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SOPA Creator In TV/Film/Music Industry's Pocket
First time accepted submitter en4bz writes "Representative Lamar Smith, the creator of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), has been consistently receiving donations averaging $50 000 from the TV/Film/Music industry for each of his re-election campaigns for the past ten years. Smith has received roughly half a million dollars from the TV/Film/Music lobby over the past ten years according to opensecrets.org. Check out the source link for a full breakdown of donors to Smith's campaigns."
Speaking of SOPA, new submitter DarkStar1O9 submits this "explanation in simple terms of why this dangerous new bill in congress could result in the extinction of sites that are based on user-generated content like YouTube, Reddit, and StumbleUpon." Update: 12/18 20:42 GMT by T : An anonymous reader writes "Eric S. Raymond weighs in on SOPA and the question of why so many people hate this bill and not the dozens of others just like it that get passed on a regular basis."
If you keep on electing the same morons who push controls on the internet for big corporate friend donors, then the only person you can blame is yourself.
If you lived here you would see the sheer numbers of completely ignorant people there are in this country that don't give a fuck about anything beyond what is happening on Keeping Up With the Kardashians
Far too many of our populace has become completely complacent. Throw some McDonald's, Coca-Cola, and NASCAR at them and nothing else in the whole goddamned world matters, so long as we're "fighting the terrorists".
Things will change, it is inevitable as this level of ignorance is unsustainable; unfortunately, this country is going to have to suffer a total economic collapse before people start opening their eyes. I wish it were not so, but there's been a real anti-intellectual bent in this country over the last 30 years or so, so there are just too many people that can't see beyond tomorrow or their own backyards. Hell, any attempt to upset the status quo is widely dismissed and mocked, go to CNN and read the comments on any article about an Occupy protest here in the states and you'll see for yourself what we're fighting against.
So you tell me, Non-American: what do we do? Start locking up stupid people? Require IQ tests to vote? How do we nullify the moron voter base? They don't want to hear reason, because they're trained by Talk Radio ideologues to distrust anyone that disagrees with them. So what's your solution? Because honestly, we could use one, and I would really like to find one that doesn't involve Hitler-esque eugenics programs...
Yup I guess corruption could be seen as a form of speech. Still it is corruption and should have no place whatsoever in politics.
You're misinformed. China owns a whopping 8% of the US debt. The country is nowhere near broke. Eliminating the Bush tax cuts and putting some common sense reforms in place in Medicare and Social Security (e.g. means testing, increase the payroll tax cap, allow young healthy people to buy into Medicare) are all we need to get back in the black.
Our problem is a political one, not an economic one. The Republicans have abandoned any notion of loyal opposition, and now view politics as a war in which one's opponent must be destroyed utterly, no matter the cost. So solutions that are entirely reasonable, such as Obama's proposed plan to reduce the deficit by $2 trillion, get torpedoed, simply because a Democrat proposed them. Instead we get plans like the super committee, which was supposed to cut $600B from each of domestic spending and the military. But even that's too much compromise for the Republicans, so now they're trying to weasel out of the very same deal that they insisted on a few months ago.
As long as voters continue to view politics as a team sport, we're screwed.
One of the shocking things to me is how cheap it is to buy your own laws. A million people could part with one dollar and easily block these laws. A million people isn't even 1% of the population. I think we need to start a PAC (or some type of corporation) and start buying our laws just like everyone else. Surly, as non-caring as everyone is about these issues, we could get 1% of the population to go in on some laws that favor the people.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Look at Obama. He's honest, smart, and completely helpless. He wasted most of his first two years trying to negotiate with people who had no intention of ever working with him. All the while, his opponents spread vicious lies about "death panels". They accused him of trying to indoctrinate school children when he told them to stay in school. They demonized his wife for suggesting kids shouldn't eat fast food every day. They complained about him raising taxes ("Taxed Enough Already!") when he had actually cut taxes, as part of the stimulus. They lied and lied and lied and the drooling masses lapped it up, with the result that the liars gained power.
Stupidity and hatred will beat reason and cooperation every time. The GP is optimistic. A total economic collapse will not get the idiots to open their eyes. They'll blame the collapse on whomever Limbaugh tells them to blame. Spoiler alert: they're going to blame liberals, and immigrants, and Muslims, and gays. And the idiot masses will start killing.
How would you like it if you were in the military and had to go through basic training, where the circumstances require you to shower in a room with up to 50 other guys showering in it... and they were allowed to be openly gay?
Umm, what exactly is the problem with that? Are you afraid the gay will rub off or something?
It's not like we can separate them from us like they do with female groups...
Which is itself a relic of gender inequality. I say put everyone together and teach discipline. If you can't behave honorably and control yourself in a shower with your fellow soldiers you shouldn't be in the military in the first place. How can such a person be expected to act under real stress where their suppressing their animal impulses and obeying orders will save the lives of their fellows or prevent the kinds of sickening, dishonorable abuse that has made American soldiers so easy to hate.
There shouldn't be any openly gay people in the military.
There shouldn't be homophobes in the military, nor people who can't see past one attribute of a fellow soldier and treat them as a person, with respect and honor.
Gays need to accept that the way they are is NOT the status quo...
Prejudiced dinosaurs like yourself need to realize the world has moved on. Ignorance and repression were socially acceptable in the past. People of other races, religions, philosophies, and preferences are as much people as you are and if you can't deal with it and them, you have no place representing the United States of America in any official capacity.
"In the case of this issue, you have huge corporations with vast sums of money working on both sides of the issue." That's your justification? So it's not corruption because we have huge corporate proxies fighting for both sides? This is laughable. It' not about which side you are on. It's about the fact that money is involved in influencing a politician to legislate favorably to those who support their campaign efforts. I don't care which side you are on, this is corrupt and it's not how our government is supposed to work. There was never any vision for paid lobbyists within our system. Congressmen and Senators are supposed to be influenced by the voters in their states and districts, not to the corporation who throws the most money at them.
The moron vote is herded like cattle by demagogues who are paid to do so by the Faux News corporate propaganda machine. The demagogues appeal to their prejudices, to ignore the policies that might hurt the plutocracy. So you have the insane situation where the lower middle class hates health care reform, where they are the actual benefactors of health care reform. We have a dynamic where their health and the education of their children is damaged by policies they fully support, because they believe fairy tales like welfare queens with 20 kids and lazy illegal immigrants, that that is the real threat. And they don't want to reward these stereotypes. When of course it is themselves who are having their benefits removed, and the real threat is the corporation who doesn't want their bottom line impacted and the health care insurance corporation who wants the money to keep flowing in the wasteful healthcare system we have.
So what do you do? Forget the morons for a moment, you can't do anything about them. Aim like a laser beam on one issue that even the morons understand: corporate influence in our politics. Keep up a constant drumbeat of how our elected representatives represent the influence of those who pay for the reelection campaigns, rather than the actual people they are supposed to serve. Even a moron can get behind that. It will take time, but enough inertial movement will eventually be established that the point will be too loud and obvious, and even the demagogues can't distract the morons anymore from the real tragedy going on.
It is "We the people", not "we the rich people and the corporations." Hammer on that point every day. This is the weak point in the propaganda machine that the lower middle class morons are currently under full influence of. Their standard of living gets worse every day. And it is exactly because of the agenda of those who pay for the propaganda machine that keeps them spellbound. Break the spell. Show the little plutocrat behind the curtain creating the illusion of the fake frightening Oz.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Don't you see that in the current system most of us are deprived access to influence? Our votes are the only power we have in this system. I'll never be able to influence my local congressman to pass legislation that favors me, especially if the local corporation can work against me and contribute far more money to their campaign than I can. The simple reality is that this is about who should have the political influence in our country. Because if money is removed from the electoral process then you pretty much remove the influence of corporations and give the power back to the individual voter. But that will never happen will it? Politicians love their money too much and corporations love their influence too much and the American public just sleeps.
I'm an American, but here's my answer to your question: Educate. That's our only hope, to educate our way out of this, and that's where the Democrats should narrow their focus. An uneducated person doesn't understand Rawlsian economics. An uneducated person doesn't understand that the U.S. Constitution is outdated and needs to be replaced. Or that socialism isn't a dirty word.
What the neo-cons have done is make a religion out of Americanism. They paint their opponents as unpatriotic blasphemers and the general public buys it. They buy it because they're uneducated, which makes them suckers.
Educate children. Extend the schoolday to 9-10 hours long (most people work at least 8 hours a day, so a 6-7 hour school day necessitates child care of some sort), allow more time for physical activity, self-study, and hands-on learning. Keep these kids away from their idiot parents as long as possible and teach them about the world. Ensure that they're well versed in logic, mathematics, science, and multiple languages. That they are in good physical condition.
There's this bizarre attitude in this country that a parent knows best. That by becoming a parent, some slumbering genius is awakened in each and every one of us and these instincts will guide our children to happiness. Mothers especially love this bullshit - the "maternal instinct" they speak of so reverently. Of course, they fail to mention that infanticide brought on by postpartum depression is nothing more than "maternal instinct."
I would rather see a Brave New World than my country devolve into ancient Rome, a land of bread and circuses, which is the way things appear to be headed. Take these kids away from their parents and fill their heads with every bit of objectively verifiable knowledge we can. That way, when they get older and start making subjective assessments, they'll at least be rooted in logic, which is clearly not the case right now.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
There is that thing called the US constitution. It says that the federal level of government can do only so much and there rest is none of its business. RP being strict constutionalist thinks that the constitution says what it says in plain English and the words written there have precedence over his personal beliefs.
If you want to have something else, you need to do it the right way and amend the constitution, not to reinvent the meaning of the words only because the ends would justify the means. Well intentioned creative interpretations start the slippery slope and sooner or later you go from the rule of law to the rule of men who don't care what the law actually says and what rights you supposedly have.
They have this guy, too:
Chris Dodd, Ex-Senator, Named MPAA Chairman
at $1.3 million/year.
Stretching the truth to pass SOPA:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111214/04100017081/chris-dodd-resorting-to-outright-lying-desperate-attempt-to-get-sopa-passed.shtml
More:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/05/24/christopher-dodd-as-mpaa-chairman-can-he-save-hollywood.html
Sig this!
Separation of Church and state isn't spelled out in the constitution.
Separation of Church and State is a concept much older than the Constitution.
It gets credited to British philosopher John Locke, whose writings heavily influenced the men who framed and drafted the Constitution.
(The same people liberally borrowed from the Virginia Declaration of Rights, also influenced by Locke, when they drafted the Declaration of Independence)
Heck, the Declaration of Independence's famous phrase about 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'
is a gently massaged version of Locke's idea that 'life, liberty, and property' are inalienable rights.
And ultimately, the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed and upheld Jefferson's belief that:
"make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" = " a wall of separation between Church & State"
P.S. Jefferson said that 209 years ago, so you really can't get much more originalist than that.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
i think you are gay. you are a closeted homosexual who has not come to grips with the contrast between his upbringing and what your family and society expects of you and your true innate homosexual impulses. i'm being serious
look: as a heterosexual male, homosexuality or gay men have no effect on me. it doesn't frighten me. it doesn't arouse me. it doesn't confuse me. it doesn't do anything for me at all. i feel nothing. make me watch gay porn for hours and what will i do? i will fall asleep. BECAUSE I'M NOT GAY
now show some me a pair of full breasts or a nice ass, and i will get promptly aroused and excited. because i'm a heterosexual male. duh! show me two guys kissing and what do i feel? anger? arousal? confusion? no, i feel nothing
so whenever i see someone getting REALLY upset at this hypothetical shower scenario, i think: you are a closeted homosexual. if you were straight, you simply would not care
and in fact i think a lot of homophobia is driven by people like you: deeply closeted gay men deeply in the closet, projecting their internal psychological struggle onto the outside world. we suffer, because you haven't come to grips and made peace with the fact you are a gay man. accept it, deal with, move on, and stop forcing us to bear witness to your ugly struggle between the societal expectations you have internalized and your true identity
i'm 100% serious. the greatest loudest homophobes in this world are deeply closeted gay men. no one else except them care so much about homosexuality. i'm looking at you rick santorum
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it