Hacker News Reader

Comment by Natsu | Hacker News Reader

I would hate to see this become a partisan issue. There are plenty of people on every side who hate this crap.

On the contrary, it would be fantastic for this to become a partisan issue. Competition works just as well in the political arena as it does in the marketplace.

Parties don't always take opposite sides of each issue. Frequently, they try to take the higher ground by claiming they do "more" ...

Wouldn't it be wonderful for both parties to compete as to who opposes draconian garbage like SOPA/PIPA more?

Obviously, the best situation would be for majorities in both parties to be against this stuff. But a world where Republicans are against it and Dems are for it is much better than the world we've had for the last few years, in which both parties were on Hollywood's side.

Hopefully the Democrats will fail to promote their restrictions to the younger/more liberal crowd.

On the flip side, making it a partisan issue implies a solid opposition, making such laws harder to pass without anyone noticing. We're stuck with this ugly system at the moment, may as well take what we can get from it.

I'd be happy to see the parties compete on this issue of how to make Hollywood and friends no longer a threat to free speech and the net.

Democrats could push for European-style subsidy of production. Republicans could push for letting the market work - advertising, product placement, etc are all that's needed. Both programs can agree on eliminating copyright for entertainment works.

While that'd be a nice way for competition to play out, I doubt that's what we're actually going to see. What both programs really agree on is precisely "copyright for entertainment works". The Democrats are pushing SOPA; the Republicans pushed the DMCA and copyright extension. They disagree mainly over tactics/timing/details.

I can see the Republicans trying to strongly dissociate themselves from SOPA, but I give it approximately 0% chance that they're going to recant the DMCA or Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, or even loosen their position on the DMCA moderately to the extent of supporting more exemptions to the anti-circumvention clause.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com