Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot in Politics?
Michael "Codetalker" Obersnel asks: "I was wondering if anyone out there had any ideas on how to turn all that passionate talk on Slashdot (how I love it) into a political force that people will pay attention to. Like a lobby group or something similar. It seems that people tolerate the DMCA and spam enough to complain about it but not really do anything about. I think we could change that with some organization and a cohesive front. I'm not suggesting that Slashdot itself be responsible, only that the community take part. Like a micro-payment system to hire lawyers for topics we are interested in or some sort of petitioning system. I know I'd pay a buck to overturn the DMCA, free Dimitri, outlaw spam, protest license problems, protect the GPL etc."
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of lobbyists!
Thinking of collecting donations for this currently nonexistent PAC: All we need is the mouse-click equivalent of a 900 number; say, an Amazon one-click donation link, or the equivalent. Then we get the URL posted in a lead article on /. and the /. effect produces an instant lobbying fund, the money supporting efforts against strategies like this so we can prevent anyone else doing the same thing.
Laws and sausages are made much the same, but sausages are better with mustard.
It's a shame that a Beowulf cluster of Slashdot lobbyists would typically be found running Quake instead of using all that power for something useful.
Got Rhinos?
I've seen what happens when politicians run the government at the behest of business because intelligent people were too lazy to speak up, and it's called "The United States."
Take some responsibility. If you think that retroactively making all computer crimes punishable by life imprisonment under an anti-terrorism bill only concerns "special interests", then I think you're the one who needs a breath of fresh air. With your head where it is, all you're getting is methane.
is to put morons like John Katz in the faces of our duly elected representatives.
"Mr. Katz, I understand your group has some objections to this bill outlawing Linux?"
"Senator, the zeitgeist of the age we inhabit is literally filled with the pathos-ridden desiderata of a people whose very conception of reality is marked by a lingering sense of technophobic alienation . . . "
"Sergeant-at-Arms! Sergeant-at-Arms! Get this pretentious lackwit out of here before he makes my ears bleed! God, where does he -get- this stuff? If this is what Linux does to America's youth, then by God we ought to lock up that Torvalds fellow (that's a foreign name, innnit?) and throw away the key. Where's Ashcroft, we need -more- legislation to erase this horror from the Earth - for the sake of the
children . . . "
If all the people who take the time to complain on here would just take the time to phone and/or write their congressperson, it would probably make a big difference. The other side is organized; why aren't we?
The problem is that we don't know how to write with pens and papers, and congresspersons don't know how to use email.
Big gap here...
You mean the Political Action Committee - of Multipule Anonymous Netizens?
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.