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Ask A Tech-Savvy Lobbyist About The Politics Of Computing
Posted by
timothy
on Fri Oct 05, 2001 11:00 AM
from the laws-and-sausages dept.
from the laws-and-sausages dept.
Morgan Reed is a lobbyist in Washington, D.C. with the law firm of Venable, Baetjer, Howard & Civiletti. He has represented a wide range of clients, from the International Pizza
Hut Franchise Holders Association (really) to the Telecommunications Industry
Association and the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM). That means he's paid to personally persuade (not to mention cajole and
badger) lawmakers with real shoe-leather tactics, on issues that few lawmakers have the time to personally spend years
learning about. He's also a Slashdot reader and Linux hacker, with work on the Linux Router Project (LEAF/ LRP). Morgan has volunteered to expand your
knowledge about the intersection of technology and politics. Ask Morgan (one question per post, please)
about how clueful politicians are when it comes to technology, what tactics are likely to impress your representatives
to make intelligent tech-related decisions, and what you can do to steer the course of legislation which could affect
your freedoms. We'll pass your questions on to Morgan, who will get back with answers shortly.
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Ask A Tech-Savvy Lobbyist About The Politics Of Computing
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Internet taxes (Score:5, Interesting)
W3C Idiots (Score:3, Insightful)
Rick Boucher (Score:5, Insightful)
Advice (Score:5, Interesting)
Educating Politicians (Score:4, Interesting)
Best way to communicate... (Score:4, Interesting)
What are the best ways for people to communicate with their politicians to inform them of their views and opinions on proposed legislation?
Z.
My biggest concern these days (Score:5, Interesting)
The President (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The President (Score:5, Funny)
DMCA etc (Score:4, Insightful)
Who knows best? (Score:5, Interesting)
Chances of the SSSCA becoming law? (Score:5, Interesting)
I know that polticians have a lot on their plates right now and I'm worried that it might slip through with little discussion. As a canadian, I'm not very intimately familiar with the legislative process in the US, but US laws invariable affect me.
-Derek
DMCA (Score:4, Interesting)
Basic questions (Score:3, Interesting)
Have You Had Any Success? (Score:4, Interesting)
Better-educated lawmakers? (Score:4, Interesting)
I know that Alaska's reps (Ted Stevens and Neil... I mean, Don Young) are just good ol' boys, never meanin' no harm. But, they are also rather ignorant about technology and information. Is this changing? Are lawmakers *choosing* to become educated about the topics on which they make important decisions?
Or, do they react only to questions and concerns of money? (Does it all come down to the dollar, in the end?)
Top five issues ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Double-edge Sword (Score:5, Interesting)
Slightly OT...or maybe not. IP... (Score:4, Interesting)
This brings up a simple (and probably naive) question from me - what factors have made "intellectual property" law so convoluted?
In this case, my first thought is that "Mickey Mouse(tm)" and the various representations thereof, are, taken together, one form of "intellectual property" called a trademark. Personally, I DON'T have a problem with TRADEMARKS being owned by a company for as long as they are in use (after all, should Microsoft be allowed, for example, to call some future version of Windows "Windows LINUX" even if it has nothing to do with Linux, just because the trademark on Linux expired?).
On the other hand, "Steamboat Willy" (as I recall, the very first Mickey Mouse cartoon from sometime in the late 1920's(?)), as a specific work, ought to definitely have entered the public domain years ago [but for good old Sonny Bono and his 'Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension Act' (as I heard one IP lawyer call it), as it falls under "copyright" and not "Trademark."
'course, this then gets complex - if it were in the public domain as it should be, you would be legally allowed to make as many copies of it as you liked, create derivative works, etc...but you still couldn't take an individual image of Mickey from it and use it as a "label" since that would infringe on the Trademark....
And, of course, if we throw the DMCA into the mix, if Disney Corp releases "Steamboat Willy" on an encrypted DVD, even if Disney misses a payment to the legislators and Steamboat Willy is finally allowed to hit public domain, we'll still be flung in jail if we try to GET the public domain copy of Steamboat Willy from it...
So, in short, my question is - who's fault is it that the simple principle of "don't make unfair use of someone else's work" has resulted in this mess of rights-restricting and near-incomprehensible mass known as "intellectual property law"?
National laws with International effects (Score:4, Interesting)
As technologists, we appreciate the international scope of the Internet, and its constituent components, e.g. Linux was originally developed by a European, Mandrake and SuSE are both produced outside the US. The communities that have built up around these technologies are non-geographic, as is the readership of Slashdot.
How is this factored in to legislative decisions which will undoubtedly affect this international culture? I'm speaking specifically about matters of encryption, privacy (currently with Echelon and Carnivore the US is in violation of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights [un.org], at least Article 12), censorship, online trade, free speech, and the recent Voyeur Dorm case in Florida.
Bribes? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's your opinion of organizations providing funds to political campaigns in exchange for laws/policies/etc that benefit the organization? Could this be considered bribing on behalf of the funding organization and accepting a bribe by 'returning the favor?' If not bribes, would you consider this practice ethical?
I ask this question in how it pertains to the situation of organizations with deep pockets such as the RIAA funding lawmakers to create laws like the DMCA and other laws that are currently coming down the pike.
Also, what advice would you give to shallow-pocket organizations such as the EFF or EPIC in fighting to keep the rights of honest, well meaning Internet users?
Bought and Paid For? (Score:4, Informative)
Is congress concerned at all... (Score:4, Interesting)
I do not ask this question as a joke. It is very common for the people here on slashdot to assume that since there have been no strong laws to protect users rights in cyberspace that congress does not care and does not listen. Occasionally we win a victory by getting a law knocked down or not passed but I have never seen a "User rights in cyberspace" bill. So I ask if the people in congress that you get to talk to discuss peoples rights in cyberspace or if that is just add-on-feel-good filler for campaign speeches while they are in california.
Can a non-US person do anything? (Score:5, Interesting)
My question is this: can non-US citizens help to influence US decision-makers for the greater good, and if so, how?
Why was the DMCA created? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why is this? I can think of a few reasons:
1. They are following the money. Philosophical arguments are great but they have to raise $xx,xxx per day for the reelection campaign.
2. They don't spend much time thinking about these things and the license holders who benefit from such legislation do a very good job of informing and educating the legislators to encouraging them to think their way.
3. The legislators have thought about these issues, understand the arguments and are well informed. Their philosophical beliefs lead them to believe that this is the right thing to do.
Why do you think that this type of legislation has been passed and do you agree that it will be harmful to the country in the long term?
How do you become a lobbyist? (Score:3, Interesting)
How we can best work in the system? (Score:3, Interesting)
Perception == reality (Score:4, Interesting)
In the real world, criminals can easily use one-time-pad, unbreakable encryption that'll never be broken in the 30min allowed for a Hollywood plot, and they would never resort to public key technology that the rest of us want to simply make it harder for the gov to spy on us.
Do our representatives have any concept of what real computer work, and real cracking consists of? Do they have a clue of how encryption can work? How would I educate my reps that killing public key tech would do nothing to hurt mafia/Bin Laden types?
Email to legislators (Score:3, Interesting)
The Slashdot Lobby (Score:4, Interesting)
What advice would you offer to those trying to organize the "Slashdot Lobby?" How can they best go about forming their organization, raising money, and then turning that money and human capital into actual political influence?
Is it all about money ? (Score:3, Interesting)
It is dominated (according to the cartoon) by powerful rent-seeking corporations, spending big money to defend big interests, manipulating legislators who are desperate for ever more campaign contributions and ever more local feel-good stories.
So:
Which communication methods work best, in order? (Score:5, Interesting)
An example might be: 1 personal appearance at his office = 2 conversations at a house party = 100 handwritten letters = 200 handwritten postcards = 1000 typed letters = 50,000 emails.
Here's my list of methods I can think of:
A. talking with legislator when he's gardening or fixing the car on a bill;
B. lunch or coffee (one on one);
C. personal appearance at his office (phoned in ahead, as a constituent);
D. personal conversation at a house party or fundraiser (more than 1 minute);
E. question at a constituency open house (as advertised in local papers) (usually have 20-40 people);
F. handwritten postcard with cool pics on other side;
G. handwritten postcard found free in coffee shop or movie house;
H. handwritten letter, hand addressed;
I. typed letter, hand signed, with hand P.S.;
J. typed postcard, hand signed, with hand P.S.;
K. fax, hand signed;
L. actiongram faxed letter like on EDF or EFF;
M. actiongram email, modified from boilerplate in own words;
N. actiongram email, boilerplate;
O. wierd knick knack gift, like a techie toy we have tons of, wrapped up in a box and sent;
P. wierd knick knack gift, connected to issue;
Q. boring gift, like stapler remover from local Kiwanas
Anything I missed?
Lawmakers' awareness of the SSSCA (Score:5, Insightful)
Are our lawmakers aware of the SSSCA and its dangers? Do you think it will be debated in detail, or will it pass "under the radar?"
Expectations of privacy? (Score:3, Interesting)
He was probably thinking of sites, rather than URLs. It's one thing to worry about whether I visit dailynews.yahoo.com; it's another to worry about logging something as specific as http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20011004/tc/zero-
The example people are citing is "LUDs"; the ability for police officers to get a list, without a warrant, of all the phone numbers of people I've called or who've called me. Any legal theories on which is closer, sites or URLs?
This whole thing strikes me as fairly bizarre. I think there are legal precedents about my expectations of privacy for the videotapes I rent, or the books I borrow from the public library. I don't know how accessible they are to law enforcement, but no one can publish such a list in the newspaper. (Right?)
Educate the masses (Score:4, Interesting)
That said, should not the education of the general populace be a high priority in getting reasonable legislation passed? After all, if peeople really understood how they were being affected, would they then not put more pressure on their congresscritters?
Software backdoors... (Score:3, Interesting)
How often is Cogress interested? (Score:3)
Some of these tech issues are clearly headline grabbers, not well thought out policy. Additionally, our "capitalist" society (I use quotes because of the growing amount of government intervention, on behalf of companies and on behalf of consumers) places a tremendous value of the creation of wealth.
Given the slogan, "it's the economy, stupid," it clearly is hard to argue to our politicians that we should hurt the economy (reducing trade = reducing wealth) on the basis of strange fair-use arguements.
Yet at the same time, many of the proposals and passed legislation borders on absurd. As people sworn to uphold the Constitution, it is also disturbing to see unconstitutional legislation passed and the buck passed to the judiciary.
How many issues facing technology that we care about here even matter to those in Congress? The major technology bills aren't things we hear about, because they mostly involve research and tax policies, and industries tend to lobby exclusively for hand-outs.
Some of the draconian laws are beneficial headline grabbers, but some are just draconian. How many of the laws are every things that the politicians care about? How many of them CAN the politicians care about? How do we appeal to the desire for reelection? How do we appeal to their civic goals for improving society?
Alex
Contacting staffers to influenece legislation (Score:3, Interesting)
Key escrow encryption (Score:4, Interesting)
first amendment and politicians (Score:3, Interesting)
/EJS, do they *really* understand how the very nature of a "press" has changed in the past 5 years?
Advocates of Rights (Score:4, Interesting)
Who are the main proponents of Online Rights in congress, and do you feel they represent the minority or majority of these people?
Career Path (Score:5, Interesting)
Congressional staff (Score:3, Interesting)
In twenty-seven parts.
Knowing that there is virtually no way to guarantee direct correspondance to our represenatives my question is how many of our elected officials keep tech-savy staff onboard to advise them? What has been your experience with these people? Is there a way to communicate our concerns to them and get a more direct line to our elected official?
Corruption of democracy (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems to me that this is simply organised corruption. We see the results every day in the DMCA and similar broken laws. In your opinion, is this really democracy? At what point should a nominally democratic system be seen as a facade?
(DISCLAIMER: I am a defendant in the California deCSS case.)
How much $$$ does it take? (Score:3, Interesting)
Can I make a difference? (Score:4, Interesting)
If anything, Microsoft seems to be strengthening on all fronts...home, professional, embedded. They're rolling over the planet, with no end in sight.
I know software is expensive to make, and techies are tough to deal with, but do our careers really have to be so extensively deprofessionalized by this horrid mixture of Government and Corporations?
Let me put it this way: When your opposition is a Corporation or other powerful entity, do you ever win or even get significant concessions?
patent office reform? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is there any support in government circles for an overhaul of patent office procedures, to address the anti-competitive effects of making things like "clicking" and "linking" patentable?
Can we get the government to USE free software? (Score:3, Interesting)
First, it reduces favoritism of the government to particular private parties. Second, it puts the work of the government in publicly documented file formats (how many agencies have old MS backup files?). Third, it creates support for non-proprietary standards. This will increase competition in government contracts by cutting the chain of proprietary dependencies: file formats to desktop OS to network environments and apps to consultign services. Finally, as a taxpayer, I believe we can save a bundle in licensing or rental fees.
I expect that many people are using free alternatives in government agencies, but I also know that government agencies are also some of the most policy-bound entities in the world. How can citizens make it easier for people in the government to use free software?