General Category > General Discussion
SOPA apparantly isn't dead yet!!
paw broon:
"I thought that might be a bit too far off-topic, though," John C
You're correct. Came over all funny there for a moment. Let's all just enjoy the comics.
John C:
Paw, you're actually right that "it's all politics," so it does bear mention. If we're suddenly all "subversives" for wanting to have a say in government, then the rest is worthless. I just don't want it to overwhelm the topic.
Watson, that's only part of the problem. The other part is that, while the big companies spend more to connect with lawmakers, the rest of us withdraw from the process.
Keep in mind that, historically, most of these laws only applied to large corporations (starting up a newspaper or book publisher ain't cheap), so only they were consulted when making the laws. That was balanced well enough, because a draconian measure meant that you had power over a competitor, but he had the same power over you, and the rest of us could live our lives in peace. (It's the same even with finance--even fifty years ago, who would have envisioned a world where the average person invests in the stock market and has a stake and/or the knowledge in how the banks are regulated; since the right answer is "nobody," the regulators are all bankers.)
But assuming the lawmakers are corrupt (even if it happens to be true) means it's not worth speaking up. And if we don't speak up, there's only one voice left in the discussion, and it's a voice saying that we make excellent raw materials to exploit.
Now, the MPAA might be able to spend money to bribe officials, but average people can bury Congressional offices in letters making it clear that we have an opinion and won't stand for any more of this elitist garbage.
(And note that I do think copyright is important and respect it. I think it has grown back out of control, almost to where the concept was in England before Queen Anne's Law, and I think it's been perverted to try to guarantee an income for an artistic class, rather than merely encouraging artists to share their gifts with the world. And when you try to legally enforce a business model, you damage the economy and provide tools to harm people.)
watson387:
I email legislators/congressmen/etc. about stuff like this all the time, but I'm pretty sure it just falls on deaf ears. I always get some generic, half-assed response to the tune of "your opinion is valid and being taken into consideration" but it never sounds sincere.
Another CISPA article: https://torrentfreak.com/cispa-bill-lets-isps-spy-on-and-report-pirating-subscribers-120409/
John C:
It'll happen, because it needs a reason to get through the different people who exist to filter out the bozos. That's why handwritten letters where you explain why you're interesting and in-person meetings are far better.
Figure that most of their e-mail is spam, too. When you get rid of the actual spam, you get activist spam, the form-mailings through websites like the NRA or MoveOn or whatever. So, you're buried in that pile, and probably faced with some intern who was asked to pass along the ten most important e-mails (in political weight more than topic, I'd bet) and auto-reply the rest. And ten might be a high estimate, keeping in mind that these people still seem to think their technological ineptitude is a badge of honor.
(Incidentally, Paw, I do want to emphasize that when I said "keep on topic," I meant me. Pull my string, and I'll babble about this stuff for hours, if nobody stops me. It's a community, though, so whatever you guys want to talk about is basically on-topic as long as nobody's going to feel uncomfortable contributing to the community.
(We've kicked around a space just for the activist-type discussion as it relates to what we do. If there's interest, we'll look into seeing if there's a way to have a board that people can "opt out" of seeing if it bores them.)
Yoc:
This is a general discussion section guys so it's not hard for those only interested in comics to just ignore anything inside here.
As long as a topic doesn't turning into personal attacks I'm Ok with it. This is a topic very important to the site so I don't find it off topic at all.
-Yoc
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