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.

Comments

So what happened?

[TripMaster Monkey]

So, the Broadcast flag wasn't smuggled into law within the CJS appropriations bill, as threatened earlier.
The question now is: why not?

• Did the massive phone campaign advocated by Public Knowledge manage to dissuade the senators?
  
• Did the senators decide against this course of action on their own?
  
• Or was this just an unfounded rumor to begin with?
  

Discuss.

Re:So what happened?

[LordNimon]

Better idea: pass an amendment that prohobits "riders", like what Minnesota has done (or so I've heard).

Re:So what happened?

[bhsx]

Well, I can tell you that for the first time in my life, I called my Senator, Dick Durbin. I've used the EFF's (invaluable) fax service before; but I've never actually called. This, for me, could be a final straw in my belief of a failing system, you see; so it became that important to me. This is how the conversation went:
bhsx: I'd like to know Senator Durbin's stance on the rumor of a ryder being added to the appropreations bill regarding the mandate of the broadcast flag.
Nice, very professional sounding rep: You know, we just started hearing about this yesterday, and we really don't know enough about it to say, at this point.
bhsx: Well, the rumor only broke yesterday. I voted for the Senator last election; and will rethink that vote if this happens.
Nice, very professional sounding rep: We are taking a tally, we've gotten plenty of phone calls about this. Do I understand that you are against this possible ryder?
bhsx: Yes, very much so...
Nice, very professional sounding rep: That does seem to be the concensus here sir, we will be looking at this very closely. Thank you for calling.
Of course, Senator Durbin is eating crow over breaking Godwin's Law, so maybe he saw this as a possible platform for looking like the good guy again. Who know's why it happenned; but believe that every one of us here that faxed and phoned got heard. Keep up the good work everyone!

Re:So what happened?

[ntk]

It's not over yet.

Just between you, me, and a few other passing Slashdot folk, here's the extent of what we know: there's a senator who is (or was) friendly to the idea of dropping a BF amendment into the Senate Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Bill.

There are a number of opportunities for them to do this: drop it in sub-committee (Tues), full committee (Thurs), or even later in the passage of the bill.

If it's an uncontroversial amendment, and you're a sneaky senator, you're better off dropping it in early, because then the job is done, and someone else has to fight to get it out of the bill.

The more controversial it becomes, the later you should place it (when the bill has some momentum, and fixes are harder).

The BF got a lot more controversial this week.

The campaign switched this to becoming the "Broadcast what?" amendment, to the "Is this that Godforsaken thing that's been melting my staffers phones all week?".

It was always an even split whether the sneak move would go in Tues or Thurs (which was why it was a 48 hour campaign, and we've been targetting the full Appropriations Committee). They could still try and stick it in tomorrow, but that's becoming increasingly unlikely (we're betting 50/50 right now). Too hot a potato.

Next stop in this line of attack would be an amendment on the senate floor, but there's some time to go before that.

I've written about the effect of your messages on the EFF site, but that's mostly statistics on exactly how big the response was (summary: for a campaign targetted at a few senators in a short time-frame, it was huge).

I'm currently pulling together all the possible opportunities the broadcasters have for sneaking the flag in. I'm tempted to publish that, because it would give people a better overview, but there's a bit of me that thinks "Don't let them know what the opposition knows!". What do people think?

Re:So what happened?

[drew]

Since nobody else seems to have posted this yet (surprisingly)...

Ob. Simpson's reference:

Kent: With our utter annihilation imminent, our federal government has snapped into action. We go live now via satellite to the floor of the United States congress.

Speaker: Then it is unanimous, we are going to approve the bill to evacuate the town of Springfield in the great state of --

Congressman: Wait a minute, I want to tack on a rider to that bill: $30 million of taxpayer money to support the perverted arts.

Speaker: All in favor of the amended Springfield-slash-pervert bill?

[everyone boos]

Speaker: Bill defeated. [bangs gavel]

Kent: I've said it before and I'll say it again: democracy simply doesn't work.

Wait there's more!

[Prophetic_Truth]

Don't start jumping up and down. This won't be the end of the broadcast flag...

Re:Wait there's more!

[murphyslawyer]

but by enlarge it still sucks

Hey - did you send me like 20 emails this morning?

Re:Poor senator

[iabervon]

We have that in Massachusetts. It's nice for avoiding riders, but it has certain problems: they can't pass a bill to tax one thing (e.g., gas) to fund a different thing (e.g., public transit), and it's therefore possible for one bill to pass and the other not. If the funding bill is first, opponents will say there isn't money to fund it. If the taxation bill is first, opponents will come up with more popular things to spend the money on.

I think a better solution would be to have a quick process for undoing the effects of a rider. The day after passing a bill with a rider that wouldn't have passed as a bill by itself, anyone could propose repealing the rider, everyone would look at the rider and realize that it's something noteworthy that wasn't actually discussed at all, and they'd vote with no argument for keeping it (since no argument was initially raised for adding it). Chances are that such a bill would survive a presidental veto on general principle (or the threat of sneaking something nasty about the areas that fail to support it into the next popular bill).