Internet Defense League To Be Deployed Against CISPA 71
yanom writes "Slashdotters may remember the launch of the Internet Defense League, a network for website owners that would allow for the replication of a media campaign similar to the one that took down SOPA. Now it plans to spring into action in response to the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, which is now making it's way through Congress. The IDL wants its members to embed anti-CISPA banners into their websites, which will be activated tomorrow, March 19th."
How to actually do something about it (Score:4, Interesting)
How do you do anything about this when your district's congressman [house.gov] is completely opposite your views on almost every issue? Especially when you didn't vote for him. Any letter writing would go to the technologically-clueless equivalent of /dev/null.
Aaron Swartz (Score:5, Interesting)
Aaron Swartz [wikipedia.org], not only was he very vocal about SOPA, he was at the centre of the fight against it.
I called all my friends, and we stayed up all night setting up a website for this new group, Demand Progress, with an online petition opposing this noxious billâ¦. We [got] ⦠300,000 signersâ¦. We met with the staff of members of Congress and pleaded with themâ¦. And then it passed unanimously.â¦
He won that fight, but then it meant he got the government's attention. That's how it works, you are just part of the crowd until they see you as one of the leaders and then they hammer you until you can't go any longer. He lost all of his money in that legal battle, obviously the government can just throw everything to defeat you if you are the enemy. He could have ended up in prison, just like Bradley Manning [wikipedia.org], but he went a different route.
You and your government, the relationship is not what you were brought up to believe it is.
obvious (Score:5, Interesting)
Where is the banner on /.?
Re:Education (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that they just end up listening to the pressure groups, who are basically an unelected elite selected for their capability to make every minor problem seem like a moral crisis that spells impending doom for civilization as we know it. I don't know the general fix for that, but politicians with at least a little knowledge of the areas they are legislating in seem to be better able to resist them.
Re:Education (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly this. The sequester is a prefect example. The big arguments against it are this its ill timed, and second that its indiscriminate. I won't speak to former because its off topic but the later illustrates your point. The sequester is not bad solution because its indiscriminate; that is in fact the only reason why even the very very minor spending reduction it amounts to could be accomplished at all.
Sure in a perfectly sane world we would identify the least effective, most out dated, most abused, least needed programs and make cuts there. Our government has [d]evolved to a point where it can't accomplish that anymore though. The first is it really is actually a hard question the number of budget items is mind blowing, coupled with the fact that you could never guess in may cased what services an agency, office, ..., actually provides without conducting weeks of interviews. The second more germane reason to this discussion is that every line item is someones sacred cow, or gravy train.
If you eliminate one of those line items those people suddenly have a big interest in hiring one of the lobbyists to go wine, dine, and blow (or provide blow to; depending on the members preferred forms of recreation) enough CONgress persons to get the legislation amended. Naturally these guys no how to spin it too. Even though as a libertarian I am pretty convinced our government has become a dangerous corrupt mess and only its ineptitude spares us real horror; I still believe most legislation is originally enacted with good intentions. So when you talk about any one item it always sound reasonable. "It only costs a few million and think of all the undernourished bullfrogs that get a second chance at life; oh and TEH JOBS!; also we can't let TEH TERRORISTS WIN!"
It becomes impossible to make the argument anyone thing will really benefit the bottom line. You can't justify causing one group so much pain to accomplish so little, in the way of reform. People just are not wired to see how a million here, and million there add up to a trillion. The numbers are just separated by to much magnitude. If on the other hand you indiscriminately cut everything. You make everyone suffer some loss, but not enough to justify the cost of a lobbying effort and maybe less able to afford it.
The same applies to industry issues. The IP lobby has gotten used to just getting ever stronger protections whenever any new technology threatens them. You'll never convince anyone they should be made to give anything they have up. If we all stick together and remain universally opposed to enacting new protections, and continue to frame the debate about being pro-freedom though we can probably block legislation like this. Do it long enough and the market will out grow the current players. They will become marginalized and nobody will care about them because disruptive technologies will have replaced them in our daily lives. Just like nobody much cares about laws regulating horse cart safety; other than small pockets of Amish here and there.