Hahaha. Luckily, Anonymous Cowards don't make the rules. A major purpose of companies is to legally shield owners from such liabilities. What you're really saying is that you don't think companies should exist, that everything should be partnerships.
In my experience, that's also a misleading comparison. If you want the stability of something like Mac OS or (cough) Windows, which only has major updates every few years (if that), then run Debian stable or the equivalent for whichever distribution you're using. Then you should have no dependency problems. However, if you want to update core components of your system on an ongoing basis, you have to accept that things aren't going to be quite as simple. But mixing and matching versions of core components isn't even an option you have available to you with the closed source systems. Or in those cases where it is, you run into things like what Microsoft has even acknowledged as "DLL Hell", where near-impossible dependency issues can arise.
The point is that there's no fundamental issue here that somehow makes the open systems less compatible with applications than closed systems. People tend to make comparisons very loosely, though, and give the advantage to the system they're most familiar with.
No, it's unacceptable to have the U.S. Attorney General play games with the meaning of the Constitution, whether he's being deliberately obtuse or is just dumb. (Of course, in this case I assume the former).
Checks and balances exist for a reason, sure, but when those checks and balances are the only thing that has a hope of reining in a bunch of anti-Constitution fascists running the executive branch, there's a serious problem. It's not just business as usual, and you shouldn't just sit back and say "so what".
Re the theory of evolution, "theory" in that context is a term with a specific scientific meaning, in particular, "capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise falsified through empirical observation". Creationism does not rise to the level of a theory in that sense, and nor does "intelligent design".
It's just unfortunate that the colloquial use of the term "theory" has connotations that make it sound more tenuous than it actually is, and that people who want to promote a certain ancient fantasy exploit that pun to good effect.
Ditto. This is IMO one of the biggest weakness of Linux, and conversely Mac OS X's single-file.app format is one of its biggest advantages. It's odd and annoying that the "open" system only works well if you stick with centralized repositories, while the "closed" system is just fine running lots of third-party apps from multiple sources.
That's a strange way to put it. There's only one OSX. Naturally applications written for OSX will run on OSX. Applications written for Debian Linux will run on Debian Linux, too. But there are many Linuxes, each with different versions of the basic components, and different goals and development teams. The open system works just as well as the closed system if you stick to software that's designed for the particular OS you're using. If anything, the Linuxes are far better at running applications written for other operating systems, than either Win or Mac OS are.
That's not to discount the fact that the lack of a single distribution with Microsoft-level relative dominance is a problem for Linux. But it should be recognized that that's the issue. The choice is mainly one between quasi-monopoly and competition. The Linux situation can be improved, but as long as there are multiple popular distributions, it's never going to be as simple as it is with a tightly-controlled single OS from a single vendor.
Yeah, but the solution to that is not to require advertisers to register with the federal government and be required to file reports about their advertising activity.
Of course this is a legal issue. What I meant by "courts can't be so selective" is that they can't apply logic to one specific area and ignore the consequences outside other relevant areas, as you are trying to do. Attempting to require federal registration for accepting money in exchange for some activity might be fine in some cases, but in this case the activity in question is the exercise of the constitutionally-protected right of free speech. That's inevitable by the wording of the law in question: "stimulating grassroots lobbying" is impossible without speech. You're attempting to logically separate the monetary exchange from the activity being contracted for, but that makes no sense, legally or logically. Without the promise of the activity, the monetary transaction would not occur. The promised activity involves the exercise of speech. It doesn't matter whether people in individual cases fulfill their promises, the point is that in those cases in which the promises are fulfilled, the exercise of free speech would be inhibited by the requirement to register with the federal government. The right to free speech does not evaporate because someone accepts money to make that speech.
Your use of language is quite revealing of your thinking, and where I think you're making a mistake: "people who charged a client to astroturf on their behalf". You seem to be taking the position that all "stimulation of grassroots lobbying" is astroturfing, and you're treating this amendment as though it were designed to regulate astroturfing, not stimulation of grassroots lobbying. Perhaps you do see the two as synonymous. I don't. Plenty of perfectly honest and legitimate groups, across the political spectrum, communicate their perspective via blogs (and other means), and encourage people to contact their representatives. Not all such efforts are astroturfing, even if money changes hands.
No they would not -- unless they specifically billed a client for pushing certain issues, they would not be affected.
Why should billing a client for pushing a certain issue, to the general public, trigger the requirement to register as a lobbyist? Take, for example, the woman described in this article. She blogs about various issues -- the article describes her entry about Darfur. So here we have a passionate citizen, who (if you read to the end of the article) succeeds in getting people to contact their representatives about issues she feels strongly about. So let's say she decides she is good at this, and finds it fulfilling work, and decides to start soliciting payment for what she does, as long as it's for issues she agrees with, perhaps even personally chooses. So in the next three months she comes up with five issues she feels strongly about, and finds five organizations willing to pay her $5000 each to write about that issue, and encourage people to contact their representatives. At that point she would become a lobbyist under Sec. 220, and would have to register with the federal government, comply with most of the laws that are supposed to apply to lobbyists, and file reports about her activities. I find that prospect utterly abhorrent. It sounds like Soviet Russia, or a science fiction dystopia novel to me.
You might argue that the scenarios I'm describing aren't happening very much. It doesn't matter -- if laws like this are passed, we'll never know what can happen. Blogging is a very new medium, and it's only barely begun to have the political impact that it will have in the future. We shouldn't be hurrying to pass laws that could inhibit this kind of activity. Transparency is a good thing, and I'm completely in favor of that, but this law wasn't about transparency, it was about control. Laws like this will work against the little guy, and favor well-funded organizations that can afford to keep up with the reporting requirements. This is anti-democra
After all, it is impossible for someone to be against the bill if they knew what it was really about, right?????
Yes. If you have a dissenting opinion, you are required to register it with the Federal government, and they will send you to a reeducation center to teach you the right way to think.
I know what the bill was about, am I am a shill / mouthpiece for nobody but myself, and YET, I know better than to regulate speech on ANY grounds, because it IS a slippery slope, or at least that is what the left has always claimed when censorship was from the right.
Or is this the Hypocrisy Zone?
Apparently. The moral of the story: the Constitution is more necessary than ever, because people are all too willing to sacrifice bits of it for the most trivial of reasons.
What is shocking is how willing people are to give up freedom of speech, when they think freedom of speech might in some way benifit someone they don't like.
I agree, it's utterly scary to watch. It's like seeing the Patriot Act and the like being passed after 9/11. Apparently astroturfers are a bogeyman that, like terrorists, are worth sacrificing bits of the Constitution for.
There may very well not be any other examples of this situtation. It's a pretty unique situation, involving people who wish to promote some cause, and in so doing, affect legislation etc.; people who are willing to promote that cause by communicating with the public; and members of the public who agree sufficiently with the cause to take action and contact their representatives about it. There are some pretty important rights at play here; for example, aside from the free speech issue which we disagree on, what individual citizens choose to communicate to their representatives is not something that can be subjected to much regulation.
Lobbying regulation has to do with things like what representatives pay to fly on private jets, what kinds of gifts are acceptable, disclosure of gifts, and other things that have to do with the relationship between lobbyists and those being lobbied. Those laws have a lot less to do with the situation in question here. If companies involved in "stimulation of grassroots lobbying" are to be regulated, it will have to be done in a way that respects the right of people to communicate with each other, and even pay each other to perform communication activities. You cannot claim that "stimulation of grassroots lobbying" is not inherently a communication activity, and that's part of where your argument that this has nothing to do with speech falls flat.
I don't agree that you've shown anything about the factual incorrectness of the point about free speech. A relevant court decision might do so. However, courts have upheld the connection between money and speech, for example, which is why it's difficult to place legal limits on campaign financing.
Your argument that the bill is independent of whether you say or write anything seems simply disingenuous to me. The argument only appears to succeed by focusing on a narrow aspect of the situation, and ignoring the inevitable effects of the bill. Courts can't be so selective in how they interpret the law, particularly the Constitution.
In the scenario I've described multiple times, a person who is writing out of conviction, but who accepts sufficient financial support for that writing from anyone who might otherwise have hired a lobbyist, would find themselves in the position of having to register federally as a lobbyist. That would certainly inhibit many people and small firms. The chilling effect here is not just on the previously uninhibited speech of someone such as a blogger, but also on the ability of an organization to get its message out. Like it or not, in a country of 300 million people, communicating with large numbers of people involves money. The exchange of money between an organization that's trying to promote some cause, and someone who's willing to promote that cause is not something that can constitutionally be subjected to the kind of regulation that was proposed in this case.
I see the purpose for lobbying legislation and regulations related to people dealing directly with public officials. I do not think that the same kind of legislation and regulations can automatically be applied to these other situations.
Because I'm not claiming that you have disagreed with me; I'm claiming you have persisted in making factually incorrect statements long after it has been pointed out to you that they are factually incorrect. There's a difference.
I could make the same statement about you (that's a hypothetical; I'm not doing so, since I respect your right to disagree with me, as foreign as you seem to find that concept!) The point is that because you think you've demonstrated some point definitively, doesn't make it so, and these meta-arguments don't get us anywhere.
Unless they are charging money specifically for pushing that particular agenda, it's a non-issue. But if they are, then yes, they are lobbying.
No, they're not. Lobbying is a regulated activity that involves dealing with public officials.
Having paid spokespeople pretend to be independent isn't free speech, it's fraud.
Actually, I don't think it rises to the legal definition of fraud, but I agree with your sentiment. As I said before, I'd be perfectly in favor of a law which required anyone receiving money for the activities in question, to disclose that along with the rest of their message. What I object to is the requirement to register, at a federal level no less, and be classified and subject to laws as though you were someone who directly lobbies public officials.
I'm not misrepresenting the issue. My objection is more or less the exact same one described by the Register article as a problem with the legislation that needed to be fixed. In one of the posts you point to, I wasn't sure at the time, based on conflicting information that I'd read, whether the registration requirement only applied to persons who already qualified to register as lobbyists, which would have made the whole thing more or less moot. It turns out that wasn't the case. I found this out independently from examining the law myself and reading a position paper by a group that was in favor of Sec 220. For me, that aspect of the amendment was essentially a poison pill -- without it being fixed, I don't believe the amendment should have passed.
I apparently disagree with you politically in certain ways, particularly in the degree to which the law should be used to attempt to control or inhibit what people say. But characterizing my disagreement with you as "misleading spin" is pretty much a Bill O'Reilly tactic. You also seem disturbingly close to accusing anyone who disagrees with you of being an astroturfer.
When you get to the point of thinking that you're so unequivocally right about your position that there must be something wrong with anyone who disagrees with you, you put yourself in a really interesting category along with such notables as Osama Bin Laden, Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and (allegedly) George Bush Sr[*]. As the latter example shows, it's a pretty natural human response, but you should try to moderate it if possible.
[*] "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
The problem is you're tarring all people in that situation with the same brush. To follow your example, Bob and everyone else who delivers packages would have to register his package delivery with the DEA, or something, because they might contain drugs.
Remember my Al Gore example? If you have someone who's blogging on a subject that they feel strongly about, and some lobbyists who supports their position decides they want to support them, as soon as the money involved adds up to enough, the moral blogger in question becomes a lobbyist, subject to lobbying regulations. I don't agree with that, and I do consider it a restriction on free speech.
If a PR firm creates a blog or some other form of astroturfing operation full of (possibly inaccurate) information and urges people to contact their congress critters on the basis of it, aren't they lobbying just as surely as if they had hand delivered the stuff themselves?
No. You're forgetting that it's still up to the consumers of the information to use their discretion. As I mentioned early on in our previous exchange, if the electorate simply follows the instructions of random bloggers, that's a problem with the electorate, and laws which have the effect of inhibiting people from accepting money for certain kinds of blogging, or other PR activities, won't fix that problem.
It might be interesting to look back at those threads and see if we could figure out who the astroturfers are.
Seems to me you might have a problem distinguishing them from people who have a legitimate problem with the amendment. The Register article described the issue accurately: section 220 was screwed up. I would have supported a suitably fixed Sec 220, but as written I just don't agree with it, and don't think it should have passed in that form.
Posting bill text might not have been as useful as you think, unless it went along with a pretty detailed analysis, because there was a lot of interaction between different sections.
As for groupthink, that was happening on both sides, and still is (except now the default direction of the groupthink is reversed). Section 220 had a problem in it, which The Register article mentions. That problem is exactly what was bugging me about the bill: that anyone paid enough to do "stimulation of grassroots lobbying" would have had to register as a lobbyist, and be subject to lobbying regulations, even if they have no direct contact with public officials. That's a heavy-handed way of dealing with the problem, and I think that it could even run afoul of the first amendment. So given the flawed nature of Sec 220, people on both sides had a point. In its proposed form, though, I'm glad the section was rejected.
One problem with section 220, though, is that it would have required the PR firm in your example to register as a lobbyist if they met the income threshold, even though they have no direct contact with public officials. I don't agree with that -- it basically pulls people who do work for hire for a lobbyist into the lobbyist regulation mechanism as though they were lobbyists themselves. There are better, lower overhead ways to handle something like that.
Frankly, I'm glad the provision was rejected, just on principle. Bad laws aren't necessarily better than no laws, even if they have some good effects.
The information in that spam probably can't be considered public
I don't see why not - if it's been sent directly to millions of people's inboxes, how much more public can it be? All you'd have to do to cover yourself is document when you received the email, so you can prove that you only bought after the email went out.
You can't be guilty of insider trading if you have no connection to the company and no source of real inside information. This spam is never based on real inside info.
It's the people who buy before the spam goes out and sell right after (probably even same day) that you would target. Only the people behind the spam have advance knowledge of when the pump is going to occur. Plus, anyone doing this is doing more than one, so there'll be a pattern of this activity proving it can't be a fluke.
[Web 2.0 is] not a technology, it's not a language, it's not a platform, it's really just a cult of web designers who think Tim O'Reilly is some kind of god. They take common sense and "duh" level ideas, come up with cute names for them, and pat them selves on the back like they actually accomplished something unique.
Thanks, that's great. Totally captures the Web 2.0 thing. Except I think it's not just web designers - don't forget the bloggers.
So all I can say to Flash bashing is grow up, open up you mind, just because it isn't as open or "free" as whatever crap you use doesn't make it a bad idea.
Actually it does make it a bad idea, when you're talking about applications beyond something that's either in-house or advertising-oriented. The problem is just that you haven't yet grasped the importance of the open, standards-based technology that brought you the Internet.
Pretty much the only persons who don't have Flash installed are the neo-Luddites who hang out here.
Some corporations don't allow Flash or other widgets to be installed, either as a matter of security or just to prevent support problems on the user's desktop. Others block Flash content at the firewall.
Saying that 90-something percent of people have Flash is a bit like saying 50% to 80% of American adults have herpes simplex. It may be true, but it doesn't make it a good idea, and the people without it are better off.
The main reason for the success of Flash is that it's good at doing "chimp attract", making shiny moving flashy things to help web advertisers better target the half of the bell curve whose higher brain functions go into suspend mode when confronted with anything brightly colored that moves. That doesn't make it a technological advance, no matter what the marketing department told you.
Slashdot Mirror
Hahaha. Luckily, Anonymous Cowards don't make the rules. A major purpose of companies is to legally shield owners from such liabilities. What you're really saying is that you don't think companies should exist, that everything should be partnerships.
That depends on whether the person who figures it out decides to reveal his discovery, or carefully profit from it instead.
Oops, I've said too much...
In my experience, that's also a misleading comparison. If you want the stability of something like Mac OS or (cough) Windows, which only has major updates every few years (if that), then run Debian stable or the equivalent for whichever distribution you're using. Then you should have no dependency problems. However, if you want to update core components of your system on an ongoing basis, you have to accept that things aren't going to be quite as simple. But mixing and matching versions of core components isn't even an option you have available to you with the closed source systems. Or in those cases where it is, you run into things like what Microsoft has even acknowledged as "DLL Hell", where near-impossible dependency issues can arise.
The point is that there's no fundamental issue here that somehow makes the open systems less compatible with applications than closed systems. People tend to make comparisons very loosely, though, and give the advantage to the system they're most familiar with.
I, for two, welcome them, but can we at least shorten their name to something more manageable, like Googlecapacitoverlords?
No, it's unacceptable to have the U.S. Attorney General play games with the meaning of the Constitution, whether he's being deliberately obtuse or is just dumb. (Of course, in this case I assume the former).
Checks and balances exist for a reason, sure, but when those checks and balances are the only thing that has a hope of reining in a bunch of anti-Constitution fascists running the executive branch, there's a serious problem. It's not just business as usual, and you shouldn't just sit back and say "so what".
Re the theory of evolution, "theory" in that context is a term with a specific scientific meaning, in particular, "capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise falsified through empirical observation". Creationism does not rise to the level of a theory in that sense, and nor does "intelligent design".
It's just unfortunate that the colloquial use of the term "theory" has connotations that make it sound more tenuous than it actually is, and that people who want to promote a certain ancient fantasy exploit that pun to good effect.
That's a strange way to put it. There's only one OSX. Naturally applications written for OSX will run on OSX. Applications written for Debian Linux will run on Debian Linux, too. But there are many Linuxes, each with different versions of the basic components, and different goals and development teams. The open system works just as well as the closed system if you stick to software that's designed for the particular OS you're using. If anything, the Linuxes are far better at running applications written for other operating systems, than either Win or Mac OS are.
That's not to discount the fact that the lack of a single distribution with Microsoft-level relative dominance is a problem for Linux. But it should be recognized that that's the issue. The choice is mainly one between quasi-monopoly and competition. The Linux situation can be improved, but as long as there are multiple popular distributions, it's never going to be as simple as it is with a tightly-controlled single OS from a single vendor.
Yeah, but the solution to that is not to require advertisers to register with the federal government and be required to file reports about their advertising activity.
Of course this is a legal issue. What I meant by "courts can't be so selective" is that they can't apply logic to one specific area and ignore the consequences outside other relevant areas, as you are trying to do. Attempting to require federal registration for accepting money in exchange for some activity might be fine in some cases, but in this case the activity in question is the exercise of the constitutionally-protected right of free speech. That's inevitable by the wording of the law in question: "stimulating grassroots lobbying" is impossible without speech. You're attempting to logically separate the monetary exchange from the activity being contracted for, but that makes no sense, legally or logically. Without the promise of the activity, the monetary transaction would not occur. The promised activity involves the exercise of speech. It doesn't matter whether people in individual cases fulfill their promises, the point is that in those cases in which the promises are fulfilled, the exercise of free speech would be inhibited by the requirement to register with the federal government. The right to free speech does not evaporate because someone accepts money to make that speech.
Your use of language is quite revealing of your thinking, and where I think you're making a mistake: "people who charged a client to astroturf on their behalf". You seem to be taking the position that all "stimulation of grassroots lobbying" is astroturfing, and you're treating this amendment as though it were designed to regulate astroturfing, not stimulation of grassroots lobbying. Perhaps you do see the two as synonymous. I don't. Plenty of perfectly honest and legitimate groups, across the political spectrum, communicate their perspective via blogs (and other means), and encourage people to contact their representatives. Not all such efforts are astroturfing, even if money changes hands.
Why should billing a client for pushing a certain issue, to the general public, trigger the requirement to register as a lobbyist? Take, for example, the woman described in this article. She blogs about various issues -- the article describes her entry about Darfur. So here we have a passionate citizen, who (if you read to the end of the article) succeeds in getting people to contact their representatives about issues she feels strongly about. So let's say she decides she is good at this, and finds it fulfilling work, and decides to start soliciting payment for what she does, as long as it's for issues she agrees with, perhaps even personally chooses. So in the next three months she comes up with five issues she feels strongly about, and finds five organizations willing to pay her $5000 each to write about that issue, and encourage people to contact their representatives. At that point she would become a lobbyist under Sec. 220, and would have to register with the federal government, comply with most of the laws that are supposed to apply to lobbyists, and file reports about her activities. I find that prospect utterly abhorrent. It sounds like Soviet Russia, or a science fiction dystopia novel to me.
You might argue that the scenarios I'm describing aren't happening very much. It doesn't matter -- if laws like this are passed, we'll never know what can happen. Blogging is a very new medium, and it's only barely begun to have the political impact that it will have in the future. We shouldn't be hurrying to pass laws that could inhibit this kind of activity. Transparency is a good thing, and I'm completely in favor of that, but this law wasn't about transparency, it was about control. Laws like this will work against the little guy, and favor well-funded organizations that can afford to keep up with the reporting requirements. This is anti-democra
Yes. If you have a dissenting opinion, you are required to register it with the Federal government, and they will send you to a reeducation center to teach you the right way to think.
Apparently. The moral of the story: the Constitution is more necessary than ever, because people are all too willing to sacrifice bits of it for the most trivial of reasons.There may very well not be any other examples of this situtation. It's a pretty unique situation, involving people who wish to promote some cause, and in so doing, affect legislation etc.; people who are willing to promote that cause by communicating with the public; and members of the public who agree sufficiently with the cause to take action and contact their representatives about it. There are some pretty important rights at play here; for example, aside from the free speech issue which we disagree on, what individual citizens choose to communicate to their representatives is not something that can be subjected to much regulation.
Lobbying regulation has to do with things like what representatives pay to fly on private jets, what kinds of gifts are acceptable, disclosure of gifts, and other things that have to do with the relationship between lobbyists and those being lobbied. Those laws have a lot less to do with the situation in question here. If companies involved in "stimulation of grassroots lobbying" are to be regulated, it will have to be done in a way that respects the right of people to communicate with each other, and even pay each other to perform communication activities. You cannot claim that "stimulation of grassroots lobbying" is not inherently a communication activity, and that's part of where your argument that this has nothing to do with speech falls flat.
I don't agree that you've shown anything about the factual incorrectness of the point about free speech. A relevant court decision might do so. However, courts have upheld the connection between money and speech, for example, which is why it's difficult to place legal limits on campaign financing.
Your argument that the bill is independent of whether you say or write anything seems simply disingenuous to me. The argument only appears to succeed by focusing on a narrow aspect of the situation, and ignoring the inevitable effects of the bill. Courts can't be so selective in how they interpret the law, particularly the Constitution.
In the scenario I've described multiple times, a person who is writing out of conviction, but who accepts sufficient financial support for that writing from anyone who might otherwise have hired a lobbyist, would find themselves in the position of having to register federally as a lobbyist. That would certainly inhibit many people and small firms. The chilling effect here is not just on the previously uninhibited speech of someone such as a blogger, but also on the ability of an organization to get its message out. Like it or not, in a country of 300 million people, communicating with large numbers of people involves money. The exchange of money between an organization that's trying to promote some cause, and someone who's willing to promote that cause is not something that can constitutionally be subjected to the kind of regulation that was proposed in this case.
I see the purpose for lobbying legislation and regulations related to people dealing directly with public officials. I do not think that the same kind of legislation and regulations can automatically be applied to these other situations.
I could make the same statement about you (that's a hypothetical; I'm not doing so, since I respect your right to disagree with me, as foreign as you seem to find that concept!) The point is that because you think you've demonstrated some point definitively, doesn't make it so, and these meta-arguments don't get us anywhere.
No, they're not. Lobbying is a regulated activity that involves dealing with public officials.
Actually, I don't think it rises to the legal definition of fraud, but I agree with your sentiment. As I said before, I'd be perfectly in favor of a law which required anyone receiving money for the activities in question, to disclose that along with the rest of their message. What I object to is the requirement to register, at a federal level no less, and be classified and subject to laws as though you were someone who directly lobbies public officials.
I'm not misrepresenting the issue. My objection is more or less the exact same one described by the Register article as a problem with the legislation that needed to be fixed. In one of the posts you point to, I wasn't sure at the time, based on conflicting information that I'd read, whether the registration requirement only applied to persons who already qualified to register as lobbyists, which would have made the whole thing more or less moot. It turns out that wasn't the case. I found this out independently from examining the law myself and reading a position paper by a group that was in favor of Sec 220. For me, that aspect of the amendment was essentially a poison pill -- without it being fixed, I don't believe the amendment should have passed.
I apparently disagree with you politically in certain ways, particularly in the degree to which the law should be used to attempt to control or inhibit what people say. But characterizing my disagreement with you as "misleading spin" is pretty much a Bill O'Reilly tactic. You also seem disturbingly close to accusing anyone who disagrees with you of being an astroturfer.
When you get to the point of thinking that you're so unequivocally right about your position that there must be something wrong with anyone who disagrees with you, you put yourself in a really interesting category along with such notables as Osama Bin Laden, Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and (allegedly) George Bush Sr[*]. As the latter example shows, it's a pretty natural human response, but you should try to moderate it if possible.
[*] "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
The problem is you're tarring all people in that situation with the same brush. To follow your example, Bob and everyone else who delivers packages would have to register his package delivery with the DEA, or something, because they might contain drugs.
Remember my Al Gore example? If you have someone who's blogging on a subject that they feel strongly about, and some lobbyists who supports their position decides they want to support them, as soon as the money involved adds up to enough, the moral blogger in question becomes a lobbyist, subject to lobbying regulations. I don't agree with that, and I do consider it a restriction on free speech.
No. You're forgetting that it's still up to the consumers of the information to use their discretion. As I mentioned early on in our previous exchange, if the electorate simply follows the instructions of random bloggers, that's a problem with the electorate, and laws which have the effect of inhibiting people from accepting money for certain kinds of blogging, or other PR activities, won't fix that problem.
Seems to me you might have a problem distinguishing them from people who have a legitimate problem with the amendment. The Register article described the issue accurately: section 220 was screwed up. I would have supported a suitably fixed Sec 220, but as written I just don't agree with it, and don't think it should have passed in that form.
Posting bill text might not have been as useful as you think, unless it went along with a pretty detailed analysis, because there was a lot of interaction between different sections.
As for groupthink, that was happening on both sides, and still is (except now the default direction of the groupthink is reversed). Section 220 had a problem in it, which The Register article mentions. That problem is exactly what was bugging me about the bill: that anyone paid enough to do "stimulation of grassroots lobbying" would have had to register as a lobbyist, and be subject to lobbying regulations, even if they have no direct contact with public officials. That's a heavy-handed way of dealing with the problem, and I think that it could even run afoul of the first amendment. So given the flawed nature of Sec 220, people on both sides had a point. In its proposed form, though, I'm glad the section was rejected.
One problem with section 220, though, is that it would have required the PR firm in your example to register as a lobbyist if they met the income threshold, even though they have no direct contact with public officials. I don't agree with that -- it basically pulls people who do work for hire for a lobbyist into the lobbyist regulation mechanism as though they were lobbyists themselves. There are better, lower overhead ways to handle something like that.
Frankly, I'm glad the provision was rejected, just on principle. Bad laws aren't necessarily better than no laws, even if they have some good effects.
I don't see why not - if it's been sent directly to millions of people's inboxes, how much more public can it be? All you'd have to do to cover yourself is document when you received the email, so you can prove that you only bought after the email went out.
You can't be guilty of insider trading if you have no connection to the company and no source of real inside information. This spam is never based on real inside info.
It's the people who buy before the spam goes out and sell right after (probably even same day) that you would target. Only the people behind the spam have advance knowledge of when the pump is going to occur. Plus, anyone doing this is doing more than one, so there'll be a pattern of this activity proving it can't be a fluke.
Actually it does make it a bad idea, when you're talking about applications beyond something that's either in-house or advertising-oriented. The problem is just that you haven't yet grasped the importance of the open, standards-based technology that brought you the Internet.
Some corporations don't allow Flash or other widgets to be installed, either as a matter of security or just to prevent support problems on the user's desktop. Others block Flash content at the firewall.
Saying that 90-something percent of people have Flash is a bit like saying 50% to 80% of American adults have herpes simplex. It may be true, but it doesn't make it a good idea, and the people without it are better off.
The main reason for the success of Flash is that it's good at doing "chimp attract", making shiny moving flashy things to help web advertisers better target the half of the bell curve whose higher brain functions go into suspend mode when confronted with anything brightly colored that moves. That doesn't make it a technological advance, no matter what the marketing department told you.