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
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
We're just getting started, so it's a great time to join in.
Miko O'Sullivan
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.
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.
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.
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
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"
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.
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.
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)
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
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
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.
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.
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.....
And the funny thing is, I still talk to people who think campaign finance reforms would be a bad thing!
It is. It is a violation of first ammendment rights in nearly all forms that i've seen proposed. Now I would agree that all money that doesn't come in anonymously should be reported, but that is all i'm willing to say.
that is If I choose to give 1 million anonymously that is fine, but I'm the only one who knows that I did so, not the politition. If I choose to donate otherwise, so that I can get some law, then that i donated the money should be public knowledge. (And remember polititions are free to ignore my wishes) But don't limit how much I can give, that is a violation of my rights.