Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The next SOPA

marco.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 173 posts

Re: The next SOPA

#121

Post by nbashaw »

I'm surprised Marco didn't mention the most empirically effective alternative - make our own legislative investments. Where is the tech industry lobbying firm? Are the industry leaders like Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook pumping money into it?

Obviously this is a short term solution that ends up making the root problem - money's influence in politics - worse. But sometimes you have to pick between the lesser of two evils. I'd rather have a good set of laws brought about by an unfair process than a bad set of laws brought on because we sat around complaining about how unfair the system is.

Re: The next SOPA

#122

Post by mrdingle »

ramanujan wrote: post #116

Marco's heart is in the right place here, but campaign finance reform actually ends up disproportionately empowering media outlets. While various kinds of direct donations to candidates are capped or made more difficult by CFR, newspapers and television outlets aren't banned from writing stories on particular candidates, even up to the day or morning of the election. Because advertising can't happen, but articles can…

Campaign finance reform and biased media coverage are different beasts entirely. Murdoch owns Fox whether corporations are people or not, and he loves your disparaged argument. Besides, I'd rather be lied to in the face by the news that have my senators bought and sold behind closed doors.

Also, all of the plan you propose is already happening. It's called the creative process. I bet a large portion, if not the majority, of your entertainment is now facilitated by self published content given away for free on the internet. Youtube videos, remixes, wikipedia, flickr, twitter, facebook updates. All of this stuff is 'High Quality' culture that is available to you for free.

Copyright is great. It's necessary. It facilitates things like Creative Commons and the GPL. Abusive copyright holding organizations on the other hand are not so great. They exist only to exert control over their holdings and have recently risen to unprecedented levels of power because of the money we directly give them.

To call a boycott against these organizations futile is to miss the point of the boycott. It's not about putting them out of business. It's about awareness and slowly changing the overall public perception of an issue so fundamental and important as copyright reform and voting with your dollars.

So try not to get so discouraged and remember you give them the power. Seriously. Vote with you dollars (and with a ballot).

Re: The next SOPA

#123

Post by marcamillion »

Here is the problem with this solution...the sacrifice is too large, from too many people. If I and the entire HN crowd (say 1,500,000 people?) decide not to watch any more movies - while that may depress their earnings a bit...I would think the net effect would be about a 20% reduction in earnings. The vast majority of HNers probably don't buy every single movie they watch.

So, the real solution needs to be one that is incremental and can be adopted more mainstream. I don't know what it is, but I don't see 'stop watching all movies' as a realistic goal.

Re: The next SOPA

#124

Post by techiferous »

beagle3 wrote: post #109
techiferous wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> seeking common ground, and compromising > negotiation This. Realizing that the other side is not the devil and has legitimate interests of their own, even if they are clumsy in communicating them or harmful in their actions. Viewing the other side as evil is lazy. Coming to authentic, common ground is very hard work.

Not this. The truth is, there is a small group (MPAA/RIAA members) that can profit immensely from an act that is detrimental to the rest of society, and they pursue it. It's about as "evil" as one basketball team can consider their opponent "evil"; the title is useless. But just like on the basketball court, you have to do your best to defeat the other team, because they are doing their best to defeat you. And unlike…

I don't disagree with what you're saying.

I just think that if we techies try to understand some of the concerns of the copyright holders, we are in a position to propose legislation of our own. Until then, we are resigning ourselves to playing defense.

Re: The next SOPA

#125

Post by jacoblyles »

The focus on campaign finance reform is wrong-headed and risks fracturing the internet freedom coalition.

America has a strong tradition of individual rights and liberties, stronger than anywhere else in the world. This is especially true regarding the rights of free speech and the free distribution of information. It is possible to build on these principles to create a platform that appeals to a large swathe of the American electorate, an “Electronic Bill of Rights”.

We cannot taint this with other pet causes on the right or left. I am looking for allies right now to help push for pro-freedom legislation that will push the middle in our direction. I’ve explicitly written off working with freedom advocates that are too heavily invested in other high-profile political stances with a partisan lean.

For this to succeed, we need to reach both the Tea Party and the OWS crowd while not alienating anybody. The good news is that the mainstream is with us. President Obama and all four contenders for the Republican Presidential nomination oppose SOPA. Let’s take this momentum and use it to erect lasting bulwarks to protect internet liberty.

Let’s pass something that we can all agree on. Let’s not get bogged down arguing with each other over campaign reform, or other peripheral issues.

Re: The next SOPA

#126

Post by scott_s »

snowwrestler wrote: post #40

But I like to watch movies. I think a lot of movies are great--great enough to pay for them. Why should I shoot myself in the foot to keep someone else from shooting me in the foot? This idea that the root cause of all bad legislation is political donations: it's wrong, and not supported by the data. The vast majority of political donations are made by people who are not lobbyists. No one raised more political money…

I agree with your conclusion, but your statement on political donations is contrary to my understanding of the process.

Donations don't literally buy votes, but what they do literally buy is face time. That is, people in Congress will hold fundraisers, and lobbyists pay to attend those fundraisers. The understanding is that the lobbyists who attend those fundraisers will have time to talk to the politician about the issues their clients care about.

This episode of Planet Money clearly demonstrates this: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/11/01/141913370/the-tues...

Now, if you have two sides to an issue, and only one side of that issue has active lobbyists who buy that face time with people in Congress, then you will have a situation where the people in Congress only understand one side of the issue.

Re: The next SOPA

#127

Post by scott_s »

DanI-S wrote: post #95
snowwrestler wrote: post #40

But I like to watch movies. I think a lot of movies are great--great enough to pay for them. Why should I shoot myself in the foot to keep someone else from shooting me in the foot? This idea that the root cause of all bad legislation is political donations: it's wrong, and not supported by the data. The vast majority of political donations are made by people who are not lobbyists. No one raised more political money…

This idea that the root cause of all bad legislation is political donations: it's wrong, and not supported by the data. The vast majority of political donations are made by people who are not lobbyists. If lobbyists' money didn't give their words extra weight, why would they donate any of it?

It's not that money gives lobbyists's words extra weight. Money allows their words to be heard. That is, without the contributions, you don't get to talk to the politician. Contributions are an entry fee to a meeting.

Re: The next SOPA

#128

Post by armandososa »

mrdingle wrote: post #122
ramanujan wrote: post #116

Marco's heart is in the right place here, but campaign finance reform actually ends up disproportionately empowering media outlets. While various kinds of direct donations to candidates are capped or made more difficult by CFR, newspapers and television outlets aren't banned from writing stories on particular candidates, even up to the day or morning of the election. Because advertising can't happen, but articles can…

Campaign finance reform and biased media coverage are different beasts entirely. Murdoch owns Fox whether corporations are people or not, and he loves your disparaged argument. Besides, I'd rather be lied to in the face by the news that have my senators bought and sold behind closed doors. Also, all of the plan you propose is already happening. It's called the creative process. I bet a large portion, if not the major…

I may be wrong, but I think his point is: even if they couldn't bribe politicians, they still could blackmail them with bad coverage.

Re: The next SOPA

#129

Post by bh42222 »

A LOT of people have fought very hard for campaign finance reform over the past 20 years I can remember. The result is more money in politics than ever.

Supporting campaign finance reform will do nothing. We tried that over decades, the supreme court shot it down.

You have two options:

1. Constitutional reform.

Make it specifically distinguish campaign finance from free speech. No plain law will ever stand with the constitution as it is today.

2. Greatly increase the number of representatives.

This may be a lot easier as it is just a plain law. At some point we decided too many members of the house would be too chaotic. So we hugely raised the ratio of people to representatives.

This favors the lobbying power of interest groups.

While individuals still have a lot of influence if they write or in person visit their representative, it is universally accepted that the fewer people are in your district the more influence each individual has. And the opposite is also true. This is why, unlike the senate, the house is supposed to be the people's house.

If you dramatically raise the total number of representative you bring power closer to the people.

Will this also result in grid lock? Yes! Is that still totally worth it? YES!

Re: The next SOPA

#130

Post by scott_s »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #24

I don't quite understand. Are people suggesting that congress considers legislation primarily based on campaign contributions and that this is the same for both main parties? So they will only go against legislation proposed by lobbyists if they feel the votes they would lose would outweigh the benefit of those contributions to their next campaign? If that is the case then I'm sorry to say but your entire government…

As I've said elsewhere in the thread, I think many people get the motivations confused. We don't have to assume that the politicians are voting on bills based on how they think the lobbyists will contribute to their next campaign. Rather, you only get to talk to people in Congress if you make campaign contributions. Those contributions get you into parties where you have a chance to talk to the person in Congress.

The tech industry does a poor job of lobbying. For that reason, only MPAA and RIAA lobbyists have been talking to people in Congress. Imagine a random person who did not understand the internet and technology in general. Now imagine that they had, over the course of many months, only ever heard the RIAA and MPAA explain their side of the issue, and had never heard tech people explain the other side. How do you think they would vote?

We don't need to assume a calculation of "If I don't vote yes on this bill, lobbyist Joe will not give me any more money." It's sufficient for them to think "Lobbyist Joe made a lot of sense when he explained this issue to me. I'm going to vote yes." Lobbyist Jane, who would explain why this issue is a terrible idea, does not exist.

Post reply on HN