People don’t listen. I recently did a little test on my personal Facebook account. I posted a quote from a Republican candidate, said how the quote sounded like Pre-WWII Nazi propaganda and waited. I was not disappointed as people pointed to only part of the statement.
It was an interesting experiment that confirmed what I feared. Most people see and hear only what they want to, and are blind to the rest. So what does this have to do with the world of IT? Plenty. think about when you deal with a customer/client/user. Do you only hear party of what they are saying,or do you hear the whole thing? Is the client only hearing certain things you are saying? Where is the disconnect and how can one get past it?
Now this disconnect is shown in all its glory with SOPA and PIPA. Congress is listening to the entertainment industry. the refuse to hear what the tech industry has to say. It is a sham that could make us more unsecure. The techniques of domain blocking they are talking about are not only used by oppressive regimes to control what their citizens can see on the Internet, but is used by the very same people that they are trying to stop.
Think about this, you get an e-mail from what looks like a legitimate source, and get sent to a good forgery of the website. The link showed the right address, until you really dig into it. Next thing you know, you have become a victim of identity theft. This is the sort of misdirection that SOPA and PIPA use. Redirecting and falsifying the DNS records. This is what DNS-Sec, which has been years in the making, is supposed to curb or stop.
The RIAA and MPAA, who are so knowledgeable and innovative in the tech world that they are still trying to avoid it, swear that these laws won’t harm security and won’t damage DNS-Sec. Yet the experts who have been DENIED a chance to talk to the committees about the technical issues, are saying the exact opposite. Congress still won’t listen.
Don’t get me wrong, as much as I don’t like the RIAA and MPAA for overextending copyrights so that they don’t have to innovate, they have a right to want help in controlling piracy of their work. To me its not for the Artists who make millions of dollars, but for the lowly engineers, the secretaries, the people who make normal wages and want to keep their jobs. Yes piracy is not as big as it once was, and as more and easier legitimate means come to get entertainment, it goes down. Also, you will never be able to completely stop it. The pirates always find a way around things.
In a world where Identity Theft is a larger problem than Piracy, where something such as DNS-Sec and other security measures that are impacted or killed by bills such as SOPA and PIPA, what is the right solution. SOPA and PIPA definitely are not. Feel free to e-mail this to your congressmen and senators, for them hearing from us, the people who employ them, is the only way to truly stop it.