It's important to be very clear as to what you'd like to do with the (still hypothetical) political power of LJ users.
It seems, for example, much more practical (if less viscerally satisfying) to lobby for clear language in any new intellectual property legislation to protect "ordinary users" from aggressive prosecution as opposed to trying to kill the bill outright - though if there are enough anti-government liberals/libertarians in the Senate killing it might be possible. If nothing else, there are very serious industrial-scale threats to content producers and distributors that may well require new criminal penalties. I believe an effort that respects those legitimate concerns and focuses on ensuring the legislation is tightly written is more likely to be taken seriously than a movement whining about "teh ev0l kapitalists."
Or maybe I'm just the token Republican on your FList :)
The real difficulties in this are:
A) Figuring out exactly what the LJ/blogging/social networking community wants the final legislation to do about our concerns.
B) Figuring out how to leverage the LJ and larger online community to effect political change: emails are nice, but words in bills are changed by firms on K Street.
C) Deciding whether or not dealing with all the LJ-drama and wank would be worth the potential benefits of building a politically useful movement online.
no subject
It seems, for example, much more practical (if less viscerally satisfying) to lobby for clear language in any new intellectual property legislation to protect "ordinary users" from aggressive prosecution as opposed to trying to kill the bill outright - though if there are enough anti-government liberals/libertarians in the Senate killing it might be possible. If nothing else, there are very serious industrial-scale threats to content producers and distributors that may well require new criminal penalties. I believe an effort that respects those legitimate concerns and focuses on ensuring the legislation is tightly written is more likely to be taken seriously than a movement whining about "teh ev0l kapitalists."
Or maybe I'm just the token Republican on your FList :)
The real difficulties in this are:
A) Figuring out exactly what the LJ/blogging/social networking community wants the final legislation to do about our concerns.
B) Figuring out how to leverage the LJ and larger online community to effect political change: emails are nice, but words in bills are changed by firms on K Street.
C) Deciding whether or not dealing with all the LJ-drama and wank would be worth the potential benefits of building a politically useful movement online.