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The Politics of Technology
airrage writes "An interesting Washington
Post article today, concerning technology's voice on Capital Hill, talks about how the high-tech sector is no longer the belle of the congressional ball. Apparently, circa 2000, politicos were simply tripping over themselves to be seen as pro-technology. Currently, it's much harder to get congressional leaders to embrace pro-technology initiatives. Seems like technology in general is trending towards more regulation as the industry is seen as staid as railroads, coal, or shipping."
Some things are long overdue. Like applying standard contract law to EULAs and declaring them unenforceable. Or using existing product liability laws to hold software vendors accountable for their defective products.
Legislators treating technology like a special case is exactly what gives us crap like the DMCA and UCITA.
If you are one of the companies that can line their pockets with cash.
Some things never change.
A lot of people had to learn that not everything that glitters is gold the hard way - they probably would not trust someone who promises a second dot-com boom.
Politics is not so much doing the best for the country's future as trying to please voters and supporters.
where's all that Karma?
I suppose you are also going to tell me that congress allows 181 Fortune 500 companies loopholes so they don't pay any federal taxes just because these corporations fill up their war chests.
Nothing is new under the sun.
---
When you come to a fork in the road, take it! --Yogi Berra--
I don't think it's about the dot com bubble, at least not completely. There are a lot of conflicting viewpoints, and lobbying dollars at the moment. The entertainment industry wants to castrate some technologies, so they can't be used for piracy. The manufacturors want fewer restrictions, because restrictions will lower demand, and restrict possible international exports. The open source communities, the ACLU, etc, want fewer restrictions on principal. And so on like that. In an environment like that, strong support for any given position is likely to get a politician in trouble from someone, so they probably think it's better to be seen as indifferent or neutral.
When someone might yell at me, it has to be OpenBSD.
Why do comments like this still get modded as "funny," or indeed anything but the trolls they are? The "Gore claimed he invented the internet" thing was bullshit propaganda two years ago; now it's just a dead horse. Give it up, people.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
There is this concept that if we look at a homeless man and a billionare, the latter somehow obtained his riches by stealing from the former.
I think this theory is intellecutally bankrupt, but that's me.
If you look at the amount of money actually given to politicans, it's scarily low. What's shocking is not whether they will sleep with you for money...it's how low their prices are.
The american political system is dominated by two groups: a small minority who know how to push buttons to get their agendas pushed forward, and the great unwashed masses who would rather sit about and complain about the system.
If you want change, then you must join the former rather than sitting about navelgazing and blaming the problems of society upon whichever group you're not a part of (rich, poor, white, black, hispanic, drug users, terrorists, aliens from outer space).
Perhaps you've forgotten your history, or maybe you never looked it up... but the United States has had marginal tax rates exceeding 90%; and during the Carter years, the highest marginal rate was 70%; it took the Reagan tax cuts to bring things down to a saner place on the Lasser curve. See this table.
As for the wealthy, according to a CBO report in 1999, the top 5% of US taxpayers pay 50% of all taxes, while the top 1% pay 29%. Hmmm, that doesn't sound like "little or no tax" to me.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Last questions first (in reverse order):
1) Laws don't Prevent anything. They assign penalties for certain actions. As such, they serve as stimulus to modify behavior. You shoudn't be looking to prevent someone from doing something using the law. That's the trap we're in now - the only way to prevent a potential "bad-guy" from doing something is to lock up everyone, good and bad. If they're copying your program without buying the appropriate number, they've broken the law, and you're entitled to damages.
2) Quality laws do fine now for both the small guy and big guy. Both have to adhere to the same level for making suring that the quality is there. I'm not going to cut my local store more slack for selling me shoddy merchandise than I would WallMart, simply because the local store is "smaller". Obviously there has to be a certain amount of leeway for QA in software (i.e. it can't be perfect, but...). There has to be a minimal barrier-to-entry for producing software, and QA is it. Everyone is held to the same standard, and if the standard is written correctly, then it won't be too burdensome. However, you might need product-liability insurance, like many traditional manufacturing busineses...
3) This goes back to the original statement: you need to be able to provide them with a method for returning the merchandise, but you generally don't have a guaranteed method of locking out cheaters. As a rough analogy: what prevents me from buying a 42" TV, using it for a party that weekend, then returning it on Monday? I'm cheating the retailer, but that's not really detectible. The vast majority of people will pay for a properly priced product, rather than cheat. And if you do it correctly, someone with an "illegal" copy isn't going to be able to get upgrades, support, documentation, et al. And yes, part of your company will have to deal with maintaining serial number collections. That's part of the business. TANSTAAFL.
Right now, being a software company (both big and small) allows the company to sidestep a huge number of obligations that non-software companies take for granted as a cost-of-business. I see no reason for this, and in fact there is a considerable social cost to absolving the software companies of these responsibilities. If this reduces the number of potential small software companies starting up, then so be it. We have to get out of the mind-set that a software company can just spew random crap at the EU. There has to be some responsibilities with producing a product, and these responsibilities cost money.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
He did not say he invented the Internet, but he did say "I took the initiative in creating the Internet". From snopes.com:
"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."
Now sure the "urban legend" uses the word invent instead of create, but the point is the same. Al Gore seemed to be taking credit for something that was *MUCH* larger that he was---even as Vice President. Especially for a project that had been going on since the late 60's. What about Vint Cerf the developer of TCP/IP? Or Tim Berners-Lee, developer of the World Wide Web. Or Ray Tomlinson founder of e-mail? Heck, if we are going to talk about politicans what about LBJ since the DARPA project that became the Internet was started during his administration?
There are a thousand people more deserving to proclaim they "took the initiative in creating the Internet". Sure Al may take credit in helping to promote it, but his statement was way too broad and arrogant. He didn't even acknowledge anyone else. It is everything I dislike about a powerful person taking credit for the work of the "little guy".
Brian Ellenberger
You mean China? I didn't know we were on the virge of war with China. Ohhh, you mean Iraq. The very same country that took a week to devastate in Desert Storm?
You mean the Civil War was last year?
Mmmm. That's why everyone on Slashdot is buying Pentium IV 3GHz PCs, SUVs, and 50" digital televisions.
Right, that's why the dockworkers in California have guaranteed job security lined up. Not to mention all those people recruiters in California who are desperately trying to find (here's the big one, folks) QUALIFIED tech workers. Sorry, if you were part of the dot-com boom, your services are no longer required. Unfortunately, that does, in a round-about way, mean I lost my job, too. But I can get a new one easily enough... I'm just choosy.
Same thing as any other year. More money to build the war machine, less money for science and education.
Good troll.
>any government regulation of industry is bad and damages free markets
Nonsense, Mr Gates. All sorts of things fall into the category of regulation like anti-trust laws, environmental laws, labor laws, etc. It would behoove the pie-in-the-sky libertarians and other lassiez faire types to acknowledge that free markets do a poor job of remaining free and also consolidate power in a way which defeats the purpose of a market to begin with. Regulation should be judged individually, not generalized as being bad because it counters what your conservative professor told you in Economics 101.