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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.
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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..."
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.
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.........