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Comment by fragsworth | Hacker News Reader

I get a dreadful sense that there's really no stopping this. The entertainment industry has been around longer than the tech industry, their claws more deeply embedded in our political system. They will not cease until they get the controls they want. They'll stop at nothing - they will use every tactic they can come up with to get their laws passed. Maybe SOPA won't pass, maybe Protect IP won't pass, but later on it will be something else. The public gets bored with issues as they drone on - can we maintain our vigilance forever?

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Maintaining vigilance is one thing. Resisting a direct and perpetually sustained assault is another. In answer to that question, no, the public can't win. Like a body riddled with unchecked tumors, it will inevitably die - prematurely and horribly.

Make no mistake: private election finance is a cancer upon the Nation. We end it, or it ends us.

Also consider retraining the greedy legacy MBAs involved if at all possible.

MBAs aren't the problem; a refusal to acknowledge a changed market and the reality of the digital world is.

And who do you think do this refusal come from?

Old people who don't grok the Internet. Not MBAs.

There is no doubt that anybody with an MBA is forever useless at anything but running steel mills and other places where what they have learned makes sense (at which they will no doubt be fabulous). I don't believe retraining is possible, for the simple reason that the average person doesn't change (individual people may, but on average they are average), thus no grand retraining is possible.

You believe in freedom of speech right? (lets ignore things like shouting fire in crowded theater right now).

So you agree that I have the right to say that the current president is an oath-breaker, a war monger and a criminal (these opinions are biased, clearly, but they are also not completely impossible to argue)?

So you agree that I have the right to tell that to somebody who wants to hear that, right?

So I also have the right to tell that to two people who wants to hear it right?

So what about 200? What if I convince somebody else to say that to ten people, 200 people? If I convince ten people to tell 2000, and pay them what they would have earned if they had worked a job that day, then I should also be allowed to do that, right?

Remember I could have hired them to paint my fence instead, which would have been allowed.

What if instead of sending people around, I started sending letters around? And to write them fast enough brought an expensive printer? And the advice from expensive (but) great ad men from Madison? And instead of using letters I brought time on the radio or the television or on various sites online?

If you allow me to do these things (and remember I could do it if, rather than getting some particular policy past the House, I wanted to sell blue cheese) then how will it matter whether I can give money to a particular candidate or not?

You can have either free speech or banned campaign founding but not both.

>You can have either free speech or banned campaign founding but not both.

You could have something else: complete and total accountability, and full transparency of WHO is paying HOW MUCH to WHOM for WHAT purpose. Publicly available. In addition, we could require all politicians to wear their sponsors' logos (just like a motorsport driver) when they appear in public.

Representative democracy is an abstraction that tries to hide what's going on behind the scenes. Let's rip off the hood and make the abstraction leak wherever possible.

Also, I don't necessarily think spreading outright lies should be considered free speech, just as much as I don't consider propaganda or hate speech to be free speech. I don't think we should forbid it but I refuse to categorize it as "worthy of protection".

If you believe in free speech, except for the speech you don't agree with, you don't believe in free speech. "Propaganda" and "hate speech" are just ways of trying to avoid making it obvious you mean "speech I don't agree with", especially the word "propaganda", which in practice simply straight-up means "speech I don't agree with".

>If you believe in free speech, except for the speech you don't agree with, you don't believe in free speech.

Except that's not what I was saying. You have an opinion that differs from mine? You are free to state it and I will gladly fight for your right to say that. I just don't believe that outright lies (propaganda) and mere hate are a valid opinion.

I also said we shouldn't explicitly forbid it. It's just not worthy of extended protection and respect. I don't see how this means I don't believe in free speech.

The probability of at least one of your supposed "outright lies" being factually true approaches 1. Propaganda isn't a descriptive term, it's a slur.

But you cannot ignore the fire in a crowded theater portion when it comes to politics. Unlike many other avenues in politics money = power. By having a consecrated few such as corporations or the RIAA against the populace you have a huge power imbalance. This allows those with the cash to effectively gag the competition preventing their speech which cannot be considered fair. Perhaps individuals should be allowed to do what they wish with their money but the individual rights granted to corporations has gone to far.

These are scary times. There are widespread attacks on our democratic institutions and on our economy. All three branches of government are participating. Congress pushes SOPA. The administration refuses to prosecute the bankers. The Supreme Court upholds Citizens United. The regulatory agencies are ineffective because f regulatory capture. There is so much money passing through lobbyists hands that few in Washington are immune.

Perhaps work should be done to pass a law that prevents these sort of bills from popping up. Go on the offense and eliminate the threat instead of constantly having to defend variations of the problem.

They will not cease until they get the controls they want.

Another interpretation would be that they won't stop until the rights that they want are explicitly prohibited by law. There needs to be an opposite-of-SOPA bill passed to enshrine the freedoms we want to preserve. Capitalism, at the very least, consumes everything in its path otherwise.

Here's another intriguing thought: will our present tech industry favorites be doing the same thing to whatever the next big thing is 50 or 100 years down the road? Or will we be the first industry to break the cycle?

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