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Broadcast Flag Sneaking in the Back Door
ZeissIcon writes "Public Knowledge.org is reporting that the oft-defeated broadcast flag DRM scheme is being sneaked into Senator Steven's Telecommunications bill. Aside from the fact that it has no business being in that bill, and making no exceptions for fair use, this particular version calls for an Audio Broadcast Flag that would affect digital and satellite radio as well. The bill goes to committee on Thursday, so there is still time for public comment."
with our legal system: When random crap like this DRM can get implanted in the middle or a totally unrelated bill.
Has anyone contemplated legislation to stop this from happening?
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You know, it would be nice, just once, for those we entrust with ensuring the country is run for the good of it's people actually worked for the people who vote for them, rather than constantly trying to sneak pieces of legislation into any bill they can in a bid to force it through because it is clearly so unpalatable to everyone else that every time anyone spots it in the wild they beat it to death and chuck it to the kerb?
What must happen before the people we elect realise that when a piece of legislation is slapped down as often as this one has been, that the people don't want it, and that if the people don't want it, it shouldn't be a "tough shit, we'll just try again when you look the other way" thing? (and before you answer, I already know the answer - campaign 'donations' matching those the media companies chuck at them - when did democracy turning into 'the rule of those who can buy the elected rulers the biggest, most expensive lunch'?
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but I've never been able to find how to "publically comment" on these bills.
Not to mention, I have a strong feeling that the congresscritters probably don't even read the comments. How can we forcibly say to congress that we don't want this passed? (before anybody says writing them, etc, you really think they read the letters?)
Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little.
We all need to know about this stuff each and every time. And for anyone who is in this particular senator's constituency, I urge you to send a strongly worded letter (complete with a copy of voter registration if you have it) that he is INDEED being watched and that it will be made clear and obvious to all where his money is coming from and what laws it is being used to pay for.
I believe all of congress and the senate need a wake-up call when it comes to these practices. They should all be put on notice that there are people who are watching, and the numbers are growing.
Nowadays when you try to sneak something like this in the rascally public can learn about it in a matter of minutes. :(
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
Nothing short of a revolution can change the status quo.
The revolution must be then used to dump the current laws and remove those, who are currently in power, and update the constitution to include the new realities and possibilities and to prevent as much as possible of this degradation of human rights and of this invasion into individual freedoms.
Of-course it is the most important job of the corrupt government to prevent such a shakeup by all possible means including dumbing down the population, removal of all individual rights and even responsibilities (those who understand their responsibilities also insist on their rights,) introduction of laws that take away all freedoms that really matter and nurturing the environment of conspicuous consumption, which is enough to satisfy the current bodily needs and to substitute any mental needs/activities.
As it is right now television is great for mass control and the Internet is terrible at it. What the US government doesn't understand is that by creating tight regulations around usage of the TV programs, they are just pushing people to use more of what the Internet offers. If I was the government, who wanted to keep tight control over population, I would promote more cheap and accessible TV for everyone and would discourage usage of the Internet.
Maybe the equation will balance itself out, or maybe those in power will try to control the Internet in the same manner as the TV (this will be much harder.)
The Internet can lead to organization of opposition and may even be able to provide the means to conduct something of a revolution for the future generations.
You can't handle the truth.
Seriously, the public outnumbers congressmen around 525,000 to 1.
Time for some civil disobedience. The jails can't hold all of us if we break this crap. Courts would be tied up for eons, putting precious patent cases on the back burner even if they DID start waving jail time. Citizens that actually have clout would get burned eventually.
I'm getting very comfortable with the idea of letting Congress passing whatever crap the corporate culture pushes under their noses because eventually a substantial portion of the public will get pissed off and force them to change.
To paraphrase Gandhi, "535 Congressmen and assorted CEOs cannot control 280 million Americans if those Americans refuse to cooperate."
These people are professional politicians. They are beholded to special interest groups. They only acknowledge the people who voted for them every 6 years. When the 17th Amendment effectively removed the appointment of Senators by State Legislatures if started a downward spiral. Now they were not beholden to the State they served and soon they became even less enamored with following the direction their state took. Now they care little what the people in each of their respective states thinks. Its all about amassing personal power and reelection. They serve those who line their pockets.
This isn't to say they are all bad. There are some true Democrats and Republicans in the Senate. They are just outnumbered by those who serve neither people or party. They are quite willing to sell our rights to the highest bidder. They will make sure to excuse themselves from any law they feel like for they no longer see themselves as the people. They are above us and the laws they pass show this belief.
To me Bush's biggest fault isn't the Iraq war, its not standing up to the Senate and using the veto power of the office to protect the people from abuses of power like this bill. They will continue to strip our rights while at the same time taking our money and building legacies for themselves. What is worse is the media will support them and many will have their anger directed at corporations and such while the true theft occurs in our halls of power.
The only way to reign in the power of the Senate is through your state legislatures. They can effect many changes. However the Congress has show quite a disregard for the 10th Amendment and managed to use the courts to effectively take power from the states who are the people.
So, do you know your Senators? Your district's representative? Send them teabags, send them letters, send them e-mail. Show up at their "townhalls" and give them an earful. How many had to resort to Google just to find out who represents them???
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
under our new Department of Freedom, you're required to carry papers and be subservient to the Party Police, here in America.
...
So a Broadcast Flag being implemented through back-door legislation is the least of your worries.
I'd be more concerned by the fact that your library records are already being given to the Department of Correct Thinking
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Because I'm not - and I hope no one else is - surprised in the least. I'm actually surprised it's attached to a telecommunications bill at all. I expected that the oft-defeated broadcast flag would be snuck through in a farm bill, or a bill that feeds homeless children (you wouldn't vote against a bill that feeds homeless children!!)
Washington sucks. Once an idea is shot down, it shouldn't be legal to attach it to another bill. Why did line-item veto's fail again?
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
So, Party A passes a law to curb this ... and abides by that law. ... and they pass a law allowing it again.
:/
Eventually, Party B becomes the majority
I thought you Americans had a neat system specifically designed for making laws to limit government power, whereby a law could be passed which needed more than a mere majority to overturn, making it more resilient to power shifts. It's called the Constitution.
I guess the problem there is that you need a supermajority to get an amendment made in the first place...
"maximum corporate legislation possible "
Sununu is defending his "constituent" (briber^Wcontributor) telco corporations from liability for the broadcast flag. That doesn't make him wrong to oppose the flag, it just makes it less obvious which corporate legislation he insists on. If he insisted on copyright holder laws, he'd get less "support" from telcos. If he really protected consumers, he'd replace the broadcast flag legislation with other legislation that blocks it, rather than leave the vacuum. The vacuum gives Sununu an issue to bargain with the telcos in the future.
I'm not talking about a "partisan issue". I'm talking about a partisan government. Republicans control the government so exclusively that they exclude Democrats from even debate, or even reading the bills before votes. With that power, Republicans insist on the maximum corporate legislation possible - with possibility defined mostly by conflicts between corporations over "market access", without any regard to the people we elect them to protect.
Republicans already have taken the telco position against Net Neutrality, despite its obvious rigging the market for telcos. If MoveOn, which depends on Net Neutrality for its existence in face of telco power, didn't oppose it, the Republicans would have found their common interest with telcos even easier to execute. Shutting out MoveOn from such political activism is the result of abandoning Net Neutrality. Republican kneejerk "enemy's enemy is my friend" is the hallmark of what's wrong with their control of the government.
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make install -not war
I'm pretty sure that if politicians enact laws allowing backbone providers to decide what data passes over their backbone and how fast, it will take at least ten minutes to load any page critical of said politicians.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Nothing should be attached to any bill. Every issue should have to stand on it's own merits.
And there should be a law that any time a new bill is passed, 2 old bills / laws have to be removed. That way government is ever-shrinking instead of ever-growing.
Washington sucks big time...
Lose Weight and Feel Great with Isagenix
Because in a "Feeding Homeless Children Act," the broadcast flag provision wouldn't be the line veto'd.
They can if they have control over a modern military with a few hundred thousand troops and lots of big guns.
And don't give me that bullshit about how the military won't be willing to fire on its own civilians. Thousands of years of history have shown otherwise, and there's no reason at all to believe that the U.S. military is so special that it's an exception.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
The only way to get rid of the current corrupted system is to vote out EVERYONE in Congress, and vote in just about anyone who's platform promotes campaign reform, line-item-veto, Congressional term limits, and (my one of my personal favorites) no salary raises for congressmen currently in office (they only go into effect for the next guy to take the office - nobody in government should be in charge of their own salary). Then if they don't follow through, recall or vote them out in the next election.
Because otherwise legislators would have no way to sneak their otherwise unpassable legislation into other bills and get it passed. It's akin to a filibuster in that it is an annoying thing to do practically, but the ability needs to be there for the rare cases when it's the only way to get something done. (I would argue, though, that filibusters are used for useful things, while sneaking unrelated amendments into bills is rarely used for anything that isn't evil.)
I agree with a sibling post that says line-item vetoes should be allowed if the line item is unrelated to the bill itself. I would go as far as to say that amendments to a bill should be required to be related. If they're not, they simply don't belong there. End of story.
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
Well what would be better was if the Constitution just specified that all legislation on a bill had to contribute to a single core purpose, and that the purpose couldn't be overly vague (to keep the purpose of every bill from being "Making the United States a Better Place"). That way the Supreme Court would have the ability to just delete anything that got attached to a bill that it wasn't supposed to have been attached to. It wouldn't solve the problem altogether (and might make it worse -- politicians would just take lots of crap on and let the courts figure it out), but it wouldn't hand that much extra power to the Executive.
I guess at the end of the day it just depends: would you rather give more power to the President or to the Justices? Historically, the latter seems to have made a lot less total boners, but that doesn't mean they will continue to do so.
I also think that the USSC should have automatic review of all new laws passed, without having to wait for a challenge case, but that's a separate issue.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
OK. quit griping. quit flamin'. DO something constructive. How about going over to the EFF site https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?JServSessionI dr003=0qdwvz7h91.app6a&cmd=display&page=UserAction &id=223
Fill in the info, and send it off.
If all of us would do this EACH AND EVERY TIME Hollywood tried this, it just might make someone sit up and take notice.
Although I did add a few sentences that I'm sure will make my Senators & Representatives sit up and take notice. If they don't stop monkeying around and playing buddy-buddy to these repressive ideas, then perhaps it is time to recall all of the senators and representatives from Washington. Put limitations on terms -- no more than 8 years of service. Not just continous or fragmented, but total years of service. No more big cars.
No more living in mansions. No more junkets. No more "special" retirement fund -- they get social security, just like the rest of us. No more special privileges. Perhaps a pay cut back to realistic levels. You get the idea.
If they want us to swallow their bull, then they will have to face the consequences.
YOU. The voting public have the power AND the inclination to affect change. If you don't take action? Then Hollywood wins. So quit your whining and do something about it.
And there should be a law that any time a new bill is passed, 2 old bills / laws have to be removed. I love this idea, but I think it would take a long time to have any noticeable effect. The only change would be the lack of publication of those "silly laws" books (e.g. a law that prohibits tying an alligator to a fire hydrant).
Just because it can't be explained doesn't mean it isn't true. Science fits into reality... not the other way around.
The good guys have to succeed every time. The bad guys only have to succeed once. Eventually, the good guys will fail.
It's important to internalize that enough to prepare ahead of time for when whatever you want to do ("X"; it doesn't matter what "X" is) becomes illegal.
Property law should use #'EQ, not #'EQUAL.
Who are these people you are referring to? AFAIK the net-neutrality advocates and the broadcast-flag advocates are entirely different groups.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Washington sucks. Once an idea is shot down, it shouldn't be legal to attach it to another bill. Why did line-item veto's fail again?
It was an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers. It gave the president too much power. It made it too easy to craft obfuscated legislation.
Lets say that a bill provided 100 billion dollars of funding to be distributed as following.
80 Billion dollars to middle school education.
19.9 Billion dollars to Medicare supplements.
and "The remaining balance to weapons development"
It would seem that weapons development would get 100 Million dollars.
If a president line item vetos the first item, the "Remaining ballance" becomes 80.1 Billion dollars. Line item veto was a BAD idea and it should have been stricken down.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Ever notice that there's no stipulations as to exactly what can happen at a constitutional convention? At all? It feels like we're just handing our Constitution over to the delegates and saying "do whatever."
Personally, I think that's one of the reasons why that "second route" to an amendment has never been used... ignoring the fact that you'd need a lot more political firepower to get 3/4rds of the state legistlations to do anything (and IIRC, it is 3/4 of legistlatures).
"I've spent my whole life figuring out crazy ways to do things. It'll work." -- Montgomery Scott, "Relics"