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Hardball Tactics For The Geek Lobby
sfjoe writes: "The San Francisco Chronicle has this story on how to effectively make the point about online freedom of speech. In a nutshell, until a legislator gets slapped around (electorally-speaking) for kowtowing to the narrow corporate interests, nobody in Congress will take online civil liberties seriously. On the other hand if, for example, Senator Disney gets his balls whacked (electorally-speaking), monstrosities like the DMCA will start getting bottled up in congressional committees. The NRA has been doing this for years and it works."
Everyone and their brother has free speech as an issue.
What "geeks" need right now is to know how to make a point about the fact that:
Seastead this.
Warning: this post is seeping with my political views, many of which are controversial. I'm using them as an example, not to try to convert folks or pick a fight.
I'm from Senator Disney's home state. Hollings is a Democrat, so voting against him means voting for a Republican. In other states, this might not be a problem -- there are a lot of moderate Republicans in the Senate that I respect, even if I disagree with some of their opinions. Unfortunately, they aren't on the ballot in South Carolina. Republican politicians in the South are fucking scary. If anyone doubts this, think about Strom Thurmond (segregationist), Jesse Helms (well-known racist), and Trent Lott (pork-barelling thug). I don't know if I can vote for a Southern-style Republican after seeing what damage out-of-control conservativism has done to the South.
In effect, saying "no" to Hollings is saying "yes" to the religious right, "yes" to corporate welfare, "yes" to the war on drugs, "yes" to irresponsible military expenditures (that, unlike much government spending, do nothing to grow the economy), "yes" to wiretapping the Internet, "yes" to mandatory censorware in libraries and schools, and the list goes on. It means saying "no" a woman's right to an abortion, "no" to affirmative action, "no" to spending money on public education, "no" to space research, "no" to any and all liberal social programs. You may not have a problem with all of these issues, but if any one of them is dear to your heart, you've got a real dilemma.
I'm a CS student, and I hope to work in software development one day, but frankly, if I never saw another computer again, or never bought another CD, I could live a happy and rewarding life doing something else. However, I don't think I could, in good conscience, advance a destructive conservative agenda just so I can use Linux instead of Windows, or use a traditional, uncrippled PC. I'm not saying you shouldn't, I'm just saying that I can't, and that many people won't. Technology issues are important, but is it worth abandoning everything else that I believe in just to vote a few (OK, a lot of) crooked Democrats out of office? Sadly, I don't think so.
We have a couple of choices, in my view. We can lobby in the traditional manner -- attempting to purchase influence via campaign donations. This is very expensive, and we'll get spanked by Microsoft and Disney, but maybe it will work if we generate enough public awareness. Barring that, we could just leave. I question whether other countries are still scrambling for computer programmers, but frankly, I'd go to Scandinavia or the Netherlands in a heartbeat if I could.
I hate that this sounds so negative, but I'm pretty demoralized about the whole thing -- it would be interesting to see if someone comes up with a solution.
Steve
Does anyone keep just lists of the Bills, voting records, etc. on these issues? Opensecrets.org does this for their issues, and Common Cause publicizes voting record for their issues, but I haven't seen anything like this for Geek issues.
Perhaps the EFF would do something like this, but I didn't find it on their Web site. Well, they are probably open to suggestions, especially with a contribution in the envelope!