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The next SOPA

marco.org

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Re: The next SOPA

#151

Post by rd108 »

Dn_Ab wrote: post #97
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. You make a very bold statement without backing it with any line of reasoning or pointing to any supporting material. I am no expert in this matter so I can not know if you are wrong. But in an older thread someone p…

I just watched the video. Thanks for adding that link.

Re: The next SOPA

#152

Post by almutasim »

There should be a constitutional amendment protecting the Internet and its underlying structure. Maybe not today, maybe it's premature, but one day soon this will seem appropriate and needed. It would put the Judicial branch on our side.

Re: The next SOPA

#153

Post by beagle3 »

techiferous wrote: post #124
beagle3 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was disagreeing with

> Coming to authentic, common ground is very hard work.

Or rather, with the implied meaning that coming to a common ground is at all desirable. It is not. They (MPAA/RIAA) out to get us (complement of MPAA/RIAA in the set of people) for monetary and political gain, and we should aspire to make it impossible for them to do that, and take back what they have already won (e.g. reverse the Mickey Mouse Protection Act)

Re: The next SOPA

#154

Post by DanielBMarkham »

We can attack this by aggressively supporting campaign finance reform to reduce the role of big money in U.S. policy

Blaming money for problems in politics is just like focusing on money when running a business -- you're looking in the wrong spot.

Money is a result of something, not a cause. There's a lot of money in politics as a result of concentrating so much political power in one place. Just like in a business where the money represents value exchanged, in politics the money represents influece -- big, powerful people in groups that want to be heard. Starting off another holy crusade along the lines of prohibition simply because you've managed to distill your problems into one word isn't going to help anything.

Re: The next SOPA

#155

Post by davepeck »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #154

We can attack this by aggressively supporting campaign finance reform to reduce the role of big money in U.S. policy Blaming money for problems in politics is just like focusing on money when running a business -- you're looking in the wrong spot. Money is a result of something, not a cause. There's a lot of money in politics as a result of concentrating so much political power in one place. Just like in a business w…

I'd suggest reading Lawrence Lessig's new book, "Republic, Lost". It is a deep, sober-minded inspection of the issue of campaign finance. You may arrive at the other end feeling differently than you do now. (It certainly changed my perspective.)

Re: The next SOPA

#156

Post by moldbug »

cookiecaper wrote: post #133
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…

I actually think that the new unidirectional media monopoly that has emerged as TV and radio have become dominant is a large contributor to today's biggest problems in social thought. Before radio, local newspapers ruled and while they certainly do not accept input, it is easy to launch a competing paper; while presses weren't cheap necessarily, they were obtainable to men with reasonable means, and such men can be f…

Both very insightful parents. Note also that the TV/radio/press oligopoly ("mainstream media," if you will, though we could also say the "WP: Reliable sources" monopoly) receives a huge hidden subsidy in the form of confidential government information.

Ie, it's legal in practice for government officials to leak to Punch Sulzberger, but not to Julian Assange. This makes it very hard for the latter to start his own competing "WP: Reliable Source." (Just how do I become WP:Reliable anyway? Or how do I lose the privilege, if I abuse it?)

You could fix this hole by enacting a media equivalent of the SEC's Reg FD: the government must release all information to everyone at the same time. Short of this, the mainstream press is best considered as a government organ - almost every story is the product of privileged information which leaves the journalist captive to his "source." If he writes the wrong thing, the source stops sourcing and the journalist's career may well be over.

More broadly, those who attribute SOPA and the like solely to electoral corruption are seeing the moon but not the sun. Corporate bribes are certainly one form of institutional power in the American system, but not the only form or even the strongest. In most areas, in fact, there's a permanent war between unaccountable corporate bribery and unaccountable bureaucratic tyranny.

What makes SOPA and the IPR area so awful is that the lobbyists and bureaucrats are both on the evil side. Certainly no one's bribing the State Department to twist Spain's arm on IPR legislation. State doesn't need or accept Hollywood's campaign contributions - it's a permanent agency.

Re: The next SOPA

#157

Post by blei »

cookiecaper wrote: post #133
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…

I actually think that the new unidirectional media monopoly that has emerged as TV and radio have become dominant is a large contributor to today's biggest problems in social thought. Before radio, local newspapers ruled and while they certainly do not accept input, it is easy to launch a competing paper; while presses weren't cheap necessarily, they were obtainable to men with reasonable means, and such men can be f…

http://books.google.com/books?id=IU7U7hDpr5cC&lpg=PR7&#3...

I highly recommend this excerpt as food for thought, bottom of page 4 - page 5:

"Political candidates' campaign discourse provides more information about issues than print or electronic news media. There are several explanation for this finding. First, news reporting tends to concentrate on the 'horse race' aspects of the campaign: Who is ahead in the polls? Who is running the campaign? Which states are being contested by the campaigns? Will the candidates attack one another? Who will be included in the presidential debates? The answers to these questions may be news, but they simply do not help voters decide which candidate should be elected president...

From January through October of 1980, CBS and UPI devoted 65 percent of their coverage to the horse race, 26 percent to issues, and 10 percent to candidates...

A second reason why voters cannot rely on the news media for policy information is that campaign news is only one story among many. The network news, for example, is a half hour long, but subtracting commercials, stories on non-campaign topics, and horse-race coverage leaves little time to explain the candidates' opposing views on policy questions. Particularly in the latter phases of a campaign, political ads, presidential debates, and other message forms provide more issue information to viewers than the news media...

To make matters worse, there may be a trend toward less and less coverage. The length of a typical political news story decreased by about 20 percent and the number of political news stories dropped by 20 percent from 1968 to 1988...average nightly news coverage of the campaign in 1996 was 12.3 minutes, down from 24.6 minutes in 1992...Furthermore, the news media have a tendency to offer short sound bites from candidates instead of thoughtful and extended consideration of issues...in 1968, the average quotation from candidates in the news was 43 seconds long. After 20 years, candidate quotations had shrunk to a mere 9 seconds...this figure had dropped to 8.2 seconds in 1996."

Re: The next SOPA

#159

Post by skrebbel »

Genuine interest: Marco calls this a 'campaign finance problem', but isn't politicians submitting bills for money usually called 'corruption'? Why aren't the Americans really mad about it?

Re: The next SOPA

#160

Post by goblin89 »

Anechoic wrote: post #38
mikeash wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could say that the MPAA's restrictions are also for the viewer's sake, and with the huge amount of viewers they obviously got that right. I don't believe it, but I don't see where it's wrong but the equivalent for Apple is right. Personally, I think Apple's policies are more destructive. They're doing a pretty decent job of convincing an entire generation that locked-down, manufacturer-controlled computing is good.…

They're doing a pretty decent job of convincing an entire generation that locked-down, manufacturer-controlled computing is good. I've spent 20 years playing tech support to friends and family who have accidentally fubar'd their open computing devices. IME that has done far more to convince folks that locked-down, manufacturer-controlled computing is good moreso than anything Apple's done. The conflict is framed as "…

Totally agree.

I used to think that yes, Apple makes neat things, but it's still evil because it locks us down. But consider, for example, how trivial it is to install OS X on a PC. There certainly are many ways Apple could go to prevent that, but they don't and will even give away updates for such installations.

This makes me think that Apple has consciously made its top priority delivering the smooth experience and working device/software. For that, Apple chose to sacrifice breadth for the sake of depth—focusing on fewer use cases, but better working them through. This means fewer features and poorer extensibility. We tend to perceive that as restrictions, but it limits the non-technical users' ability to shoot themselves in the foot, and allows for better quality.

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