Humans aren’t perfect and this economic climate tends to bring out the worst in most people but situations such as the SOPA drama manage to restore my faith in humanity every once in a while.
White people, black people, yellow people. Republican “rednecks” and democrat “hippies” as well as libertarians and so on. People from all sorts of backgrounds had the cojones to say “dear government, GTFO!” and I respect that.
We need to be careful what we wish for because an attitude such as “oh come on, a bit more government involvement won’t hurt” can and will have unfathomable negative consequences in my opinion.
That is all. /mini-rant
December 27th, 2011 at 12:49 am
Keeping our eyes and ears in hypervigilance is a GOOD thing… (necessary)
~Patricia Kaehler – Ohio USA – DomainBELL
December 27th, 2011 at 8:56 am
Well said. One correction though, it should be:
“oh come on, a bit more RIAA/MPAA influenced government involvement won’t hurt”
It’s a little more nuanced than the bogeyman of “government”, I think that dilutes the issue too much.
It’s the corporations contributing to Congressmen, that then write the bills for them, that is the problem. Witness the unwillingness of Lamar Smith, Maxine Waters, et al to consider expert opinions against SOPA. Then check opensecrets.org.
Not to mention the huge payday that Allison Halataei and Lauren Pastarnack will receive after jumping from Lamar Smith’s office straight to the media companies.
But yeah, it’s definitely nice to see folks fighting back.
December 27th, 2011 at 10:53 am
@SL: but if governments were to simply stick to the core responsibilities which make sense (defense, for example) and stay out of everything else, then lobbying as an institution would be pretty much worthless, don’t you agree?