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."
It's called the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Best Slashdot Co
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?
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
we do what we do because we are lazy. if an e-mail won't cut it, well they just won't listen :-)
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
We could call it the Elementary Freedom Fight or something like that, and even get a website such as http://www.eff.org. Oh, wait. That's already taken ...
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of lobbyists!
... is by allowing the EFF to have free banners on the site. If lets say every 50th banner is a free banner for the EFF then /. and Andover would really put their money where their mouth is. I mean there's anyway a decline in banner sells worldwide, that gap could easily be filled with "goodwill" banners... How'bout that Taco & Co?
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
I believe that was the idea (or one of the ideas) behind Bruce Perens' Technocrat.net. Unfortunately, discussions between users never reached a critical mass to get out of cyberspace, and Bruce decided to shut the site down.
"It is more complicated than you think" (The Eighth Networking Truth from RFC 1925)
There's the Consumer Project on Technology (CPT), which I'm still waiting for the results of the interview that were posted, unfortunately before the recent events. That is a lobbying group on many tech issues, and they appear to be pro-Slashdot-manta in several cases.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
We're just getting started, so it's a great time to join in.
Miko O'Sullivan
Something that I'd like to see on this site:
Links to congressional websites where you could email your representatives/governors/senators/president when an issue comes up that needs grassroots support. I know I've sent emails and written letters to the government after reading some posts here, but it generally takes a while to find where you need to go. Someone generally posts a link, but why not have it after the description of the issue?
Just a thought.
Congresspeople and other politicans pay attention to three things: (1) manually typed, manually signed letters from registered voters with reasonable arguments and tone (2) contributions of $$$ (the more the better, but any amount gets attention) (3) contributions of manhours.
I suggested when the Dimitri issue broke that if 100,000 slashdotters typed out a letter to their Congressional representatives (quick - who is the house member from your district?) and mailed it in, then Congress would begin to pay attention to the debate.
The typical response was "I don't know where a manual typewriter exists {hint - your public library} and if I can't e-mail my letter I won't bother. And send in $50??? You have to be joking!".
So exactly why would you expect any politician to take anything said here seriously?
sPh
I think its a bad idea... at least to have it associated with Slashdot. If someone was to create something seperate then fine. But I cherish the independence of /.
/. isn't the postings, but the replys.
/. had gone from a really cool community (that anyone can participate in) to something with "official positions".
.0215 Euros.
Yeah, I know some will complain that it really isn't independent, that the same types of stories are posted, and there's an anti-MS slant, but I think Taco and the boys (girls?) do a much better job than most folks give them credit for. Plus, the real value of
Something would just sit wrong with me knowing that
Just my
I've seen what happens when a geek becomes a political activist, and it's called "Richard Stallman". Keep your priorities straight.
...but for what? On these boards, people range from libertarians to conservatives to social democrats to socialists, with a generous sprinkle of anarchists, nihilists, new-age followers and so on ad infinitum. A political movement would become an excercise in flamage withing ten seconds of platform discussion.
A non-political, issue-focused lobbying group, on the other hand, could be workable. On the other hand, EFF fills that role quite well already.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
There have been many times when, on a lark, I've posted completely contradictory comments, only to have both modded up as "insightful" and both having numerous replies (sometimes from the same people) telling me how much they agree.
For every Microsoft basher, there's a Microsoft fan.
For every "Free Dmitri" user, there's one who thinks that he ought to be in jail.
For every anti-capitalist, there's a capitalist.
I don't know that it's necessary a good idea to start hiring lawyers to represent a mob of people who all disagree with each other.
On the other hand, maybe that's the best thing we could do.
Got Rhinos?
Now that sounds like trolling, but I mean this as honest criticism. To quote Nathan Torkington from a presentation he gave at a Perl conference: "Passion doesn't convince. Passion makes you look like an idiot or an asshole."
.plan file or a Larry Wall speech. Realistically, especially in politics, you cannot force everything into a black or white extreme. A middle ground, like "I use Perl sometimes, and I also use Python, Lisp, and TCL" is more reasoned.
The problem with most Slashdot discussion is that it comes from people with tremendous lack of experience. Language battles and API wars are fought by college students defending and regurgitating what they learned last semester or what they read in John Carmack's
On Slashdot, you find people who not only stick to the extremes, but they stick to the extremes for extreme ideological reasons. A typical example is someone arguing the superiority of Linux over Windows XP without ever having used the latter. Because the former is Open Source, so it goes, it must be better. You won't get far outside of geek circles with these kind of hard-liner views. A geek in politics is like Jerry Falwell running for president.
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.
Remember when Microsoft sent out letters to people and told them to sign and send them to their representatives? Well, trying to force that on people was obviously silly, but the general idea was good. If I had a letter in my hand that said exactly what I wanted to express, and all I had to do was sign it and drop it in the mail, I'd have no reason to procrastinate.
Suppose we form a web site where good writers can put together coherent, intelligent letters on various issues. Concerned citizens can go to the site, browse the letters for one they like, and download it in a printer-friendly form. On the same site, they can also look up the address and fax numbers of their representatives, so all they have to do is sign it and mail it in.
Yes, I know the EFF has some of these features. However, it would be useful if the community could contribute sample letters, and if the process was even easier than it is now. Remember, the target audience is me, the lazy, disorganized procrastinator.
If we could implement some kind of karma system for letters to congressmen, all the passion that goes into hour-long rants here could instead go to something useful.
Got Rhinos?
In the UK a group of people have formed the Campaing for Digital Rights (CDR ;), and our web site can be found at http://uk.eurorights.org/
i nfo/free-sklyarov-uk
At the moment we are campainging for three things: Consumer Digital Rights,with regard to use-restricted cd's, to free Dmitry Sklyarov and to prevent dumb laws like the EUCD (Europes version of the DMCA) from being passed.
We have held a couple of protests outside the US embassy, to ask for Dmitry to be released, the first of which had a ten minute report on NewsNight, the BBC news review program.
On October the 6th we are going to start our leafletting campaign to raise awareness of the new brain-damaged cd's being released. A copy of the leaflet can be downloaded from http://uazu.net/cd/index.html
Any people looking to take part in the campaign, should join the (now incorrectly named) Free Dmitry UK mailing list, which can be found at http://mailman.xenoclast.org/cgi-bin/mailman/list
"Free software as in beer, copy protection as in racket" - Telsa Gwynne
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?
It would be nice if politicians listened to us, but they just see us as minority group of finatics.
/. is that the advancement of laws be stopped. We don't have any alternatives, we just want these laws to go away. You want to make a difference and be listened to? Propose your own laws that include regulations we can live with. You want to get the RIAA off everbodies back, weaken their economical standing or find a middle ground everybody will be happy with. From what I see, nobody is doing this. We're basically starting our own little war with every other industry including our own, and yet we're still not unified in our efforts of opposition. Last I checked, a group of separated individuals don't win wars against unified groups.
There's still a good chunk of people out there that believe in some mystical entity controlling our lives without any proof of such thoughts. Yet these are the same people that say "that's impossible" when they see what science is capable of. Like it or not, these people have more political influence than we do. They have more power because they are unified, with leadership and there's a lot of history behind them.
There's a lot of programmers here, and I'm sure they're all used to trying to see the big picture and chart all the variables. This is one of those BIG projects in mapping all the variables and figuring out their relationship. The major points are: there's little history in computer technology right now; t's still new and strange to a majority of people; pogrammers work long hours, and the pay is decreasing, leaving less time for political movements; and there is no single "leader" that represents us, which is very important towards political advancement. You can't expect politicians to summarize the demands of many individuals, all with different points of view. They're more likely to listen to an individual with well thought ideas and the backing of a large community.
What we have been proposing on
And lucky you: education can be done easily, by you, today. Spend some time thinking about how you can present your viewpoint, sift the wheat from the chaf, and when your topic of interest pops up during conversation, try to explain your viewpoint in the most consise and clear way possible.
You just slashdotted congress!!!
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
When the time came to write my anti-weakened-crypto letter, not only did I get it onto one page of dead tree, but I hand-delivered it to the local congressional offices downtown. Especially with all the WTC disruption, I had no idea how fast or slow mail delivery would be had I mailed the directly to DC. There's some sort of diplomatic-pouch type thing from the local offices.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Only people with karma over 10 or who have paid money into the fund can vote (once per month) on allocation in order to stop skiddies and others manipulating the distribution too much.
The karma thing is basically saying "Anyone who is probably not a troll". Karma whores could be put off by charging 1 or more karma for voting.
Just a thought, off the top of me 'ead, pull it up the flag pole and see if the budgie bite.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
moderators - please mod nagora's post up!
Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
I'd like to see Slashdot start a slashbox for each of the following organizations. The data for the slashbox can be taken directly from their home pages - they each have news headlines that a bit of PERL could pull out very easily. In addition, I'd like to see a section before the headlines labeled "top issues" that can be written by the organization themselves. It would be a space for a link to the issues they think most important.
CDT
ALCU
EFF
These organizations stand for many of the things talked about on Slashdot. Those that feel strongly about any of the issues supported by one of these organizations should join that organization!
Rudy
1. 2.
The Federation of American Scientists conducts analysis and advocacy on science, technology and public policy, including national security, nuclear weapons, arms sales, biological hazards, secrecy, education technology, information technology, energy and the environment... FAS combines the scholarly resources of its scientists with a knowledge of practical politics. As a non-profit organization licensed to lobby in the public interest, FAS is uniquely qualified to bring the scientific perspective to the legislative arena through direct lobbying, membership and grassroots work, and expert testimony at Congressional hearings.
Sanity.html - Error 404 not found
My feeling is that although PACs command some attention, sincere letters from constituents weigh far more heavily.
My humble suggestion is to create a place on Slashdot where members can readily find the names/addresses/email adresses/phone numbers of the Representatives and Senators in Congreess who vote on these issues. Of course, key members on the right committees (like Technology) should be prominently displayed.
A well-categorized list of these elected officials with the ability to fire off an email while surfing (a/k/a a mailto: link) would promote discourse directly with those to whom we have given the decision-making ability.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
Maybe setting up a /. Presskit for each article would help...
/. Community" or such..
Some details, in my opinon a Presskit should be published when a thread is closed. It should consist of the article itself, an overview of the links used in it, and all Informative/Interesting/etc. comments with a threshhold greater than 3.
It could be called the "Voice of the
I'm sure that some newspapers would be interested in publishing comments approved by the mass moderation system...
We don't need lawyers if we have the public.
Just my 0.02 EUR
Well, isn't the purpose of a PAC to make it so that people don't have to exert as much effort? ;-) Just throw money at the PAC and the PAC does the activism. I think that's what the submitter wants, he just doesn't think the PAC that he wants, exists yet.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I'd actually pay a buck to turn down some of the political meandering that goes on around here. It takes away from the News for Nerds and gives to the News for Activists. I've turned off every topic I think has to do with annoying political activistism (Your Rights Online, Censorship, any article that CmdrTaco posts) and this makes it way into the Slashdot.org topic.
... is that we're a bunch of normal citizens with no hidden agenda or corporate interests... The lobbyists who actually sway the lawmakers decisions are the ones who are funded by huge companies, like big tobacco for example. We did well with the DMCA protests earlier, and that's about all we can do, organize and voice our opinions when the right opportunity comes up. Unless someone here is a multi-trillionare who wants to start lobbying in Washington, we're really not going to sway the Lawmaker's opinions.
~ now you know
Part of the problem is that people don't know who
their elected officials are.
A good place to start is www.congress.org.
You can easily search for your representatives
by simply entering your zip-code.
Hope this helps.
*sigh* back to work...
They don't take any case. They only take cases, which will get the most press, therefore showing their cause.
ACLU isn't as bad, but actually has a no-computer policy now, they're handing all that over to the EFF.
GNU is only for license copyleft issues, which is a mute point - as it seems that every company who violates GPL quickly turns the other cheek.
I agree with the author, we should form a union, PAC (Political Action Committee), something so that we can be more organized and be clearly heard, but make it easy enough for people like me, and I'm sure for many of the other thousands of people who feel the same way but don't want to write a letter to there congressman or protest on a weekend.
What I don't want to support is any anti-Microsoft legislation, frankly I've been against the whole crusade against them, a lot of people think that slashdot is full of 'rabid linux zealots' if slashdot does form some type of political group - please leave that linux stuff behind.
-Jon
this is my sig.
The most effective way to lobby is to make one on one contact with your Representative or Senator. It is actually much easier to meet with your Representative than most people think. If you are travelling to DC, simply call their office and set up a meeting. Explain that you want to discuss Tech Policy. Even if the elected official is unable to meet with you, most offices will set up a meeting with a staffer who specializes in certain issue areas. This staffer is typically called a Legislative Assistant. Be aware that this staffer may have only a rudimentary knowledge of how technology works. They are policy geeks after all, not tech geeks.
/. in the past, Congress is deluged with tens of thousands of e-mails every month.
If you are not travelling to DC, find out where your Representatives nearest State/District office is located. Contact the staffer at that location and arrange to set up a meeting with the staffer. During the meeting explain that you would like to meet with your Representative the next time they are in the area.
If you are overly shy, write an old fashioned snail mail to your Representative's DC office. Elected officials typically have a policy of responding to all letters. Believe it or not, those officials who do not respond, typically do not get reelected.
DO NOT USE E-MAIL! E-MAIL is the worst way to communicate your concerns. As has been posted on
This is not the sig you are looking for...
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 . . . "
Well, that's what I always figured.
Until I attended Professor Lessings speech at the San Francisco LinuxWorld upon which I immediately enrolled.
It doesn't really matter if you're European or not; currently trends are set in the US which won't only affect the rest of the world, but which are damn frightening in their consequences.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
If anyone here wants to prove me wrong, go for it! Slashdot has more readers than most States have regular voters. From a platform like that, it should be almost trivial to become at least a US Senator at the Federal level, or an Independent MP in the UK.
I'm sure that people will be happy to pick apart my arguments, but if those same people aren't willing to be living proof of their counter-arguments, then what kind of counter is it?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/dbq/officials/
I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people. - Jack Handey
Are they allowed to take credit-card donations from foreigners? If so, I'm in.
Here is one thing you can do, go to
http://www.aclu.org/action/liberty107.html
and enter your zip code. You have a choice of email, fax, or letter to your state reps regarding the recent issues with our rights being trampled on.
----
As a result of what happened in NY, DC, and PA, Congress has begin passing all
sorts of crazy legislation. Most of these bills are being labeled as
"Anti-terrorism" bills, when in actuality, they are mostly anti-American.
Included in their changes are:
- Allowing for wiretaps to be without a search warrants. This includes
listening in on your phone conversations and scanning your email he use of
certain words. For example, it will be legal to begin reading your email and
monitoring your website usage if attention was brought to you because you
used suspicious words in your communication. If your thinking "Isn't that
un-Constitutional?", your right, it WAS.
- Requiring giving the encryption keys to any encryption scheme to be
given to the government. Basically, your privacy would non-existent to any
non-ethical person in the government that wanted to use them. In short,
there would be NO (legal) WAY to communicate via email or internet that the
government couldn't monitor. Law abiding Americans would the only people
they could monitor, while those breaking the law would continue to use their
own encryption schemes, meaning that we would only monitor those NOT
breaking the law. Sound like fun?
- "Hacking" a computer would now to an "Act of Terrorism." Meaning that changing a website without permission could be punished with life in a federal prison. I'm not going to defend hacking a computer, but I think that
fits under the cruel and usual punishment scenario. Once we give the
government power to punish people to this extent, how long until we begin
executing people for misdemeanors?
The list goes on and on, and it scares me. I urge everyone to visit the
site: http://www.aclu.org/action/liberty107.html. Go to the bottom, enter
your zip code, and hit go. This will bring you to a page that will allow you
to fax your congressmen while only spending about 10 seconds. It will send a
fax that is basically a generic letter the ACLU has drafted. For those not
sure how to do anything about our world, this would be a simple way to
finally do something.
Congress will likely be voting on this bill within the next week, so time is
of great importance. I sincerely hope many of you will spend the 30 seconds
needed to do something that could effect our lives for years to come.
In other words: there's no point letting every cause be added to the list if there is no way of actually applying the help.
That suggests at least a level of "vetting" of nominations for practicality and then we're onto the question of who does the vetting.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
This should be affordable. I know of a group that wanted a self serving exemption to a politically inevitable law. They pooled resources, hired the right sort of lawyer, and $50k later they have their own little sentence enshrined in the US laws.
I don't know what the readership of slashdot is these days, but surely it can produce 10,000 readers willing to pay $5 for a particular freedom.
The trick is to for someone to become a credible focal point. Someone who will be trusted by the donors to make the best use of the funds.
The EFF makes a wonderful contribution with respect to the legal issues of interest to the technically inclined (read: Geek) comunity, and it's admirable how they spech most of their resources in these pursuits, but honestly, they should take a page from the playbook of the NRA with respect to fund raising if they want to compete with the powerful political action committees that live inside the Washington beltway.
/. community.
There are also other organizations which deserve your support (financial or otherwise), such as the Center for Democracy & Technology and the Federation of American Scientists which has a number of projects that would be of interest to the
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Heard on NPR this morning, in an interview with a policeofficer (likely in new york, but I stepped out of the room):
"To hell with the ACLU, people's safety is at stake."
The reporter went on to point out what a few weeks ago would have been fodder for multi-million dollar lawsuits is today conscidered routine. The risk is of course that our enforcement bodies are required to work under different standards, without being told when the standards change.
A big part of lobbying is pro-actively developing alternatives and amendments to proposed legislature which address (or attempt to address) the concerns to be addressed. Too often slashdot people are "anti-legislation". This doesn't endear us to congress. What's important is that we participate by helping to make the legislation more palatable and measured.
For instance, we could have definately weakened (in a good way) the DMCA if we had pushed for amendments to be put on the table. When there is an amendment congress people listen. What we do now is much like someone sitting on an open source mailing list yelling: "I don't like this." or "This would be cool." Yes, sometimes it works... but how often? When the person submits a patch... it's different. The primary coders listen. We need to get our fingers dirty (or hire people do get their fingers dirty). We need to sling legal code. It's easy to be critical if you don't dig into the code.
DMCA, coming soon to a neighborhood near you.
Seriously, where in the world do you live that US law doesn't impact your daily life. If the US becomes totalitarian the whole world suffers as we push similar totalitarian laws on your governments (in the interests of free trade, or what ever else it doesn't really matter.) The world is becoming much too small to think that you can live your isolated little lives in peace.
This isn't meant to be an America is the Best post, but a wake up call. Look around you and see the way the world is. Your government; even my government is unimportant. What is important is how our governments interact and where one DMCA goes, another follows quickly on its heels -- especially among trade allies, but even throughout the whole world.
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
We have organized a lecture series to take place over the coming months, but need help advertising it to the public.
Speakers include Dan Burk of the University of Minnesota's Law School, John Logie of the University of Minnesota's Department of Rhetoric and Bruce Schneier of Counterpane Internet Security, author of Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World
Read about our efforts at underwhelm.org.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Here is a list of issues that the readers of Slashdot believe to be of importance in America today:
1) goatse.cx guy
2) Cmd. Taco having gay sex
3) First post woots
4) Censorship via moderation
5) sporks
6) Destroying Microsoft
7) Promoting Linux as the state religion
I think this covers a good 70% of most threads, if you browse at the -1 level. If you ever feel bad about yourself, go read the first 30 posts of any thread at -1, you will instantly feel better!
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
I think the most effective technique would be to do what the NRA has been doing for a long time: send postcards. It's an easy thing to do on an individual basis, each person just needs to write a short statement on the back of a postcard and send it to the targeted congressman. Simple enough to do, but it takes enough time that the writer will be taken somewhat seriously.
The key to this technique of course is volume. Individually a typed letter is more impressive than a postcard, but if you can guarantee 10,000 - 100,000 postcards arriving at a congressman's office... that carries a lot of weight.
The ideal scenario is this: a person representing our concerns meets with a congressman, the congressman acts concerned but probably blows the representative off. The representative sits down at a computer and reports back using Slashdot or a mailing list, asking us to send out postcards on a given issue. The congressman's staff then spends the next several days sorting through several bags of mail coming in from all over the country but focusing on the same issue, giving the technical representative a good deal more credit.
We still need a reliable representative to actually meet with members of congress though. I continue to be impressed with the EFF and think someone from that organization would be the best bet.
...before they're declared illegal by the Office of Homeland Security.
Why? Because when faced by a horde of armed geeks, negotiating with the moderates looks awfully good to The Powers That Be.
Maj. Kong
Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.
If we do create a PAC, here's what we're up against [opensecrets.org]. That's the yearly contributions by the movie industry to both sides of the political fence. In 2000, about $24 million to Democrats and $13 million to Republicans.
I was raised a Quaker, and there is a Quaker lobbying group called the Friends Committee for National Legislation (FCNL). The FCNL has had an impact, particularly on the state level, because the politicians recognized that the agenda was not driven by economic considerations, but rather for reasons such as social justice, et. al. It does not take as much money to make change happen if you can demonstrate that you are sincere and committed.
What does this have to do with OSS lobbying? Groups like the IEEE have been very receptive towards open source concerns (and I am writing them a letter concerning the SSSCA), and along with the group (something like Foundation for the Public Domain) which Bob Young has been involved with could also be helpful. But if we can demonstrate that some of these laws like the DMCA are simply bad ideas, then maybe people will listen to us. But it takes people who honestly believe in the cause, and for more than economic reasons.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
If only there were a clearinghouse, where technodonors could read about and choose to support the technoactivists they like... I hoped Slashdot would help us reach supporters to help fund our efforts, it seems like the most likely candidate at this stage in the game. Alas, they won't post stories about "local" events.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
"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."
/. trigger phrases and link to the website of the group who you are trying to pressure. After a days worth of the /. effect people tend to become much more willing to listen to your demands.
Yeah, submit stories with all the usual
Its called the Libertarian party.
This is a group who wants to repeal copyright law to its basic elements of 7+7 years maximum.
This is a group who wants total freedom of speech, bar none.
This is a group who wants to repeal laws that give corporations limited liability, so that CEOs and other officers are guilty for crimes committed that break the law.
This is a group who wants the government out of our lives, entirely. Full privacy, full ownership of your land property.
This is a group that believes that the only reason "big business" got there is because of government subsidies -- and they're right.
This is a group that wants each and every person in this country to be responsible for their actions, bar none. If you do something stupid, you will learn by paying the consequences, and no public organization will help you. Private organizations will help, but those kind of systems will watch your recovery closely, and shut you off if you keep screwing up.
This is a group that wants non-violent crimes repealed. We want to let two adults do what they want with each other, as long as they hurt no one else.
This is a group that wants to let you do business with any person in any country, with no tariffs, embargoes, or other limitations.
This is a group that wants to get rid of the income tax and all other taxes that eat up 50% of your income each and every day. This will double your available income so you can decide what to do with it.
This is the only group who has NEVER changed their position in the 30 years they have been together.
This is a group who has ONE Congress in office for many years (Congressman Ron Paul, http://house.gov/paul ) a guy who has voted the Libertarian way each and every time. A guy who has never been corrupted by the political system, because he stands by his beliefs, and always has. The proof is there that the philosophy WORKS.
Lastly... This is a group that got 1.7 million votes in Congress in the 2000 election. No other third party in HISTORY has ever even broken 1 million votes.
http://lp.org/ Go there today. Make a difference. Kick the careerists out.
Consider the following:
DMCA comments - 300 people wrote or emailed responses during the public comment period.
HIPAA comments - 40,000 people wrote or emailed responses to the Health Privacy regulations during the public comment period.
Home Schooling - Over 500,000 people (mostly opponents) wrote physical letters when government regulations of home schooling were proposed.
These things matter. Your letters matter. Hardcopy physical mail matters most. This is how politicians judge their constituent opinions.
Your congressman and senator has local office visiting times and DC visiting times. Have you ever visited? How about your state representatives? (I visited mine to make sure that if UCITA was brought up that she would know that at least one constituent was opposed.) They try to make these visits easy.
Have you ever been to a political fund raiser? (it is very different and rather entertaining.) Have you ever donated money to the local politicians who support your views? They keep track of these things. A few afternoons or evenings, your name on their mailing list, and a few dollars makes quite a difference. You cannot buy their vote for this, but it makes your opinions an important part of their determination of the public opinions that matter to them. Are your positions worth that effort?
If you care, get out and work with these people.
They have to spend ALL that money in order to attract OUR ATTENTION, or moreproperly craft the illusion that their goals are for the common good. We already have our attention, and wee KNOW they are full of it, we just need to organize. One factor is age, how many /bots are actually of voting age ?
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I don't think this idea makes sense because I don't think Slashdot has ever had a single coherent voice (and it would be duller if it did).
/. "community" is stereotyped as pro-Linux (I am, many are not), Anti-MS (I see plenty of Windows users here now), Libertarian (a lot of the libertarianism here, esp. wrt gun control, goes too far for my liking), anti-IP (there are plenty of dissenting voices on copyright)...
It bothers me when the
No, Slashdot hosts heterogenous set of views. If you want to support a particular political agenda, get with a more singleminded organisation, one per issue. The EFF might be a good start, as might the FSF. Or the NRA if you're that way inclined.
Other ways geeks might influence their national politics is through running services like Britain's faxyourmp.org.uk -- the site was prompted by opposition to the RIP bill (privacy stuff) but now it addresses parliament's accountability, and public political apathy by making it easy for a constituent to contact their MP even if they don't know what constituency they live in or who their MP is (as is worryingly common).
If the EFF were to start taking donations to lobby politicians, they would be just another group of washington scum getting paid to help politicians buy elections by sucking up to the right people.
So its okay for you political opposite to be lobbying but not for you? That's pretty self-defeatist. If you want to play in Washington you have to play by their rules. Last time I checked donations to politicians were legal and its the most effective way to be heard.
If you don't like the system, you should just say so and stay out of politics. If you want to make a change start a lobby.
You can have this rendered on the static page with links to actions alerts and updates.
Shh! Stop giving our Congresscritters ideas!
("And as you can see, fellow Congresspeople, by implementing the ID card into a Sony(tm) Memory Stick and demanding rectal insertion, not only can I personally count on generous campaign donations from Sony, we can all benefit by buying shares in companies that make personal lubricants and hemorroidal creams before we pass this vital legislation! It's a good thing we have terrorism as an excuse. I mean, we'd look awful funny saying 'it's for the children' on this one...")
science is a religion
People with full-time jobs may not feel that they have much time, but often have $5-500 that they're willing to donate to a good cause.
70,000 people wit $15 each makes a cool million dollars that could really support a bunch of high school and college students in a political endeavor.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
I would argue that a major goal of politics is of information filtering, of winnowing out the 300 or so truely good ideas from all the chaff. We witness this every day on Slashdot: within minutes of a story about YRO or Politics beging posted, there can be litterly hundreds of comments posted.
And I don't think I'm alone in thinking that the moderation system used by Slashdot is not perfect. (Go ahead, mod me down. Nobody'll see this anyway, and I don't particularly care about my karma) The parenthetical expression I just made is an example of this. As more and more comments accumulate, the ones at the "bottom" of the list, those posted later, tend to have lower or more average moderation score. That's sad too, because I've noticed that many of the insightful comments are made later, after the rest of us have gotten our one or two lines off our chest (I don't oresume to be included in either group here).
My moderation filters are basically set for +4 with a bonus for long comments, on the assumption that someone who writes a lot will have something insightful to say (others would disagree). But still, I always wonder if there is some gem buried 4 levels nested down that doesn't make my filter, simply because no one bothered to read it.
For the past few months, I've been wondering if a moderation system based on the concept of "circles of trust" (familiar to anyone who uses PGP) might work. Comments would be moderated for a person based on what they were moderated by people that the first person "trusts", who in turn would trust others. Individuals could add a "trust contribution" to a particular comment based on the number score, or by modifiers (funny, insightful, etc), length, number of sentences, etc. One problem with this of course is the sheer amount of data involved, and the number of computations required for each comment to be processed for each individual. Another is how to set comment scores for archiving. Another is people examining the source code and figuing out how to "karma whole" it. Oh well..
Anyway, I see politics as a way to filter information. The current American system is not perfect, some (myself included) would argue, far from perfect. The decisions made by government that can most affect peoples' lives (criminal sentencing bills, the Drug War(TM), DMCA, MATA, etc) are not the ones that people vote on. Some of us do, but most of us (out in "9 to 5 Pleasentville") could care less about the fact that we live in a country where a foriegn citizen canbe thrown in jail for 5 years for doing something perfectly legal, and ethical, in his own contry, or that legislation is being proposed that would thrown a love-sick teenager away for 25-to-life for defacing a web page. Heck, the idea of MATA didn't even exist prior to September 11, such less at election time. Most people vote based on the "bot-button" issues: Medicare, Social Security, and the (promise) of lower taxes.
For the other issues, there is the "third house" of journalistic opinion, writing to Congress and other People with Power, and "big-time" lobbying. Of the three, the third is probably the most effective, followed by the first and second, unless you happen to get the ear of a Congressperson. There's a lot of cynicism about politics floating around, and I think a lot of it is that in the face of the hundreds of thousands of dollars of soft money being thrown around, and the fact that George W. ammased 100-odd million dollars before he was even elected, "little guys" don't stand a chace. Or at least we don't think we do. I recall that in a recent Supreme Court opinion regarding campaign contributions, of of the justices said that "the appearance of a fair election process must be maintained" (paraphrased from a bad memory).
As many people here and elsewhere have stated in recent days, lots of the legislative proposals made in responce to Geroge W.'s declaration of a "War on Terrorism" are kinee-jerk reactions, grounded in little if any fact (the futility of encryption restrictions), and without regard for existing laws (much of MATA). Yet they are proposed by our legislators. Do these people truely "ignore the facts"? In some cases, probably. In some cases (Judd Gregg's proposal) it might be to push a pet agenda. In a lot of cases (Judd Gregg again), it's probably so they can say to their constituents that "I did something!"
The question shouldn't necessarily be how to get better people into power, but how to get better ideas. How to make the people in power face facts, that encryption restrictions won't work, that getting tougher on computer crime isn't necessarily going to catch terrorists (they would be breaking laws anyway) and is just going to potentially ruin a lot of lives in the process, and take away the feeling of security for a lor more of us that we won't be thrown in the slammer some day.
Do I think the idea of a Slashdot lobbying effort is a good idea? You bet! We need a way to get some sanity on tech issues, and an antidote to knee-jerk reactions to anything "high tech" that is vaguely threatening, into Washington and elsewhere, and make people listen.
Jim
What's the difference? Why can't we take that email we just wrote, paste it into Abiword/ Staroffice/ LaTeX/ whatever, print it and stuff it in an envelope? You don't even need postage! (Well, in Canada, anyway.)
A number of people have posted the emails they "just sent" to whatever political group or news site or whatever. There have been a lot of great comments explaining exactly what the problem is with DMCA or whatever. Print those and mail them off. It's not that hard.
-Erf C.
Cthulu always calls collect...
Poliglut prints lots of shirts. See the link for this one. Here it is. (See the back)
In other words: what happens if there's no project manager for a particular cause?
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
1. Creating an organization that can hire a lobbyist and Political Action Committee (PAC) are completely different things. A PAC is set up with the intent to pool and distribute campaign contributions to Members of Congress. Any organization can hire a lobbyist. There are some restrictions on using appropriated dollars to fund a lobbyist (commonly referred to as the Byrd rule) but otherwise, hiring a lobbyist is not a hard thing.
2. Hiring a lobbyist is expensive/cheap. You can find younger lobbyists that have recently left the Hill and are hungry to work hard for a relative pittance... but they may lack the access you need to compete against other interests. Some firms limit their monthly retainers to a minimum of $20,000 a month, others take interesting clients for much less. The costs really depend on how broad the issues dealt with are, how toxic you will become to other potential clients, how many hours the effort will take, what are the expenses (copies, dinners, cabs are important for tiny retainers) associated with it and so on.
3. Congress is already "bought" by big business. Patently not true, but I will say that the large telecommunications, software and entertainment industries have taken the time to express their concerns to Members of Congress, and to present information that suggests that, among other things, should their industry be harmed by the amorphous "open source" movement, there will be a loss of jobs in the respective congressperson's district.
4. Congress has turned a deaf ear on electronic freedom. Also not true, Congress knows of the issues, but frankly the other side makes a much more compelling case. Additionally, I do not believe some of the organizations who do work for the policies most of you express concern about operate in a politically savy mode. I know I may be shooting myself in the foot here, but I personally came up with an effective method to combatting the cybernanny software in libraries, and suggested the idea to a head of one of the non-profs here in town. Unfortunately they were so overwhelmed with issues and underwhelmed with cash, nothing was done with it. Some organizations tend to show a "zealot" side, which is not always an effective way to advocate a position.
Finally, why would an effective lobbyist work on behalf of the concepts expressed on slashdot? To get a lobbyist who knows the Members and staff of the Judiciary committee and the Commerce committee will require finding someone who probably already has connections with organizations that would oppose the "slashdot movement". Why would he make himself toxic and decrease his/her ability to put food on the table for his family for a movement that will cost him hours of time with a likely tiny reward?
For a more complete discussion of Washington, check out my other post at Tech savvy but world dumb is the root of the issue
A sig?!? I don't think so.....
Get on the Ballot to challenge him/her in the Primary.
Don't be shy, tell reporters that you are running to educate them about you issue. You will likely get at least one face to face debate. They'll ever after recognize your name.
After I ran against Scot Klug in '96, he never failed to personally return my calls.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
Join a politial party (select one based on your own belifs. We need democrats, republicans, and third parties, so take your pick)
In high school I was given an assignment to go to a meeting of a poltical party. I found a ride to the republican party meeting. In that room were 10 people. they needed 12 to go to the state convention. 9 were opposed to abortion and brought up that issue constantly, but the last person diagreed. Needless to say they had a hard time finding their 12 represenitives. If you had been there you could have been one.
Nothing gets done easially, but grassroots is where things happen. when republicans and democrats both get a significant number of represenitives who think electronic freedom is a critcal issue you have trumped all corporate money.
The eff has sample letters, easy to read action items and links to easy to use resources like 'write your rep.' It doesn't get much easier than that.
Try some caffiene.
I have been taking a class at my local junior college called State and Local Government, and I must say, it's been an eye-opening experience for me. Among the many things it has done is shown me some ways that a concerned group of people can affect what laws are passed and how things are talked about.
Another thing it has shown me (and I already believed his) is that it is often easier to make changes happen at the state and local (S&L) level than at the federal level. Part of this is because the S&L gov is usually very close by.
Madison, Wisconsin, my town, happens to be the state capitol, which is practically around the corner. It is relatively easy to contact my state representatives (assembly reps and state senators), and even easier to talk to the Madison city council and county board reps.
My point: Why don't we try and get an effort together to lobby or local governments to switch to open source servers? We don't need to go for full desktop implemenatation right away, maybe not even for a long while. But look at all the razzing that IIS is getting. If you tell a local gov rep this, and about how they would be saving the local gov (reduce expenditurs) money, personell time (money) and Internet traffic (money) by using OSS servers, they just might listen.
I'm planning on doing this in Madison, and was actually going to ask Slashdot for some help in doing this. But why don't we start talking about it now?
-- haaz.
-- haaz.
Slashdot's strength comes from it's collective input, and this, being diverse and often opposed, is not a unanimous opinion. Slashdot is a respected authority on linux and some other issues because it provides a great service about these issues, and as such is influential with the linux community. For it to be influential in large-scale politics- because most issues the lobby group suggests are international- it needs to widen its readership and, vitally, maintain a high standard of input as free as possible from dogmatism and ossification. I would welcome an editorial endorsement of some political lobbyists, but stay clear of too close ties which could stifle both groups.