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Comment by curun1r | Hacker News Reader

> making copyright liberalization a topic for your elected officials

It'd be nice to have that luxury. But the situation these days doesn't really allow that. We're facing an all-out assault on environmental regulations, a persecution of all people brown and a possible compromise of our government by a hostile foreign power. Hell, even techies have net neutrality to try to try to regain. There's just very little reason for politicians to care about an issue that both parties largely agree on.

The days when I wrote my congresswoman about copyright issues feel like a pleasant dream, at this point, and not something I'd waste what little political influence I have on right now.

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Not that you don't have a point: prioritisation is extremely important. But also keep in mind that it's a normal political sleight of hand to keep you occupied with X, while the real goal is Y. For example, someone who wanted to push forward copyright changes, but expects problems could propose a subsidy for burning coal and while people are distracted by that, to push through their copyright changes.

If your elected official only thinks that X is important, then they may be willing to give up Y whenever anyone threatens X -- no matter how serious a threat it is. Holding public officials accountable is very hard work, which is another reason why they can frequently get away with questionable actions and still get re-elected.

I tend to think that directly actionable things are better to focus on. So promoting free and open source software, and ensuring that it becomes the backbone of software development is more effective than discussing copyright issues with your congressman. However after making the issue important to a wide class of people, you can't neglect the political side.

On the other hand, I would never criticise someone for deciding to prioritise a cause like the environment, or government corruption over copyright issues. A single person can only do so much. But if you are motivated by copyright issues, then I wouldn't hold back just because there are other, seemingly more important issues on the table -- because that hesitation will be used against you.

* a persecution of all people poor

This difference is important because, while Democrats express plenty of concern for racial issues, “there's just very little reason for politicians to care about an issue that both parties largely agree on”. In this case, the issue being sidestepped is economic inequality, and by misidentifying this, you’re hurting the brown people who you’re trying to help.

To be clear, the result of misidentifying the problem is the persistent evidence of racial disparities, despite so much apparent effort to address it, because brown people in America have always been at an economic disadvantage (see slavery, Jim Crow). They weren’t just made this way because of an uptick in racial discrimination. Rather, they are staying this way because of a drop in economic mobility at the hands of “both parties”. Of course there is simply far more evidence to the latter than the former, so we should take note.

Of course, the wider issue is social mobility, which is contingent on economic mobility. Scapegoating the economic part is a dirty game and ultimately a losing proposition.

While I agree with most of what you said, I called out the racial persecution because that's the part that got so much worse over the past couple years. The government isn't separating white children from their guardians or turning a blind eye towards police violence against white people.

The unstated part of my post was Trump and the point was that we can get back to worrying about issues like copyright once we've figured out how to get rid of him. But as long as he's president, he's going to continually make things worse on so many fronts that trying to work on less pressing issues like copyright reform is like a doctor telling a fat man with a gunshot wound to exercise more because he's at risk of heart disease. You have to treat the immediately-life-threatening issue first.

None of this is to say that systemic economic unfairness isn't an issue that needs addressing, just that there's no way to treat that disease until we've dealt with the gunshot we received in the 2016 election.

The government isn't separating white children from their guardians or turning a blind eye towards police violence against white people

Isn't it fairly standard practice to separate children from their guardians when they are detained by law enforcement? We can of course have a discussion about whether this is warranted or not, I'm of the opinion that it isn't in the case of non violent offenses, but I would assume it happens fairly regularly to white people who are accused of breaking the law.

With regards to police violence, it definitely does disproportionately affect minorities, and in particular black men, but I feel in general the government is pretty good at turning a blind eye to police brutality and prosecutorial overreach even when it affects whites.

Is it standard practice to remove children completely from the care of any adult family members and place them in cages while completely losing track of who their parents/family are?

IDK, so many things seem normal these days. Was it two legs, or four?

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