SOPA: Discuss.

[agamemnus]

Meh. Playing Skyrim.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57...i-piracy-bill/

Maria Pallante will tell a congressional committee that the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, is "essential" to thwarting online piracy.

A copy of Pallante's testimony obtained by CNET describes SOPA as "the next step in ensuring that our law keeps pace with infringers." (Part of her job is to provide advice to Congress on copyright law.)

"It is my view that if Congress does not continue to provide serious responses to online piracy, the U.S. copyright system will ultimately fail," Pallante's testimony says.

Pallante and representatives from Pfizer, the Motion Picture Association of America, the AFL-CIO, and Mastercard, all of whom support the bill, will be testifying tomorrow before the House Judiciary committee.

The only dissenting witness will be Katherine Oyama, a policy counsel at Google. A long list of companies, nonprofit groups, law professors, and other organizations buttressed Google's arguments today in a flurry of letters to Capitol Hill that raised concerns about SOPA and the speed it was moving through the House.

SOPA, which was introduced last month in the House to the applause of lobbyists for Hollywood and other large content holders, is designed to make allegedly copyright-infringing Web sites, sometimes called "rogue" Web sites, virtually disappear from the Internet.

A announcement of tomorrow's hearing leaves little doubt about where House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, stands. It says that SOPA reflects a bipartisan "commitment toward ensuring that law enforcement and job creators have the necessary tools to protect American intellectual property from counterfeiting and piracy."

Not only Smith is the SOPA's primary House sponsor, but opponents are outgunned in both congressional chambers. SOPA's backers include the Republican or Democratic heads of all the relevant House and Senate committees, and groups as varied as the Teamsters and the AFL-CIO have embraced it on the theory that it will protect and create U.S. jobs.

Marybeth Peters, the previous head of the Copyright Office who retired at the end of last year, tended to offer a more balanced assessment of proposed copyright legislation. In 2004, for instance, Peters said that her job was to strike "the appropriate balance between the rights of copyright owners and the needs of users of copyrighted works."

Pallante's endorsement of SOPA is nothing if not enthusiastic. Some excerpts:

The response provided by SOPA is serious and comprehensive. It requires all key members of the online ecosystem, including service providers, search engines, payment processors, and advertising networks, to play a role in protecting copyright interests -- an approach I endorse... In my view, such tools are essential to stopping the economic devastation caused by rogue websites...

There will be times when blocking access to websites may be the only quick and effective course of action and that providing this tool to the Attorney General is therefore a critical part of the equation. Likewise, I believe that search engines should be fully within the reach of the Attorney General and should be ordered in appropriate circumstances to dismantle direct hyperlinks that send unwitting consumers to rogue websites.

"It's an unbalanced statement and it's extremely disappointing," says Markham Erickson, executive director of NetCoalition, which counts Amazon.com, eBay, Google, Yahoo, and Wikipedia as members.

[ImAnOgre]

Any law that comes from this will be struct down as against Freedom of speech.

Remember the book, Anarchist Cookbook?

[Asmodian]

How exactly will this be enforced? Other then service providers blocking their subscribers from accessing certain domain names the rest seems rather pointless. So if i type pirate-bay in google I wont find it, is that it? What if i type in another search engine that is provided by a company not subject to us law, like rambler.ru? And even blocking websites really is pointless, it will take time, money as there will certainly be some procedure in place to be followed before a website can be blocked and for what? To disrupt the website for a total of 30 minutes which is about how long it take to buy a new domain name (lees then USD 20) and place a website there. torrent.ru was blocked last year, rutracker.org replaced it less then an hour later with complete content.

[Ominous Gamer]

It allows for the blocking of any site. This includes search engines, not that hard to do since Google has come under fire several times for being a search engine for pirates.

Its like America's own little version of The Great Firewall of China

[agamemnus]

I'm sure that American ingenuity could make a bigger firewall, though.

[Ominous Gamer]

Who called it? Thats right, I called it.

In the 5 for, 1 against, SOPA "hearings" today, Google (the only against voice allowed to speak) was attacked for being pro-pirate.

[Wraith]

The rhetoric on both sides of the debate concerning the Stop Online Piracy Act almost peaked when Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said the House proposal “would mean the end of the internet as we know it.”

Weeks after the Silicon Valley representative’s comments, the vitriol reached a crescendo Wednesday during the measure’s first hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, when Registrar of Copyrights Maria Pallante testified the U.S. copyright system would “fail” if Congress does not take action.

“The rhetoric around this bill is over the top,” said Rep. Howard Berman, the California Democrat whose district includes Hollywood, who has long pushed for taking measures to control the internet to benefit his largest donors.

Lofgren’s statements, however, aren’t that farfetched. Not if you actually read the bill.

Lofgren’s words do not mean she favors online piracy or the online distribution of counterfeited drugs.

Lofgren, her Silicon Valley constituents and civil rights groups are concerned about what’s actually contained inside the four corners of the 79-page proposal. It amounts to the holy grail of intellectual-property enforcement that the recording industry, movie studios and their union and guild workforces have been clamoring for since the George W. Bush administration: The bill grants rights holders the unfettered power to effectively kill websites they believe are dedicated to infringing activities — without needing to get a judge’s permission.

The measure would also boost the government’s authority to disrupt and shutter “rogue” websites that hawk or host trademark- and copyright-infringing products, including allowing the government to order sites removed from search engines. The bill allows the Justice Department for the first time to obtain court orders demanding American ISPs to stop rendering the DNS for a particular website, a feature even the bill’s main backer conceded Wednesday was problematic for a host of reasons, including that it’s a threat to a secure and uniform internet.

Most distressing, however, the measure paves the way for private rights holders to easily cut off advertising and banking transactions to what the bill’s backers call “rogue” websites, without court intervention.

And therein rests a major problem. The definition of a “rogue site” is so vague that the law is ripe for rights holders to abuse to cut off the financial pipelines of websites they view as designed to “enable” or “facilitate infringement.” The bill also allows rights holders to target websites that turn a blind eye to avoid knowing their site is used for infringement. File-sharing sites or cyberlockers are also included.

The list of such sites that could be considered “rogue” is legion. They range from the notorious Pirate Bay hub for all things free, to cyberlockers like DropBox or Box.net. Sites filled with user-generated content, such as YouTube, aren’t immune either because they generally don’t actively police their sites for infringement.

“We have a lot of concerns that it sweeps in legitimate sites,” Katherine Oyama, Google’s policy council, testified during the House hearing Wednesday.

Notwithstanding Google’s vested interests in the debate, we believe the measure simply seeds too much unfettered control to rights holders to decide what web sites can stay, and which ones must be disappeared from the internet.

We don’t dispute that rampant piracy of music, movies, software, and the sale of counterfeited drugs runs rampant on the internet. Clearly, the internet’s openness is often abused by many seeking a free ride.

But granting the rights holders the power to break the knees of sites they believe are infringing is equally ripe for abuse.
We’ve already seen the abuse by rights holders.

Perhaps the most telling example is Universal Music. The record label claims that it can send a takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to YouTube without even analyzing whether a video is making a fair use of Universal’s copyright.

If Universal believes it has that right under the current law, what’s there to stop it from demanding credit-card companies and ad networks to block their affiliation with Box.net because it allows users 50 gigs of free storage to share any copyrighted works they want without permission from the rights holder.

Again, SOPA allows for this, without judicial intervention. Credit-card companies and ad networks that continue working with the allegedly rogue website can be held liable for contributing to the infringement.

Let’s not forget that Viacom is suing YouTube for $1 billion, saying its business model will “completely destroy the value of many copyrighted creations.”

And if you don’t believe the banks would willfully obey such an order from private rights holders without blinking an eye, consider WikiLeaks, which is nearly defunct because institutions like Bank of America, PayPal, MasterCard, Visa and others stopped processing donation payments to it. They did so because the secret-spilling site began releasing thousands of secret, U.S. diplomatic cables last year. No judge ordered these banks to take such action, and WikiLeaks has never been charged with a crime in the United States.

There’s some hope the bill will be stopped, in no small part due to a widespread internet campaign to stop the bill.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California) tweeted Thursday: “Need to find a better solution.” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California), was quoted in the Hill newspaper Thursday that it has no chance of passage.

We can only hope that Smith’s proposal won’t become law. We’d hate to see an internet devoid of 4chan, music blogs, YouTube, SoundCloud, GrooveShark, Dropbox, RapidShare, DropSend and Scribd.

Hollywood may hate piracy, but Netflix, Pandora, Spotify, Rdio, and the Amazon Fire tablet make it clear that people will pay for digital content online, despite the existence of piracy sites and easy services to share copyrighted content with friends and strangers.

The internet is in the midst of an innovation boom that’s only going to keep going thanks to amazing economies of scale, an open network and a light regulatory environment. Destroying that by creating an ineffective Great Firewall of Hollywood hardly seems like smart public policy.

Source

I'm surprised there hasn't already been a thread on this. Obviously the source isn't exactly impartial. I'm all for fighting piracy, but this isn't the way to do it. The bill is extremely flawed, and places tons of power where it really shouldn't be.

Any defenders of this bill in the audience?

[Enoch the Red]

There already has been a thread on this, but you might have missed it.

[Wraith]

Wow. Even on the front page, only a few threads down from the top. Funny thing? I actually did read that thread before too. I'm just going to merge my thread with Agamemnus's and slink off now.

[agamemnus]

As I read further about it, The bill sounds more & more like a crony-capitalism corporate ploy to further the ideal of "might" (wealth) is right (you get sued to nothing).

[Draco]

There's a podcast interview with US Rrepresentative Zoe Lofgren here (IEEE Spectrum website, there's also a transcript of the podcast)

A snippet from the podcast transcript

Copyright law is back in the news. Back in May, the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Committee approved a bill that would give the Department of Justice sweeping powers to go after not just alleged copyright infringers on the Internet but the infrastructure of the Internet itself. The government would be able to get court orders that would force search engines and other Internet service providers to shut down websites or disconnect them from the Internet even before the infringement was proved.


The bill was pushed by businesses that make their living from copyrighted material, such as movie studios, and opposed by businesses who make their living on the Internet, such as Google, whose chairman, Eric Schmidt, has argued that such a law would give the government a deadly weapon with which to shut down any website it wants, just by calling it a haven for copyright pirates. At the time, defenders of the bill acknowledged it might be too broad but said it would get tightened up when the House of Representatives took it up. Last week, that idea backfired in a big way: The House took up a companion bill, called the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, that is even looser than the Senate version.

I disagree with this SOPA bill, just as I disagree with any such law that forces itself onto the will (ie private companies) of others. The solution isn't more regulation, more anti-laws, the solution is far deeper than that and if you read my signature, you'll know what I'm on about. When the world has been living in a philosophically messed up (largely left-wing advocated might I add) state for decades, you can't expect things to suddenly change when you conjour up some crazy bill.

[Draco]

Just wanted to add that I don't know how some of you can continue to support such big governments, or more socialist governments, when it's more than obvious how such governments have been slowly chipping away at our basic rights. This whole internet thing is just another chapter in the book (along with property rights, your body, your life, etc), and they'll come up with any reason to instill a form of control over it. Australia's was peadophilic websites (and something else I think), now it's copy right issues, so what's the next reason gonna be? And what will be the next aspect of our lives that's to have a leash attached to it? It's a slow process, but before you know it you're living in an authoritarian state where the only freedom you have is the one in your mind.

It's interesting actually. My parents grew up in a socialist/communist country and when ever they hear some news about internet censorship, or they see a government commercial suggesting that you walk more often to lose weight, or that you eat healthier foods, or that you should visit their website to get an idea of what type of healthy foods you should eat, or that you should put on sun screen, or commercials showing gruesome images related to smoking or these anti-discrimination laws, or being fined for not wearing a helmet, or jay-walking, or not wearing a seat belt, or stopped by an unmarked police car, questioning you why you're walking in a suburb at 3am in the morning (which happened to me once), they find it ironic that Australia brands itself as a free country, since they were never exposed to that type of 'propaganda' (not to say that they weren't to other forms).

Like I said, the solution isn't regulation, it's the philosophical state that the world is in and has been for a very long time now.

[Nessus]

Just wanted to add that I don't know how some of you can continue to support such big governments, or more socialist governments, when it's more than obvious how such governments have been slowly chipping away at our basic rights.

Nor do we know why you keep asking this, as you never seem very interested in discourse. It is a mysterious world we inhabit, non?

[Draco]

^^I am interested in discourse, I've never tried to show otherwise, and if this has been the impression, then it just isn't so.

[Nessus]

^^I am interested in discourse, I've never tried to show otherwise, and if this has been the impression, then it just isn't so.

Off the top of my head, this is the third rant of yours recently where you flip out about leftism this and big government that for no particular reason. I'd like to register similar complaints against you as Fuzzy did towards GG earlier, namely that your rants are mostly fueled by your outrage and feelings, and the result is a rather incomprehensible mess people have a hard time penetrating.

Now, first of all, the proposed bill in question, if we have to look at it through polarized glasses, is a right-wing one. It is a desperate bid by huge corporations to regulate their distribution methods in a market whose technology has left them far behind, and these business interests are horrified. So they want to impose flawed, draconian legislation on individuals just so they don't have to answer needs the customers have, and the technology can provide.

It's as if you saw the words "internet" "restrictions" and maybe "censorship", and you immediately leaped to, and pardon my language, 'ZOMG evil leftist nannies!!!'. You come off as a bizarre word association bot, using utterly random things as spring-boards for your emotionally laden, morality play hand-wringing diatribes. Now there's nothing inherently bad about having strong feelings towards this cause or that, but it helps if you can back your responses and solutions up with some logic and coherent thought. When people in the past have tried to engage you about your thoughts, you respond with... I don't even know how to describe it. You're defensive, incredulous and unwilling to step outside your own preconceptions to examine things critically. Now, it is possible the people engaging you are also abrasive, condescending or otherwise exhibit characteristics you find unpleasant, but we can't all have the infinite patience of Ender or Ghost Enigma, and it certainly doesn't help to start up an arms race of verbal fencing.

It reminds me of Lewkowski; where he sees 'libruls', you see 'left-wing'. The problem is that the behaviour becomes axiomatic, everything that's perceived as bad or wrong is labeled with a word that doesn't actually mean those things in the minds of the majority of the people here. This is in its own way even harder to deal with in conversations than racism: At least you can try to work with the racist's terms and try to show them that people of all 'races' are capable of bad or morally wrong deeds and thoughts, or conversely that all 'races' are capable of good things that benefit society. This is perhaps distasteful if one doesn't agree with the racist's view of the world and definitions of 'race', but at least a semblance of conversation can be attempted. When the base stance is that everything wrong with the Universe is 'left-wing', 'socialist' or 'liberal', it becomes literally impossible to have a conversation where the other side thinks left-wing concepts or socialist ideas can have positive aspects. The other side has axiomatically decided this to be impossible. There is no way to exchange ideas as there is a complete break-down of a common language to present ideas in.

Now I didn't intend to blast into you, my original comment I made pretty much out of sarcasm and boredom, but given that there's a small possibility your response was genuine, I felt it befitted our new-found spirit of playing nice and honest that I'd try. I don't expect your response to be, well, anything, really, given what I just wrote above. I do hope I didn't hurt your feelings, that wasn't my intention. But I suppose frustrated people come off as abrasive.

[Khendraja'aro]

I must say, well said, sir. Well said.

[coinich]

Now, first of all, the proposed bill in question, if we have to look at it through polarized glasses, is a right-wing one. It is a desperate bid by huge corporations to regulate their distribution methods in a market whose technology has left them far behind, and these business interests are horrified. So they want to impose flawed, draconian legislation on individuals just so they don't have to answer needs the customers have, and the technology can provide.

Not to nitpick, but how exactly is the bill a "right-wing" one? To me, it reeks of authoritarianism and overactive government control. I can see an argument for this to be against liberalism, but thats only because IMO liberalism is more of a rejection of authoritarianism itself, not necessarily conservatism. I'm pretty much reminded of that silly political compass that puts both left and right in, but on the y axis has authoritarianism and libertarianism. It essentially divorces the issue of government control (auth/liber) from the goals (left/right) of the government.

[Nessus]

Not to nitpick, but how exactly is the bill a "right-wing" one? To me, it reeks of authoritarianism and overactive government control. I can see an argument for this to be against liberalism, but thats only because IMO liberalism is more of a rejection of authoritarianism itself, not necessarily conservatism. I'm pretty much reminded of that silly political compass that puts both left and right in, but on the y axis has authoritarianism and libertarianism. It essentially divorces the issue of government control (auth/liber) from the goals (left/right) of the government.

I kinda half-assedly tried to cover this with "if we have to look at it polarized"; left wing ideals are mostly about promoting worker rights, societal equality and so on, and right wing interests are more about economic freedoms, corporate interests and so forth. This is an authoritative proposal stemming from business interests, but as you say, it doesn't neatly fit into a left-right divide, as that divide is now almost 2 centuries old (or even more, depending on how you want to look at it), and the world is moving on. Given my personal interests, I am concerned mostly with the division and lack of direction among the "left", but as the Teapers attest, the Right is having its own issues as well.

I guess my point is both left wing and right wing governments can be authoritarian, in this case it's to protect the class divide and disparity of wealth, which makes it loosely right-wing.

[coinich]

Alright, that makes sense, thanks.

[Draco]

Off the top of my head, this is the third rant of yours recently where you flip out about leftism this and big government that for no particular reason. I'd like to register similar complaints against you as Fuzzy did towards GG earlier, namely that your rants are mostly fueled by your outrage and feelings, and the result is a rather incomprehensible mess people have a hard time penetrating.

My particular reason(s) have always been stated, namely the erosion of rights. I know I haven't clearly stated this at times, but thought I always conveyed it. Yes they are partly fueled by feelings and I've explained in another topic why I tend to get into these rants; namely because this interest of mine in politics/philosophy is somewhat of a recent thing (well it started on december 31st, 2008 when I read 'On Liberty') and each time I come across such material (not just internet censorship), I am outraged that such things are being advocated for, and even more outraged that I would have once agreed with it, and above all that my agreement would have come out of me being conditioned by a largely left-wing society/system/education to think in such a way.

Now, first of all, the proposed bill in question, if we have to look at it through polarized glasses, is a right-wing one. It is a desperate bid by huge corporations to regulate their distribution methods in a market whose technology has left them far behind, and these business interests are horrified. So they want to impose flawed, draconian legislation on individuals just so they don't have to answer needs the customers have, and the technology can provide.

I agree with you there. Yet it's the big government that makes it possible.

...and it certainly doesn't help to start up an arms race of verbal fencing.

It doesn't.

...When the base stance is that everything wrong with the Universe is 'left-wing', 'socialist' or 'liberal', it becomes literally impossible to have a conversation where the other side thinks left-wing concepts or socialist ideas can have positive aspects. The other side has axiomatically decided this to be impossible. There is no way to exchange ideas as there is a complete break-down of a common language to present ideas in.

You're right about that, it isn't a constructive approach to brand anything that's wrong with the world as left-wing. But since we live in such a world that is somewhat/largely left-wing in politics, philosophy, academia, media, it still bears some weight.

Now I didn't intend to blast into you, my original comment I made pretty much out of sarcasm and boredom, but given that there's a small possibility your response was genuine, I felt it befitted our new-found spirit of playing nice and honest that I'd try. I don't expect your response to be, well, anything, really, given what I just wrote above. I do hope I didn't hurt your feelings, that wasn't my intention. But I suppose frustrated people come off as abrasive.

You didn't hurt my feelings, thanks for the concern anyhow You'd have to know me personally to do that.

[CitizenCain]

Any defenders of this bill in the audience?

I'll bite and "defend" it, by which I really mean that I'll hope it passes with a massive majority and is enforced with the draconian cruelty we've come to expect from big media. No better way to get the government firmly and undeniably entrenched on the losing side of the war against technology and render itself obsolete to everyone.

I guess my point is both left wing and right wing governments can be authoritarian, in this case it's to protect the class divide and disparity of wealth, which makes it loosely right-wing.

And you accuse Draco of not wanting a genuine discussion.

"Let's have a genuine discussion, where I tautologically define the left to be good and the right to be evil!"



Have fun with that, I guess.

[Aimless]

Draco,

the "big government" that makes these things possible has, over the past century, taken turns at being "left"-wing and "right"-wing. It's been democratically elected, and, unless we're not living in the same world, those elections and every single thing the big government has done has, to some extent, been influenced by powerful corporate interests. In this case eg. those industries that stand to benefit from a law that grants them the unfettered/unregulated ability to enforce copyright claims no matter the potentially/likely disastrous results.

So let's look at some of the possible targets of your ire:

1. The proposed bill, which was created by a bipartisan group and which seems to enjoy support on both sides of the party divide.

2. Politicians (left and right)

3. The process that put those politicians in power (democracy)

4. The corporations that're trying so hard to protect their financial interests no matter the results for everyone else.

5. The processes that've given those corporations the power to make this bill go through.




To me, these seem to be the most important targets. Which one would you say is both clearly "left" and also important enough that you could solve this entire mess by doing away with it?

The longer I live the more I begin to think that players on both the "left" and the "right" stand to benefit from big bad government and will therefore, under some circumstances, support a big government that will serve their interests. I'm not sure how to go about solving that problem. Do you have any ideas?

[Aimless]

Wow, according to Wiki,

Both the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce support H.R. 3261

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFL-CIO

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Chamber_of_Commerce

[agamemnus]

Wow, according to Wiki,



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFL-CIO

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Chamber_of_Commerce

Of course they do. They are both corporate stooges.

[coinich]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFL-CIO

corporate stooges.

[Ominous Gamer]

Wow, according to Wiki,



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFL-CIO

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Chamber_of_Commerce

As well as Nintendo and Sony Not surprised by the Chamber of Commerce either, they have been out of touch with technology for a long while, usually moving in lockstep with whatever bullshit claims the MPAA/RIAA make about piracy destroying the industry.

[CitizenCain]

Draco,

the "big government" that makes these things possible has, over the past century, taken turns at being "left"-wing and "right"-wing.

Not really, no. Or are you using the common (and incorrect) assumption that there has to be a left and a right, rather than a left and a further left? Because you can't actually defend the claim that there have been any major "classic" right wing parties (with any electoral success) in the West in the past century. It's been a non-stop parade of various flavors of leftists, and this is borne out by the progressive taxation and social safety nets in every industrialized/Western nation. The allegedly "right-wing" parties you mention don't try dismantling those because they're not actually right wing. They're just less left wing than the others. (To be fair, they couldn't dismantle these things even if they tried, because, as you mentioned, the problem is that people are stupid, selfish scum.)

The longer I live the more I begin to think that players on both the "left" and the "right" stand to benefit from big bad government and will therefore, under some circumstances, support a big government that will serve their interests. I'm not sure how to go about solving that problem. Do you have any ideas?

I guess eliminating the big government they use to abuse us isn't an option, since it would mean an end to your precious socialism, right?

[Draco]

Draco,

the "big government" that makes these things possible has, over the past century, taken turns at being "left"-wing and "right"-wing. It's been democratically elected, and, unless we're not living in the same world, those elections and every single thing the big government has done has, to some extent, been influenced by powerful corporate interests. In this case eg. those industries that stand to benefit from a law that grants them the unfettered/unregulated ability to enforce copyright claims no matter the potentially/likely disastrous results.

Just as CitizenCain said, that isn't exactly the case. There's rarely been that distinctive line (going by what I know, although I'm not sure just how right wing someone like Margaret Thatcher was since I'm speaking just for Western states). These days there's no clear distinction between the two major parties in most (or all) Western nations. Take Australia as an example: current party in power is the Labor party, our token left-wing party. The opposition is the 'Liberals' which is some sort of quasi right-wing party, yet every now and then comes out with a left-wing styled program (their last one had something to do with giving pregnant mothers who also work, greater privileges). They've accustomed the majority population into a mind set where they vote for the one who'll give them more money, free stuff and so on.

To me, these seem to be the most important targets. Which one would you say is both clearly "left" and also important enough that you could solve this entire mess by doing away with it?

I'd do away with all points bar 3.

The longer I live the more I begin to think that players on both the "left" and the "right" stand to benefit from big bad government and will therefore, under some circumstances, support a big government that will serve their interests. I'm not sure how to go about solving that problem. Do you have any ideas?

Well you should know what I'm going to say, and that's to completely strip down the big government of its power. If you had a political system where the government exists solely to protect the rights of its citizens through the use of the police force, the courts and the army, then you wouldn't have these corporations pandering to the government for favours. That's not all though. I think that the philosophical state of a nation (or the Western world) needs to be 'fine-tuned' where the majority hold reason as their guide to action as well as having a code of ethics. Now what I mean by this, is, I'm saying that things like reason and ethics should be held in a high regard when it comes to the basic aspects of our lives: so yes it is wrong to steal, it is wrong to kill someone, to take away the right of another persons life in any way, you should work to support youself and not expect other peoples money to help you (unless you seek that help from them), you should know that it isn't reasonable to spend more money than what you earn...do you see where I'm going with this?

It's the philosophical state that the Western world is in, and it's entirely the fault of all these so called intellectuals (like that Sanders guy) that have put it in this mixed up, muggy, unclear state. They're the ones who either lecture at prominent universities or hold some other high position where they have significant influence, and whilst I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, they've all contributed to this mess with their many different views, their branching off from Marxism, libertarianism, whatever, and the end result is a confluence of intellectual garbage that trickles down to the masses through the media, the government, education, society, etc. Read the quote in my signature. For centuries the authority on what was right and wrong was the church and people had no choice but to obey or burn in hell etc. Ever since religion's influence declined and the Western world as a result became more skeptical/atheistic, there's been this 'philosophical vacuum' that all these intellectuals have tried to fill with what they thought was the 'right philosophy'. I think that a lot of these intellectuals have missed the target primarily because they've taken out the individual as the core of any such system.

I guess eliminating the big government they use to abuse us isn't an option, since it would mean an end to your precious socialism, right?

And allow people to think for themselves and be more responsible *gasp*.

[Aimless]

I'll try to remember to get back to you on the rest of your post, but just a couple of quick questions:

I'd do away with all points bar 3.

Should I interpret this as saying that you'd do away with the bill; do away with politicians, but retain the process that by and large seems to have few functions beyond electing politicians and making them do things; do away with powerful corporations; prevent corporations from influencing democratic elections and democratically elected officials? Would you rewrite the constitution? How?

How can we manage that? I can see you want to limit the scope of the government, limit the things it may or may not do, but how would you go about doing that? Would you restrict corporations from influencing elections and politicians?

Btw if the US is left then why on earth were you so happy to see world power swinging back to the US you goddamn leftie?

[Draco]

Should I interpret this as saying that you'd do away with the bill; do away with politicians, but retain the process that by and large seems to have few functions beyond electing politicians and making them do things; do away with powerful corporations; prevent corporations from influencing democratic elections and democratically elected officials? Would you rewrite the constitution? How?

How can we manage that? I can see you want to limit the scope of the government, limit the things it may or may not do, but how would you go about doing that? Would you restrict corporations from influencing elections and politicians?

I'd do away with all of that bar politicans and corporations. I think politicians are necessary to facilitate in the functioning of a government and I have no say in doing away with powerful corporations, so long as they're not killing people. If they're going outside the terms of a contract with their employees for instance, then it would be up to the relevant union or group of employees to take action against the company through the courts.

As for rewriting the constitution, well I'm not that familiar with it so I can't say what I'd remove or what I'd rewrite into more clear words so it isn't ambiguous. Preferably I'd say something along the lines of "every person has a right to their life, body, property so long as they are not taking away the rights of others (which would be murder, property, and the likes)." I know it's not as simple to say that, that it involves a lot more writing and explanation, but that's the gist of it.

I'd include a part about how politicians/the government have/has no right to introduce laws that take away or restrict the rights of any one person, company, organisation, religion, etc. So that would mean that such bills as this one would never have come to fruition.

Above all I'd include a statement that says the only role of the government is to protect the rights of its citizens through the use of the police, military and courts. I know that brings into question taxes and I'm undecided on that (as to whether they should be enforced or voluntary), but in an ideal world, where the philosophical state of the world is better, you'd have the vast majority, if not everyone, who works, contribute a voluntary tax to those functions.

As for how all this can be done. Well it would take a while to implement such a system, and the philosophical state of the world would have to be much different from what it is today, it would probably have to change at the same time as the system, allow people to adapt and such. These things are best done with the founding of a new country, which is how the US started off as far as I know. Or implemented after some sort of revolution or major war, but they'd be undesirable ways to go about due to their nature. But when you already have the type of system that we all live in, in place, it would take a lot more work to make that transition.

Btw if the US is left then why on earth were you so happy to see world power swinging back to the US you goddamn leftie?

Yes at heart I am
In the end, out of all the potential superpowers that exist, America is still the better one.