Doing An AMA On Reddit About Net Neutrality Reporting… And Anything Else
from the come-check-it-out dept
Starting right about… now, I’m doing an AMA over at Reddit. It’s mainly supposed to be focused on issues related to net neutrality (and our crowdfunding campaign — which we’ve explained in detail here), but it’s an Ask Me Anything, so the topic certainly isn’t limited. Come for the net neutrality discussion, and stick around for a fuller explanation of the pros and cons of duck sized horses. Just don’t ask me about the movie Rampart.
Filed Under: ama, net neutrality
Comments on “Doing An AMA On Reddit About Net Neutrality Reporting… And Anything Else”
Karl Bode should join this discussion since this seems to be his area of expertise. His website is
http://www.dslreports.com/
Anonymous Coward
I find the response about people sending angry emails regarding the “Anonymous Coward” label pretty amusing.
I suppose if you have thin skin, and haven’t been on the internet long, you might be offended.
Re: Anonymous Coward
Eh, I get it. If you’re not from this general corner of the Internet it would seem pretty random.
So your Beg-a-thon is moving to Reddit? It might help pump up the dollars but I don’t know if you get across the finish line.
OP Did Not Deliver
I saw no fuller explanation of the pros and cons of duck sized horses. 0/10 would not read again.
Re: OP Did Not Deliver
Much cheaper to maintain. Less area needed for pastures, barns, race tracks etc…
Harder to make saddles and find jockeys to race them.
AMA
The AMA was well done.
There were some excellent questions and well thought out responses.
(Mike, you should give more warning and perhaps post in advance the upcoming AMA to several subs to garner more attendance.)
I hope you do another one of those, the subject is more important than a lot of people realize.
Larry Lessig's approach, competition vs last mile providers, international trade agreement examples
From reading this, some of your answers that might be worth followup– perhaps even an article.
This is a great question, though not one with an easy answer, unfortunately. It’s why Larry Lessig moved away from focusing on copyright (and some other tech policy issues) to focus on corruption. And after a decade or so of him thinking about it, he’s focusing on “moonshot” like solutions, which have a low probability of success, but if they do succeed could fundamentally change things. If he feels that’s the only solution, that kinda says something about the alternatives.
Question for everyone: does anyone know if Larry Lessig has spoken on why he chose his approach to the corruption problem?
Finally, I’d long been a believer that if you focused on competition first and foremost, net neutrality would fall by the wayside. I still think that competition is a key part of all of this, but the evidence from Europe and Australia suggests that competition alone isn’t really enough to prevent other kinds of abuses by those who have the power over the last mile.
If I read this correctly, there was competition on the other levels of the internet service, but that still was not enough to prevent abuses emerging from the “last mile” providers.
Can you elaborate on this?
It’s one tool, and a useful one, but it’s an issue that (like net neutrality) doesn’t get nearly enough attention. Speaking out on the issue, making more people aware of how the international trade process has become a secret way for corporations to basically pass favorable laws through a totally undemocratic process, without any transparency is really important. The laundering of regulations through international trade agreements has been going on for decades, and one reason is that it works so well. The public is totally bored by “international trade agreements* not realizing what’s really involved.
Can you provide examples where international trade agreement was used, successfully, to “pass” laws — presumably over any objections that either legislative bodies may have.
Re: Larry Lessig's approach, competition vs last mile providers, international trade agreement examples
Lessig’s big copyright concept (that it violated the first amendment) was soundly rejected by the courts in a rare unanimous dismissal of the concept. Following what was surely a painful defeat, he seems to have changed course, and has sort of been flailing around a bit looking for a cause.
Like many (including Mike Masnick), he has latched onto corruption / we have the government type concepts as a way of keeping an audience. It’s the hottest trending area on the internet today, so there should be no real surprise to find the same groups of people standing at the front of the parade acting like they were there first.
Re: Re: Larry Lessig's approach, competition vs last mile providers, international trade agreement examples
“Lessig’s big copyright concept (that it violated the first amendment) was soundly rejected by the courts in a rare unanimous dismissal of the concept.”
Two problems with this. First of all you disingenuously misconstrue what LL said. For a better discussion read
“Lessig: Yes, but the point is that the law guarantees fair use and the technology takes it away. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act comes in and says if you circumvent the technology, you’ve violated the law. And the strong complaint against that statute is that even if you violate the technology for a purpose that would have been completely legal under copyright law, you’ve violated the law. So for example, if you wanted to get access to a copyrighted work to enable it to be read aloud to a blind person, that’s fair use. If you circumvent to enable that, that itself should be a completely protected circumvention. But tools to circumvent for that purpose are banned by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. “
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2003/Lessigcopyright.html
Secondly simply proclaiming that the courts ‘soundly rejected’ a concept just because they held a position you agree with does not make their rejection of the concept any more logically sound. The courts are not the ultimate authority of ‘sound rejections’ or logic. In a democracy it should really be the court of public opinion that matters (unfortunately it’s clear that our legal system is bought and paid for by lobbyists).
Re: Re: Re: Larry Lessig's approach, competition vs last mile providers, international trade agreement examples
Actually, I was referring to Eldred V. Ashcroft, and this from Wikipedia:
“The Supreme Court declined to address Lessig’s contention that Lopez and Morrison offered precedent for enforcing the Copyright clause, and instead reiterated the lower court’s reasoning that a retroactive term extension can satisfy the “limited times” provision in the copyright clause, as long as the extension itself is limited instead of perpetual. Furthermore, the Court refused to apply the proportionality standards of the Fourteenth Amendment or the free-speech standards in the First Amendment to limit Congress’s ability to confer copyrights for limited terms.”
7-2 against, they sent him to the woodshed on all points. He continued on for many years down the same road, and got absolutely nowhere with the arguments. The First Amendment does not override other rights granted in the constitution and it’s amendments, they must co-exist. His main arguments, his pet concept, was dead.
Secondly simply proclaiming that the courts ‘soundly rejected’ a concept just because they held a position you agree with does not make their rejection of the concept any more logically sound.
The thing is, it doesn’t matter what my personal opinion is, SCOTUS ruled and unless someone comes up with another compelling case and a better argument, that judgement stands.
(unfortunately it’s clear that our legal system is bought and paid for by lobbyists).
Just because you don’t agree with a judgement doesn’t mean someone got paid off to give it, that is just not logically sound.
Re: Re: Re:2 Larry Lessig's approach, competition vs last mile providers, international trade agreement examples
“The thing is, it doesn’t matter what my personal opinion is, SCOTUS ruled and unless someone comes up with another compelling case and a better argument, that judgement stands.”
I think part of the point of these forums is so that we can discuss the arguments being made. The court is not the ultimate authority of what constitutes a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ argument. That’s what’s being discussed here. If you are going to act like a little immature child and plug your ears and close your eyes and proclaim “I don’t want to hear it because the court agrees with me, I don’t want to discuss this because the courts agree with me” instead of discussing the matter like a mature adult then don’t be surprised when people don’t take you seriously. If so many people agree with you why don’t you start your own blog and gain your own large audience instead of coming here to leech off of Mike’s audience? Oh, that’s right, because no one cares what you have to say.
“Just because you don’t agree with a judgement doesn’t mean someone got paid off to give it, that is just not logically sound.”
I’m not the only one that thinks this and it’s clear based on lots of evidence (ie: revolving door problems among many others). Retroactive extensions were a result of politicians being bought and paid for. Disney put money into getting these extensions and they wouldn’t have contributed their money if they aren’t getting anything back in return. They’re not stupid. What they get back in return is undemocratically passed laws.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik1AK56FtVc
Only a morally lacking shill would defend such public domain theft.
Re: Larry Lessig's approach, competition vs last mile providers, international trade agreement examples
Question for everyone: does anyone know if Larry Lessig has spoken on why he chose his approach to the corruption problem?
Lessig has talked a lot about various approaches, and basically he believes this is the only way to really tackle the problem.
If I read this correctly, there was competition on the other levels of the internet service, but that still was not enough to prevent abuses emerging from the “last mile” providers.
Can you elaborate on this?
Yeah, this filing with the FCC gives a pretty detailed explanation of how and why competition has failed to prevent abuses: http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7521087920
Can you provide examples where international trade agreement was used, successfully, to “pass” laws — presumably over any objections that either legislative bodies may have.
Most obvious one is the DMCA. The author of the bill, Bruce Lehman, couldn’t get Congress to pass it. So — and he’s admitted publicly that he did this directly as an end run around Congress — when to Geneva and got WIPO to create an international trade agreement called the WIPO Copyright Treaty, which then obligated the US to pass the DMCA.
Notice that Title I of the DMCA is called “WIPO Treaty Implementation.”
http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf
If you want to be even more depressed, I recommend reading the book Information Feudalism, which goes into great detail how something that wasn’t considered a trade issue, intellectual property, was made into one so that businesses could sneak through these laws:
http://books.google.com/books/about/Information_Feudalism.html?id=Pkl7HNzhXgoC
AMA question, I'm late...
Since it’s all over, let me ask you here:
The money you are attempting to crowdfund, how would it make Techdirt different? Are you planning to hire more staff? Are you starting a new TechNeutrality site, with exclusive staff, etc… or is this just a drive to get 60k extra money to the bottom line?
For all the postings, I haven’t seen a define plan of use that jumps out at me (maybe it’s somewhere I didn’t see). I think it would help you immensely (and you need it, with only a few days left) to actually put out there what you exactly intend to do with the money.
Re: AMA question, I'm late...
“For all the postings, I haven’t seen a define plan of use that jumps out at me”
Start your own blog and earn your own audience instead of coming here and flooding this blog with your nonsense. Oh, that’s right, no one cares what you have to say and so your blog won’t gain any attention and so the only way you and your dumb opinion can get attention is to come here. Poor baby.