Thomas Morton writes:
Politics is a game, a game that politicians are bred to play. I know this because, having spent several years helping fight stupid law making, I've seen all the tricks. And, boy, have we been played.
Dude, what am I? Chopped liver? I spent a huge part of my professional life as a Washington. What's more, I actually know Cary Sherman of RIAA. As in, I know him personally. We would recognize each other on the street. My headline should be obvious -- I don't think we we were played. Being effective in public-policy discussions is a learnable skill, it turns out. You learned it. Perhaps you will allow for the possibility I learned it too.
Of course the media companies are spinning this. The spin that Google really is evil after all was an obvious if unimaginative choice.
But rather than declare this to be Amateur Hour (r), can't you allow for the possibility that mass action got something right? Politicians didn't think internet mass action mattered. Now they think it does, and not just for fundraising or MoveOn or Tea Party campaigns. Copyright and technology policy in Washington has been deeply screwed up for some time. One path to fixing it it may be fine-tuning a phrase or excising it from a bad law. On the other hand, there was this guy named Martin Luther King who did not rule out mass action -- drew inspiration from, amazingly enough, a lawyer from India. Who know that lawyers could change public policy in a fundamental way, without playing an inside game? The "inside" is as much literal as figurative -- I'm talking about the Beltway, of course.)
Right now, best guess among policy experts is that SOPA and PIPA are dead for the rest of the (political) year. That is not nothing. That is something. And while preaching about the importance of Beltway politics is almost always helpful, one occasionally comes across some piece of writing that that has a foot in both worlds. I assume you didn't enjoy the analysis written by this guy -- http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/02/07/guest-blogger-sunlight-got-it-... -- but he actually seems to make in that very piece. the point you believe is so revelatory and breathtakingly iconoclastic. Maybe you would find the piece interesting if you gave it another read.
--Mike Godwin