Throwing Hollywood under the bus could pay dividends for GOP
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
But this does highlight the fact that our overly-simplified view of political parties in the United States as monolithic entities of zombie-politicians who take marching orders from the party establishment is quite out of step with the reality, particularly where conservatives are concerned. The GOP is a surprisingly diverse political entity, accepting the likes of Ron Paul on one extreme and George W. Bush on the other. Indeed, in the "center", it can often be difficult to tell the difference between "moderates" of either party.
All of which is to say, it is often unwise to make sweeping statements about large political entities simply because prominent politicians within that movement are vocal about a particular issue. Often the fight within a large political party is as heated as the battles with other political parties. Savvy voters would do well to recognize that fact.
Democrats could push for European-style subsidy of production. Republicans could push for letting the market work - advertising, product placement, etc are all that's needed. Both programs can agree on eliminating copyright for entertainment works.
I can see the Republicans trying to strongly dissociate themselves from SOPA, but I give it approximately 0% chance that they're going to recant the DMCA or Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, or even loosen their position on the DMCA moderately to the extent of supporting more exemptions to the anti-circumvention clause.
Parties don't always take opposite sides of each issue. Frequently, they try to take the higher ground by claiming they do "more" ...
Wouldn't it be wonderful for both parties to compete as to who opposes draconian garbage like SOPA/PIPA more?
Both parties are against our interests. Conservatives are for maintaining the status quo which is the opposite of what we do. Both parties cater to special interests, in this case placing democrats against us.
If our industry started putting votes and money behind a third party that let us do what we do best and left us alone (aka Libertarians) we'd be much better off.
Yes!
> If our industry started putting votes and money behind a third party
No!
For you to win in the general election with 3 parties, you'd need to muster at least a third of the vote.
That's a lot of people!
For you to win a primary of a major party, you would need to muster the vote of a fourth of the voting populace. Actually, it's even lower than that, since many don't affiliate themselves with a party and out of those, many don't vote in primaries. On top of that, you can end the primary early as long as you kill off your opponents in a few early states.
So it's much easier to take over an existing party (like the GOP) than to create a third. On top of that, all those conservatives you don't like ... well, they'll vote for your guy now. Because they have a choice of two and they like your guy more.
Ron Paul is doing it right. That's the only way a libertarian leaning pol will ever get close to the presidency.
But arguably now that most of the people who usually vote dems for other reasons take SOPA/PIPA seriously, the only dem candidates that will stand a chance will be people taking their money outside MPAA/RIAA
I believe my time is better spent promoting federalism and other variations of "live and let live" than convincing others to drop their religion.
I quote from http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/sssca3.html
"According to the RIAA, the value of all CD's, live presentations, music videos, dvds in 1998 (from http://www.riaa.com/pdf/md_riaa10yr.pdf) was 13.72 billion US$.
According to the SOI, in 1998 the business receipts of the computer and electronic product manufacturing including both hardware and software (they do not divide it further) was 560.27 billion US$. This of course excludes the value of all the data stored on computers."
Also, Silicon Valley's business model depends on public trust of the cloud. As David K. Levine points out, SOPA/PIPA undermines public trust in the cloud, so Silicon Valley was right to oppose it. The choice is between supporting an industry in decline that turns to government for protection from competition, versus supporting a dynamic industry where the incentive is to grow businesses.
As an systems architect and somebody who consults with large technology organizations, I am extremely interested in how systems of people interact -- hence the political junkie thing. But as part of watching that interaction, I've noted that we all we have a tendency to become very tribal, especially when the topic of our favorite "teams" come up.
So yes, I think it's very important to learn facts like the number of Republicans that jumped ship and the fact that Al Franken was a sponsor of the bill. Just like it's important to know that many members of the Democrat party hang on to the idea of the bill and that the administration was in support of it before they jumped ship as well. These are facts -- if you care about PIPA/SOPA you should know this.
But once we move into political analysis, which side is doing what for which reasons, I think the article becomes much more shaky as a topic for HN. Whether or not one party may benefit or not touches directly on what you already think of each party, so the comment thread could end up with just so much posturing.
As a libertarian, to me the interesting things are 1) that both parties supported the bills by large margins (or they wouldn't have been reported out of committee) until they got caught and 2) many years ago there was some general bipartisan agreement to freaking leave the internet alone. I'd like to know what happened to that. But because that's going to be a "team story" that's probably a topic for a different board besides HN.
It wasn't a threat at that point. It was a novelty. It's easy to agree to leave a novelty alone. It's difficult when it's threatening the revenue stream of the guys lining your pockets.
> that both parties supported the bills by large margins (or they wouldn't have been reported out of committee) until they got caught
Look, as much as we want to believe that our representatives actually read the stuff they're pushing, the truth is, they don't. I would be shocked if a singe member of the committee responsible for the bill actually read the damn thing. Each of them is on quite a few other committees, responsible for quite a few other bills, have speaking engagements, businesses, books they're writing, etc etc.
They decide on what to vote for and push based on who's supporting it. Some members of the GOP saw the Chamber of Commerce as a supporter and jumped on board. Commerce = Business = Good. Seriously, that was the thought process.
Once they saw the push-back, they realized things were more complicated than that, and dropped support.
Can the GOP be a strong ally for leaving the Internet alone? Absolutely. As long as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, etc. line their pockets right before re-election time. If that happens, I promise you, they'll vote for whatever bill the "Internet" endorses. Without reading it. It's a promise.
Keep in mind that a republican does't necessarily have to get a democrat's vote to come out ahead in this case. All it takes is for the democratic voter to be so disgusted with his party's position that he either votes third party or doesn't vote at all.
I despise the idea of it becoming a for & against partisan issue because of the swell of support that would ultimately result in, but it could be politically effective in an evil-ish way.