - 40% (214,702 votes, 21 delegates)
Mitt Romney - 27% (143,508 votes)
Rick Santorum - 17% (92,834 votes)
Ron Paul - 13% (71,917 votes)

Delegate Totals to Date

Newt Gingrich: 21 delegates.
Mitt Romney: 19 delegates.
Rick Santorum: 12 delegates.
Ron Paul: 3 delegates.

1,144 required to win.

Here's to hoping that Newt stays with it. At this point, he is in fact the best candidate of the bunch. Last week, I was all set to call this Romney's race. I'm not backing off from that just yet, but Newt has turned this into a serious contest with this blowout victory tonight. Now if we could just get Ron Paul out of the way.

The next contest up is 10 days from now in Florida. We'll see what comes of that since they've been bitch-slapped by the RNC for holding their primary "too early".
.........................
"It is pointless to resist, my son." -- Darth Vader
"Resistance is futile." -- The Borg
"Mother's coming for me in the dragon ships. I don't like these itchy clothes, but I have to wear them or it frightens the fish." -- Thurindil

Well. I guess that's that then.

So unless you've been living under a rock fo the last few months, you're probably aware of SOPA - the Stop Online Piracy Act. It's a bill that was winding its way through Congress which aimed to address the issue of overseas content piracy and counterfeit product sales. The legislation drew a slew of protests over part of its implementation method, which even if you're living in a cave, should be well known to you by now. It's the same kind of doomsaying nonsense that always comes up with internet legislation: The evil USA is stamping out my free speech!

Several websites have chosen today to "go dark" in opposition to the bill. Most of them are ill-informed morons though. They're almost universally putting forth a spew of propaganda about how it spells the end of the 1st Amendment on the internet, how "just anyone" can have an entire domain thrown offline never to be seen again, and how folks will be rotting in jail just like all those Iranian or Chinese dissidents. Which does a severe disservice to the actual plight of Iranian and Chinese dissidents by trivializing their situations for propaganda purposes.

What this does of course is make a gullible public who has no clue WTF is going on panic. They then flood their congressmen with thousands of emails with identical text from some ill conceived online petition about how they don't want their free speech curbed. Most folks you may talk to don't even know what the purpose of the legislation is, much less the process behind how it actually works to seek a site being taken offline.

There are even several sites involved in the "go dark" day that are using communist symbols to promote their agenda. That's just lovely. It has all the same hallmarks of the Occupy movement. Which isn't something to be proud of.

All of this should of course sound eerily familiar, unless your cave didn't have internet in 1998. I'm referring of course to the doomsday predictions for free speech and innovation that were raised over the DMCA back then. None of which have since been realized. The boy is crying wolf yet again.

The reality is, the legislation as proposed does not do any of the things people are scaring themselves silly over. It is specifically targeted toward foreign websites who are engaged in activity which is already criminal. It merely gives the content providers and product makers tools they don't currently have to enforce their copyright and trademark rights. There's even a rather extensive due process involved that's probably leagues ahead of how the DMCA operates.

Read along with the actual copy of the legislation. Specifically, Section 102, subsection b. The process by which a site can be taken to task is detailed there. The US Attorney General must initiate it, and they have to go through a notice and counter-notice procedure similar to how the DMCA works. Note that nowhere in there does it say that "just anyone" can file this notice. So already you actually have more protection against bogus claims than you do with the DMCA.

If notice is not acted upon, the AG still has to go to court and get an injunction against the site. Providers will not be required to do ANYTHING until a court order has been issued on the matter.

The rest of the proposed legislation deals with plenty of other things that also have similar high bars for action. So the only conclusion I can draw is that the majority of those opposed are either pirates or counterfeiters, or companies that directly benefit from the activities of both.

It is also worth mentioning, since every last article I have read to date utterly fails to mention it, ONLY a copyright holder has any legal standing to sue over infringement of their work. Similarly with trademark and patent issues. Facts like this are poison to those opposed though because it doesn't fit their agenda politics of "anyone can take any site down".

I am generally against the idea of passing new laws to deal with problems that existing laws can already address. This country has enough junk legislation on the books already that we're not paying attention to. In this case, however, the tools don't exist in the law to seek remedy against a site that's stealing your stuff overseas. There may be some implementation problems with the DNS portion of SOPA, but rather than protest like wild animals and whip up a public frenzy over an issue that never existed, one should instead seek to improve the bill to remove the objections.

Piracy and counterfeiting are not going away. The issue will come up in Congress again in the future. Tabling the bill they have now will only delay the inevitable. Hopefully by then the rabid and uninformed opposition will give way to reasoned analysis and FACTS. We wouldn't be in this situation at all if people would quit feeling as though they were entitled to their movies, music, and games, without having to pay for them.

As an aside, I posted some responses last night over at TES Nexus. For those who's caves didn't get the memo, that's a game modding site primarily focused on the Elder Scrolls series. My responses, save one, have all been deleted since last night. Which I consider rather ironic given the outcry against this bill. Censorship is only bad if you're censoring someone who agrees with you?
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"It is pointless to resist, my son." -- Darth Vader
"Resistance is futile." -- The Borg
"Mother's coming for me in the dragon ships. I don't like these itchy clothes, but I have to wear them or it frightens the fish." -- Thurindil

Well. I guess that's that then.

Round 2 is now complete tonight with the New Hampshire Primary more or less a done deal. The winner wasn't exactly a huge surprise but the WTF moment came with who finished second: Ron Paul. I really have no words to express just how disappointing that is on so many levels. How scary would it be for Ron Paul to wind up as the VP nominee? ( Continued... )
.........................
"It is pointless to resist, my son." -- Darth Vader
"Resistance is futile." -- The Borg
"Mother's coming for me in the dragon ships. I don't like these itchy clothes, but I have to wear them or it frightens the fish." -- Thurindil

Well. I guess that's that then.

It's hard to believe it's already been 4 long miserable years since the last election and primary cycle, but it has. The long wait is finally over and the Republican party is finally getting down to the business of picking the candidate we'll be putting up against Barack Obama in November. So of course that means it's time for me to begin covering the race in earnest. ( Continued... )
.........................
"It is pointless to resist, my son." -- Darth Vader
"Resistance is futile." -- The Borg
"Mother's coming for me in the dragon ships. I don't like these itchy clothes, but I have to wear them or it frightens the fish." -- Thurindil

Well. I guess that's that then.

So it's that time already. A new year is upon us. Like so many before, 2011 flew by like it wasn't even there. As is tradition here, it's time for a look back at the highlights (and lowlights) of 2011. Worth noting that today marks this blog's 5th anniversary. Holy crap.

( Continued... )
.........................
"It is pointless to resist, my son." -- Darth Vader
"Resistance is futile." -- The Borg
"Mother's coming for me in the dragon ships. I don't like these itchy clothes, but I have to wear them or it frightens the fish." -- Thurindil

Well. I guess that's that then.