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Comment by megablast | Hacker News Reader

I don't agree with this. Congress can only know so much, and I would prefer them to understand how health care works, how wars work, and how spending money works way before they understand the internet. In fact, there are dozens of things they should know before the internet.

Actually, if they just outlawed lobbyists that would be a big start.

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They don't need to understand it, but they need to know that they don't understand it and that they need to listen to people who do.

Exactly. They keep refusing to listen to the experts in the Internet infrastructure, and even though they say they don't believe them, I think they actually know they might be right, but they just don't care.

Right. I think more than the fact that they didn't know how the internet works was the arrogance that they didn't need to know how it worked or listen to/trust people who say they know how it works to make a decision.

So who do they listen to, the experts from the RIAA/MPAA, or the experts from Google?

Do you guys actually think about this stuff? If you do not know what you are making judgements on (you are the government), how do you find the right experts? You can't. You trust advisers, but everybody has an agenda, including the Universities Professors. This is not a solved problem, and anyone who thinks it is easy is wrong.

I don't know about you, but if I were writing a law about the internet, I'd probably talk to Google over the RIAA. The problem here is that they're writing a law about the internet to solve a problem somewhere else. So, instead of asking the people that are being affected, they're asking the people who they're trying to help.

But yeah, to answer your question? If it's a law about the internet, you ask Google, just as if it were a law about the Billboard Top 100, you ask the RIAA. For expert advice, at least.

Why would you choose Google? Because you are an expert in the field. Once again, you don't seem to understand what it is like for a non expert.

There is more than one congressman. Each congressman has a staff. They can specialize, delegate. The internet is not something people rarely come into contact with, it's something everyone uses every day.

As others have pointed out, it's the apathy that's the problem, moreso than the ignorance. What would people say about Congress if they didn't consult medical professionals on healthcare, the military on wars, and economists on spending before passing laws in those areas? Nothing good can come out of sticking a bunch of people in a room and asking them to vote on laws with no information as to what effects those laws can have; we may as well ask them to vote at random. (Actually, that would arguably be better, as lobbyists wouldn't have any impact. Unless, of course, they write the laws in the first place.)

I feel lobbyists write all of our laws. Our government has been slowly taken over by the lobby and congressmen are just there to make some big bucks for being the middle man. The only reason we still have congressmen is to keep up the charade. http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DgIcq...

This is why they have committees.

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