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Learn About Political Campaigning on the Internet 275

Posted by Roblimo from the new-ways-to-get-out-the-vote dept.
This week's Slashdot interview guest, Ben Green, is director of Internet operations for Al Gore's presidential campaign. He's charged with making the algore2000 Web site as big, popular, and efficient as possible. Political campaigning on the Internet is new and still rather experimental in many ways. The point of this interview is not to boost (or diss) Al Gore or any other candidate, but to learn about the process of using the Internet as a political tool, which is of more long-term importance than any single election. One question per post, please. The complete Q&A session is scheduled to appear Friday.
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Learn About Political Campaigning on the Internet More

Learn About Political Campaigning on the Internet

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  • Al Gore is about as exciting as dryer lint. Al Gore is boooring. Even the Simpsons attests to this (The Al Gore doll, Lisa buys that says "You... are hearing me talk." when Lisa pulls the string.)

  • Lowest common denominator (Score:5)

    by BOredAtWork ( 36 ) on Monday February 14, 2000 @12:48PM (#1276132)
    I'm a 20 year old male; this will be the first time I can vote in a presidential election. I am one of your target demographics. I'm a student; so my time to research the candidates is limited. One of my major sources of information is the web - cnn.com and the various candidate sites in particular. At this point, my vote is up for grabs.

    Algore2000 is a good site. I'm sure there was countless hours of thought put into each and every detail, especially the "agenda" page. That page in particular is a work of persuasive art, right down to the picture of Al with a pair of cops (tough on crime), and the (over)use of red, white and blue. The list of catch phrases is an especially nice touch; who could possibly NOT support "Saving Our Schools," "Fighting for America's Seniors" and "Improving Health Care," right?

    My question for you, sir, has to be this: Why does algore2000.com seem to think I'm a fool? Am I supposed to be genuinely impressed by the load of press releases and speaches? I hate to break the news to you, but I want to see real content, NOT glazed over executive summaries. Take for instance something VERY relevant to me as a college student - the link from the front page about Al's Plan to Make College More Affordable. It leads here [algore2000.com]. The extent of the "details" stated is this:

    "Gore announced new details of his National Tuition Savings Program, which is designed to help families save for college. The plan allows families to invest funds in an account where their money will be protected from inflation and can be withdrawn to pay for higher education expenses tax-free. The plan will also guarantee the cost of college tuition at any participating college or university in the country."

    The rest of the press release is all fluff. No mention of whether this is limited to public or private universities, 2 or 4 year degrees, graduate school, part or full time study, etc. And this is the *basic* stuff. I'm also interested in why this would be a better option than, say, investing in short-term CD's.

    That's just ONE example from the many I could have chosen. Nearly all the "content" of algore2000.com is fluff. And shots at Bill Bradley. The simple fact is this does not impress me. Actually, since this site represents Al Gore, I'm inclined to believe Al relatively clueless - if he wasn't, surely he'd tell us HOW he plans to fund his proposed programs, tax cuts, etc. Any politician can CLAIM to support any number of things. Algore2000 picks popular issues, and loads the wording of them such that ANYONE would be nearly forced to agree. Come on, who on earth DOESN'T support "A better educational system?"

    What I could like to see from algore2000.com, as well as EVERY OTHER CANDIDATE is DETAILS. I want to know HOW you plan to provide a tax cut - will this come at the expense of the defense budget? Money always comes from somewhere; I want to know what has to be CUT to lower taxes. And don't tell me "unnecessary pork" or some trite answer. I want to see numbers.

    And I want a big ass chart, with a column for every candidate, and a row for every issue. "Do you support abortion as it currently stands? y/n" "Do you support the abolition of legal abortion under all circumstances? y/n" "Do you support abortion under limited circumstances? If so, when?" Things like that. REAL questions. Some more: "Do you support the reverse engineering of software for porting and compatibility purposes?" "Do you support CDA in its current form?" And more of the like. I don't want to read "Al Gore supports technology and innovation" - I want to read HOW he supports them.

    Simply put, algore2000.com seems to play to the lowest common denominator - the average american, who sadly enough has little interest in politics, and little technical knowledge. I think this is a mistake; this audience doesn't read political advocacy web sites on a wide basis. You'd do better to use the web site to provide details and elaborate on Al's statements and ideas rather than just rehash them.

    One more side note: I followed Jesse Ventura's campaign slightly - I don't know his stance on most of the issues. I dont live in Minnesota, so I didn't take the time to research him. What I DO know is that I was very impressed when a reporter asked him if he supported some obscure bill I'd never heard of. Ventura replied something like "Well, to be honest, I'm not familiar with that at all. I'm not gonna lie to you; I don't know everything, or have all the answers you wanna hear. But I learn fast; I'll read up on it." When can we expect Al Gore to say something like THAT?

    --

  • Ben Green! now there's a name I haven't heard in awhile. :-)

    Ben, last we spoke, you were looking for some high-end servers to handle the Gore2000 mailing list. I was just curious as to what kind of solution you went with and what your experiences have been with it.

    Douglas from min.net

  • Labeling/rating whatever is basically stamping something so someone who wants to censor it can. It's not censorship. It enables censorship, but it is not censorship. In this country anyone is free to go buy music as long as someone is willing to sell it. Someone else does the censorship.

    I'm not from the USA, so don't kill me if I'm wrong here: but isn't it against your constitution for the goverment to censor? If so, is it not an end run around the constitution to have government enforced labelling in the full knowledge that many private companies (e.g. Walmart) will censor the music with "bad" labels?

  • What was Mr. Gore's involvement with ARPANet and MILNet? Also, does Bob Metcalfe know about this?

    (for those who don't know, Bob Metcalfe also invented ethernet. Although lately, I think he might have really invented ether...)

    Okay, okay, serious question. What is Mr. Gore's stance on cryptography now that the US has lessened their regulations on it? Does he consider the Clipper chip to be a mistake, and is he still in favor of that ridiculous key-escrow idea?
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
  • No, and I don't think my post was *completely* off-topic. It's probably about as on-topic as a question like that will ever get on slashdot. Besides, I didn't find that narrow little topic to be too terribly interesting. :)

    I'm not trying to be pro/con Gore, he's probably my favorite out of a whole bunch of rotten choices. But I still probably won't vote. If I did vote, it would be because he answered those questions correctly.

    The only thing more dangerous than a technologically clueless president is a president who only thinks he has a clue...
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
  • John McCain has raised a lot of money off his website from individual contributors giving small amounts. In fact in just the few days following the New Hampshire primary he raised over $2 million.

    How much(if anything) have you raised online, and has it been an important source of revenue for your campaign?

    BTW, try to talk Gore into having one of these interviews :)
  • Hey, I'd really like to know who moderated my post down and why they did it. That post was not a Troll at all, and I can't believe anyone would think it was.
  • I think it'd be cool if there was a record of who did what.
  • Why did you feel like I was Trolling?
  • What sort of books have you used as a touchstone for shaping your web site?

    There's a lot of material out there, and a lot of experts, but who do you think really provided you with good advice on how to put together your website?

  • What can you really do? (Score:4)

    by X ( 1235 ) <x@xman.org> on Monday February 14, 2000 @08:03AM (#1276143) Homepage Journal
    Most of the political web sites I've seen out there are what I refer to in the web development industry as "brochure sites". They tend not to be terribly interactive, and mostly serve as an online brochure.

    What can you do with a political site that really enhances your ability to get the message out there?
  • I am not sure that your suggestion would be completely in the interests of the political candidate - these guys want to be all things to all people, and often that means keeping hush hush about some of the opinions they hold or may have had in the past. This would be more appropriate functionality for an independant politics website.

    --

  • This is an essential issue!
  • Yes he did invent the Internet and he also, not known to many people, invented programming, by inventing the algorithm! Yes he did!

    Al Gore - I loves you man!
  • Did you miss the special request that questions be related to using the Internet as a political tool in general, and not pro/con Gore?
  • Well, actually it would have been more on-topic in any one of the other stories on the american political process.
    It would have been even *more* on-topic in that "Father of the Internet" story half a year back.

    Despite your burning desire to have these questions responded, and your stated intent to allow that to influence your vote, it really isn't what this article is supposed to be about.
    I'd almost call it (or any other pro/con post) trolling.
    Anyway, why don't you e-mail your concerns directly to Gore campaign headquarters, they might actually reply. I would deem it unlikely your questions will get moderated up high enough to get to the webmaster that way.
  • How do you keep in touch with the various communities on the net and what has the "Open Source" issue [slashdot.org] taught you in this regard?
  • Do you feel intimidated being the head web-honcho for the man who invented the internet?
  • How do you balance a visually interesting site for the main public and people with disabilities (a politician can't be perceived as ignoring the disabled?)
    --
  • Disk space is cheap.
    Will somebody maintain the site up after the election, even as a frozen site?

    It will be valuable for historians (and electors who would check the promises).
    --
  • have you found innovative ways to make online promotion work?

    Of course! Being interviewed in Slashdot is a way to bring a lot of traffic two times, during the questions and after the answers.
    --
  • Bobby Accesibility check [cast.org] of the first page of the site.
    --
  • Everybody knows Linus is Bill Gates' love-child.

    George Lucas made four films about something similar.

    --
  • How will you deal with the fact that there are more languages spoken in the US beyond English?
    If you translate something, how much and to which languages?
    --

  • External links? (Score:4)

    by Pseudonymus Bosch ( 3479 ) on Monday February 14, 2000 @08:20AM (#1276157) Homepage
    Linking to another sites is an essential feature of the Web.

    Would you recommend linking to another sites from your boss' site?
    If yes, what kind of sites (supporters, other candidates, ~independent~ media, Slashdot :), supported campaigns)?

    Would you object to being linked from another sites, even from opponents?
    --
  • I'm no Gore man, but add two more point for Gore:

    6. Uses PHP
    7. Uses MySQL

  • http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.algore2000 .com .... sez Apache 1.3.9 w/ PHP.
  • They used to run IIS along with ASP. Couldn't keep up with the load and around the turn of the year they switched (partially on my recommendation) to Apache/PHP.
  • Again, I'm in the know on this one and I was talking to Ben about switching to Apache many, many months ago. The reason for switching was simple: IIS/ASP couldn't keep up with the load. The decision to use Linux/PHP was mostly based on the fact that it could keep up with the load.

  • How do the support volunteers that use the Internet compare to those that have been traditionally involved? Are they more active, or more talk and less action?
  • Was it your idea to claim that algore2000.com web site is "Open Source"? Do you even understand what Open Source means, or did you just decide to put yet another buzz word on the site, along with "information superhighway", which Al Gore likes to use so often?

    Also, who came up with the idea that Al Gore invented the internet? Was it you or Al Gore himself?

    ___
  • There's not a single question moderated in this article. In fact, I looked in other articles and found the same thing. Can anybody give more details about this?
    ___
  • Through nmap and telnet, I can see that that algore2000.com uses Linux and Apache. Al Gore has been known to assimilate buzzwords and jargon in a big way (MIT seems to have had his number [mit.edu] during commencement on this one). For example, several months ago I recieved a mail from the site claiming it was now "Open Source" when in reality it was nothing of the such and the term wasn't even remotely applicable to anything on the site. How much of your decision to go with Linux/Apache came out of practicality, and how much of it came because they are the trendy things to be running?

    --

  • Internet Policy (Score:3)

    by Uruk ( 4907 ) on Monday February 14, 2000 @08:11AM (#1276166)
    Something that I've seen missing from all of the candidate's web sites is their policy on the internet. How can you campaign on the internet and not discuss the issues pertaining to the very media you're putting your ideas out on? My previous impressions of Gore have been that his policies on the internet are not very similar to that of the internet populace.

    Also, on a note about Gore, how can the internet populace vote for a candidate who is pro-censorship? What effect would Tipper Gore (former member of the PMRC) have on the White ouse?

  • What factors were involved in the decision to call your web site "open source"? Do you really, truly embrace the open source movement, or was this just a chance to throw out a hot "buzz word" to a computer savvy audience?
  • Who cares about watching a bunch of crappy video feeds of commercials we're going to become thoroughly sick of on broadcast TV over the next several months?

    The Internet is made for conveying information in detail. For example, I should be able to go to the site, click a link labeled "Social Security", and read why Al Gore thinks that the overwhelmingly young American Internet audience should support that system that confiscates 1-1/2 months per year of our labor in payroll taxes and, if Gore and his Democrat pals get their way, several weeks of additional labor in federal income taxes (those $trillions of "surplus" dollars). The soundbite crap on the site is useless.

    On a more Internet-relavent note, the FEC wants to regulate political speech on the Internet (see th is CNN story [cnn.com]). Doesn't this create a hostile environment for non-official candidate web sites? Isn't this a blatent violation of the First Amendment (intended to protect political speech)? What is your view on such web sites?

  • What factors were involved in choosing slashdot as a forum for a discussion/interview about internet campaigning and voting techniques? Was it an entirely technical motovation, based on the idea that us of the technical persuasion in the audience might have insight on whether or not we felt it was a reasonable and rational approach to campaigning and/or perhaps even voting on the Internet? (IMHO, Jesse Ventura has ALREADY done an excellent job of answering the feasability issue.) Or are there political motivations behind this interview, where which in your anwers the audience will be showered with many pro-Gore-thinks-this-internet-thingy-is-cool-isms and turn out not to truly be of much insight about the technical/social issues that the Slashdot Audience is likely to be far more interested in?
    In case it is perhaps the former, wouldn't it have made more sense to have put this under the Ask Slashdot category, and have assumed that the Slashdot Audience's input on the matter is actually -more- important that the Gore Campaign Camp's opinions on Gore or Gore's approach to campaigning on the internet?
    In the case of the latter, does it occur to your that the majority of the people you are reaching in the Slashdot Audience are bound to see this as an unfair, lopsided approach to a campaign? One which is merely a transparent attempt to gain sympathy or support for a candidate we trust as far as any single one of us can throw the Empire State Building (And no, the other partys aren't worth trusting either)? It stands to reason that if the "Democrats" are here waving their flag all over our nice generally technical forum (a forum that inherently resents contemporary (American) politics in the FIRST place) that, for the sake of fairness, All other candidates Campaign Managers (or whoever you are) should be interviewed here as well.. or at the least your candidate's biggest opponent.

    And finally, on the astronomically off chance that this ? gets posted in the interview, my apologies to Jon Katz (who I've personally never met, but whose work I dislike immensly) for generalizing the "Slashdot Audience"..
    =)

    mprov
  • My previous impressions of Gore have been that his policies on the internet are not very similar to that of the internet populace.
    Also, on a note about Gore, how can the internet populace vote for a candidate who is pro-censorship?
    Remember that the internet populace is a very large thing, and has a lot of diverse views. Just because all of us on /. are against censorship (and not even everyone on /. is), doesn't mean that the entire Internet is against it. Remember that the soccer moms trying to "protect the children" are part of the internet populace.

    The views of the internet populace reflects the views of the people on it; the views of the american internet populace reflects the views of most americans (minus some of the lower income brackets and technophobic). Remember, the PMRC got their stickers on music because they had the support of some of the american people, now those same americans are on the internet.
    --

  • I've noticed that many people who are accustomed to traditional one-way media such as radio or TV are slow to understand the two-way dialogue nature of Internet culture. By one-way, I mean that broadcasters (including me for a while) send their messages out to the "masses" and don't interact much with their audience. In contrast, one of the first things I noticed about the Internet was that you could send emails to famous people and they'd write you back! People are more down-to-earth and treat each other as peers, as opposed to the (perhaps inevitable) heirarchy between a broadcaster and her/his audience. It's worth noting that "heroes" among the online community are chosen for their accessibility and involvement in the community, and that they quickly lose their status if their ego takes over in a way that makes them less accessible. Ego generally gets razzed at, as does abuse of power. People forgive your flaws here if you're honest and open and well-intentioned, but if you're not, the Internet is an unnervingly good BS detector. This becomes clear to anyone who pays attention to their feedback.

    My point is, I've seen very few politicians (one or two on the local level) that understand this and can use it to their advantage. As one poster above mentioned, most campaign sites are like mere brochures. If a candidate is to gain respect online, s/he needs to respond to the audience. This could be as simple as maintaining a real FAQ, or it could take the form of an online forum for discussion of issues, perhaps using a format like Slashdot. Al Gore would have suffered much less online damage if, after his "Internet" statement, he'd posted an online apology explaining what on earth he'd been thinking, and acknowledging the people who really deserve credit for the Internet.

    So... my questions are: Have you thought about this? If so, what are your thoughts? What are your plans in this area? How long will it take before politicians use the Internet to become more in touch with their constituency?

  • I almost wrote this exact same comment, but I found this well writen one instead, heh.

    Thanks! Though I really wish it would get moderated up, since I really wanna know the answers. (You have a good question too.)

  • But maybe a better way to do this would be to contact the web people of all the major campaigns and do a 'how did each respond' type of interview.

    In lieu of the 'Al Gore Invented the Internet' problems and rancor, it may make for a more rounded interview and more intelligent questions being asked...

    jf
  • If you are going to mess with politics you either need to represent all parties, or you declare your loyalties.

    I haven't heard anything about anyone else other than Gore, so it's *very* apparent that the /. crew is biased, and on top of that lying about it.
  • The question should be, why did they change from NT and IIS to Linux and Apache? A year ago they were on NT and IIS.

  • Bad Press (Score:4)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 ) on Monday February 14, 2000 @08:17AM (#1276176)
    In an increasingly wired society rumors and myths propagate at incredible speeds - how do you diffuse rumors and myths. For example, if I start a rumor that Mr. Gore said he "fathered linus torvalds" - how do you diffuse that? Rumors and myths often come about as a minor distortion of the truth which then goes through the "telephone game". How do you keep the public informed about what a candidate /really/ thinks, as opposed to what other people think the candidate thinks?
  • How succesful has appealing to netizens for help with the gore200 web site been? How many non-gore staffers are currently involved and what unforseen challenges have running the web site this what posed?
  • You'd be on +4, possibly interesting, possibly informative. Then someone trolls you and yo go down one abnd become troll because that's what you were last rated as.

    I used to think moderation was defensible. But they need to develop a new system in the slashdot r&d labs quam celerime.
  • <i>Is it censorship that Microsoft won't let OEM's dual-boot BeOS on
    systems that have Windows preloaded?</i><br>
    <br>
    It's a misuse of the work censorship... but yes, I think it is. It's the same in spirit.
  • The parent message is not a troll. It is, in fact, a problem with a lot of advertising-model web sites: they just post their ad copy onto a web server and wait for the traffic to come in. They actually have confused their advertising for their product. One contribution that the web could make to the political process would be to get BEYOND the lowest-common-denominator syndrome that marks televised campaigning.

    It would be naive to think that a site for a political figure doesn't advocate that candidate, but there are things that a good political site could do. One thing I *wouldn't* put on that list would be an online forum for discussion, because that is just a magnet for hostility. However, voting records and links to analyses of voting records are useful resources. Policy studies and links to more indepth study (perhaps even documents available for download); endorsements and links to the endorsing organizations; even historical context studies.

    Ideally, I'd like to see web campaigning be part of a process of trying to cull a couple statesmen out of the murky pool of politicians we've got.

  • Most political campaigning, like most advertising, involves a one-way flow of information- the candidate makes statements, gives soundbites, and buys advertisements, and the only way the individual can communicate back is by voting, or writing a letter which will be immediately filed away and ignored by campaign staffers. Such is the nature of mass-media- TV, newspapers, and radio do not facilitate 2-way communication. One of the consequences of this is the public's widespread disinterest in and apathy about politics, because they see no connection between themselves and those who represent them, and no way of truly having a voice.

    The internet provides an incredible opportuinty to fundamentally change this dynamic. I feel like I know in some way and am communicating with internet celebrities such as CmdrTaco and Bruce Perens simply by participating in Slashdot. In this community, unlike in national politics, I believe I have a voice, however small it may be. My question is, can the internet bring this sort of connection to politics? How can you, and how are you, leveraging the unique two-way nature of internet media? Can the internet become a conduit for true communication between a politician and those he represents, or will we just see more TV ads and sound bites in HTML format?

  • Was it your idea to claim that algore2000.com web site is "Open Source"? Do you even understand what Open Source means, or did you just decide to put yet another buzz word on the site...

    Now THIS question needs to be asked. Speaking as a Democrat, I'm very ansy that the likely candidate, the person who could end up defending abortion rights and the environment in a lasting and permanent way, doesn't have people on his team who knows the difference between "open source" and "volunteer written."

  • Two-part question:

    Your job is to get as much eyeballs to your site in order to influence something offline. Do you think it is possible for an online community to do the opposite and gain enough offline clout to successful lobby for, say, an amendment to or abolition of, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act? So how can the Open Source community use the Internet best as a political tool?

    I have serious doubts that it can be used as political tool because I think politicians do not take the Net seriously. What is your view on this?

    (Please, no campaign speeches, I don't get to vote anyway.)

    Remmelt de Haan,
    the Netherlands

  • (there's no distinction between the two, really).

    Aw, come on. Sure there is. Censorship prevents you from getting something you want. Labeling makes it easier to determine what you want. Censorship may be present with labelling, but labelling itself is not censoring.

    Okay, consider it this way. Is it censorship that food products are labelled "The chemical dioxitribe may cause reactions in people who have blue eyes and blonde hair"? No. Censorship is when those food products are no longer available to anyone, even if they don't have an effect to most people.

    Now, if a store decides that 89% of the population is affected by this food product, and decide not to carry it, then that can be called censorship. Who knows, maybe they wouldn't have known about the problem without the label, because people would have bought it anyways. But not selling something is their choice to make. They have finite shelfspace and they want to maximise their profits.

    Now, whether it's food, or music, it doesn't matter. Labelling isn't censorship, it's responsibility. It helps those who are adversely affected to ignore it, and those interested in it to find it. If it is no longer profitable to a store to sell a product, *maybe* that could be considered censorship, but that's their choice, and they will do what is profitable. I tend to believe that it's not censorship, it's just business.

    Is it censorship that Microsoft won't let OEM's dual-boot BeOS on systems that have Windows preloaded?

    -Brent

  • What's the true measure of success? (Score:3)

    by A Big Gnu Thrush ( 12795 ) on Monday February 14, 2000 @08:33AM (#1276188)
    This Wired article [wired.com] talks about the flood of donations received through McCain's web site after a win in NH. Increasingly, the most effective form of political activism appears to be cash. While a strong web presence could promote a dialogue of issues, this does not seem to be taking place.

    If a web site brought in little or no money, could a candidate still view it as successful, or is income the final measure of success?

  • Do you feel that the credibility of the candidate involved can have any adverse or positive influence on the way people view "internet campaigns"?

    "I took the initiative in creating the internet." Is not something that we (around these parts) are likely to forget.

    LK
  • This is a travesty. Giving pulpit to this
    democratic puppet shows /.'s integrity these
    days.
    I just have one question: how much did Gore's
    campaign pay VAL to get this publicity?
  • ...to put the 'secret message' in the HTML source? Was this for marketing, or just because it seemed like a nifty idea? Did you copy or were copied by Transmeta.com?

  • First of all, Tipper Gore started the PMRC, she wasn't just a member. She listened to a Prince tape her daughter had and was not happy about the song 'Darling Nikki' where Prince talks about masturbation as well as some other adult themes.

    Secondly, I dont know if I would go as far as calling what the PMRC did as censorship. No record stores stopped selling 2 Live Crew or G'n'R (in fact they sold more) and no kid who wanted it badly enough was denied access to the record/tape/cd. It was just labeling. All she did was increase awareness of foul language in the music kids were buying in an attempt to make obvious to parents what was going on. Unfortunately I dont have the reference, but I recall reading that she is in fact opposed to censorship.

    -Rich
  • Due to the Tipper Gore's actions, tons of rap and other music has been
    pulled from chains such as Walmart and K-mart.

    K-Mart and Wal-Mart a) are not record stores, b) Refuse to sell all kinds of things. You're talking about stores that sell shotguns but wont sell music. I cant buy porno at Wal-Mart either, is that censorship? Take it up with Wal-Mart and K-Mart. They're the ones who took stuff off the shelves, or refused to accept non disney versions of the music. One of the many reasons I dont shop at Wal-Mart.

    She wrote a whole book about how proud she was of censoring this music,
    "Raising a PG Child in an X-Rated World" I believe the title was.

    Did you read it? I didn't so I wont comment.

    PMRC describes rap music as a "secondary form of child abuse"

    Looks like her opinion to me. Doesn't have very much to do with censorship at all. Trying for an emotional appeal here?

    See my page at http://censorware.org/pics/primer/ and then tell me whether PMRC is promoting labeling or censorship (there's no
    distinction between the two, really).

    Labeling/rating whatever is basically stamping something so someone who wants to censor it can. It's not censorship. It enables censorship, but it is not censorship. In this country anyone is free to go buy music as long as someone is willing to sell it. Someone else does the censorship. It's sort of like how DeCSS isn't really copyright violation, someone else does the copyright violation, DeCSS is just a tool. Or kind of how napster is just a tool for downloading files. It takes someone who wants to steal music to make napster a mechanism for theft. In the same vein, Labeling is not censorship, it just gives people who want to be censors an excuse to use. Stealing DVD's CD's or censoring contnet are all equally illegal in this country. You can villify the PMRC if you want, but the arguments you use just may backfire on you.

    If you want to fight censorship fight the morons who are censoring something, not the people who are just trying to warn the ignorant or protect their children. I respect your vigilance, but I find it misguided.

    -Rich
  • I'm not from the USA, so don't kill me if I'm wrong here: but isn't it against your constitution for the goverment to censor? If so,
    is it not an end run around the constitution to have government enforced labelling in the full knowledge that many private
    companies (e.g. Walmart) will censor the music with "bad" labels?

    Yes, the government cannot censor anyone. The problem is labeling does not force anyone to go from point a to point b. It just provides an excuse. Walmart is going to censor the music anyway. They're not going to sell certain kinds of music whether there is a label or not, It's just their policy. The label just makes it easy for them to screen the content, otherwise one might slip through. Labeling doesn't force anyone to do anything, it just gives an excuse to people who are looking for one. It's the wrong fight to be fighting. Fight the actual censors (like Wal Mart) if you want to stop the censorship.

    -Rich
  • 1) Annoying self-righteous semi-public figure decides to spearhead labeling initiative to "protect the children!"

    2) Evil mega-retailer sees oportunity to maintain public image of "the family-friendly" store, refuses to carry any music bearing such labels.

    3) Record executive scum say "Ah, crap. Wal-Mart sells a very large percentage of our product. We better convince "the talent" that they have to change the lyrics."

    4) Many artists, not in a position to argue with their record company submit. A few refuse, and take the sales hit.

    That's all capitalism though. They have the right to do whatever they want. The artist should have paid more attention to his or her contract (A huge problem in the music industry).

    Making it easy for major retailers to censor music is simply a more roundabout way of doing it yourself.

    The thing is, though, these retailers would be censoring this stuff anyhow. It's not like labeling magically caused Wal-Mart to shift it's position on anything, they just now have a scapegoat to blame when the censorship ocurrs. You're diverting attention from the real censors, the stores.

    -Rich
  • Hacking into a site of "the father of the internet" would be seen as gaining major credit inside the site cracking community. How, in general terms, have you gone about addressing security issues for your site ?
  • Many of us on the web perceive ourselves as being part of something new, something exciting, something different. Those that are involved in Open Source or Free Software probably tend towards believing that because of the success of this approach in producing working code that it is a paradigm for other areas of human endeavour. However this may not be true: to examine your own area of expertise I would like to ask the following:
    • Given that succesful politics is heavily driven by money do you feel that there will really be any difference between the internet and any other medium? Specifically will it not be the case that the candidate with the most money will be able to afford more bandwidth, more mirrors, faster servers with more memory and thus dominate the medium?
    • What policies should be implemented by the candidates to ensure that the web is a democracy enhancing medium? Specifically I'm interested in the issue of governmental control of the web turning it into a means of control as per the recent example of Burma instituting prison sentences for unlicensed computers
    • Given that there is a wider structure beyond merely "the net", which is the community of hackers who have created this technology, what policies should the candidates pursue to ensure that this community remains vibrant and innovative (I'm thinking here about avoiding laws that stifle innovation and turn hackers into involuntary criminals like Jon inthe DeCSS scandal)

    • I know that's a lot there but hopefully you can answer some of it.
      Thanks
      --Crush

  • Hi all!

    Interview questions are historically picked by the moderators - top X questions get submitted.

    But, right now - and for a good few days - it just doesn't seem that there's any quantity of moderation points in the system. I mean, when did anyone last see a moderated post?

    Something odd appears to have broken and normally this would only cause a real problem if +1s start trolling. But here it stops questions getting submitted by anyone other that +1s so what can we do?

    Greg
  • That's a good idea, but the problem seems to be that comments are listed in point then date order - so it wouldn't help if more people have already replied as +1 than they're going to submit questions.

    I suspect this interview may have to be put on hold, unfortunately...

    Greg
  • Extrans posting is broken. Dunno why, but if you want HTML you have to post as HTML formatted instead of Extrans.

    The lesson here is simple - always preview your pages, and you'll catch slashdot bugs more often :)

    Greg
  • Where do you get your information, out of a cereal box? Due to the Tipper Gore's actions, tons of rap and other music has been pulled from chains such as Walmart and K-mart. Other music has been "Sanitized for Your Protection", meaning lyrics have been altered or eliminated, even for adult purchasers. She wrote a whole book about how proud she was of censoring this music, "Raising a PG Child in an X-Rated World" I believe the title was. PMRC describes rap music as a "secondary form of child abuse". See my page at http://censorware.org/pics/primer/ [censorware.org] and then tell me whether PMRC is promoting labeling or censorship (there's no distinction between the two, really).

    --
    Michael Sims-michael at slashdot.org

  • Effect on Lying (Score:4)

    by jellicle ( 29746 ) on Monday February 14, 2000 @09:00AM (#1276226) Homepage
    Given that the internet allows users to seek out and verify information for themselves to a much greater extent than previously possible, will this affect the typical lying and obfuscation of political campaigns? That is, I can retrieve information about Gore's campaign and see that in Bumfucht, Idaho he promised a group of veterans that he would increase spending on national offense, while three days later in Nowhere, Ohio, he swore up and down to a local Rotary Club that he would eliminate wasteful military spending.

    Will the increased access to information force politicians to actually have consistent stances, or will the politicians fail to wise up, treat everything as "business as usual", and continue alienating a large portion of the population through pervasive pandering, mushy beliefs that depend on who they're talking to, and outright lies?
    --
    Michael Sims-michael at slashdot.org
  • Taking into consideration that many of the readers of this forum are voters and pro-open-source (to put it carefully ;-)) the answer will probably be accordingly.
  • I don't think that was the reason, but it is an interesting question nonetheless (and certainly not flamebait; moderators, please give the original posting an 'underrated' or 'interesting').

    I just wanted to point out that we should take all answers of this person with a grain of salt.

  • Why Linux? (Score:5)

    by VP ( 32928 ) on Monday February 14, 2000 @08:13AM (#1276231)
    According to netcraft, algore2000 is running Linux and Apache. What were the reasons for choosing that platform, and were they mainly technical, or political? Was this your initial choice, or did you change the platform at some point?

  • When I worked in the big non-profit world, I encountered a problem which may be familiar to you. Whenever the boss talked to somebody, his job was to convey the message "We understand each other." This is harmless enough, but in his enthusiasm the boss often morphed this into "We're in the same business, we think exactly alike, for practical purposes we're one and the same person." I had a lot of "my geek will call your geek" meetings in which the technical people sat around wondering why the hell we were supposed to be talking to each other.

    Which brings me to my question. Is there a lot of pressure to make the Vice President look more Internet and tech-savvy than he is, or even needs to be?

    Maybe its Ok for a guy who's been living in that mansion at the USNO not to know what a laser scanner is. I for one never suffered from the delusion that George Bush ever ran out for a loaf of bread at the lock Kwik-e-mart while he was VP. Likewise, I don't expect that the vice president has ever slapped eyeballs on slashdot. Maybe the Internet candidate doesn't have to drop terms like "open source" (;-) if he can show he understands and supports values like freedom of expression that netizens cherish.
  • There's exactly one thing Al Gore could do to wrench my vote away from Bill Bradley, and that's to submit a patch to the Linux kernel and get Linus to accept it. C'mon Al: you invented the internet, so now do something to improve the computers that power the internet in the Twenty First Century (tm). Give our children (WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN???) something to hope for, something that will our nation proud again, proud of our bounty and proud of our freedom (GNU!).
  • Why not do what everyone else is doing and leverage the power of the web to make money by....: going IPO! Sell shares in your future potential presidency, and rake in the dough. While you might not actually ever get elected president, companies like Amazon.com might not ever make any money either, and just look at their stock prices. With the IPO revenue, the candidate can effectively smother the competition with expensive far-reaching vote-gathering advertising, and once in office, the stockholding lobbyists can get cabinet positions and dictate executive policy. Sure it violates FEC rules, but existing IPOs are essentially Ponzi schemes and flout the mandate of the FTC, and what's the difference between those TLAs, anyway?

    Hey, it's not so different from existing candidates' policies: y'know, this would be a perfect spot for another Texas baseball stadium!

  • How does the website affect the candidate? (Score:3)

    by Silas ( 35023 ) on Monday February 14, 2000 @09:07AM (#1276239) Homepage
    Many of the questions posted so far ask you to discuss how the website and its upkeep influence the voters and the campaign. I'd like to you to discuss how having a website affects the candidate, his views, his methods, his public personality.

    That's my main question, here are some points to ponder:

    It seems that having a website as large and significant to the campaign as Gore's or most of the others would tend to force them to be more responsible, to be held more accountable for each and every utterance. In a world where disinformation and twisting of facts is commonplace in the popular media, how does a website like yours influence the candidates` ability to take advantage of this?

    Are Gore or any of the others more or less likely to refer back to their campaign managers and website before making statements about policy and moral issues? Or is it just as easy to perform an "about face" because the website can be updated just as quickly? Can campaigners now say "please see the FOO section of my website" instead of answering questions about specific issues?

  • Disclaimers:
    1. I'm not a very political person anymore, and even back when I was I wouldn't have been much interested in Al Gore (or any Republicans).
    2. I don't speak for my company, this is just me being curious.
    3. This might be a better question to ask of the FEC than of you, keeping in mind that what backs certain alternative currencies might fluctuate in dollar value over time and that political contribution limits are denominated in dollars.
    4. Right now, no alternative web currency, including ours, stores enough value to be of much interest to a political campaign, anyway.
    5. I probably seem self-interested in posting this, so moderate me down -- see if I care. :)

    How do you feel about the idea of accepting instantly settled payments of an alternative currency, say one denominated in grams of Au, Ag, Pt, or Pd [e-gold.com]? Note: we have account holders all over the world, and this brings up questions of identity-verification (just spend back to suspicious accounts, I guess) but those questions come up with the current system when a campaign encounters, for example, suspiciously-wealthy Buddhist monks. Do you think this is a possibility for the future.

    I'll include my standard /. offer to show anyone who creates an account and sends me the number a small e-metal spend to show how the system works, just email me your account number and PLEASE remember your passphrase.

    Anyway, I look forward to your answer. Thanks.
    JMR
  • Agreed, and here's [realchange.org] another one to consider for attention. If I want dirt on a candidate, ANY candidate :^) it's where I go first.

    Yes, they have a Gore section [realchange.org], but they don't spare anybody over at the Skeleton Closet. (I have nothing to do with them, I speak only for myself.)
    JMR

  • A couple of months ago I remember reading an article saying that you had bought many "bad-publicity" domain-names like http://www.algoresucks.com and likewise addresses and that you had them all linked to the Gore-campaign website. When I re-checked today the pages didn't link anymore. Why did you decide to un-link the pages??

  • One-way media (Score:3)

    by overshoot ( 39700 ) on Monday February 14, 2000 @09:46AM (#1276245)
    It seems that the ruling class is hoping for the Internet to become a cheaper form of television: strictly one-way media. A classic indicator of this is that Bush and Gore have run spam campaigns and McCain (as committee chair) pulled a midnight sneaky to get prospam legislation through the Senate.

    Why is is so hard for our Lords and Masters to understand that the Internet isn't television? Wiil it take the 1960 debates all over again?
  • Aw, come on. Sure there is. Censorship prevents you from getting something you want. Labeling makes it easier to determine what you want. Censorship may be present with labelling, but labelling itself is not censoring. Not true! When a record company has the option of releasing 2 versions of a song, one which has been censored, they will look at where they can sell that product. When stores like Walmart and Kmart refuse to carry the non-censored versions, they're going to give censoring a good look. Besides, how many people don't buy a cd because its lyrics have been changed? How many people would even know about it? Thus the deciding factor is not whether the product is censored, but how much exposure they can get for it. Doug
  • In building a political campaign web site for my brother who is running for a city council race, I find that the web site itself generates very little traffic. Even though we've placed his web site on all of the campaign materials (fliers, bumper stickers, hats, etc), and even though the web site is an easy to remember name, very few members of the community have hit his web site.

    Do you see the web as an effective way for local candidates to get the message out? Or do you see the web more as a way to impress the local political "elite" and press in a region?

    Further, given the nature of a presidential campaign (where the candidate's message is often "tuned" to a geographic area or interest group), do you tune the message on the web to fit all geographical regions? Or are you tuning the message to fit a sort of "Internet special interest group?"
  • Maybe ever since the web turned into one big commercial marketplace that no-one pays attention to RFC 1591 anymore?

  • Marketing (Score:3)

    by TheTomcat ( 53158 ) on Monday February 14, 2000 @08:17AM (#1276253) Homepage
    What marketing and advertising methods have you found most successful for promoting the website? We all know that banners are dying, and the creators have to become more creative to get people to even NOTICE the banners. Is old media (television, print -- Newspapers, magazines, billboards etc., radio.) the backend to the website's marketing campaign, or have you found innovative ways to make online promotion work?
  • I am not normally one to followup my own posts, or question the moderation...

    But in this case... I am totally stumped why this one would be considered offtopic? I know the moderator cannot respond, but maybe someone else who feels this way?
    ---
  • I am not sure that your suggestion would be completely in the interests of the political candidate - these guys want to be all things to all people, and often that means keeping hush hush about some of the opinions they hold or may have had in the past. This would be more appropriate functionality for an independant politics website.

    If one politician starts presenting the facts in that manner, then it could really hurt if the others don't do it. When one says "I've always been for so-and-so", and then can list every vote she's been in, and prove she's been for it, that could be a big help, especially against the "I've always been for it - but been voting against it" type people.

    And honestly, I'd much rather see a politican that will admit their past and deal with it instead of hiding it.
    ---
  • The current political candidate sites seem to be little more than political rhetoric and volunteer information. Are there any plans to treat the website differently than a brodcast medium? I mean, including interactivity, such as message areas for open discussions, polling booths to get a feel for what people are really interested in. And also perhaps for offering large amounts of data about a candidate's past actions in government, such as voting records (and perhaps reasons for the vote).


    ---
  • Given that the Internet works via a passive model wherein a user must request information,
    how do you intend to reach the majority of people who don't request AlGore2000 info?

  • Others to interview (Score:3)

    by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Monday February 14, 2000 @12:19PM (#1276262) Journal
    On the subject of internet and political organization, I can think of a few others who might be better candidates for such interviews than Gore's internet guy.

    For starters: Newt - or his internet guy. He was the first established politician to make serious use of the internet for political organization and campaigning. It was an underpinning of his contract-with-America push to obtain a congressional majority.

    Next: The people who organized the grass-roots networks that took down some major political figures. Here are the organization names. (I can dig out contact info if there's interest)

    Citizens Against Corruption: Organized (at least one of the two) grass-roots letter-to-every-voter-in-his-district campaigns that took out Roberti and Roos in California.

    De-Foley-8: Organized a grass-roots campaign that took out Foley - the only time a sitting speaker of the house was taken down in an election.

    These last two represent three successful kick-the-bastard-out campaigns organized entirely over the internet, powered primarily by members of one interest group (pro-gun), acting in retaliation against powerful political figures who had passed legislation against their interests.

    Think how many more people might participate in campaigns against the authors of legislation goring internet oxen - such as censorship, crypto bans, nettapping, anti-reverse-engineering, etc.

    Not to mention "campaign reform" laws designed to make such grass roots campaigns impossible.
  • According to RFC 1591:
    COM - This domain is intended for commercial entities, that is companies. This domain has grown very large and there is concern about the administrative load and system performance if the current growth pattern is continued. Consideration is being taken to subdivide the COM domain and only allow future commercial registrations in the subdomains.


    Why is the website of a politcal campaign under the COM TLD, when it should have been registered under ORG?

    ORG - This domain is intended as the miscellaneous TLD for organizations that didn't fit anywhere else [COM,EDU,NET,INT,GOV,MIL, or country codes -/me]. Some non-government organizations may fit here.
  • Personally, I think that most candidates are talking out of their posterior during interviews and debates. The internet has helped me a great deal because sites such as selectsmart.com and others have listed each candidate's stance on various issues. Sort of a cut through the B.S. and get to the facts type thing that I love, allowing me to discount the "he sure is a swell guy" mentality.

    However, many people do consider personality a very important quality when searching for candidates and I am curious as to how that might be conveyed over the internet. How have you dealt with this obvious difficulty in a media such as the internet?
  • Was it your idea to claim that algore2000.com web site is "Open Source"? Do you even understand what Open Source means, or did you just decide to put yet another buzz word on the site, along with "information superhighway", which Al Gore likes to use so often?

    This question certainly needs to be asked, but I think there is a need to be specific about the full issue. Here is my attempt to state the question as completely as possible, with links:

    The algore2000 website claims to be an "open site". The is clearly an attempt to choose a term other than Open Source after the reaction of the Open Source community to the initial application of that label to the site. The statement, here [algore2000.com] begins with:

    In the spirit of the Open Source movement, we have established the Gore 2000 Volunteer Source Code Project. www.algore2000.com is an "open site".


    Invoking the name of the Open Source movement is clearly an attempt to either court it as a constituency or for help with the web site, or both. If you want that, you can't go with half measures. I read the legal notice [algore2000.com]. I realize that the limitations on who can contribute are an effort to be sure that all of the contributed source code is kept strictly on the legal side of election laws. That's fine. However, to be Open Source [opensource.org] a project must meet certain criteria [opensource.org], including:

    1. The software must be freely redistributable.
    2. Source code must be included with the distribution.
    3. Derivative works, as long as they are clearly labelled as such, are allowed.
    4. The license must not discriminate against any field of endeavour.
    5. The license must not be specific to a product.


    The first item would clearly allow an unmodified mirror of the algore2000 web site, but not under your direct control. The second, if the site is entirely HTML and images has been met simply by putting it on the web. The rest, take together, would allow an opponent to copy the look and feel while changing the content or anyone to create a parody.

    There are other conditions on the Open Source [opensource.org] web site (http://www.opensource.org/). Please, tell us specifically which ones you are honoring and which ones you are deviating from as an "open site" and why.
  • Queso still identifies my 2.2.10 boxes as 2.1.xx.. It used to have the habit of calling my 2.0.32ac box 1.2.x as well. TCP fingerprinting is only one step in any effort to identify a box.. I'me behind a firewall here, so my efforts to quantifiably identify algore2000 fail.

    My best guess would be Linux 2.0.36.
  • Use your +1 for good!

    If you see a good 0 or 1 question down the list, repost the text of the question with a text credit to the original author. A href to the actual comment would be nice, but as it is unlikely to be followed by the readers nor reprinted in the outbound question it is more of a bonus than a prereq..

    As for +1's trolling.. We do, but we have the decency to do it at 1 or 0, because otherwise it would be gross abuse of our perks.
  • Has anyone else noticed that moderation has been weak for the last few days? That makes it tough to choose good questions for an interview..

    (hoping the moderators aren't just saving up their points in order to do a few dozen negative moderations to the next moderator-questioning post)

    --

  • From the source of the front page of algore2000.com [algore2000.com]:

    The fact that you are peeking behind the scenes at our site means you can make an important difference to this Internet effort.

    Since alt-v, (u|c) is about as hard as voting, and lots of the people who look at source code obsessively live in CA, does this statement mean he's desperate for votes in CA?

    --

  • This is not really a question, but a comment on this interview. I accept that in theory this interview is supposed to be about the process of using the Internet for a political campaign, but why do I have a feeling it will turn into a political speech? Something like:

    Q: What do you think the impact of the Internet will be on future campaigns?

    A: Al Gore is a huge believer in the power of the Internet, and intends to be a front runner in making sure everyone has access to this powerful bridge into the 21st century so that every citizen can have the benefit of directly reaching their candidate. [insert more hot air here]

    Does anyone really think that the questions will not be run through 6 different P.R. people, each spinning it a little more toward Al Gore?

    If my prediction turns out to be correct, I hope that Slashdot will give other candidates a shot. In fact, equal access laws may require it.


    --

  • constituents, elitism, and changing messages (Score:3)

    by mattorb ( 109142 ) on Monday February 14, 2000 @12:08PM (#1276294)
    It's a good bet that the portion of the American public that gets their political news primarily from online sources -- and more specifically, the portion that is actually likely to look at any candidate's website -- is not a completely representative cross-section of America. Does this affect, or can you imagine it affecting in the future, the messages you display on your website? Clearly the ideas you talk about on TV and the ideas you talk about on your site have to be basically the same, but do you make a conscious effort to tailor the way you convey those ideas to the population you're sampling via each medium? If not, can you imagine situations in which it might be greatly to your advantage to do so? Or severely detrimental?
  • Does the sudden rash of DoS attacks and comprised systems have any effect on your Internet campaign?

    Knowing that you will be the focal point of politically minded hackers (believe it or not, they are out there!), how are you going to handle site security?

    How do you assure the public that what they read on your site is genuine and unadulturated?

  • In the "Agenda" section on algore2000.com, I can't help but notice a pointed lack of comments on intellectual property laws. If Al Gore intends to make the internet a "duty-free" zone for commerce, thereby promoting the already insanely rapid growth of internet business, how does he intend to deal with issues such as the recent trend of "questionable" patent applications, the semi-legitimate buying/selling of domain names, the open-sourcing of code, and other issues closely related to intellectual property? And, now that I think of it, I wonder if Gore has any ideas on how to deal with the huge "information provider" type mergers, such as AOL/Time Warner. -sircase Please wait a moment, I am constructing haiku. What season is this?

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