Recording Industry Lobbyists Says Politicians Worried About User Rights Are 'Disgusting'?

from the that-doesn't-seem-right... dept

Well, well. Last week there was a "town hall" meeting in Toronto about new copyright laws in Canada, and we'll have a more detailed post on that later. But there is one story that popped up from all of this that deserved a separate discussion. Apparently two Parliament Members, Olivia Chow and Charlie Angus, who have been big supporters of consumers' rights on copyright issues, have been called out by music industry lobbyists for distributing a 'disgusting' flyer. Why? Because that flyer contained an interview with Angus (a former musician in a popular punk band), where he talks about the importance of consumer rights and not following through with a DMCA-style law in Canada. It's hard to read anything in that interview that is "disgusting" -- unless you don't believe consumers have any rights. But that apparently was the position taken by Alan Willaert, the Canadian representative of the American Federation of Musicians, who not only called it disgusting, but also demanded a retraction and an apology.

It doesn't sound like he's going to get it. Charlie Angus is defending himself ably:

I was elected to participate in discussions about public policy. I have never heard of a lobbyist group demand an apology for speaking out about a totally botched piece of legislation like Bill C-61. If they spent less time running e-mail attacks and more time speaking with the various players they might realize that the NDP position has been balanced and consistent from the beginning.

As for a public recanting to satisfy the C-61 lobby ? Sorry, dude....it ain't happening.

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And Of Course: Grandstanding Anti-Craigslist Politicians Still Not Satisfied

from the no-surprise-there dept

Well, this one was rather easy to predict. Way back in November, after coming under pressure from various grandstanding state Attorneys General (who seem wholly unfamiliar with Section 230 of the CDA), Craigslist caved in to pressure (despite no legal basis requiring them to do so), and it changed the way its erotic services section worked. The various AGs claimed they were satisfied. But it took all of a few months before some misguided news report showed that people were misusing Craigslist again, and suddenly these AGs sensed an opportunity to get press... so they went on the offensive again, blaming Craigslist for the actions of its users. It makes for a good headline.

Once again, in May, Craigslist caved again and further changed how the site worked and handled "adult" type ads. It also showed that the ads on its site were a lot less graphic than those found on many sites run by traditional newspapers. But, suing the local newspaper doesn't generate headlines like suing Craigslist. And, given that it did such a good job generating press (and got Craigslist to cave when it didn't need to), you had to assume that it wouldn't take long for politicians to start complaining again.

And... here we go. Connecticut's AG Richard Blumenthal, who has milked the bogus Craigslist story for a while, along with Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, who sued Craigslist earlier this year, have both come out to once again grandstand against Craigslist and insist that the company still isn't doing enough.

Seriously. Can someone send either of these gentlemen a copy of Section 230 of the CDA, along with a nice side dish of common sense. To wit:

• It is not Craigslist that is the problem. It is the users of the site who are advertising prostitution. They are the ones violating the law. Not Craigslist.
• Not only that, but Craigslist is very cooperative with law enforcement officials in helping them track down those who break the law via the site. Plenty of law enforcement officials have figured this out and know to use Craigslist as a tool to help them crack down on prostitution.
• Cracking down on Craigslist doesn't slow down or prevent the illegal activity at all. Those who are involved in prostitution (i.e., the actual law breaking) are still out there, and are quick to find other sources in which to advertise.
• So cracking down on Craigslist is blaming the messenger -- and making it more difficult to really crack down on prostitution, by driving it further underground.

You would think that such common sense (and the fact that the law makes this clear as well) would have, perhaps, sunk in by now. But, alas, common sense doesn't get you headlines in the paper.

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Are Canadian Politicians Finally Recogizing There's More Than One Side To Copyright?

from the that-would-be-nice dept

In each of the past few years, facing tremendous pressure from US entertainment industry interests (backed up with blatant lies about the supposed "situation" in Canada), Canadian politicians have introduced draconian copyright reform designed to benefit those Hollywood interests. Luckily the outcry against such rules has been great, and have stopped such bad legislation from getting anywhere. However, there may actually be hope that this year's crop of politicians aren't quite so enamored by the myths Hollywood spread. Michael Geist reports from a recent digital economy conference in Canada where two of the speakers -- the Industry Minister and the Heritage Minister seemed to take a much more reasoned view to these issues. Of particular interest was the talk by Heritage Minister James Moore, seen below. It's only about 5 min long, but the good part starts around 3 minutes:

Here's a quick transcript:

The average age of a Member of Parliament is 55. And I point that out, only to underline the fact that the average Canadian watches about 26 hours of television a week. Those under the age 25, it's about 12 hours a week. But they're consuming more media than ever before. But, they're consuming it where they want it on their iPhones and on their Blackberries and on their PVRs and on their laptops. And they're doing it through mechanisms that didn't exist.

And you'd be surprised the number of Members of Parliament who have never held an iPhone, who couldn't tell you, functionally, how a Blackberry works and have no idea how these things integrate. And when you ask the average member of Parliament "How do you consume your music?" They'll say "well, maybe I'll go out and buy a CD and drop it in the thing or maybe I'll hear something on the radio on the way" and you say "How do you watch movies" and they'll say "Well, I'll go out to the theater when I have the time on a Friday night or maybe rent a DVD at home" and you say "How do you listen to radio or get your news?" and they'll say "Well, I'll sit at 6 o'clock after the meal, finish a steak and watch the news, or get the paper in the morning."

The old way of doing things is over. These things are all now one. And it's great and it's never been better and we need to be enthusiastic and embrace these things.

I point out the average age of a member of parliament because don't assume that those who are making the decisions and who are driving the debate understand all the dynamics that are at play here. Don't assume that everybody understands the opportunities that are at play here and how great this can be for Canada. Tony is doing his job and I'm going to do my job and be a cheerleader and push this and to fight for the right balance as we go forward. The opportunities are unbelievable and unparalleled in human history.

It's great to see some politicians at least having a sense of the opportunity, rather than the "threat" posted by new technologies. Hopefully he can back those statements up when the time comes.

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Some Quotes Of Note: Politicians Damning New Technologies/Cultural Artifacts

from the have-fun-with-it,-people dept

In my post earlier about Rep. Robert Wexler's misguided remarks at the World Copyright Summit, an anonymous commenter added a wonderful comment highlighting similar politically misguided sayings throughout the years that was too good not to share. The anonymous commenter didn't say where it's from, but it appears that it was mostly from a Wired article from a few years ago. So, one could make an argument that the original comment was infringing, but aren't we all better off for having had the chance to read it?

Is it the only lesson of history that man is unteachable?

-- Sir Winston Churchill

The disturbing material in Grand Theft Auto and other games like it is stealing the innocence of our children and it's making the difficult job of being a parent even harder ... I believe that the ability of our children to access pornographic and outrageously violent material on video games rated for adults is spiraling out of control.

- US senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, 2005

The effect of rock and roll on young people, is to turn them into devil worshippers; to stimulate self-expression through sex; to provoke lawlessness; impair nervous stability and destroy the sanctity of marriage. It is an evil influence on the youth of our country.

- Minister Albert Carter, 1956

Many adults think that the crimes described in comic books are so far removed from the child's life that for children they are merely something imaginative or fantastic. But we have found this to be a great error. Comic books and life are connected. A bank robbery is easily translated into the rifling of a candy store. Delinquencies formerly restricted to adults are increasingly committed by young people and children ... All child drug addicts, and all children drawn into the narcotics traffic as messengers, with whom we have had contact, were inveterate comic-book readers This kind of thing is not good mental nourishment for children!

- Fredric Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 1954

The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth; and prevented others from improving their minds in useful knowledge. Parents take care to feed their children with wholesome diet; and yet how unconcerned about the provision for the mind, whether they are furnished with salutary food, or with trash, chaff, or poison?

- Reverend Enos Hitchcock, Memoirs of the Bloomsgrove Family, 1790

Does the telephone make men more active or more lazy? Does [it] break up home life and the old practice of visiting friends?

- Survey conducted by the Knights of Columbus Adult Education Committee, San Francisco Bay Area, 1926

This new form of entertainment has gone far to blast maidenhood ... Depraved adults with candies and pennies beguile children with the inevitable result. The Society has prosecuted many for leading girls astray through these picture shows, but GOD alone knows how many are leading dissolute lives begun at the 'moving pictures.'

- The Annual Report of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 1909

The indecent foreign dance called the Waltz was introduced ... at the English Court on Friday last ... It is quite sufficient to cast one's eyes on the voluptuous intertwining of the limbs, and close compressure of the bodies ... to see that it is far indeed removed from the modest reserve which has hitherto been considered distinctive of English females. So long as this obscene display was confined to prostitutes and adulteresses, we did not think it deserving of notice; but now that it is ... forced on the respectable classes of society by the evil example of their superiors, we feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion.

- The Times of London, 1816

I particularly like the last quote. That darn Waltz. Destroying society.

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Craigslist Caving Shows The Perils Of Self-Policing... Or The Perils Of Grandstanding Politicians?

from the i'd-argue-the-latter dept

Following Craigslist's decision to cave in to demands and start monitoring every "adult services" post on its platform, the Wall Street Journal is running a rather odd article suggesting that this somehow shows "the perils of self-policing" by a community, and suggesting that such crowdsourced reviews don't work. Except, that's a gross misreading of the actual situation. The crowdsourcing worked just fine. The issue was that members of the Craigslist community didn't have a problem with the ads in question. Those who did have problems were grandstanding politicians looking to get elected to higher office. If anything, it doesn't show the perils of self-policing, it shows the perils of getting caught in the sights of grandstanding politicians who need to whip up populist anger even if they have no legal basis to do so.

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More Congress Critters Want To Track And Tax Your Driving Habits

from the why? dept

For years, various state politicians have pushed the idea of a "mileage tax" for driving, and it's never made much sense at all. Yet, just a few months ago, we noted that some politicians in the federal government were pushing the idea as well -- even though the Obama administration said it would not approve such an idea. Still, that's not stopping some politicians. Rep. James Oberstar is so strongly in support of a plan, he says he doesn't want any pilot programs, studies or information about such a plan, he thinks it should just be implemented right now.

Of course, these plans have never made much sense at all. They would be crazy expensive, in that every car would need to be outfitted with a GPS device, and then that info would have to be communicated to the government (certainly something of a privacy concern). And, the really silly thing is that we already have a much better and cheaper proxy in place: gas taxes. Not only that, but the gas tax at least encourages people to use more fuel efficient vehicles, and increases the demand for alternative energy vehicles. So it's difficult to come up with a single viable reason for a mileage tax, but that's apparently not stopping Oberstar from demanding that it be started right now.

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South Carolina Candidate For Governor Claims There Are Millions Of Internet Child Predators

from the hyperbole-much? dept

Over the past few years, we've see quite the moral panic about the supposed threat of internet predators preying on children online. This isn't to say that it doesn't happen or that parents and children shouldn't be quite careful, but the press and politicians have clearly blown the threat way out of proportion. Study after study after study has shown that the threat is relatively small, and most kids are smart enough to be safe online and avoid anyone who seems sketchy. And, the reality is that preying on kids has actually decreased as the internet has grown more popular.

But, of course, that doesn't make for the type of headlines that politicians want. South Carolina's Attorney General has now announced his plans to run for governor of the state, in part on the claim that he's going to crack down on child predators online. Now, we're all for cracking down on online predators, but it's tough to take him seriously, when he claims that "there are millions out there." Millions? That seems a bit on the high side. On top of that, he claims that "Any child can become a victim" because "the predators are so skilled at what they do." Except, of course, that's not what the studies have shown at all. They've shown that most kids aren't interested in strangers online at all, and if you reasonably educate them (which you should) they're likely to be safe. But why bother with the actual evidence when you can grandstand as part of your bid to be governor?

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Politicians Defer To Time Warner Lobbyists Who Wrote The Bill They're Pushing

from the funny-how-that-works... dept

Following up on the earlier story of Time Warner Cable going the political route to try to block municipal competition in Wilson, North Carolina, Broadband Reports has a story pointing out two interesting side stories:

1. During hearings about the law to ban such municipal competition, the politicians pushing the bill that would ban municipal competition were asked to clarify, and rather than answer themselves, the politicians "turned to a Time Warner staff member and an attorney who represents the industry to speak on their behalf." In other words, they outright admitted they didn't understand their own legislation and that the corporate lawyers from the company that would benefit from the legislation understood it better than they did. It's certainly no surprise that lobbyists write the legislation that politicians pass, but usually they at least try to hide it a little bit. Here they're basically flaunting the fact that Time Warner Cable wrote the bill, and the politicians just shuffled it through the process without understanding it. Isn't it great to be a servant of the people?
2. Time Warner Cable is complaining about what a huge cost municipal broadband is to the people of Wilson, but leaves out the fact that Time Warner Cable's CEO's compensation from the past two years is greater than it cost the city of Wilson (via a bond measure, so not taxpayer dollars) to fund the deployment of the fiber network. And you have to wonder if Time Warner Cable will end up spending more trying to block this competition than it would have cost to have built out a competitive quality service as well.

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Open Secrets Takes Us One Step Closer To Open Government

from the a-good-step-forward dept

OpenSecrets.org, the website of Center for Responsive Politics has just put over 200 million documents online -- basically the groups' entire archives. Specifically, the data includes info about fundraising, lobbying, personal finance of politicians and information about "advocacy groups" known as 527 organizations. It looks like a treasure trove of information that plenty of politicians and lobbyists probably wish remained hidden behind closed doors.

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Politicians Overreacted To Terrorist 'Threat' Online

from the moral-panic dept

It seems that with every new communications tool online, we get some politicians absolutely freaked out about how "terrorists" will use it to communicate, and how that must be stopped. In just the past few months, we've seen politicians freak out about terrorists supposedly using Second Life, YouTube and Twitter -- and how each of these need to be stopped. Every time this has come up, it has seemed pretty ludicrous for a variety of reasons. First, these are communication tools. They can be used for good or bad purposes -- but it seems pretty ridiculous to freak out over the fact that some might possibly use them for bad purposes. But, even more importantly, the idea that these tools would help "recruit" new terrorists seemed particularly silly. If someone is going to be convinced to become a terrorist based on a YouTube video, there's a bigger problem.

And, in fact, that's exactly what a new report is finding. The whole "freaking out about terrorists online" thing is totally overblown. The study found little evidence that terrorists were effectively recruiting people online, and even if they were, they found no conceivable way to stop such tools from being used by terrorists at all -- and pointed out how pointless it was to even try. At best, they would get some content taken down from a few websites, which would only serve to draw more attention to the content, which would quickly appear on other websites instead. But, of course, most politicians don't care. They need to create such moral panics so it looks like they're actually doing something to "protect the children" in order to get re-elected.

In the meantime, if they were really concerned about "terrorists" using technology, they might actually want to focus on getting the folks who hate us to use the technology even more. At least that's the feeling I get after reading this article about a Taliban leader and former Guantanamo prisoner, who's now obsessed with his iPhone. I have to admit, most of the article reads like an Onion-style parody ("'It's easy and modern and I love it,' Zaeef said as he pinched and pulled his fingers across the iPhone's touch screen last week. 'This is necessary in the world today. People want to progress.'"), but it does show that perhaps using enabling technology to allow people to better their lives, gets them a lot less focused on looking for ways to kill us.

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Politicians Jump On Privacy Bandwagon For Purposes Of Publicity

from the different-places,-same-political-games dept

Google's new Latitude service, which lets people share their location via Google Maps, launched to a lot of coverage last month. There have been plenty of similar services around for a long time, but Latitude got the PR boost the Google brand provides, making it a lot more noticeable than earlier efforts, and it hasn't failed to escape the attention of some British politicians. In an Early Day Motion (described as little more than a way to call attention to pet projects), four members of parliament called for the government there to "examine the privacy implications of Google Latitude and to take action to ensure that Latitude does not represent a privacy threat." Keep in mind that Latitude is an opt-in service, one in which users must actively turn on location-sharing; furthermore, as The Register points out, British mobile phone operators track handset locations and retain the information for a year in case police want the info, which seems to be a bigger privacy issue than the opt-in service. As long as Google clearly explains what Latitude does and how it works, and users must opt-in to the service, it's hard to see how there's much of a privacy problem here. But somehow, it seems that it's publicity, not privacy, the politicians are most interested in.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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The Difference Between Outreach And Transparency

from the it's-all-the-difference-in-the-world dept

The buzzword in DC these days seems to be "transparency," though it seems like not everyone agrees on the definition of the word. For example, earlier this year, we noted that the press seems to think that transparency means access, even if that's not necessarily the case. Now, as Ed Felten points out, many politicians and the press seem to be confusing transparency with outreach. Specifically, Twitter is full of buzz among politicians these days -- and they're claiming that it's useful for a more transparent relationship with their constituents. However, just because you use Twitter, it doesn't make you more transparent -- it just improves your outreach.

Here's the difference: outreach means government telling us what it wants us to hear; transparency means giving us the information that we, the citizens, want to get. An ideal government provides both outreach and transparency. Outreach lets officials share their knowledge about what is happening, and it lets them argue for particular policy choices -- both of which are good. Transparency keeps government honest and responsive by helping us know what government is doing.

Twitter, with its one-way transmission of 140-character messages, may be useful for outreach, but it won't give us transparency. So, Congressmembers: Thanks for Twittering, but please don't forget about transparency.

It's an important point to remember as we hear more and more politicians claiming to be transparent, when they might really just be focused on outreach.

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Why Is The Government Asking Companies To Both Retain And Destroy Data?

from the something's-not-working dept

With Congress' latest attempt to force data retention on anyone who operates a network (including home users), some are realizing that other parts of the government have been equally adamant about getting these same folks to destroy the very same information for the sake of keeping people's data private. It does seem like we're on a crash course between privacy on the one hand, and the demands of law enforcement, the entertainment industry and a few others who want all data to be kept for as long as possible. A few years back, when stories of how the government was misusing data that it got access to were revealed, we had hoped that it would lead politicians to recognize the downsides of data retention. But, of course, that's not quite how Washington DC works.

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Can We Push Some Of The Stimulus To Cover Economic Education?

from the that-would-be-grand dept

While I don't necessarily agree with everything that Steven Pearlstein says in his latest column, I do have to second the request that if we're going to dump so many hundreds of billions into a "stimulus" plan, could we also spend some money on educating our members of Congress on basic economics? Pearlstein's idea is to put another $53.5 million (or $100,000 per elected Congressional Representative or Senator) to allow them to hire an economics "personal trainer." I'd actually like to take that argument further, and see if there might be some way to educate the wider population on economics a bit more -- so that we'd avoid silly self-damaging proposals like adding "buy American" requirements.

Separately, I'd like to point to the open letter written to President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, which asks them to publish whatever stimulus bill is finally agreed to for five full days to allow for public comment. This matches up with Obama's earlier promise (which he has unfortunately failed to live up to) to let the public comment on any legislation for five days before passing it. So much of the action on the stimulus bill has been done behind closed doors, involving various horse trading deals that it seems only fair. We saw with the TARP "rescue" package that the more Congress talked, the more pork was included -- and the early results from that all-too-rapid taxpayer cash dump hasn't been good at all. If the new administration is really committed to transparency, it seems only reasonable to let the public read and provide feedback on the stimulus. Related to this, another excellent source to follow is StimulusWatch.org.

This doesn't mean that the gov't should change the stimulus plan based on exactly what the "most" people want (a recipe for a disaster), but let's let some smart ideas start to bubble up by trusting that when more people are allowed to push ideas forward, some good ideas will come out of the mix. Limiting the discussion to just those inside the Beltway has proven to be a huge disaster for quite some time. Let's get more people involved -- recognizing that there will be plenty of terrible ideas -- but as a way to let some good out-of-the-box thinking emerge.

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What If We Put Lie Detectors On Politicians During Debates?

from the it-wouldn't-work dept

It's political silly season these days as we get closer and closer to election day, and with the various campaigns ratcheting up their attempts to win over voters, the inevitable campaign spin reaches the point where the connection between the message being pushed out and the truth often seems increasingly hazy. That is, politicians start lying about each other. Or, if you want to be generous, being extremely misleading in their characterizations. Some worse than others. This, in part, has resulted in the rise in popularity of various "fact checking" sites over the past few campaign seasons, as many people are fed up with campaigns lying and not being called on it.

Some challengers to an Indiana congressman have come up with an amusing suggestion for how to deal with this, with two challengers to the incumbent agreeing to wear lie detectors during a planned debate. The incumbent has refused, with his party chair calling it ridiculous.

Of course, it's all really a stunt to get some press coverage for the challengers. As polygraph experts well know, a polygraph in a debate setting would be useless. Beyond not always being perfectly reliable, polygraphs are designed to work under very specific circumstances, not in a public debate setting, where the results would be entirely meaningless.

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UK Politicians Demand YouTube Vet Content To 'Protect The Children'

from the the-end-of-safe-harbors dept

Various safe harbors for service providers that protect them from the actions of their users make a lot of common sense. It's simply wrong to blame a service provider for the actions of its users. We don't blame the telephone company when someone commits a crime using the phone. And we don't blame the car company for providing the getaway car. Nor do we ask those companies to do anything to block those actions. That's because we all realize how silly that is -- to blame a tool provider for the actions of its users. Yet, for some reason, when we move online, that concept gets confused. While most of the focus has been on safe harbors concerning copyright or defamation, when you toss in a bit of "but think of the children!" it gets even more ridiculous.

We've already seen this with US politicians bullying ISPs into blocking "objectionable" content, even though they have no legal basis for this (and, in fact, such blocking will only make it more difficult to track down those actually responsible). And, now we see it in the UK. UK MPs are claiming that Google needs to vet all of the content uploaded to YouTube "to protect children from harmful content." Seriously.

I guess it's only in the techie community that we recognize that the phrase "to protect the children" is almost always followed by a plan that does the opposite.

The politicians seem concerned that occasionally, questionable content is found on YouTube, and it might take them (gasp!) 24 hours to take it down. Apparently it has not occurred to those behind this demand that perhaps they should be focused on using the content being uploaded to track down those actually responsible for the objectionable (illegal?) content, rather than demanding that Google proactively hide the evidence. Next up, we'll be expecting the report where politicians demand that telephone companies "proactively" review all telephone calls to make sure there is no objectionable content "to protect children."

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NY State Passes Video Game Labelling Law; About To Waste Taxpayer Money Defending It

from the definition-of-insanity dept

About a dozen states have passed laws either requiring video games be labeled for content or banning the sale of certain video games to children. Every single time this has happened, the law has been struck down as unconstitutional. And, every single time, the same arguments are shown to politicians, explaining how such a ban is a clear violation of the First Amendment. Politicians know this. But they can't resist passing such laws, because it gets them headlines about how they're "protecting the children," even if the only real result is having to waste taxpayer money defending the law in court, where they always lose.

The latest to join the fray? New York State. NY has been working on such a bill for a while, and Gov. Patterson has signed it into law. Lawsuits are already being filed against it, and New York will almost certainly lose. Once again, we can't resist repeating the quote from Judge Richard Posner in striking down one of these laws:

"Violence has always been and remains a central interest of humankind and a recurrent, even obsessive theme of culture both high and low ... It engages the interest of children from an early age, as anyone familiar with the classic fairy tales collected by Grimm, Andersen, and Perrault are aware. To shield children right up to the age of 18 from exposure to violent descriptions and images would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it."

Yeah, but it does get politicians in the headlines, and who cares about deforming children when the headlines will claim they're protecting them?

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Politicians Embracing Technology To Actually Communicate With Constituents

from the warms-my-heart dept

There have been plenty of stories over the years about politicians (especially presidential candidates) embracing the internet. However, they're usually focused on bringing together communities of supporters, often for fundraising purposes. There hasn't been as much where it's really about the politician actually communicating directly with the people he or she represents. There was a period of time when politicians started using email, but most have since locked down the ability of people to contact them via email, limiting it to cumbersome forms. However, it appears that some politicians are figuring out ways to actually use technology effectively to directly communicate with the people they're supposed to represent.

There was some buzz this evening (I'm guessing kicked off by a post by Robert Scoble about politicians embracing technology in DC) with people pointing out that a Texas congressman named John Culberson has his own Twitter account. If you look at it, it's pretty clear that it's Culberson himself who's using it -- and he's actually talking and listening to what people are saying to him. He's also using the mobile phone video streaming service Qik to shine some sunlight on what actually happens in Congress -- and even tried (but wasn't allowed) to do a video with the President from the Oval Office, but was stopped by the Secret Service. There's another congressman named Tim Ryan who is also on Twitter, though he's not following anyone else or talking with anyone else -- just communicating one way.

This evening, Culberson also hosted a "Virtual Town Hall" meeting on his own website. Apparently he's been hosting town hall meetings via a phone system which dials a bunch of constituents in his district and lets them ask him questions -- but he expanded it tonight to the internet using Ustream, broadcast video and allowing text chat too. Watching the video, you see quite clearly that it's just him talking directly to people. There's no one "screening" the calls or limiting who is saying what to him -- and he's not shying away from questions at all. Whether or not you agree with him politically (and there's plenty I disagree with him on), it's fascinating to see an elected official in DC actually embracing technology to communicate directly with people in a way that isn't just him broadcasting a message to people. It's also impressive to see politicians using technology to communicate with (not to) people, rather than hide from them (or just to squeeze money out of them). Hopefully other politicians will start to do the same thing.

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NY State Demands Email Addresses/Usernames Of Sex Offenders

from the grandstanding-to-protect-the-children dept

Chris writes in to let us know about a new law passed in NY State that requires any sex offender to register any email addresses and screennames with the government. Any time a sex offender registers a new name or email address, he needs to alert the state within 10 days. While you can understand the grandstanding reasoning behind this ("protect the children!"), this really does seem fairly pointless. It's similar to a federal proposal, and all it really does is create a huge bureaucracy. Despite what the mainstream media has portrayed, the vast majority of sex offenders are not online stalking people. Most involve people known to the offender (all too often family members). In fact, recent research has shown that the whole "internet threat" thing is totally overblown. This isn't to absolve sex offenders of their crimes -- but to question the reasoning behind this sort of law. Those who are really out to stalk kids online will simply ignore this law -- and all NY State gets is a big bureaucratic mess tracking usernames and emails.

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Malaysian Politicians Go From Hating Blogs To Requiring Them In Record Time

from the well-how-about-that dept

It would appear that some politicians in Malaysia have gone through quite a transformation when it comes to blogging. Almost exactly one year ago, some Malaysian politicians got into a bit of an argument with some bloggers and started trashing the entire concept of blogging -- leading to some politicians there declaring that all bloggers needed to register themselves with the government if they wanted to keep blogging. That resulted in an uproar, and the politicians backed down on the registration requirement. In fact, they started to check out blogs a little more carefully, and even liked what they saw. By the end of that same month, the government agreed to set up a special government agency to follow blogs and interact with bloggers to respond to any concerns they might have. Fast forward a year and not only do some of the original leading critics of blogging have their own blogs, but the ruling political party is now requiring many of its political candidates to blog. Anyone who wants a "youth post" needs to have a blog. The guy in charge of the party's youth wing explained: "All candidates must have blogs. If not, they are not qualified to be leaders."

So they've gone from hating blogs to requiring them in about a year. To be fair, a lot of this is politically motivated. Apparently the opposition has been getting plenty of attention because its leader has a popular blog. So this is likely a politically motivated response. Also, it seems almost equally as extreme as the original plan to require bloggers to register. Not everyone should blog. Not everyone wants to blog. Requiring a politician to have a blog, even if it's helpful, seems a bit extreme. It certainly won't lead to good content if people are forced to blog, rather than blogging for a good reason.

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