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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."
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).
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.
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..."
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.
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You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
A law to not make laws? Why not just not pass the laws you don't want?
This prevents any laws from passing, even the ones Mr. Issa doesn't want to pass but others do
Actually, it doesn't. Congress can't make a law that binds Congress's lawmaking ability.
What this is about is being seen to do something while actually not doing anything. The measure won't pass but some members will climb on board and talk about it and get attention that they hope will build their personal reputations.
Congress can't make a law that binds Congress's lawmaking ability
Is that actually true? In the UK, Parliament can't pass laws that bind a future Parliament[1], but in this case he's only proposing a 2-year limit (i.e. for the duration of this Congress), so that wouldn't apply: they'd be voting to limit themselves, not future holders of their office. That said, wouldn't it be simpler to get 50% of the members of one of the houses to sign a pledge to vote against any such legislation?
[1] This raised some interesting constitutional issues when we signed the Treaty of European Union.
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Yes, it's true, and blatantly obviously true. Congress is entirely capable of repealing any law, ergo any law that attempts to bind it is pointless.
Issa's basically wasting everyone's time for a "feel good" measure that's stupid on every single level.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
It's better than what I have seen proposed - much less done - from the other side of the aisle top-down for the past four years, which in a nutshell has been increased meddling, decreasing privacy, a disturbing lack of transparency, and attacks on several of our basic rights.
These are all broken campaign promises, things that people voted certain folks into office over, "Hoping for Change", if I can borrow a slogan... It sure didn't!
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
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.
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That doesn't prevent the passage of laws, it just requires a supermajority of 60% to pass, which, if the legislation is heavily controversial, sounds like a good idea to me. Prevent the whole 51% dictating to 49% thing.
Not that different from needing a supermajority to override a presidential veto really, except it works even if the president is of the 51%
Just one more check.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
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.
So, are you against Obama when he makes "symbolic, substance-free gesture in order to generate the illusion that he is interested in" doing something you agree with? If not, then why is Issa different?
Cutting 900 million out of a budget that is Trillions of dollars under funded, is one of those "symbolic, substance-free gesture in order to generate the illusion that he is interested in" doing something. Or going to a book store with his kids in support of buying "local" when most of the time he doesn't do any thing like this.
Don't get me wrong, both sides do the same thing, making "symbolic, substance-free gesture in order to generate the illusion" of lots of things. Speak against them all or stop cherry picking because there is an (R) or (D) after their name.
I can support Dennis Kucinich when he is right on something, as much as I can support Issa on something he's right on. They are not even close politically on most issues.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Yeah, but these days...Presidents are just using Executive Orders and bypassing Congress completely......getting unelected agencies to do their bidding over the citizenry...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........