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Democrat Win May Be Good News For Internet Policy
Null Nihils writes "Following the pivotal U.S. Midterm elections, things look hopeful for a free and open Internet, but the likelihood of progress in terms of copyright and privacy legislation is still uncertain. At any rate, it isn't hard to see a shift in U.S. information technology policy coming over the horizon. Reps. John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.), strong supporters for Net Neutrality, will most likely take command of Internet policy, but Democrat commitments regarding privacy, data retention, and digital copyright have yet to be made certain. A C|Net article discusses the likely shift in priorities at Capitol Hill. 'If (Democrat Rick) Boucher gets the nod as chairman, a broadcast flag becomes far less likely and changes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention sections become politically feasible ... If Rep. Howard Berman, however, gets the job, the recording industry and motion picture industry will have a staunch ally as subcommittee chairman.'"
The Democrats pander to big business just as often (if not more often) than the Republicans do. They're just more able to offer it as some sort of "equality" of certain selected racial or income classes. Don't believe that we'll see anything better come from them that we did the Republicans -- remember, many Democrats voted for Republican pork so that the Republicans would vote for Democratic pork. Nothing will change.
The Internet is best left alone -- and deregulate communications as much as possible to allow for more competition. That will help everyone with lower prices, more competitive levels of service based on what the customer needs (rather than a one-size-fits-all solution), and better service levels due to the reduced cost of meeting regulations and restrictions.
We have just as much to be worried about with the Democrats in power as the Republicans. The Democrats are no friend to the free market, which means we'll see more restrictions on speech (ie, copyright and patent extensions), more restrictions on actions (ie, paying wages equal to the production of the worker) and more restrictions on competition with offshore companies (ie, forced benefits, federalizing of programs that should stay local, and probably higher barriers to entry against entrenched corporations).
The Democrats and the Republicans are two sides of the same face of the coin -- the left side and the right side of authoritarianism or Statism. The opposite side is freedom, something no political party (not even the Greens nor the Libertarians) are about.
If you want freedom, start voting for none of the above like I do.
That's good news in general.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
While I may adore the internet I've got to say it's rather small potatoes on the grand scale of things. I think we need to worry more about terrorist attacks after we pull out of Iraq than we need to worry your mum might find out Sexyslut99372 is your sister on Myspace.
Side note : I'm not saying ZOMG TERRORISM! I'm saying we're dived into a can of worms and with the current "run away" or "stay forever" political sides in the current war this is dangerous in the big picture.
I like muppets.
At any rate, it isn't hard to see a shift in U.S. information technology policy coming over the horizon.
Coming from the party that invented the internet, this is great news. I bet that when their staff sends them an internet, they get it right away, instead of being all tangled up in the tubes.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
I'm all for change, but let's not overlook the fact that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was signed into law by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat.
Do you like German cars?
For once, I agree with dada21. Leave the internet alone. All this Net Neutrality flap is doing is ensuring that we'll be screwed one way or another. i.e. Senator Stevens will tell you that he's pro-Net Neutrality when his bill is actually anti-Net Neutrality. On the other hand, if you pass a law, you may make it impossible for ISPs to properly support time-sensitive services like VoIP. (VoIP being the use that Internet Tiering was originally designed for.)
The FCC is already regulating the situation, and will slap down any provider who improperly abuses their tiering abilities. So leave it the heck alone. Anytime Congress gets involved, we merely end up with the opposite of progress.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Look here:
p e=industryNews&storyID=2006-11-09T091511Z_01_N0945 8311_RTRIDST_0_INDUSTRY-DEMOCRATS-DC.XML
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?ty
"I'm trying to contain my joy," MPAA chairman and CEO Dan Glickman told The Hollywood Reporter.
Look at the fact--Rep. John Conyers take over Judiciary. You can say 'Boucher is great, or Berman is bad' but they are minor players compared to Conyers and the power of the chairmanship (Conyers was the author of the 'analog hole' bill along with a host of other bidding on behalf of the RIAA).
Stop drinking the Kool-aid. This was no better a result than the previous crowd staying in control...
Stop trying to tie politics into every goddamned thing in the world!!! Face it, ALL politicians are knobs. I dno't care if you look at any political party, when it comes to technology, the positive or negative impact on it that a politician can have is far more tied into that individual's understanding of technology. It has nothing to do with Republicans being more "tech savvy" or Democrats being Mac users or the like... It has everything to do with whether or not the politician thinks the internet is a series of tubes, or whether he believes that filtering the internet is unreliable because of what it cuts access to. Stop trying to make this a political issue. It isn't. These knobs will vote for whatever they think will get them more votes around election time and more money between elections. Jesus you people are fucking thick!!!!
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
As the democrats have secured both the house and the senate, it'll be interesting to see what happens the the house Net Neutrality bill famously blocked by Senator Ted "Tubes" Stevens. My representative's co-sponsorship of that bill cinched his otherwise shaky (with me) run for senator. Now that he is a senator, I can only hope he can either get it out of committee hell or help reintroduce it in the newly democrat controlled senate.
Demented But Determined.
Golly I feel like I'm on a phpBB now ...
The DMCA has a lot of noxious amendments, but it's actually a good law otherwise. Current copyright law just let owners of Intellectual Property (a concept some don't like, but it predates the DMCA) just haul off and sue sue sue everyone in sight as soon as they saw content that was infringing. The DMCA lets content providers at least make a good-faith effort to remove the offending content via the infamous "DMCA takedown" procedure, BUT it lets the accused "infringer" challenge the takedown (a procedure sometimes called a "putback") and demand that the folks demanding the takedown either put up with legal action within 14 days, or shut up, at which time the content goes straight back.
So yeah they can get a "free" 14-day takedown, but the situation prior to that was to skip straight to legal demands that would put the host of the content in immediate danger, which would more often than not result in permanent removal regardless of the merits.
Stuff like the "circumvention devices" nonsense needs for sure to be cut out of the DMCA, and the stacking of the legal system against the little guy is sort of outside its scope. But at least the hosts with the deep(er) pockets aren't being targeted first.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Because the Internet is pretty US-centric. That's more a matter of audience makeup, which is changing. However, regulation and asshattery by US lawmakers can affect people connecting to and from other countries as well. Not to mention other nations enacting their own laws similar to the way things are being done in the US w/ regards to technology.
As long as the dems don't try to take my Internet tubes away, I'm happy. I'd hate to have to start using that Big Truck again.
The Democrats pander to big business just as often (if not more often) than the Republicans do.
Something will change and that is simply that President Bush will not be able to pass what he wants and neither will congress will get bills past the veto.
This simply means that less legislation will be passed which in turn means less pork and effectiveness of corporate lobbying.
Sure they can still lobby but since congress can't get their bills passed, it will be a moot point.
As they say... The Government that Governs least, governs best!
Still... Isn't it sad, that the only way to have our government work for the people is to have it not work at all?
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Why is Slashdot so damn US-centric? Are does anyone else outside the USA really care for the political propaganda crap on Slashdot?
I suppose we'd have to take a peek at the number of Slashdot subscribers and their webserver stats to see why the "editors" choose to be "US-Centric".
In addition to that, you have to look at the fact that Slashdot itself is based in the US and has American "editors".
Hear all those Repuke wingnuts screaming that they lost because of fraud? Blaming Diebold and those cheating Democrats.
Demanding endless recounts in the races they lost narrowly. Whining "count all the votes".And now that it is over and they have lost blaming it on the stupid American voters?
No you don't.Kind of refreshing isn't it?
This is neither Troll nor Flamebait maybe a little off-topic.
When your country of origin comes up with a better way of getting information through all those tubes and puts up the majority of the money to make it happen we will make all /. posts your-country-centric.
committee in the senate.
I think we can all be happy about that.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
Re: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=205785&cid =16788711
Why is Slashdot so damn US-centric? Are does anyone else outside the USA really care for the political propaganda crap on Slashdot?
Yeah, just last week I went to slashdot.co.de and complained about how German-central their political coverage was. It was especially true in terms of technology. Even though Germany was the principal founder of the internet, and also still the controlling force for some aspects through its dominance of ICANN, that isn't right. Plus, given Germany's strong global presence, even though they use their political and economic weight to lead or dictate policies across the globe, none of that means they should be talking about politics on a web site based in their country written in their language.
Certainly not on a website devoted to technology, especially one with a subcategory called "Politics" that can be disabled by any viewer who wishes to not see those type of stories.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
The Bad: Well, Hollywood is better friends with the Democrats.
The Ugly? Well, both are pretty beholden to our corporate masters... unless we're willing to get our government to revoke corporate charters (ie, the corp death penalty), we're not going to starting winning that war.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I consider myself very technologically savvy, have been working in IT for 15 years, 10 of those in networking, and I've honestly never understood why people deride the politician that made the "tubes" analogy so much. Isn't the analogy of tubes or pipes fairly accurate to describe the Internet's physical infrastructure? What's so weird about that? Someone please explain it, I honestly want to know. Thanks in advance.
What country have you been in for the last 10 years? Maybe you haven't been following what has been happening in the communications and broadcasting industries in the US lately since the loosening of regulations took place? Just to refresh your memory, the result has been the exact opposite of what you describe: there's been rampant consolidation in both industries - the communications industry is down to 2 or 3 major players (AT&T/SBC, Verizon, and maybeSprint), and the broadcast industry is down to a handfull of major players as well (radio for example, is down to 2 companies that own most of the radio stations in the US, Clearchannel and Infinity), with concrete and drastic results against free speech. So how has deregulation in the communications industry helped competition or anything else other than mega-corporations pockets again?
I consider myself very technologically savvy, have been working in IT for 15 years, 10 of those in networking, and I've honestly never understood why people deride the politician that made the "tubes" analogy so much. Isn't the analogy of tubes or pipes fairly accurate to describe the Internet's physical infrastructure? What's so weird about that? Someone please explain it, I honestly want to know. Thanks in advance.
Out of context - the comment seems about as funny as a random line from Monty Python. The speech Senator Stevens gave was a halting, rambling affair that maintained an amazingly consistent level of anger/passion. He made numerous statements that belied a decidedly uninformed perspective on e-mail, e-commerce, and the internet at large.
The now infamous comment; "it's a series of tubes!" came at the end of a diatribe about how the "internet" that his staff had sent him last Friday was, apparently, clogged up with all the movies being offered by commercial operators. The statement was delivered with such gusto, such conviction that you swear the old fella truly believed they were a bunch of literal tubes.
Was it a technically sound statement, in and of itself? Perhaps...but it seems clear from the rest of the speech that it was more Clouseau than Sherlock.
That's comedy.
Running Windows^H^H^H^H^H^H^H OSX and Linux in the home. (I don't have time for Solitaire any more.)
First of all the headline is wrong. It's 'Democratic', not 'Democrat'. Your grammar is worse than mine, and mine is pretty bad.
But as far as internet policy concerns, it's hard to say what will change. The Democrats are generally better with small business, as the Republicans tend to favor the big donor moneyed set, so we'll see a bit more promotion of competition and open access to the "tubes" and such. Nasdaq tech companies certainly did much better in the 1990s then they have recently.
But are they going to favor changing copyright law and such? Doubtful. I hope they can roll back patent changes that allowed patenting of business processes and such, we'll see.
Honestly though, with the fucking mess Bush has created with our foreign policy, I doubt there's going to be much time spent on these types of low-priority domestic issues. It's going to be Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, some Afghanistan, and more Iraq for the next two years until we finally pull out of the Bush Folly.
I can't figure out why it's so hard for people to get this straight. I suppose the person who composed the title of the post and the author of the quoted piece may not be American citizens. Just for clarification, there is no "Democrat Party". A Democrat is a member of the Democratic Party.
... If Rep. Howard Berman, however, gets the job, the recording industry and motion picture industry will have a staunch ally as subcommittee chairman.'"
[Democratic] Win May Be Good News For Internet Policy
Posted by Zonk on 2006.11.09 15:50
from the little-from-column-a-little-from-column-b dept.
[ The Internet ] [ Politics ] [ Your Rights Online ]
Null Nihils writes "Following the pivotal U.S. Midterm elections, things look hopeful for a free and open Internet, but the likelihood of progress in terms of copyright and privacy legislation is still uncertain. At any rate, it isn't hard to see a shift in U.S. information technology policy coming over the horizon. Reps. John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.), strong supporters for Net Neutrality, will most likely take command of Internet policy, but [Democratic Party] commitments regarding privacy, data retention, and digital copyright have yet to be made certain. A C|Net article discusses the likely shift in priorities at Capitol Hill. 'If (Democrat Rick) Boucher gets the nod as chairman, a broadcast flag becomes far less likely and changes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention sections become politically feasible
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
Far from true. You rightly point out that the Democrats present us with new challenges, especially those of us who believe in copyright reform (in some respects they may be worse for that issue). But I'm not a one-issue voter. So here are some others:
The last item on the list is probably the most important. If I could choose between the president doing whatever he'd like without oversight and having a broadcast flag on my TV signal, I'll take the broadcast flag and feel lucky for it.
I don't know where you come up with the description, "Small government republicans." It certainly doesn't apply to the past 6 years. They've been small when it comes to regulating business, big when it comes to giving out contracts, small when it comes to monitoring those contracts, and big when it comes to interfering in common peoples' lives. Oh, and "conservative" appears to have nothing to do with fiscal responsiblity or conservation of resources. IMHO, today "conservative" means conserving their wealth and power.
I've always held myself to be a moderate. My brother says we still live by the Republican values we were raised with, but today that makes us Liberals. In 4th grade, before really understanding politics, there were 2 of us favoring Barry Goldwater against LBJ. Having learned more about Goldwater since then, I guess I can call myself a conservative, a moderate, a liberal, and a Goldwater Republican - truthfully on all counts.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.