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Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
Like SOPA?
(Legislators who publicly admitted they did not even know what they were legislating about, getting paid big ...err.. compaign contributions, not even willing to let people who <did> know the technology to testify before the drafting committee. That kind of public input?)
You know, Stonetools, if you held the American Congress to the same standards you want to hold Internet "pirates", 99% of the members would be serving multiple life terms for corruption...
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Indeed, exactly like SOPA. SOPA was defeated in a public campaign that was out in the open. Now Google funded a lot of the opposition to SOPA and its cash and its army of lobbyists worked to defeat the lobbyists on the other side.
But at least it was in the end up to legislators accountable to we, the people, not a bunch of programmers crafting DRM and anti DRM measures somewhere on the Internet.
The point of the legislative process is not whether the legislators are up on Java or the latest in encryption schemes : its that they are accountable,in the end , to voters.
What that means is that the next time there is a bill on this issue-and there will surely be a next time-we'll get to vote on how to fix this problem and the fix will be done publicly. It may not be done well, but at least the solution will be democratic.