[Foundation-l] "We are the media, and so are you" Jimmy Wales and Kat Walsh OpEd in Washington Post

[Mike Godwin]

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-wrong/
-- 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