Unacceptable Ignorance: Congress must reinstate Office of Technology Assessment

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3 pointsck22 comments

To prevent the next SOPA (or the first one from passing in a modified form) I firmly believe they need a non-partisan group that works directly for them just like the budget office - where they can bounce off the crazy ideas they get from lobbyists before they waste everyone's time and money.

They clearly never call or listen to "expert testimony" so they need it in-house where it's less un-ignorable.

I agree the OTA needs to be reestablished, but that won't eliminate the corrupting power of money in politics. Unfortunately that is the real problem. Media companies can continue to push through these types of laws year after year, and until their influence is either countered or mitigated, we will continue to see more SOPA-like laws in the future.

Lawrence Lessig, the guy behind the Creative Commons, realized this and changed his views away from modernizing copyright to pushing congressional reform. His new blog talks more about this (http://lessig.tumblr.com)

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