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The Internet Blueprint Wants You To Crowdsource Digital Laws
will_edit_for_food writes "Are you fed up with anti-piracy acts that use scorched-earth tactics, like SOPA and PIPA — or secretly negotiated agreements like ACTA? Do you wonder why we the people don't propose our own laws, rather than just react whenever these bills slouch toward Congress to be born? Wouldn't you like a place where you and a few like-minded amateur lawmakers could get together and do it right? Public Knowledge has debuted the Internet Blueprint, a site for those technologically and politically inclined to gather ideas...and eventually submit them to sympathetic politicians."
If you don't demand laws that protect digital freedom, someone else will demand laws that says the bytes you buy aren't yours.
This is a boring sig
Why would the politicians bother to submit their bills without millions of dollars in donations to their re-election campaigns? I thought Washington was pay-to-play.
Those bills aren't slouching through Congress to be born. They're being bought by one-percenters who think buying congresscritters is cheaper, easier, and more profitable than coming up with a business model that works in the Internet Age.
(Heh, my .sig is actually relevant to the post.)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If ever it were to get any traction, the minute that happens it'll be pwned by shills.
When I tried to do hyper democracy, I wanted to be like Digg/Reddit, but I wanted factional voting. Factional voting is allowing republicans to view only republican upvotes and democrats to only see democrat upvotes. We had a ton of other features too. This is why we failed. We didn't embrace KISS. By just going with facebook likes, this saves you from writing an entire voting system! This is an eloquent approach. The only problem is a lot of people don't like Facebook. I guess these are tradeoffs.
Another challenge we faced when writing a hyper democracy website was: How do you validate they're a US voter? It could be someone from the Ukraine trying to change politics. Worse yet, it can be a million computer botnet from Nigeria trying to petition congress on something. We couldn't solve this problem in an eloquent fashion. We were going to have people physically sign up at booths across the nation to be validated, but even that doesn't solve stuff. My biggest worry is that if Facebook gets ingrained with politics and identification of people, is that Facebook will be mandatory for those getting political and that lying on Facebook about a fake ID would be a felony down the road.
My hats off to the eloquent interface: Just use Facebook likes instead of your own database. But that can come back to bite you in the long run.
God spoke to me
So the solution to political corruption is a slew of undifferentiated amateur lawmakers churning out legislation even faster than the public can keep up with?
This smells hideously false flag.
We had a functional system. We need to restore it by reasserting it and enforcing it, not by Monsanto-ing up more bizarre legislation faster than we can track it. One of the underlying problems has always been a decreasing public understanding of the legal models in play. Without resolving that, this approach will only exacerbate it. What publisher solicits books from writers who are illiterate?
The Wolfpack Project: BitCoin + Crowdfunding = Political Accountability
Crowdsourcing proposed laws will not work. The laws that reach congress will not respect the rights of minorities.
I'll provide gay marriage as a non-digital example. Majority rule would determine gay marriage to be illegal, based on the most recent surveys. That does not protect the rights of the minority of people prefer to enter into a same-sex marriage.
Here is an easier example: Joe from Juniper bought and owns 100 acres of land. The other 9 residents of Juniper have only 1/2 acre of land each. A crowdsourced bill may be introduced requiring Joe to divide his land evenly among the other residents. It is likely everyone except Joe will vote up the up. While the bill may accurately express the desires of the majority of Juniper residents, a law requiring Joe to surrender his land would be wrong.
What makes you think they wouldn't cook something like this up from the start?
When trying to dumb down the majority, you have to find something to keep the intelligentsia busy. And we're immune to Counterstrike.
The Wolfpack Project: BitCoin + Crowdfunding = Political Accountability
After that some attention would need to be turned to carefully dismantling the mechanisms the two political parties have put in place to insure that no other party rises to power, and the mechanisms the very rich have managed to get written into law to insure that they remain very rich at the expense of everyone else. If we have to go back to banking and moneylending being sinful, that's fine with me. Lets start actually creating actual things again as the main value driver of our economy.
I don't suppose any of that would be very popular in Washington. And if I ever managed to run and get elected on such a platform I'm sure that Washington would corrupt me just like it's corrupted every other fresh-faced freshman ever to set foot in the place. Must be something in the water.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Whenever some entity says that they are the authority of the Net and wants to represent the users of the Net, I can't help but think of ICANN
Decades ago when ICANN was first organized they had a "crowdsource" campaign - they actually let the public at large to "register as members" and yes, I still keep the "ICANN membership card" that they sent me
But what is ICANN today? Do they care about the millions of "registered members"?
I don't think so
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
There is a major flaw in the thought framework underlying the entire initiative - which is, BTW, excellent and a nice illustration of the principle "if you can't beat 'em, embrace 'em" - IMHO: the idea is totally US-centric, In the minds of the initiators, law-making = US law.making = US Congress. As a European I vehemently protest. So would most Asians, who form by far the most numerous subset of internet users.
QFD.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
How about this for a law. All persons seeking election to public office should be independently tested and the test results audited and presented to the public. tests to check knowledge, intelligence, health and psychological fitness (also to include checks for psychopathy and narcissism).
In many instance people have to undergo the tests for employment including government employment, why shouldn't politicians be subject to these tests prior to running for office.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
What the Internet Blueprint project needs to do is create single draft law with supporting documentation. The draft needs hundreds of qualified voting advocates in all 50 of the United States.
The question put to people seeking elective office needs to be "Are you for it or against it?" In every race, the advocates for a sane reform of copyright and patent law need to educate each candidate and get each candidate to answer "Yes or no" whether they will vote for the measure in Congress. The hundreds of advocates need to use the answers they hear to affect who is elected in their district.
Representatives serve for 2 years and Senators serve in three staggered groups for 6 years. November 2012 is the deadline date to have a draft law that can be used as an election litmus test. In 2012, only 1/3 of the Senate will have faced the "For it or against it?" question. By 2014, 2/3 of Senate. By 2016 all of the Senate.
The "For it or Against it" approach requires the draft law and the supporting documentation to meet a high standard of fairness. The balance struck needs a quality economic analysis.
The law may be inspired by thinking from distinct ideological backgrounds (like Linux open source was) but the proposal should not be of a distinct political tone. But there is nothing wrong in giving it a distinct name like: "The American intellectual freedom advancement and copyright and patent revenue balancing Act."
I think we should look for some kind of folding motion to create a relationship where the rights holders and users both benefit, (like automatic, cheap, easy, non-cumulative, distributive and time limited patent licenses.) The present system of building cartels and charging all the market will bear and stealing designs and secrets is a sleazy combative mess. A change in the licensing system will definitely need a quality economic analysis.
If we start testing candidates for those qualities, then we'll have smart, physically fit politicians who are still corporate shills. Frankly, I'd rather have the feebleminded, old and infirm ones we have now. I'd hate to think how much trouble energetic versions of them could cause.
Perhaps you have never heard of psychopathy testing which can not be cheated on. It measures emotional response and control with in the brain, so no, zero, zilch corporate shills (the ones left would be terrible liars hence honest politicians).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
That's exactly what's happening in Iceland ! After the 2008 crisis, the people didn't want to pay for the banks to be saved. Then they forced the government to leave and ditch the current consittution. Now, they are not just writing laws, they are writing a whole new crowdsourced constitution !
They selected a few people who are in charge of making the new constitution, and then everybody can comment on what they propose on FB, Twitter, on their website... When it makes sense, they merge the suggestions into the draft and iterate again.
And in the end, the new constitution will have to be accepted in a referendum and the "government" won't be able to change it. This is really "for the people, by the people" !
And it's not a surprise that our leaders (in any country you could live in) don't talk about it...
Do you wonder why we the people don't propose our own laws, rather than just react whenever these bills slouch toward Congress to be born?
No, I DO NOT wonder why people don't do this. How can you ensure a democracy if everyone participating is anonymous? How can you ensure that one person has exactly one vote? How do you prevent criminals from influencing policy by voting hundreds of times for their own laws?
As it is now, wealthy people can make any laws they want, but it still requires the complicated process of bribing elected law makers with high-paying consulting jobs. If you take money out of the equation, anyone who figures out how to game your voting system will easily pass any laws they want by simply creating a huge number of sock-puppet voters.
I hate how money, rather than common sense and compromise, has more influence over law, but a digital democracy simply won't work unless you can uniquely identify voters with sensitive personal data which no one wants (nor should they have to) provide to anyone anyway.
OMG, let's ban doctors, pilots, dentists plus every other profession requiring testing. It's done already, cheats are caught and when required you can bet better qualified and skilled people who gain competitive advantage will drive honest testing.
One of the dumbest thing I have ever seen your comment is tops "At least not until we can trust everyone not to cheat" cheats all over the place, that is why people go to so much trouble to catch them, we can fully trust the most incompetent to cheat the most.
The mind boggles that you think no testing is better than testing.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I don't think we have psychometric testing that is accurate enough for this to work, unfortunately. You'd get too many false positives and false negatives. Also, whoever controlled the testing criteria would have a little too much power.