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Broadcast Flag Sneak Not Attempted
Trizero writes "THOMAS, one of the best sources for Congressional action on the Internet has shown that no amendments occured to the CJS Appropriations Bill. Monday, Slashdot covered the EFF announcing a rumor that a senator was attempting to sneak an amendment to bring the Broadcast Flag into law. From THOMAS (scroll down to the bottom): "6/21/2005:
Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies. Approved for full committee consideration without amendment favorably." Translation: No one attempted to sneak the Broadcast flag into law." Update: 06/22 18:55 GMT by J : The EFF's new Activism Coordinator, Danny O'Brien, sees this as a victory for swift citizen action. Impressive numbers. Nice work by EFF and Public Knowledge, and everyone who raised their voice.
Don't start jumping up and down. This won't be the end of the broadcast flag...
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
Whether this is similar to Y2K ("Nothing happened! Complete waste of time!" "Idiot! It only didn't happen because we did all that work!") or like the Tiger Repellant ("What's that?" "A tiger repellant" "What for? There are no tigers in Atlanta" "Exactly. Works pretty well, huh?") is difficult to tell from the point of view of an outsider.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Why ask hard questions? It was presented as a rumor, and due to the seriousness of it, it needed to be published. It's not like any harm came out of it. And more likely, it may have actually prevented harm by keeping the sneak from occurring.
The RIAA did something similar in the 90s when it snuck in "work for hire" legislation, which made all recording artists mere "work for hires" without any right to retain or obtain copyrights on their songs.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
>So which bill....?
Exactly. Some MPAA congresstooge will slip it in under the cover of night, as it were.
On the other hand, consider the possibility that the story was leaked as a trial balloon, to see how much attention it would get. They'll put it out again every couple of months, until we all decide that a broadcast flag is inevitable.
Considering how many people think digital TV is some kind of constitutional right, I suspect we'll get a broadcast flag along with subsidized digital TV -- to protect our way of life, fight terrorism, and to save the children.
The MPAA will get their broadcast flag, and the government will borrow money from my kids to pay for it.
sigs, as if you care.
Perhaps it is time for those of us who care about preserving fair use, and copyright reform, to stop being reactionary and be proactive. Perhaps it is time to put our energies, and (more importantly) monies into lobbying for the legislation we want, and not just stopping the ones we don't.
I'm not saying it would be easy, just that it is time to add this to the conversation.
What do you know I wrote a novel
illegal legislation
I have to call you on that one. If Congress passes the law, and the president signs it, it is by definition legal. There ain't no such thing as illegal legislation. There is such a thing as unconstitutional legislation, though, which is maybe what you were thinking of.
I am officially gone from
Attaching an ammendment like Real ID or Broadcast Flag will not slow the process. So maybe the CJS Appropriations Bill was not an ideal carrier for Broadcast Flag since appropriations bills tend to be the most debated and delayed.
"Why do we, as American citizens, have to keep a close eye on everything that our elected officials do so that they do not sneak unlawful provision into law."
Complete the well-known phrase or saying: "The price of freedom...."
Unconstitutional legislation is illegal legislation. Perhaps an oversimplification on my part but a truth nonetheless.
The solution is simple. Pass an amendment giving the President a line-item veto. Let each item stand on its own merit. Perhaps a line-item veto could be overturned by a simple majority rather than a supermajority as with normal vetos. In other words, prevent Congress from blackmailing the President and each other with these (usually spending) bills that normally would never pass.
But I suppose making things more efficient and effective isn't The American Way (TM).
How long till someone proposes a whole year's worth of legislation as one bill... up or down? And voting down means depriving war orphans of free milk, which makes you worse than Hitler (at least according to Senator Durbin), whereas voting up cedes citizens' rights to the **AA, insurance companies and other large, rich corporations, buried so deeply in the legislation no one even knows it's there.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Better idea: pass an amendment that prohobits "riders", like what Minnesota has done (or so I've heard).
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
How about instead of term limits on Congress, have "space limits" on laws... in conversation with a lawyer friend of mine, he admitted that he doesn't even know all of the laws IN HIS AREA OF SPECIALIZATION! I asked him how we could justify, "ignorance of the law is no excuse" when even a trained professional, whose job it is to know the law, doesn't know the law. He had no answer.
No, we don't need term limits on Congresscritters. What we need is a Constitutional amendment to the following effect:
The sum total of all laws currently in force as enacted by Congress must be less than 50,000 words, with *no* references to external sources allowed (that's approximately 96 pages).
If Congress wants to put something new in, that's great... but they'll have to take something out. Furthermore, it does a terrific job of (a) allowing the average citizen to understand what the laws are and (b) forcing the law to be concise, well-thought-out and well-written, and most importantly, a statement of general principles that are to be equitably applies across the board - not one riddled with loopholes.
For reference, the US Constitution, including all amendments and enumeration of amendment numbers, clauses, phrases, sections, etc. is a total of 7,709 words (as counted by copy/pasting into MS Word). It's pretty freaking clear on the general principles of law involved (some of the amendments less so).
Just a thought.
I'm not sure how exactly you would phraze the ammendment, but yeah, I agree that a "one law, one vote" ammendment would do wonderful good for America. Just make it so that anything added into a bill where it doesn't belong is declared unconstitutional as soon as anybody challenges it. While we are at it, we should also have an accuracy in naming clause in the ammendment. So, you can't have a bill that does something terrible, and call it, "clean skies bill," or "school lunches for poor minorities act" which make use of torture illegal.