Comment by tzs | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tzs | Hacker News Reader

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In most of these kinds of situations, the unpopular proposal is actually addressing some real problem that probably should be addressed.

Those who find the proposal terrible rally against it, but usually don't offer alternatives to address the problem. They may win, but then since the underlying problem was not addressed another proposal will arise. And since the opposition to the last one didn't contribute any new ideas to solving the problem this new proposal is usually similar to the old one.

And where is the general public in all this? The first time when they are told the proposed solution is terrible they can get behind that and call and write and sign petitions at the opposition's urging. The proposal is shelved and the public is told they won.

But they know that there still is an underlying problem to be solved, and signed on to oppose the bad proposal with the expectation that a better proposal would be offered, because the general public does actually want the underlying problem solved.

By the second or third time the now modified in small ways original proposal comes around, each time with the same "no to this, but we aren't going to offer an alternative solution" opposition, people are starting to think that maybe the proposal is the only way to solve the underlying problems because that's the only way that ever gets proposed.

This sort of thing happens with laws in a variety of fields, at all levels of government. National security, housing, transportation, crime, healthcare, education...in all of them you can find bad things eventually passed because the people vigilantly fighting those things didn't offer any answers themselves, just reasons not to accept other's proposed answers.

The problem here is that copyright protections are too strong, and the companies who based their business models on it have too much power.

This proposal does not address any of that, this proposal is a symptom of the problem. If we want the symptom to go away, we need to address the real problem.

Of course to the copyright companies, there's not really a problem, they just see people share stuff online that they believe they should be making money on. The problem is that they can't reasonably do that, so they try to do it unreasonably through this proposal. The "problem" they want to address is not really a problem; copyright companies are healthy and powerful and raking in plenty of money. They just want more of it. They see it as a problem that people are creating new content online, some of which is derivative of their content, and they want to stop it. What they see as a problem, most people see as a good thing. That's the fundamental problem here. Giving them what they want is not going to fix anything for us.

Also, by extending the time for copyrights again and again, they're eliminating the possibility of adaptation and remixing, which can fuel creativity and more the culture forward.

But, hey, Mickey MAY be in the public domain 2024! ref: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/a-whole-years-wo...

Where the 'problem' is that the copyright cartels, despite reaping growing, record profits, want even more money.

Maybe after this law passes, they'll decide they finally have enough, and will stop tightening copyright laws?

> In most of these kinds of situations, the unpopular proposal is actually addressing some real problem that probably should be addressed.

I agree that this happens. But I think the claim is overbroad, and the followup "[the public] know that there still is an underlying problem to be solved" is fundamentally inaccurate.

Sometimes, there's a problem affecting the public, but the laws proposed to fix it are bad. This can come from incompetent drafting, where we'd expect successive bills to improve, but it can also come from conflicting interests, meaning anything from a powerful stakeholder undermining good laws to a party split rendering coherent laws unpassable. Quite a few people have observed that American private-actor, public-mandate laws like the ACA might perform worse than private or public solutions, but are legislatively easier. This is definitely a category worth discussing. Even here, though, I think calling on a law's opponents to give an alternative solution is too restrictive. Sometimes the reason a law is bad is that we don't know how to solve the problem, or the problem is fundamentally not amenable to a legislative remedy.

But sometimes, there simply isn't public benefit available. Talking about what's a "real problem" is of course question-begging, since very few laws have literally no beneficiaries. But there are no shortage of proposed laws which benefit no one but the authors, or a few influential companies, or some unnatural constituency like "retired factory workers in two swing states".

A lot of the Article 13 provisions, like many SOPA/PIPA/CISPA/ACTA/TPP provisions, fall in that second category. They're fundamentally bad law, written only for the protectionist benefit of a few already-monopolistic businesses, or to expand government authority without better serving the public. The public becomes exhausted of these fights, too, and it's not at all a matter of wanting an underlying problem solved. They pit protracted industry lobbying against highly-visible mass action, and the use of money and access as force multipliers for lobbying enormously increases its staying power. Even that might be alright, just as corporate campaign donations sometime lose out to small-donor funding. But the legislative ratchet effect means that unlike with elections, bad laws can be pursued repeatedly with virtually no downside.

I do think your point is worth addressing for activists, though. When campaigning against a law, it's worth talking publicly not just about the law's problems but why those problems exist. Is it simply a botched bill? Is it a problem needing more study (or less gridlock) before a good law can be attempted? Or is it a fundamentally worthless law, of the sort where action is needed to prevent it from coming back like a weed? This stuff isn't easy to convey to a mass audience, but it's an important part of building for a good outcome instead of averting one bad one.

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