Hacker News Reader

Comment by slowpoke | Hacker News Reader

While I definitely support the notion of this petition, it's time that people realize that things like these won't do shit, to put it bluntly.

To stop this madness, we have to attack and bring down the people who cause this retardation - the content industries. They won't somehow come to their senses and stop pushing for insane laws and regulations.

It's a very dangerous illusion that petty petitions will change anything, at least on their own. Fight the real enemy, and fight it with all means necessary - may those be alternative licenses, spreading the word, piracy, or straight out aggression[1]. Until the content industries are either out of power or simply gone (and I doubt the former can be achieved without the latter), this war on freedom for the sake of corporate profits will continue.

[1]: I'm talking about stuff like Operation Payback and Anonymous in general. I dislike calling it "cyber warfare" because the term is retarded newspeak, but it's essentially what I mean.

View on HN

To stop this madness, we have to attack and bring down the people who cause this retardation - the content industries.

The content industries don't cause this. They go to politicians and say "pretty please take away people's freedom to protect our profits". That's the only thing they have the power to do.

Politicians are not helpless babies who have no choice but to give big content what it wants. They are intelligent adults who choose to side with big content.

The people you need to bring down are Biden/Obama, Orrin Hatch, etc.

Well, I think it's a bit more than: "pretty please take away people's freedom to protect our profits". That's the only thing they have the power to do."

More along the lines of: "Pretty please take away people's freedom and here's a huge bucket of cash set up as an anonymous corporate shell donor. If you don't support us we'll give this huge bucket of cash to your opponent. kthxbye."

But I agree that a lack of term limits or accountability means that its the career politicians who are ultimately responsible.

In reality it's more like this:

Step 1: Use bucket of cash to gain access to and develop a rapport with a politician, increase the rapport and dependency with campaign contributions

Step 2: Convince said politician of your perspective, namely that the works of art your company has struggled to create are threatened by people who want to "steal" them without paying.

Step 3: Convince said politician that it's necessary to go to special measures to protect content from being "stolen" because it's such a big and growing "problem".

In many cases these steps can be quite natural and good seeming. The biggest problems are that the MPAA/RIAA have a lot more access to politicians than and a much more well honed "pitch" than any organization seeking to defend individuals.

Agreed.

It amazes me when people see a bad result and insist that there must be a bad person behind it all somewhere. Do people not realize that more evil will come from a bad system full of good people than will ever come from a few bad people in a good system? Germany wasn't bad in WWII because of Hitler -- there are a million little Hitlers running around the world at any given moment. Germany went bad because the Weimar republic was in such a state of disarray [insert long discussion here] that armed political gangs thrived.

People see the problems with the patent laws and content industry and they insist on "attack!" when the only thing that will do is make the system less stable and open to more of the same exact kinds of things they're upset with in the first place.

Why do we insist that every story have a villain?

Absolutely, I agree. That diffusion of culpability is what makes social ills like this so damned difficult to change.

I would say, though, that identifying a villain is immensely helpful in mobilizing opposition, even if the villain is more caricature than reality. Hitler is a great example; no one cared that the reality of the Nazi state was a diffuse and dreary bureaucracy of Eichmanns and Speers. It was Hitler's face that went on war posters.

I don't think those of us blaming lobbying are hung up on the MPAA/RIAA lobbyists here as a villain so much as upset at the general state of the system as it regards lobbying.

The reason why say MPAA has unprecedented access to politicians is because MPAA is used for political propaganda, overall consistently favorably portraying the government.

"Pretty please take away people's freedom and here's a huge bucket of cash set up as an anonymous corporate shell donor. If you don't support us we'll give this huge bucket of cash to your opponent. kthxbye."

Ok, more precisely: "pretty please take away people's freedom or else we might tell everybody that you're a poopy head."

It's not "tell everyone you're a poopy-head", it's "run saturation-level advertising claiming that you voted to take away medicare, raise taxes and make it illegal for people to visit certain websites", unless you agree to our bill making it illegal to visit certain websites.

Advertising works. I've canvassed the last 4 or so national election years and every single time I hear a lot of people echo the latest attack ad as truth, or say "I just don't know who to believe".

Agreed. It's the same as the "occupy" movement saying that corporations shouldn't influence government. It's true, but it's the politicians who are the problem. Everyone, the content providers included, should be representing their best interests to politicians. The burden is on the politicians to remain uncorrupted and to represent the best interests of their constituents to the fullest degree possible under law.

If, after several hundred years of trying, we haven't yet found the mythical race of "uncorruptible politician", it might be time for a plan B, like systemic changes to reduce the effects of corruption on the very-human politicians we do have (and are likely to continue having). That's essentially the campaign-finance-reform argument, that the problem isn't going to be solved by hoping that the next crop of politicians, unlike just about every crop throughout human history, will be selfless saints who don't respond to incentives; rather, the solution is to change the incentives.

it might be time for a plan B, like systemic changes to reduce the effects of corruption ... That's essentially the campaign-finance-reform argument

No, your response doesn't address your goal at all. CFR doesn't do a darned thing to "reduce the effects of corruption". It seeks to decrease the possible vectors of corruption (both in quantity and magnitude), but it does absolutely nothing to address the effects of corruption.

What yummyfajitas and others have been arguing is precisely for a solution to the problem you cite, the effects of corruption. That is to make it so that it matters much less how a bureaucrat gets corrupted, by stripping him of power to the greatest extent possible, so that the potential for damage he can cause is minimized.

That so-called solution also ties the hands of honest reformers. Obstruction of regulatory function is just as subject to corruption as an excess thereof. The notion that the payor is morally pure is absurd; public choice theory shows that large entities like corporations and unions have every incentive to rig the process by exploiting the rational ignorance of the median voter.

What makes it any more reasonable to suggest that it's possible to change the incentives than to suggest we can find uncorruptible politicians?

I don't think that this systemic view aligns with the campaign-finance-reform argument argument at all; the people who want money out of politics regard money itself as the root cause of the problem, but neglects to address the real underlying incentives that money - merely an abstraction of value - actually represents. If you take money out of the picture, those incentives will still exist, and still convey political advantage. Who dominates politics then, if not the wealthiest? The most well-connected? The most ruthless?

The real, underlying systemic problem is the centralized concentration of de jure power in a small set of political institutions. This will always be susceptible to concentrated influence, whether via money or otherwise.

It's a good question; perhaps we can't. I think it's worth thinking about and considering if we really can't do anything to reduce likelihood or magnitude of corruption, though. The founding fathers spent a decent amount of time thinking about it in their own historical context, rather than leaving it purely to a trust that voters will punish politicians who behave badly. For example, the U.S. Constitution has written into it a prohibition on federal officeholders accepting titles of nobility, no matter how much voters like or dislike the politician in question; they just decided not to leave that question for the voters, but thought it would lead to less corruptible politics if politicians were completely banned from accepting noble titles. That at least doesn't seem to have had any particularly bad effects, though there is debate over whether it had good effects or was just symbolic anti-monarchism. It does seem vaguely analogous to some of the no-gifts clauses that have been proposed and/or implemented more recently, though the analogy isn't perfect.

I think the founding fathers presumed that a certain level of corruption and abuse will always exist; their solution was to make it very difficult for any single political institution or office-holder to act autonomously, and deliberately constrained the exercise of power, so as to make effective corruption quite expensive and complicated.

Our modern trend toward increasing political centralization and removal of constraints on power is what's making corruption so lucrative and effective: if you build it, they will come.

Many of those who are most vigorously agitating for campaign finance reform want a strong and centralized federal government that isn't influenced by interests that compete with their own. But you can't have your cake and eat it too: if that's what you order, it's coming with a side of corruption (and a mixed metaphor fresh out of the blender).

Well, here in the real world, there was a Citizen's United decision in 2009, and there was record-setting advertising spending from industry groups in 2010. In a midterm election.

Noone's claiming they have a perfect system, I'd be satisfied if we stopped sliding backwards.

What do you mean by 'sliding backwards'?

What was wrong with the Citizen's United decision? What's wrong with high advertising spending?

Are you implying that voters are really so easily influenced by the mere volume as advertising that advertising alone is the overriding determinant of electoral success? If that's your point, isn't it actually an indictment of democracy itself?

This is the solution; a system level design that assumes a level of corruption and general stupidity, then feeds incentives to help the broad spectrum of society.

I remember posting this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3161455

One solution is term limits on Congress. Unfortunately, Congress votes on the bills and amendments, so it's not happening.

We have term limits in California and there is absolutely no sign that it has led to better legislation.

The goal is not better legislation; I agree term limits wouldn't do anything for that. The goal is to combat accumulation of power, which results in greater and greater corruption.

It's more of a systemic problem with how democracy (if you want to call it that) works in this country. The costs of running a successful, political campaign are unbelievably high and contributions from corporations and lobby organizations play a major role in it. For all practical purposes, you only get the choice between two huge parties. Not only is a large segment of the population pretty much bound to one party, since they would never ever vote for the other party, but for those people who actually might swing their vote, there are even more issues at hand. Even if you wanted to use corruption as your single decision criterium, the choice would be hard. Both parties managed to stay pretty en par in that and that's all they needed to do. The brain washing that the campaign contributions pay for also work really well. It's astonishing what unimportant tiny events change in the polls before a presidential election. There is a complete decoupling from reality, once the race nears the finish.

If we want a better working system, we need a better democratic process. Sadly the US was a pioneer in that and is still stuck with a system, that was brilliant for its time, but needs updating. We need a system that allows more than two parties to participate and we need better campaign funding regulation.

That's the only way we can permanently stop BS like this

While I appreciate you calling out the lovely senator from my state (and I completely agree), with such a poorly informed public and with issues that exceed the capacity of many to understand even if they did try yo become informed, I don't think there is a solution that doesn't require a massive overhaul.

Personally, I've like many aspects of the Starship Troopers model: if you don't care enough to serve your country (military or humanitarian), you may still live there, but you are disenfranchised. I suspect there is the real potential for tyranny of the voters, but, in theory, the service is supposed to limit that.

> The content industries don't cause this. They go to politicians and say "pretty please take away people's freedom to protect our profits".

It's not the fault of corporations. It's not the fault of politicians. It's the fault of corporations and politicians working together. When that happens, it is usually not in the public interest.

How does Obama/Biden side with "big content"? Everyone has their preference to repub or dems, but this seems unfounded to me...

If this seems unfounded to you, it's because you are unfamiliar with Biden's record.

http://news.cnet.com/2010-1071-946732.html?tag=mncol;txt

http://www.politechbot.com/docs/congress.p2p.letter.081002.p...

http://news.cnet.com/Senators-aim-to-restrict-Net,-satellite...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9920665-7.html?tag=mncol;t...

Please note that I was attempting to avoid partisanship by naming Orrin Hatch (R, Utah) as well.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/01/riaa-lawyer-solicit...

"It's time that people realize that things like these won't do shit, to put it bluntly."

That's simply false. They raise public awareness and support of any given issue. People say that the petitions to legalize marijuana have done nothing, but if that's true then why has public support for legalization gone from 36% to 50% in just five years? It's not magic, it's because every time there is a petition that the white house ignores it generates dozens or hundreds of news articles, which all push people's opinions in favor of reform.

People support marijuana legalisation primarily because they want to get high rather than because of an e-petition.

Decriminilisation in places like california and modern research into medicanal uses has probably helped too.

Speaking as someone who has absolutely no interest in getting high, I support legalization, mostly because I don't think the government has any business telling people what they can or can't put into their bodies, because marijuana convictions account for an astounding number of people in our prisons, and because we already legalize, regulate, and tax alcohol and tobacco, both of which are demonstrably unhealthier than pot. That's just for recreational usage; I think that the medical approach is even easier. Again, we already legalize and regulate medical narcotics far more dangerous and addictive than pot, and there's a fairly long list of medical benefits associated with it.

I think it does a lot of disservice to the issue to just write it off as "lol, potheads want to smoke up, they're the only ones that want this legalized".

I think your best bet is to have the tech companies acquire the media companies and be done with it. Tech in general dwarfs the content industries that propagate this by several orders of magnitude. Media also drives a large proportion of sales in the tech industry.

Or tech can start lobbying in proportion to their size, they could put them to shame in no time flat.

If they actually acquire media although, would they do the right thing? I doubt it.

The real solution might be to strip government of most of its power rather than try and change it.

If you were to take away power from the government, who would be left to defend the interests of the powerless? While it's true that government usually turns out to be an instrument used by the powerful to control the powerless, it is undeniable that the rule of law has occasionally functioned well enough to protect a minority from a majority. It offers a framework with at least the possibility of protecting the powerless. Take away that framework, and the faction with the biggest guns will win. People forget that even in the US, in the early 20th century large corporations used lethal force wielded by their own private mercenaries to keep an oppressed worker population under control. If government had no power, these gatekeepers could do whatever they wanted without the hassle of approval and public debate.

You are arguing against a straw man. Cheez wasn't advocating taking all power from the government, just "most".

Applying the principle of charity ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity ) to cheez's remarks, one would assume that preventing violence is not one of the powers he advocated taking from the government.

Suppose the government only lost the power to regulate the telecom industry. In this case, the gatekeepers could do whatever they wanted regarding telecom policy without any fear of legal pushback, instead of having to at least consider their small and manageable fear. If you don't like what they do and there is no framework for making your voice heard on this particular issue, what options do you have? Try to start your own ISP?

Suppose further that the government never subsidized the infrastructure to begin with.

I'd say it's incumbent on Cheez to make a less simplistic argument if he doesn't want to be subject to reductio ab adsurdum.

If his argument is a silly one-liner that's demonstrably refuted with a pointer to Somalia as an example of "less government", it's not javek's responsibility to fill in the blanks for him.

Similarly, if anyone advocates more test coverage, we should automatically assume they want 100% quickcheck-like coverage testing all possible occurrences including power outages, network cables being unplugged, etc. What nonsense! How could anyone get work done in a place like that?

Or, to use a political example, if anyone advocates more regulation of X, it's incumbent on them to explicitly explain they aren't actually advocating Stalism.

This gives us an easy way to dismiss all views we disagree with without even having to consider the actual proposal.

"More test coverage" isn't actionable, and if you try to act on it then you'll make stupid tests that don't help, waste effort, and hinder later refactoring efforts. "I'm worried about the foo module, do we have test coverage for this type of failure" is reasonable.

And I'd similarly pile on anyone who asked for quote "more regulation" without specifying so much as an industry and type of behavior to be regulated.

In the context of a conversation about module foo and all the KeyError exceptions it's raising, a charitable person would interpret "more test coverage" as "write tests that look for KeyError's in module foo." An uncharitable person would make the leap I described in my previous post.

Note to self: don't hire pedantic employees who interpret my statements in the most unreasonable way possible just to prove a point.

If I said I wanted to raise taxes, would you start posting bullshit about what would happen if all property belonged to the government?

Of course not, because you wouldn't be trying to set up a strawman to attack if I said that.

"it's incumbent on Cheez to make a less simplistic argument if he doesn't want to be subject to reductio ab adsurdum."

Bullshit. Bullshit in any circumstance.

They don't mind Operation Payback or Anonymous much at all, because their actions are inconsequential relative to the unimaginable amounts of money they're making.

You can't attack Big Content in any meaningful way, because the unimaginable (again) amounts of money they spend bribing Congress and the White House makes you absolutely insignificant as a voice.

And there's your solution:

Stop giving them money! Period.

We bitch and moan about all the bribery (I guess some people still call it lobbying, or access) that goes on, while at the same time we give them all of the exact same money that they're doing the bribing with.

If you want things to change, stop giving them money. Choke off their air supply.

You might think that your choice to not buy CDs and movies won't make a bit of difference. And you might be right. But there is no other way to stop them except by cutting off their supply of money.

Make them irrelevant in your life. Don't buy their music or their movies. Read books (I know), from the library if possible. Read more from the Internet (I know) and blogs, there's an amazing amount of free, quality content swimming around out there.

Make your own content, and be content with less content.

Yea, why is this going to the White House instead of Congress in the first place? Anyway, personally I think it will deadlock in Congress for years like the net neutrality mess thanks to companies like Google. The key would to be keep it going until the content industry dies (or at least the lobbying) which will take years (I like to compare it to end of support for XP).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com