Congressional Anti-Piracy Caucus Formed 631
questionlp writes "News.com reports that three members from the House of Reps has formed a caucus that aims to stop piracy and make for stronger IP laws. One of the members of the caucus: helped author a note last fall to 74 fellow Democrats assailing the Linux open-source operating system's GNU General Public License as a threat to America's 'innovation and security.'"
Well... (Score:5, Informative)
Here's some addresses for you to do with as you please; normally I'd recommend writing them as I usually do, but their corrupt stupidity compels me to not care if you DDOS them, spam them, or whatever:
Rep. Robert Wexler [house.gov]
Rep. Adam Smith [house.gov]
Rep. Tom Feeney [house.gov]
Oh, and if you haven't already, try joining the EFF [eff.org].
Corporatism getting way out of hand. It's getting scary as hell if you ask me.
Please, voters act! (Score:5, Informative)
Will the people of the 19th Congressional district of Florida vote this moron out of congress, PLEASE!!!
Thanks,
The rest of the America
Re:In Other News (Score:5, Informative)
Even more interesting (Score:5, Informative)
Don't forget... (Score:3, Informative)
Remember, as always, strength in numbers. And don't forget to donate to them an the ACLU.
Map (Score:3, Informative)
Mod this down all you like... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:oh no!!! (Score:2, Informative)
Linux is the only os that does not incorporate drm copyprotection so it must be stoped.
Well, it will soon according to Linus [theregister.co.uk].
Money and your vote Count? Not if you live here. (Score:5, Informative)
No, I didn't vote for Berman in the last election. I swallowed hard and voted for the Republican candidate, because he seemed to be genuinely concerned about eroding Fair Use rights.
I don't know what's going to happen when Berman, Feinstein and Boxer are up for re-election again. Usually the Republicans run Religious Right-sponsored, Orange County-friendly candidates at the Senatorial level here in California. I can't support someone like that. But Feinstein and Boxer make me sick. Berman does too, but I think he's gotten enough heat from geeks in his district (they do exist) to where he's not going to try anything so stupid as a "Son Of Berman Bill".
I live close enough to Hollywood to where it's a lot like living in Adam Smith's district in Washington State. This is a company town and Big Media is the company. Resistance, it seems. is futile.
Re:FEC in focus (Score:3, Informative)
Nope. It's a problem wit the voters. (Score:1, Informative)
Not everyone. The only congressman worth a damn, Ron Paul, [house.gov] gets 96.9% of his contributions from individuals. [opensecrets.org] As a comparison, my congressman only gets 44% from individuals.
Behold, the infamous letter... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:This is just like Congress... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Well... (Score:2, Informative)
On your point about the head of the Electoral Office, the position should not be appointed by the governor or any member of the ruling party. The whole idea that the head of the supposedly independant arbiter of democracy should be beholden to one political party or another goes against the whole idea of a fair democracy. It's like the winning team picking whoever the hell they like as referree at the next game.
See this is the problem with American Democracy, it's not. While it may have started out with high ideals the American political system has degenerated into an almost dictatorial system with corperate bribery becoming the norm and narcissim and cronyism replacing any semblance of the sort of meritocracy that should be in place.
Here in Australia we have the concept that the public service must be able to fearlessly tell the government when it is doing the wrong thing, for the life of me I cannot see that happening in the states. Mind you I can see that concept rapidly disappearing here as well as our conservative government keeps riding the coat tails of the republicans in the US and introducing such ideas as Judges and Magistrates on limited term contracts.
The Whitehouse Runs on Apache and Linux. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:agent smith, er rep smith is a talking puppet (Score:3, Informative)
Reads like an enemies list (Score:2, Informative)
Both the RIAA [riaa.com] and MPAA [mpaa.org] were positive about this. That means that it is a very bad thing [slashdot.org].
Re:agent smith, er rep smith is a talking puppet (Score:5, Informative)
Money contributed from PAC of the corperation.
(From the top contributors page)
Microsoft Corp $32,200
AOL Time Warner $5,000
Re:Is anyone surprised? (Score:5, Informative)
Shadowrun (Score:4, Informative)
This discussions seems to be more or less wrapped up and writing your Congressman and / or voting different seem to be good options. So all that's left for me is to throw in some comment.
Everytime I read about Big 'Cons heavily influencing laws [eff.org] that undermine basic human rights and invalidating democratic structures [guerrillanews.com], in order to grow bigger and bigger, I only wait for the awakening of magic in 2012.
It's as if everyone in power in this world read the shadowrun books and thought "wow, thats a great world to live in".
The US needs to reform their electoral and governmental system fast or they'll be run down the drain by all these corporate whores.
That's what bothers me most with the eff and aclu: they just take the conservative approach of "everything has to stay the way it is" instead of calling attention to the things that IMHO need serious fixin.
If you look at the eff's site [eff.org], the news section is just full of battles in jurisdiction but on the legislation side of things, it's just "state has passed this, congress has passed that".
Where is the support for a legislative proposal that actually strengthens consumer/citizen/human rights?
Where is the proposal for a system that allows for more than two parties to gain power?
Where is the continous lobbying effort to keep the politicians in line with common sense?
Re:FEC in focus (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong. MS and Disney are owned and controled mostly by a very small number of people (Bill Gates, et al.) That's who they represent.
Corporations act in the interests of their shareholders. Corporations are not controlled via popular elections. They are not part the democratic system, and should kept the hell out of it.
Look at it this way: How the hell can you have a functioning democracy, when one person with resouces far beyond those of most people (Bill G.) can contribute as much of his money as he wants to buying influence?
These people depend on Office and Mickey to provide them with a paycheck.
This argument is silly for a million reasons. For one, how do you know that MS is the only possible way these people could be employed? If MS was dissolved tomorrow, would everyone just stop using computers?
Two, how do you that this is the best possible why these people could be employed? Perhaps there is another way things could be organized which would produce more.
Arguments like this are a last resort of those who don't want to see change.
But you cannot blame these companies for trying to keep their source of income strong.
This statement is silly too. As long as a company is working to increase it's profits, they shouldn't be held accountable for anything they're doing? This pure idiocy.
Here's an example:
A nuclear power company has all these spend fuel rods they need to get rid of. They discover the cheapest way to do this, and increase their profits, is to buy a law that allows them to throw it out with their normal trash.
This is clearly wrong, but all the arguments you gave support it. The power company is represented, speaking for all those people you think they speak for. The power company stays afloat, so everyone who works there can keep their jobs. And all they're doing is trying to increase their profits, they're blameless right?
Your biggest failure is to consider the costs to society of these company's actions. There is no Wildlife Corp, that can buy influence to preserve our wilderness. There is no Public Domain Inc. which fights to get works placed into the public domain.
Yes, there may be citizen's groups that fight these things, but the money they get is not anywhere near the value of the damage they have to try and prevent.
Take my power company example above. Can you figure out the problem? The damage to society is not being accounted for. There is no automatic reverse contribution to take this into account. And don't say the people should take care of this reverse contribution, either. That would be impossible. It would require every person in the country to be informed about every law that was going to be passed, and donate accoringly.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Informative)
But you are correct, this is a part of the traditional US voting practice. The Democrats of Chicago under Mayor Daley were particularly nortorious for it. This part just isn't usually covered in civics class. (And is only admitted officially in small print after several decades have passed.)
Re:How did Bush get elected President? (Score:3, Informative)
I call 'bullshit!', and request that you cite a source for this statement.
Immediately after the initial count (favoring Bush by 1,784), an automatic recount was started (pusuant to section 102.141(4) of the Florida Election Code). This recount (approx two days), gave Bush a 327 vote margin of victory.
Due to the discrepancy, the Florida Democratic Election Committee, under section 102.166 of the Florida Elction Code, requested a manual recount (authorized by section 102.166(4)), to be done in some of the most populous counties (which Gore had won). Asking for recounts in a few counties is not an exceptional circumstance (asking for a statewide manual recount would be, for logistical reasons alone)
First a smaller sample recount in these counties was done (to determine if a full recount was warranted). The full recount then proceeded, but was going to take so much time that it was going to pass the certification deadline (November 14, one week).
The secretary of state, Katheleen Harris, had the authority and discretion to extend the deadline, in order to receive the results.
She chose to NOT extend the deadline, and if you assume her reasons were political (I concede that both "sides" will disagree on this issue), this is really the first point where political control of the state starts to possibly affect the outcome of the election. Earlier events were all lawful, done in a non-partisan way (in close races, asking for a recount is not uncommon; that is WHY there are laws covering it)
There is, of course, much more to be said. I am sick of people distorting the events of this time period. It is a part of our HISTORY, and we should at least get it factually correct. Luckily, there are a few books and other sources that give a reasonably undistorted timeline (at least, as best as I can tell)
As far as your "Christian" comments, I have no response. They are so paralogical as to make everything you say suspect.
Re:agent smith, er rep smith is a talking puppet (Score:3, Informative)
His district is shaped kind of like a mirror image of Idaho. The bulky part is down around the state capital, almost a hundred miles south of Redmond. The "panhandle" just touches the south end of the Seattle metropolitan area.
Here's a map: http://www.house.gov/adamsmith/i/district_map_pop
Re:Well... (Score:2, Informative)