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US Congressman Wants To Ban New Internet Laws
SchrodingerZ writes "Representative Darrell Issa, a Republican congressman from California, has drafted a bill for the internet. The bill, aptly named the Internet American Moratorium Act (IAMA), is, 'a two-year moratorium on any new laws, rules or regulations governing the Internet.' In short it hopes to deny any new government bills related to lawmaking on the internet for the next two years. The bill was first made public on the website Reddit, and is currently on the front page of Keepthewebopen.com, a website advocating internet rights. 'Together we can make Washington take a break from messing w/ the Internet,' Issa writes on his Reddit post. The initial response to the bill has been mixed. Users of Reddit are skeptical of the paper's motives and credibility. As of now, the bill is just a discussion draft, whether it will gain footing in the future is up in the air."
A law to not make laws? Why not just not pass the laws you don't want?
Will it help net neutrality, or will it be more designed to favor corporate profiteering and plundering at the public's expense?
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
So long as there are accompanying moratoria on new copyright bills, perhaps the /. crowd can get behind it.
But as any patent examiner can tell you - adding the phrase "on the internet" to everything is all the rage these days. Would the passage of this bill mean that the next congressional session can't do anything, because everything is related to the internet? What about privacy protection, the upcoming FISA renewal, patent reform, etc.? Probably those are pressing areas, related to the internet, that are in need or some action.
Any suggestion or idea coming from him has some hidden purpose.
I recommend veto.
Until you realize that this will also put a moratorium on things like privacy laws, as well as put a hold on any action regarding things like bandwidth caps, net neutrality, and copyright enforcement legislation. That may be good or bad, depending on how we're represented, but I'd rather have the debate in congress, rather than have them be forced to sit idly by while the incumbents go unchecked.
-- lk t lv ll th vwls t f wrds. T svs lts f tm t wrt bt ts pn n th ss t rd nd mks m lk lk cmplt dpsht.
good luck with that...
I'm daily amazed the internet is still as free and open as it is. It's taking corporate and goverment quite a long time to put a lock on it and turn it into yet another channel showing amazingly stupid shows and ads.
But it can't last forever i'm afraid. We handed far too much power to the media companys and other corporate assholes on the planet. Eventually it's all going to get locked down. I'm guessing 'app stores' will be a huge part of that lockdown. Along with signed efi bios etc... Just a few pieces in what will eventually be just yet another tv. And the boogymen of pedophiles and pirates and identity theft will be in there too.
At least we'll still be able to turn it off.... Maybe. Maybe not... Your fridge and washer and microwave and car and phone and everything else will still be watching you citizen.
“So long as they (the Proles) continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern...Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.”
George Orwell, 1984
I misread that link as Keep the weeaboo pen.
everything they do is ultimately aimed at helping the old rich stay rich.
should slip this clause into the reconciled version: "This ban is effective the day before this bill is signed by the President of the United States."
Any legislation congress can pass, congress can repeal.
All encompassing sweeping laws can be dangerous, demand specific scope in your laws.*
* Works the same in programming.
They cry about their precious "Net Neutrality" even as this bill unconditionally outlaws...
1) Data retention mandates.
2) New surveillance powers, claims, etc.
3) Any new intelligence community moves into further "securing the net" (think about that recent controversy over the NSA secretly claiming to "invade private networks")
4) New powers to seize domain names or any thing else Hollywood wants
Yeah, what a trade off. Give me some of that DoJDHSDoD Internet love any day so long as Verizon has to be 100% "fair and neutral..."
...is like asking a Redditor to stop fapping.
The Corruptman in question is against Net Neutrality. To force net neutrality, laws are needed. This guy wants to stop that. He wants unbridled and unchecked market forces to regulate the Internet.
We know who the market it is, HINT: it ain't you and we know the market wants to destroy net neutrality. This corruptman isn't proposing a freeze, he is proposing government do nothing while business gets to do everything it wants.
If you want to see if this is a good idea, fellow republican corruptmen forced the government to step aside and let the financial industry do whatever it wants... how is that economy going US of A?
People say that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others. Well, tight government control is the worst of all systems to regulate markets. Except for all the other methods.
Always follow the money. Who is paying this guys salary? No, not you you silly voter. His election campaign fat cat jobs once he retires. YOU don't factor into his decision making, never have, never will.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Republican Issa's corporate sponsors evidently believe that they've got the Internet set up for whatever harvesting they might desire. So they're leveraging the small House majority (elected by a gerrymandered minority of House voters) they bought into eliminating the power of the Democratic minority, the significant Senate majority, and the reelected Democratic president.
Darrell Issa has spent his career investigating and attacking Democrats. It's cost a fortune, halted government action, and turned up nothing but empty headlines and a blowjob. How about a moratorium on Darrell Issa? I'm voting for that in 2014 by voting for a House Democrat. Only 17 more and Issa can't run anything but his mouth on Fox News.
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make install -not war
What if a moratorium was added, by default, to all but the most important laws the first time they were passed? This could make it mandatory to review the worth of a law after it has been in effect for a while. If deemed worthwhile, being passed a second time could make it permanent. Certainly this would have huge downsides, but many benefits. It might decrease the amount of stale legislation and could allow the benefits of hindsight to be incorporated into the second version of laws deemworthy of re-passing. But, it would significantly increase Congress' workload, likely causing them to be unable to get as much done, and there's no guarantee that "bad" laws wouldn't be passed a second time while "good" laws would. Anyway, just a thought.
It won't do anything. All the next law in regulating (or not) the internet has to say is to null out the previous law somewhere in it and suddenly it's ineffectual.
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
Laws either require something, or forbid something. In the absence of a law on any particular topic, nothing is required, and nothing is forbidden, thus anything is allowed. So, in the absence of a law that would protect the internet from corporate trolls, they are allowed to put up as many profiteering tollbooths as they want, and take their steps to wreck the whole thing. If laws that would prohibit such maliciousness are disallowed, then we're screwed.
In the House of Representatives. I think Ebola and North Korea are more popular in the US right now.
Maybe he really really means it this time. Based off his past, I highly doubt it or he's using this to get something else that's worse.
The major ISPs have no desire to actually "spy on you." The worst they may do is run analytics on you to target advertising at you. Unlike with government, there are actually laws protecting you from some of this anyway. For example, if your ISP overrides my ads on my site or adds them, I can sue them for creating a derivative work.
And when you lose the vote or the issue you want to vote on is never brought up for a vote, you don't get to opt out the way you do with a relationship with a corporation. So yea, it's like totally the same....
You read the TOS before signing up on any website, yes? You do.
You reap what you sow.
To me, if the government is given the ability to call something it isn't in order to get what it wants, it will this section is what concerns me in this fashion: "(a) PRESIDENTIAL NOTIFICATION. - Upon notification to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, Intelligence Committees and Homeland Security Committees by the President of the United States, or his designee, of an existential threat to the Internet, the President may, for the purposes of addressing this threat, allow agencies to promulgate rules that have otherwise been suspended by this Act." Disagree with me, and you are a "terrorist". Have a nice day /. :)
The donations to him from tech companies such as Google, who have an interest in an open Internet, are far more than donations from the telcos.
Why spend time building something up when some capricious law is just going to tear it down or otherwise gimp it? Well, under this declaration, you know nothing is coming down the pike for the next 2 years.
Now, instead of not passing laws, we're passing laws to not pass laws?
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Hasn't Congress got more urgent important stuff to do? Like avoiding this fiscal cliff that everyone is talking about..
...the Global Malware Authors Guild announced the formation of a new super-PAC...
skeptical of the paper's motives and credibility.
Being skeptical of our government is among the most important patriotic duties of U.S. citizens. The Declaration of Independence is an impassioned ode to the enduring beauty of critical enquiry of the motives and actions of government. Regardless of how we feel about Rep. Issa, it is our duty to challenge his statements.
a discussion draft
One of my common complaints about the state of our government is that our elected officials, when addressing complex issues, focus more effort on directing public opinion than on fostering public debate. The goal of our leaders should be to bring the nation into the analysis, not to establish our conclusions. By presenting this as a provocative entree rather than a finalized declaration, he has given us a kernel upon which to found the discussion.
For my part in that; I think a moratorium is a double edged sword. Authoritarian versus libertarian is only one dimension, another is organizational versus individual. It is possible to believe that individual rights to speak and associate freely on the Internet should be subject to less government authority and also that that organizations (lobbies, unions, corporations, religions) should be more limited in their permits to influence or monitor the behavior of individuals on the Internet. A moratorium could prevent the government from censoring individual speech, or it could give ISPs a two year foothold on selective restriction of online activities.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
so it defiantly has some corporate backing to screw the consumers. probably for bandwidth caps, or prioritizing services.
Last night during dinner, a thief walked into my home and asked me whether or not he should put a moratorium on robbing me for the next 2 years.
Just go away. Just leave us alone—now and forever!
Dear Representative Issa,
Please Google "legislative entrenchment", and then resign for not knowing the basics of your own job.
Regards,
The Internet
Since any law trumps any preceding law covering the same topic, isn't this just a law that says, "we haven't passed any subsequent internet laws since the passing of this one"...?
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
Yo dawg we heard that you like ban laws so we made a ban law to ban laws that ban.
...because you are being misdirected. Issa is as slimy as they come and a paid whore for the telecom industry. Among the many disservices he's done for his constituents was voting for retroactive immunity for the phone companies (all of them, save QWest) who held the bag while various agencies violated our rights and spied on us without judicial supervision. If he's putting something as radical as this in place, there's a reason and you can bet that it's not something that is good for us.
A moratorium on Internet-Americans? When will this country learn that diversity and immigration are its cornerstones? Millions of Internet-Americans are already here, they're not going anywhere, and growing their ranks is our only path to economic salvation!
The government has the right to secure the internet. The intelligence community has the right to monitor the internet.
There should be no secrets kept hidden from the US military on the internet because that would empower terrorists to plan their attacks on the enemy against US troops.
Lawmakers can't tie their hands like this save by constitutional amendment.
In practice they can. For example, the rules of the U.S. Senate, readopted as each new class of senators is sworn in, require 60 percent assent for a "cloture" motion to proceed on a bill. Without cloture, the minority with 41 to 49 percent can threaten to "filibuster" the proceedings by giving hours of off-topic speeches.
A procedural obstruction is far different from a law blocking other laws.
Unless the law blocking other laws is implemented as a procedural obstruction. The 2-year limit and the fact that the House and Senate rules are up for renewal this January make it sound like that might be the case.
he doesn't want corporation to be regulated on what they can do and say on the internet.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If Issa's behind it, it's not being done because it benefits the public. My guess is this bill's proposed for the same kind of reasons California's Proposition 33 on auto insurance rates was proposed. That proposition would've changed the law to permit insurance companies to offer lower rates to drivers who'd had insurance for more than a certain length of time. Sounds good, right? Here's the catch: California law already requires insurance companies to offer best rates based only on driving record, regardless of whether you've had insurance before or not (yes, it's possible to have a driver's license and a driving record without owning a car of your own). So the proposed change wouldn't lower rates for people with a good driving record who'd had insurance for a while, but it'd permit insurance companies to raise rates for people with a good driving record who hadn't had insurance or had had a break in coverage. When all the major insurance companies are backing the proposal whole-heartedly you know it's not because it'll lower rates across the board, if they wanted to do that they could just do it. My guess is this proposal is to try and cut off legislation to do things like prohibit cableco/telco ISPs from giving their own VoIP services priority on the network while throttling traffic for Google Voice and/or Skype to make those competing services less attractive.
Whats' the difference between the power play by one man to limit the constitutional power of other members of government with which you are supposed to share power and responsibility? Is it different when you're a Californian vs when you're an Egyptian?
President Morsi of Egypt just tried something similar, albeit vastly larger in scope. At least Issa is proposing a bill for consideration which, if passed, would create the illusion that the majority has successfully hamstrung the minority. Either way you're talking about an irresponsible power grab of convenience. )This time it's obviously limited in scope, but I can't help feeling like he's trying to avoid something he knows is on the horizon, if only for 2 years... net neutrality must be gaining ground, eh?)
Debating proposed legislation is the responsibility of elected officials. What's next, legislation to take the full term off from service?
No, its not. Its Issa making a symbolic, substance-free gesture in order to generate the illusion that he is interested in stopping government messing with the Internet. When you look at the substantive legislation affecting how the government does or does not regulate private industry and activity that that Issa has sponsored in the last year, that illusion is hard to maintain. See, particularly, H.R. 3782, the "Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act".
Between the two major parties in the US, I'm solidly in the Democratic camp -- and yet I can still recognize that there are plenty of Republicans that have sponsored or supported good legislation (even recently.) But Issa's empty symbolic gesture isn't doing here isn't something good, its doing something empty, meaningless, and distracting.
Roman_mir's behind it. Case closed; it's a bad idea.
Also, no: we're still laughing at you.
Congress finally admitting they don't know wtf they're doing when it comes to technology & the internet. So in bureaucratic fashion they pass the problem on to their successor.
Congressmen submit legislation to publicize a cause or satisfy constituents. Most of it never emerges from committee. Most of the legistlation comes from big presidential/party initiatives. Then packed with amendments and earmarks.
The bill doesn't really outlaw anything, since any bill regulating the internet would -- without even requiring a specific mention -- override this one exactly as much as necessary for the new bill to be given effect. This bill does nothing.
I'm more concerned how certain ISPs have attempted to selectively throttle internet traffic and censore content over the last few years.
Basically he had an idea and wrote it down and more or less officially showed it to other people.
Wow! A new age for America!
Yawn. Wake me when it's signed by Obama.
He's a Republican In the House of Representatives. I think Ebola and North Korea are more popular in the US right now.
So why did the Republicans beat the Democrats by about 35 House seats a few weeks ago?
The meat of the bill is the part where it forbids any regulatory agency from creating new rules. Remember, regulatory agencies operate under the authority of Congress, certain functions reserved to Congress under the Constitution being delegated by Congress to that agency under that laws that created it.
But in general, each Congress can make its own rules, and is not restrained by previous Congresses. Usually, they just adopt the previous Congress' rules. But they can make a rule that binds them for the rest of the Congress. Technically the rule can be rescinded, but that can be made much harder to do than simply passing legislation that the rule prohibits. In addition, if the rule has popular support, then those pushing to rescind the rule will be at a political disadvantage.
I'm willing to bet the main thrust (what with the R following his name) is to keep the FCC from effectively regulating the Verizon Wireless / AT&T duopolies - especially their usurous data rates and fantasy-based 'some ones and zeros are different than others' policies.
Oh, those poor confused Republicans - even when they decide to do something, it's only to make sure that they won't do something.
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
There are already plenty of U.S. laws against intentionally distributing malware across state lines, such as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Do we need more?
I'd like to see a two-year "cooling off" period on any internet-related bill before it could be voted on - maybe with another year for any amendments.
The republican party has been business friendly but hateful to the public at large. If this bill was put forward by a democrat I might want to get into the details but anything put forward by the right wing gets an auto reject from me and most of America as well.
there hasn't been any credible source on how to handle the internet, there needs to be expert plumbers to explain how a bunch of tubes work
Such broad "I will never do X" pledges gave us Grover Norquist's anti-compromise contract, which has already damaged US's credit rating because investors see a larger potential for a deadly financial/political Game-of-Chicken.
Do we really want the same thing with the 'Net?
Table-ized A.I.