CBDTPA / SSSCA Won't Be Passed This Year, Say Leahy
Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the savior-graceful dept.
filrock writes "It looks like we'll have a little breathing room before the CBDTPA/SSSCA becomes law. Senator Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is against the bill. Read the article on Wired. Good to see someone in the Senate with some common sense."
They are working on a better offer we can't refuse.
What does he want?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Leahy will only pass a bill with such a name as the JLTDMCAWWTTTAAOYRAMAP (Just Like The Digital Millenium Copyright Act, We Will Try To Take Away All Of Your Rights As Much As Possible)
Don't let your guard down
by
chennes
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
This only delays it a year, which is a notoriously short amount of time. We can't say to ourselves "Good - now I can go back to bed." This give all of us another year to deluge our representatives with letters expressing the danger of this legislation. We can't keep relying on people like senator Leahy to save our asses for us. WRITE!!
Re:Don't let your guard down
by
SomeoneYouDontKnow
·
· Score: 5, Informative
And don't forget that this thing could still find its way into another bill as an amendment. That's how the CDA was passed, as an emendment to the 1996 telecom act.
OT: If one of the admins is reading this, could you go in and delete or modify the post that screwed up the page formatting?
-- That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
Good, but not the end of things
by
Jouster
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
It has been the case, on several occasions, that bills have been sent to the "wrong" committee to avoid a hostile chair. Since the Speaker (who decides where bills go) is Republican and is known to be tightly linked with Hollywood, this seems a very real possibility. The only thing stopping it is that the bill has already been assigned, but when the next round of bills comes to the fore, watch for incorrect assignment to occur.
Jouster
Re:Good, but not the end of things
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Just want to set your facts straight: The Hollings bill is a Senate bill; there is no Speaker in the Senate, only a Majority Leader, who is a DEMOCRAT -- the party closer to Hollywood. You can bet the Republicans, who get less that 30% of what Democrats get in soft-money from Hollywood, will favor tech (really big-business) over content (somewhat big-business).
Slacker
More common sense needed...
by
dciman
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Now, someone in the congress should take notice to the obsurd proposal the RIAA has to charge extra fee to internet raido stations. The Screen Savers had the founder of WOLF FM on the other night talking abotu this issue and it amazed me. The guy does this out of his own pocket basically and already pays the normal fees that any other broadcast radio station pays. Now they want to charge him MORE than that, on a per user basis that is retroactive back to 1998!!! He would have to literally pay millions of dollars if he wanted to stay broadcasting.
This is all about the RIAA wanting to put indepent people out of business...period. They want to control every outlet that consumers have to get content.... and it is disturbing. People need to get their haeads out of their asses and stop this. Call your Senator daily....write letters....send email... and spread the work. We shoudn't have to deal with this "everything in the world must be copy protected crap."
What are his motives?
by
Screaming+Lunatic
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Leahy says he will block the bill, but he doesn't state why. What are his intentions? Does he feel the bill is just a plain bad bill or is their some lobby group he is looking out for? I think it's usually the latter when senators try to block bills. Or it could be just partisan politics.
PK
Leahy is an oddity in Congress. He's someone who seems to have his principles and sticks to them. He really seems to understand that there's such a thing as the First Amendment.
I wonder if there's a chance that Slashdot could do an interview with him. I'd like to see that happen.
-- That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
Re:What are his motives?
by
Brendor
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
As a Vermonter, I have heard nothing but good things regarding personal repies to e-mails by my friends and family. The Senator is also known as a savvy web user and his site can be found here. I would like to see his responses to Slashdot's questions also.
After the election...
by
JordanH
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
If it comes up next year, it will be after the midterm election. Congressmen are a bit more easily swayed by grass-roots campaigns before the election.
Thank you Senator Leahy
by
jmorris42
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· Score: 3, Insightful
A Democrat that still believes in the Constituition! Just shows they aren't all like Fritz "the Senator from Disney" Hollings. Keep writing those cards and letters folks, but send them to the Senator from Vermont in the form of thank you notes. He will now be the subject of extreme lobbying efforts by Hollywood and the DNC so he could use some encouragement.
-- Democrat delenda est
Re:Thank you Senator Leahy
by
dattaway
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· Score: 3, Funny
And remember, everytime you buy a movie, a starving lobbiest from Hollywood will thank you.
Interesting...
by
lie+as+cliche
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· Score: 4, Insightful
...considering the source. Isn't Wired owned by Viacom, which also owns Paramount / Blockbuster / Showtime / UPN etc.? How nice to be reassured by corporate film interests that we can stop worrying about copy protection initiatives for a while.
Fight it at the constituency...
by
loucura!
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Most of the USian population could care less about time-shifting, or space-shifting, they don't care about fair use rights, they just want their entertainment in pre-packaged slices, like 'American' cheese.
Buuuuut...
Most of the population 'hates' pr0n, especially the Southern Baptist Convention and their ilk.
Too fight the CBDTPA, we should mount a campaign against it claiming that it protects the illicit profits of pornographers, after all, what is most traded on the Gnutella network?
-- Black and grey are both shades of white.
This really wasn't the point
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The point of this bill wasn't to get passed, it was to make the next bills concerning this topic look less radical. I'm not going to find the link but in a recent cnet article they said how "Fritz" Hollings was a powerful influence because of his ability to point out an extreme and then get an alternative that's not quite as radical passed.
Re:Democrats are against this bill
by
DAldredge
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· Score: 3, Informative
The vast majority of sponsors of this bill ARE DEMOCRATS!
We could have a Republican Senate next year....
by
coltrane679
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
which would mean that Leahy is OUT of his control position. A third of the Senate is up for grabs in November, and there is only a one seat difference now (and, as you might recall, the Democrats only have control now because the Senator from Vermont, Jeffries, switched parties last year). There is also a possibility that Sen. Miller of Geaorgia, a Democrat, may switch to the Republicans. I believe the Republican Senator who would take Leahy's position is Sen. Hatch of Utah.
As a libertarian I really don't take a partisan view of such things--I view the Republicans and Democrats like the Bloods and the Crips, or the Corleone and Tattaglia families. I am pretty sure, however, that the DMCA passed the Senate (and House) while they were both controlled by Republicans, with Hatch then in the position that Leahy has now. Of course it was signed into law by Clinton, a Democrat. See my point about the Bloods and the Crips...?
Re:We could have a Republican Senate next year....
by
Chris+Johnson
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Well now that's interesting, because Orrin Hatch is not happy about what happened to the DMCA he helped to create, and he has NO love for the entertainment industry. This is the guy who has been in support of Napster. I think it is extraordinarily unlikely that he would support this in any way.
Rather nice that no matter who ends up in the control position, they don't trust the entertainment industry (they'll take the money, but it doesn't guarantee 'results', evidently)
Heres what we need to do folks
by
HanzoSan
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
We need a fund, slashdot or some group can setup a fund so we can all donate 10 bucks or so, to a fund, this money money will be used for advertisements. Instead of petitions we need donations which advertise our point of view to the public and tell the public which politicians are on our side and which arent.
We can raise the money online, through rallies, etc etc
We can get this money. It takes a group to colllect the money, a banner for hundreds or thousands of sites to post all over the web linking to this, and just hang the banner on your site. And of course IRL donations
-- If you use Linux, please help development ofAutopac
Re:Heres what we need to do folks
by
CokeBear
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Re:Heres what we need to do folks
by
The+Cat
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Good idea. Just FYI:
A 30-second midday ad on a nationwide cable network in about 60 million homes runs only a few thousand dollars. Probably be seen in an average of 4 million homes, roughly.
Just a thought.
Re:Heres what we need to do folks
by
flacco
·
· Score: 3, Funny
A 30-second midday ad on a nationwide cable network in about 60 million homes runs only a few thousand dollars. Probably be seen in an average of 4 million homes, roughly.
Are you kidding me?? Hell, I might pony up a few grand just to tell a bunch of people to kiss my ass on national TV. Well, as many as I could cram into 30 seconds, anyway.
-- pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Its time to act. We need to collect money for ads
by
HanzoSan
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Someone set up a non profit of some sort, allow us to donate money, I'll donate $5, everyone here donate $5, then when morpues and others go down we link to that site, millions donate $5, next thing you know we will have millions of dollars.
We use this money to create ads, the ads will tell the public whats going on, how they wont have freedom on their computer anymore. Put the ads on MTV, and on shows college kids watch, let them start a real grassroots movement.
We just need to get the word out.
-- If you use Linux, please help development ofAutopac
That wont work
by
HanzoSan
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Because the Democrats could do the same thing using Enron and other companies. You act like only the Democrats are puppets. Doing that would be commiting suicide for the republicians because the democrats will do the same thing, and both sides will lose out to a third party.
-- If you use Linux, please help development ofAutopac
Re:I think it would.
by
MAXOMENOS
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Enron isn't really relevant to the lives of most voters -- or at least they don't think it's relevant, which amounts to the same thing for political purposes. The collapse of Enron really has no effect on the life of the average American.
That's going to vary by geography. The Enron debacle has created a major mess here in Oregon, where PGE (an Enron company) increased our rates 30% just prior to the colapse (coincidence?) and thousands of people lost their retirement savings. That and the rotten economy (8% unemployment, lots of empty store fronts) are going to hurt Sen. Gordon Smith's (R-OR) chances in November.
Your average voter in, say, Kansas probably won't care about Enron either way. It's just too complicated.
Similarly, the Republicans will be nuts to play the CBDTPA card; unless El Rushbo picks his words very carefully, most GOP faithful won't have the first damn clue what the hell CBDTPA even does. They (like most Democrat faithful) might assume that it's there to make cable TV cheaper or to put criminals out of work. Some of 'em might even say it's no big deal, since everyone uses Windows anyway.
A letter to Feinstein
by
Voivod
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I'm sure it'll just end up in a wastebin somewhere, but I just wrote the following letter to Diane Feinstein, who is my representative.
---------
Dear Mrs. Feinstein,
I'm just writing to let you know that I will not be voting for you in the next election. I've been a Californian all my life, and have always voted on Democratic party lines. However, due to your shamefull sponsorship of the so called "Digital Television Promotion Act" which is a direct attack on not only the technological innovation which makes the state you represent great, but also attack on the lives and careers of millions of the citizens you represent, I will never again vote for you.
Looking at the giant campaign contributions you have received from media groups, I somehow doubt that your decision was actually based on considering the pros and cons of the bill. In the unlikely event that you are actually interested in facts on the situation, I beg you to do a little research into the repeating, inevitable reaction that media groups have shown throughout this century to new technologies, from VCRs and digital audio all the way back to the original record players, change threatens the pocketbooks of these industries, and they fight with all their power against these ultimately unstoppable trends. The sad thing is that in almost every case these dinosaurs ultimately benefit from these trends in reaching broader audiences with more interesting products.
Are you blind to the fact that this last cycle was fought just 20 years ago, and that expensive Senators such as yourself rallied along side the movie industry to fight off the horror of the VCR, which (they claimed) would bring an end to American culture in waves of piracy? Instead, now billions of dollars each year are added to the banks of these same media companies because of that innovaction which they fought blindly to stop. What happened to that world where every living room was to feature a "copying device" (VCR) which would drain the entertainment industry dry? Today, the cast is the same, the script is the same, but the new terror is the threat of that den of piracy known as the Internet.
Looking back, you may see your own reflection in the voices of senators from 20, 50 or even 80 years ago, who having found themselves solidly in the pockets of these frightened elephants proclaimed that no effort should be spared to protect these monied interests from the horrors of change. Have some shame and reconsider your foolish stand with them, so that they will again wake up and take advantage of this new medium instead of fighting it. In any case, you have lost my vote, and it will be a happy day for me when you are out of office.
Slashdot Mirror
They are working on a better offer we can't refuse.
Leahy will only pass a bill with such a name as the JLTDMCAWWTTTAAOYRAMAP (Just Like The Digital Millenium Copyright Act, We Will Try To Take Away All Of Your Rights As Much As Possible)
This only delays it a year, which is a notoriously short amount of time. We can't say to ourselves "Good - now I can go back to bed." This give all of us another year to deluge our representatives with letters expressing the danger of this legislation. We can't keep relying on people like senator Leahy to save our asses for us. WRITE!!
It has been the case, on several occasions, that bills have been sent to the "wrong" committee to avoid a hostile chair. Since the Speaker (who decides where bills go) is Republican and is known to be tightly linked with Hollywood, this seems a very real possibility. The only thing stopping it is that the bill has already been assigned, but when the next round of bills comes to the fore, watch for incorrect assignment to occur.
Jouster
Now, someone in the congress should take notice to the obsurd proposal the RIAA has to charge extra fee to internet raido stations. The Screen Savers had the founder of WOLF FM on the other night talking abotu this issue and it amazed me. The guy does this out of his own pocket basically and already pays the normal fees that any other broadcast radio station pays. Now they want to charge him MORE than that, on a per user basis that is retroactive back to 1998!!! He would have to literally pay millions of dollars if he wanted to stay broadcasting.
This is all about the RIAA wanting to put indepent people out of business...period. They want to control every outlet that consumers have to get content.... and it is disturbing. People need to get their haeads out of their asses and stop this. Call your Senator daily....write letters....send email... and spread the work. We shoudn't have to deal with this "everything in the world must be copy protected crap."
Leahy says he will block the bill, but he doesn't state why. What are his intentions? Does he feel the bill is just a plain bad bill or is their some lobby group he is looking out for? I think it's usually the latter when senators try to block bills. Or it could be just partisan politics. PK
If it comes up next year, it will be after the midterm election. Congressmen are a bit more easily swayed by grass-roots campaigns before the election.
What this means is that we really need to spend the time getting organized and involved.
A Democrat that still believes in the Constituition! Just shows they aren't all like Fritz "the Senator from Disney" Hollings. Keep writing those cards and letters folks, but send them to the Senator from Vermont in the form of thank you notes. He will now be the subject of extreme lobbying efforts by Hollywood and the DNC so he could use some encouragement.
Democrat delenda est
...considering the source. Isn't Wired owned by Viacom, which also owns Paramount / Blockbuster / Showtime / UPN etc.? How nice to be reassured by corporate film interests that we can stop worrying about copy protection initiatives for a while.
Most of the USian population could care less about time-shifting, or space-shifting, they don't care about fair use rights, they just want their entertainment in pre-packaged slices, like 'American' cheese.
Buuuuut...
Most of the population 'hates' pr0n, especially the Southern Baptist Convention and their ilk.
Too fight the CBDTPA, we should mount a campaign against it claiming that it protects the illicit profits of pornographers, after all, what is most traded on the Gnutella network?
Black and grey are both shades of white.
The point of this bill wasn't to get passed, it was to make the next bills concerning this topic look less radical. I'm not going to find the link but in a recent cnet article they said how "Fritz" Hollings was a powerful influence because of his ability to point out an extreme and then get an alternative that's not quite as radical passed.
The vast majority of sponsors of this bill ARE DEMOCRATS!
which would mean that Leahy is OUT of his control position. A third of the Senate is up for grabs in November, and there is only a one seat difference now (and, as you might recall, the Democrats only have control now because the Senator from Vermont, Jeffries, switched parties last year). There is also a possibility that Sen. Miller of Geaorgia, a Democrat, may switch to the Republicans. I believe the Republican Senator who would take Leahy's position is Sen. Hatch of Utah.
As a libertarian I really don't take a partisan view of such things--I view the Republicans and Democrats like the Bloods and the Crips, or the Corleone and Tattaglia families. I am pretty sure, however, that the DMCA passed the Senate (and House) while they were both controlled by Republicans, with Hatch then in the position that Leahy has now. Of course it was signed into law by Clinton, a Democrat. See my point about the Bloods and the Crips...?
We need a fund, slashdot or some group can setup a fund so we can all donate 10 bucks or so, to a fund, this money money will be used for advertisements. Instead of petitions we need donations which advertise our point of view to the public and tell the public which politicians are on our side and which arent.
We can raise the money online, through rallies, etc etc
We can get this money. It takes a group to colllect the money, a banner for hundreds or thousands of sites to post all over the web linking to this, and just hang the banner on your site. And of course IRL donations
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Someone set up a non profit of some sort, allow us to donate money, I'll donate $5, everyone here donate $5, then when morpues and others go down we link to that site, millions donate $5, next thing you know we will have millions of dollars.
We use this money to create ads, the ads will tell the public whats going on, how they wont have freedom on their computer anymore. Put the ads on MTV, and on shows college kids watch, let them start a real grassroots movement.
We just need to get the word out.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Because the Democrats could do the same thing using Enron and other companies. You act like only the Democrats are puppets. Doing that would be commiting suicide for the republicians because the democrats will do the same thing, and both sides will lose out to a third party.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
That's going to vary by geography. The Enron debacle has created a major mess here in Oregon, where PGE (an Enron company) increased our rates 30% just prior to the colapse (coincidence?) and thousands of people lost their retirement savings. That and the rotten economy (8% unemployment, lots of empty store fronts) are going to hurt Sen. Gordon Smith's (R-OR) chances in November.
Your average voter in, say, Kansas probably won't care about Enron either way. It's just too complicated.
Similarly, the Republicans will be nuts to play the CBDTPA card; unless El Rushbo picks his words very carefully, most GOP faithful won't have the first damn clue what the hell CBDTPA even does. They (like most Democrat faithful) might assume that it's there to make cable TV cheaper or to put criminals out of work. Some of 'em might even say it's no big deal, since everyone uses Windows anyway.
Finding God in a Dog
I'm sure it'll just end up in a wastebin somewhere, but I just wrote the following letter to Diane Feinstein, who is my representative.
---------
Dear Mrs. Feinstein,
I'm just writing to let you know that I will not be voting for you in the next election. I've been a Californian all my life, and have always voted on Democratic party lines. However, due to your shamefull sponsorship of the so called "Digital Television Promotion Act" which is a direct attack on not only the technological innovation which makes the state you represent great, but also attack on the lives and careers of millions of the citizens you represent, I will never again vote for you.
Looking at the giant campaign contributions you have received from media groups, I somehow doubt that your decision was actually based on considering the pros and cons of the bill. In the unlikely event that you are actually interested in facts on the situation, I beg you to do a little research into the repeating, inevitable reaction that media groups have shown throughout this century to new technologies, from VCRs and digital audio all the way back to the original record players, change threatens the pocketbooks of these industries, and they fight with all their power against these ultimately unstoppable trends. The sad thing is that in almost every case these dinosaurs ultimately benefit from these trends in reaching broader audiences with more interesting products.
Are you blind to the fact that this last cycle was fought just 20 years ago, and that expensive Senators such as yourself rallied along side the movie industry to fight off the horror of the VCR, which (they claimed) would bring an end to American culture in waves of piracy? Instead, now billions of dollars each year are added to the banks of these same media companies because of that innovaction which they fought blindly to stop. What happened to that world where every living room was to feature a "copying device" (VCR) which would drain the entertainment industry dry? Today, the cast is the same, the script is the same, but the new terror is the threat of that den of piracy known as the Internet.
Looking back, you may see your own reflection in the voices of senators from 20, 50 or even 80 years ago, who having found themselves solidly in the pockets of these frightened elephants proclaimed that no effort should be spared to protect these monied interests from the horrors of change. Have some shame and reconsider your foolish stand with them, so that they will again wake up and take advantage of this new medium instead of fighting it. In any case, you have lost my vote, and it will be a happy day for me when you are out of office.
Sincerely,
Didn't the DMCA pass by voice vote, in the dead of night?
Yes, along with the Mickey Mouse Monopoly Extension Act.
Will I retire or break 10K?