Comments | stolen_tea: SOPA and PROTECT IP and politics

stolen_tea

SOPA and PROTECT IP and politics

Jan 18, 2012 15:19

I was going to try to start updating again today, but that's apparently not what today is about. :) Instead, today has become the day to talk about the horrible things that large corporate copyright holders have lobbied the US government to do to the Internet. (Which is *us*. We are the Internet. The big revelation of social media is that *we ( Read more... )

one-dimensional politics, censorship, voting

Comments 4

contrariety January 19 2012, 00:41:53 UTC

"In other (i.e. my) words, the party's goal is to get elected, and our goal is to have the party represent our interests. If we create a pattern of sacrificing our goals for the party's goal, then the party has no reason to change. But if it becomes clear to the party that the only way to achieve its goal is to support our goals, then the party will do that."

This is a nice statement of something I often think that Republican voters seem to get intuitively, and Democratic voters don't (although I'm sure there's some perception bias in there).

stolen_tea January 19 2012, 01:27:11 UTC

Yes... I think this is part of what has been behind the several "reinventions" of the Republican party in our lifetimes. Whereas the Democratic party hasn't seemed to have had that sort of experience. Maybe I'm overgeneralizing?

(The comment has been removed)

stolen_tea January 19 2012, 01:33:31 UTC

Yes!

One of the things that really bugs me the most about the copyright landgrab, is that we went from a setup where expression had a minimal protection for a short time, unless it was explicitly marked as copyrighted and then extended, to a setup where every single iota of expression is protected for 70+ years unless it can be proven otherwise. It's very much a guilty-until-proven-innocent mentality.

cerebralpaladin January 19 2012, 20:03:02 UTC

Just a +1 for your comment, feir_fireb. Congress, multiple presidents, and the Supreme Court have all been pretty big offenders in this regard--Eldred v. Ashcroft was probably the best hope of stopping it, but the Court wasn't even particularly divided (7-2), much like this week's 6-2 split (with Kagan recused). I sometimes think that the original 14 years with a 14 year renewal might be the right rule, or at least close enough. :(