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20 Lawmakers Want to Kill Your Television
Macki writes "As previously mentioned, the Broadcast Flag is back before congress. There are 20 law makers currently supporting the bill. The insane thing about it is the fact that no one supports the bill except a handful of entertainment companies. Probably not even the employees of the entertainment companies. It's bad enough they want to break our televisions, but the way that they are subverting democracy is just astounding. Danny O'Brien at the EFF has done a spectacular job deconstructingthe MPAA/RIAA's efforts to ramrod this through, and more importantly, the motivations of the members of congress who are helping them."
It's bad enough they want to break our televisions, but the way that they are subverting democracy is just astounding
Okay, now with this issue there might be an exception here, but there is a reason we don't have a true democracy in the United States: people are stupid. That's why we pick representatives to do the voting for us. It's not because it would be inconvenient to have a popular vote on every issue, it's because the framers were smart enough not to trust the public with such power.
Think of all the things that the majority of people in the U.S. hold as being a "good thing" for the country that would probably end up being disasterous. If slavery and civil rights were held to a popular vote, there's a good chance the laws never would have passed.
So please, before you trash Congress for against "the will of the people," bear in mind that is exactly why Congress exists; so that when the time is appropriate, Congress can go against the majority of the people in order to protect the minority.
I make no claim as to the application of my statements to this particular article. Just a general remark about the issue raised by the article summary.
What?
For me, like for many people here, TV is already dead.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
The number of people who support a piece of legislation is irrelivant in terms of whether a law is right or wrong. At some point in our nation's history it was only a handful of people who wanted to:
There are plenty of reasons not to vote for this law, but that line of reasoning isn't one of them.
(fyi, do not mistake this comment as support for the law)
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
"Never get between an American and his TV set." If Congress passes this bill, there will be hell to pay.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The broadcast flag won't do a thing to break your TV. Your TV shouldn't have to care one way or the other about the thing.
What this breaks is your PVR, by making it unlawful for Best Buy (or whoever) to sell you one that will record something they don't want you to. That doesn't stop you watching TV.
So they're not killing your home entertainment centre per se, just transporting it back to those lovely 1970s, where video recorders don't exist and the only way to watch something is to do so when they want to broadcast it. Which is pretty rubbish, admittedly.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
You write letters, as in black print on white paper, in a real envelope, with a real stamp, to your Congresscritters, explaining that you oppose this, you think it is a really bad idea, and you want them to vote AGAINST it.
You send three letters, at a minimum: one to each Senator from your state, and one to the Congressman who represents you.
You get all your friends to do the same thing.
E-mail WON'T CUT IT. They KNOW that e-mail takes no effort, compared to sending an actual physical letter.
If any of the Congresscritters sponsoring this travesty are from your state, whether they represent you or not, you also send them letters.
The letters should be short, polite, to-the-point. They should not use profanity, they should not use 1337-speak, they should not make any kind of threat, not even the threat to vote against them in the next election if they support this. (That last threat is implicit in the fact that you sent the letter.)
The vast majority of Congresscritters *NEVER* hear from "The Folks Back Home". The corollary is that every actual physical letter they receive indicates at least 100 voters who feel the same way, but didn't bother to write a letter. (Every phone call is assumed to indicate 10 voters.)
You almost certainly will receive a reply to your letter. It may or may not indicate that anyone actually read it. If you do not receive a reply, you send more letters, to the State party headquarters, complaining about that clown in Washington who can't be bothered to answer mail from constituents. Those letters also get read, and said clown will hear about it from the guys who made his election happen.
And anyone who thinks that these things can't be fixed should re-read the results of the 1994 mid-term elections.
At one point the Internet looked like providing a fix, at least for the literate, in terms of supplying information. But even there the good stuff is increasingly subject to Gresham's Law - it's being buried under the piles of shit. And now that Rupert Murdoch has suddenly discovered the interthingy, and is moving the centre of his empire to the US, it won't get better any time soon. But cheer up! The Roman Empire ran on panem et circenses; it's just a social cycle and eventually it will collapse. Probably when the barbarian hordes from China invade, steal all the electronic goods, and put the population of the US to work building giant terracotta statues.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
And yes again the "We are bigger than the Swiss therefore it will not work" argument. Yet again this is a classical excuse on why it works in Switzerland and not anywhere else. Direct democracy can work on national level if it is a NATIONAL issue. Many people confuse county, state, and federal issues.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Their "threat" is so transparently false that it makes me laugh. Broadcasting companies are threatening to stop broadcasting? If they don't get their way, they'll just close up shop, lay everyone off, liquidate their assetts and cease to be? Right. Do you think their shareholders would support them getting out of broadcast television?
They're like a 4 year old threatening to hold their breath until they die if they don't get the candy bar they want. They cannot do it, period. Sorry kid, no candy bar for you.
If Congress doesn't deliver a Broadcast Flag pronto, warns the letter, content producers will abandon free, over-the-air broadcast TV.
Obviously, that means that we should, under no circumstances, deliver a Broadcast Flag; we really need the bandwidth for more useful purposes. For example, if we use those channels for WiFi or WiMax, then Internet access becomes easier and people can choose what to watch, as opposed to having ABC and NBC show them bad television with worse advertising mixed in.
Correct, but each and every one of those people will keep or lose their jobs based on party-line issues. The bile in your throat you feel over this particular issue won't hurt them at all.
This is why politicians on both sides love the abortion issue, especially when raising funding for their campaigns. Nothing can be done about it one way or the other, because Roe v. Wade is established constitutional law, and not enough people want to change things for an Amendment, which is what it would take. However, Republicans know they can count on the "pro-life" vote, so long as they keep pretending they have the capacity to outlaw abortions. Democrats know they can count on the "pro-choice" vote, so long as they keep pretending that the Republicans have the capacity to outlaw abortions.
Every once in a while an honest politician like Tim Penny comes along and openly admits that the whole debate is completely irrelevant, and we should be voting on issues that matter, like the budget, but nobody wants to hear it, so it all just gets drowned out in the din of partisan screaming.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
You see I live in a country that has true democracy and it is called Switzerland. In fact true democracy works well because believe it or not there are "STUPID" swiss! People who say, "it's because the framers were smart enough not to trust the public with such power" are in fact saying, "An elite number of people know what's good for the masses!". Let's carry this thought through and call it what it is namely fascism.
Interestingly enough, the Swiss Germans make up the majority of Switzerland; so in any direct vote they would get to decide what is best for everyone. When I lived there one of the complaints I heard from my Italian and French Swiss friends was that if the German Swiss decided something was good it became law at the national level.
While direct democracy can work well it starts to break down as people become less homogeneous and have varying views of what is good based on their cultural norms. Even a country as small as Switzerland is not a country of only cows, Heidis, and chocolate or watch makers.
Speaking of Heide, Switzerland was the last European country to give women suffrage; and unless it has changed they still can't vote in some local (largely ceremonial) elections.
It's wonderful and interesting country to live in, but the reality is very different than the popular image (in the US at least) most people have of Switzerland.
The US has true democracy on a local level to a limited extent - we vote on laws directly, as well as many revenue issues. Some states allow citizens to overturn or create laws via popular referendum as well (CA falls to mind). We just don't do it on a national level; as a republic with limited federal powers that's probably not a bad idea considering it would concentrate power in a few very populous parts of the country.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
The current administration is only conservative in the sense of social and military. They do not seek smaller government, and the size of government has expanded under their watch. Check some of Bush's campaign promises (he promised to sign any gun control legislation that crossed his desk) and facts from the congressional budget office.
Agreed. And all the "State's Rights" stuff is BS also. Only when it suits their agenda. Take a few issues recently:
- Medicinal Marijuana. The State of California enacted laws to allow it. The feds went in and arrested folks growing it. Had the feds followed their mantra of "states know better" this would have never gone to the Supreme Court.
- Right to die. The State of Oregon passed laws to allow it. John Asscroft made a unilateral decision to bar doctors from prescribing drugs for this purpose, effectively squashing it. Even though Asscroft is gone, there has been no attempt to reverse that decision.
- Gay marriage. A few states have passed laws to allow it. The feds are doing whatever they can to circumvent them or at least ignore them. No federal tax advantages of marriage, no ability to get a same-sex spouse citizenship, etc. No attempt to enforce the constitutional requirement that states recognize the public acts of other states.
If a state passed a law to do something in their agenda (read: Christian Fundamentalist or their fellow rich guy's view) that conflicted with Federal law I am sure we would see a very different reaction from this administration.
Pretty sad state of affairs.
The only athletic sport I ever mastered was backgammon - Douglas William Jerrold
Democracy has been subverted for ages and will continue to be. The only thing that keeps it rolling along is the electorate eventually gets pissed off enough and kicks the scoundrels out and installs new scoundrels. Rotating the bastards out is something akin to hitting the reset button - things work well for awhile until it's time to reset again.
These 20 congress folk who signed the letter need to be reminded who voted them into office. The bribes the MPAA and RIAA are paying had better be enough for them to live on once they're kicked out.
Which is why Buffet and Soros are both Democrats, and why small business men and farmers tend to vote Republican.
Your statement is simplistic. The parties are coalitions of pressure groups. The "platforms" are just plans to benefit the groups in the coalitions at the expense of those outside. Some industries support the Republicans some support the Democrats. Some consumer groups support one, other groups support the other. The pressure groups vote for whoever promises to give them the most stuff.
Democracy (where the government represents the interest of the people) is essentially dead in this country. All we have now is pressure group warfare.
Incidentally, it is interesting to note that the greek roots of "democracy" mean "people" and "power" while the greek roots of "monarchy" mean "one" and "rule". The implication seems to be that while the people have "power" in a democracy they do not "rule". An interesting observation...
The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)