I am very pessimistic, because it seems governments just won't stop trying to pass such laws (the same thing is going on in Germany where I live). If this time it fails, they will just try again, until eventually they succeed.
In Germany the law is pushed under the pretense of fighting child pornography. Some people who are against it are now being described in media as people who are against fighting child pornography - even by tech magazines that should have a better understanding.
I am very pessimistic, because it seems governments just won't stop trying to pass such laws
And by definition, they have deeper pockets than us -- they can afford to push it farther than we can, because in the end, they control the guys with the guns who can come and take everything away from us.
A few years back I was involved in a local controversy. The local authorities made three tries to pass a referendum, being rejected each time. Finally, on the fourth try, they were victorious. There was no difference between what was proposed in #3 and #4, except:
1. They changed voting hours, so that polls were only open in the afternoon; and
2. They sent postcards to the entire town (paid for by us, of course) containing information that was objectively false. [1]
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[1] Not relevant to this discussion, but the referendum was for school construction. The proposal contained a bunch of frills such as expanding the cafeteria. The false mailing I mentioned explicitly stated that the proposal was for classroom space only, which was patently false. But the mailing was timed to arrive the afternoon before the vote, when it was too late to do anything about it. And they knew we couldn't afford a lawyer, and the amount that could be done ex post facto was limited anyway. No one ever held them to account.
Let's be honest, the drivers behind this are the content companies and various individual legislators. They're the ones who keep pushing it every time it fails. "Government" as it pertains to legislation is just a collection of 535 individuals (adjust figure for your nationality). Smoothing that all into a single proper noun will hamper understanding of what's actually going on.
"Government" as it pertains to legislation is just a collection of 535 individuals (adjust figure for your nationality). Smoothing that all into a single proper noun will hamper understanding of what's actually going on.
That's true in one sense. However, pretending that everything would work out fine were it not for a few bad apples will certainly hamper attempts to keep the system running properly.
It would be far better to acknowledge that much of the behavior of a democracy results from Public Choice Theory, and so it's going to work out this way even if your favored politicians are lucky enough to win the election. With that out of the way, we can start to shore up the places where the system is vulnerable to malfeasance.
Yeah, I agree actually, I wasn't claiming it's "just a few bad apples" when we just had a throw out the bums election and the new bums are just as welcoming to anyone with a check to sign. IMO the bad apples here are the lobbyists who seem to be a permanent fixture.
So, 2 steps:
1) Call congressmen to directly remedy problem in this particular case (I haven't done this but should, they do listen).
2) Address the problem of lobbying generally, that's a bigger discussion and every idea I have to fix it could have unintended consequences.
It sounds like you're describing local politics in general. Something similar happened in a city in which I used to live. The mayor and part of the city council wanted to change the city's liquor laws (not a bad thing in itself), but they used misleading information in the voter information brief to do so. Their information brief suggested that there was no previous limit on e.g. distance between bars and elementary schools, when in fact their ordinance reduced an existing minimum distance.
There always seems to be a pretense for these kinds of laws. And the internet is always the scapegoat. You never hear of politicians wanting to set up permanent police checks on the highway because criminals use the highways. Or set up checks to verify lawful use of electricity from the electrical grid because someone might be using it in an unlawful activity. The public wouldn't stand for that. And they shouldn't stand for this.
I was watching DC news last night and it was a story about the guy who shot at the White House last week. They went on about where the guy was from, possible motives, etc. The story ended with "police search the DC site of Occupy Wall Street for the gunman and didn't find him." Wow, so Occupy Wall Street is for shooting at the White House/killing the president?
Yes, but we run the internet. Many of us here at HN control vast amounts of web realestate. Every time they push for censorship push back, educate your users, show them on your site an example of what can happen.
In Germany the law is pushed under the pretense of fighting child pornography. Some people who are against it are now being described in media as people who are against fighting child pornography - even by tech magazines that should have a better understanding.