Where can I go to help?

I also wonder how much we can do about it. The EU parliament has a “FAQ” page up where they assure everyone this treaty is all about protecting them from lead in their kids’ toys, “not ganging up on China” and protecting international trade.

It completely and conveniently glosses over the invasions of privacy, etc.

It is important to stay positive, so that progress is actually possible.

Kill Apathy & Relax.
I recommend empowerthyself.com for interesting tools and information about killing apathy and getting active with stuff you do care about.

Sam (ct #9), please, no “cattle” or “sheep” talk. Our fellow citizens are people. Even when they’re not paying attention to what’s going on around them, when they’re putting blind faith in crooked leaders, they’re still people. I know how frustrating it all can be, but you’re not going to convince anyone by hurling insults at them.

And hey, big money doesn’t always call the shots. The House did hold up telecom immunity a few months back. (I wrote to my congresswoman about that one, and got a reply, though it may have come from an aide.) Sure, the telecoms are trying again, but it’s not guaranteed that they’ll win.

Protests in the streets are a fine idea, but letter-writing campaigns are far from useless. The religious right gets a lot of mileage out of them.

Mwahahahahahaha!

After I finish rubbing my hands together in evil glee, I will be trying to figure out how to market my evil mind reading over the internet by a single pixel in your monitor device!

Mwahahahahahaha!

your pal,
old

I’m writing to express my opposition to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (which has nothing to do with counterfeiting of currency) because it attempts to limit the ways in which people can exchange information and create new sources of prosperity.

The free flow of information on the internet is good for the economy in the long run. It is speeding up the pace of innovation and problem solving faster than anything in history.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is an effort to clamp down on the free flow of information for the supposed benefit of the entertainment industry. Perhaps their interests will be somewhat damaged by the revolutionary changes of the internet, but society as a whole will benefit from these changes.

Here’s a link with more info: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/06/secret-supercopyrigh.html

Thanks for your attention,

(your name here)

Think about that next time someone tells you that you can’t make a difference in national politics, and that writing to your representatives will do no good. If it works for the fundies, it’ll work for you.

Sam (9, 20, 27), you’re wrong. Greg London is right. We do get listened to, and our protests and statements of opinion have the power to move the center of the debate in our desired direction.

Your advice is so bad that I’ve had flashes of wondering whether you’re a paid astroturfer. Taking the fight to the streets without first trying conventional methods is a great way to find yourself marginalized as a bunch of crazy extremists. Also, most people aren’t going to do that, so claiming that it’s the only effective action will only serve to politically neutralize an yone who listens to you.

Finally, when someone disagrees with you, the appropriate response is to explain and extend your own argument. You haven’t done this. All you’ve done is repeat the same set of assertions, plus insult Greg London for disagreeing with you.

RedFoxOne @10: You’re also wrong. We don’t know that the recording industry can buy any laws they want. Those of us who’ve been paying attention know that they’ve gotten some laws they want, but that’s getting harder and harder for them, largely because of organized resistance like the EFF, and individual citizens making themselves heard.

Also, I removed your .sig line and irrelevant link because we don’t do those here. If you want to link to a site, put the URL in your user profile.

Danny O’Brien, the idea that this is being discussed under an NDA makes me furious and confused. This is the people’s business.

Dainel @29, I doubt that would work. It’s too easy to show someone the financial records of your contribution. I’d say the better option is the new rule being used by one of the presidential primary candidates’ campaigns, and which that nominee has very recently caused to be extended to his entire party for the general election: no contributions are being accepted from any industry’s lobbyists. Instead, they’re raising their campaign funds from lots and lots of small individual donors.

Torporous: Yes. They’re cheap. I sincerely congratulate you on figuring out something that’s opaque to many of your fellow citizens: the amount of corporate money that’s riding on politicial decisions is hugely greater than the price of a poitician who’s up for sale. Note: not all politicians are up for sale.

Couldn’t stand to miss Spider-Man 6: Electric Webaloo?
You paid for this.

Too lazy to use RIAA Radar when you shop for music?
You paid for this.

I could go on and on. None of the legislative abuses in this treaty would be possible if we, the consumers, weren’t practically tripping over our own shoelaces in our eagerness to pay for them.

Oh gawd, yes. anyone who has surplus time to go to a blog for the sole purpose of saying how hard life is must lead a truly horrific life.

h, xcs m, yr mjsty. ws nt wr tht s lbrr wsn’t llwd t xprss my pnn bt my fllw prltrts n yr lly wht blg.
Bggng yr prdn, thgh, sr. Whl brkng my bck my b my lf, ddn’t sy tht ws th hrd prt. Th hrd prt s bng brn nt cntry whr y r sddld wth th ndscrtns f yr rlng clss nd th mscncptns thy prvl n w lwly crtrs.

Would it not be better to make all campaign contributions secret from everyone, including the recipients. Let’s make it illegal tell the politician you have made a contribution, or even to promise a contribution. The government can set up a department to … “launder” contributions so that the recipients do not know who paid up.

The majority of people are so willfully ignorant to this kind of stuff, it makes me want to chop down a tree in frustration.

That doesn’t mean I don’t do what I can, but honestly, it feels like a futile exercise.

“The Golden Rule: He who has the gold, makes the rules.”

~ They Live

#35 Teresa Nielsen Hayden

I’ll start with a general observation: you know how you periodically see news stories about how some Christian Defenders of Family Values-type organization that’s had congresscritters and big corporate advertisers running scared turns out to be a handful of people who write a lot of letters?

Anecdotal evidence.

Excuse me? The only reason I didn’t provide links was because that type of story is so common that I trusted everyone would know what I’m referring to. You, on the other hand, have not only been running on purely personal or anecdotal reportage, but some of what you’ve reported runs counter to common experience.

However, I’ll be the first to say that you shouldn’t underestimate the power of a room full of grandmas with nothing but time on their hands and lots and lots of family. However, I’m not a room full of grannys –

Good thing, because that isn’t what I said. I was talking about the power wielded by everyday citizens.

– and I don’t have time nor the inclination to write to dozens of people, over and over again. Or anyone I know, for that matter.

You grossly misrepresent the process. It’s not necessary to write to “dozens and dozens of people, over and over again” to have a significant effect.

If someone were to say “here you go dude, this is your paid leave of absence where you go and write to your representatives.

It doesn’t take a leave of absence to write a letter. Further up the thread, and elsewhere on Boing Boing, there are examples of readers taking a few minutes to write letters. Many of them have copied those letters into the comment threads. It’s demonstrable from their timestamps that it took very little time to write them.

Also, I’m going to pay for you to go take classes on how the government works and how to write better”

Both of which are quite unnecessary. You can’t use them as an excuse for you or anyone else to sit on the sidelines and complain.

Yeah, I’d go do it. Sure. As it is, I have no impetus to go and do anything of the sort. Nor do I think it’s ok for someone to come along and look down on me because of that.

Oooh, nice red herring — and by the way, the jury’s still out on whether you’re a professional astroturfer. The answer, of course, is that what you’re characterizing as others looking down on you are responses to unprompted categorical assertions you made in this thread. They were wrong then, and they’re still wrong now.

I vote. I take time off from my job and join the small embarrassed gathering that was supposed to be some sort of protest against violence or whatever at my local city hall.

I don’t believe you.

I volunteer for campaigns in my area.

I really don’t believe you.

If you were politically active enough to be doing either of those things, you’d know that writing letters to your elected representatives is far easier and more efficacious than you’d have people believe.

Jst bcs thnk lttr wrtng cmpgn s stpd dsn’t mn wnt th trrrsts t wn.

I thought I was the one being insulted, or was I wrong about that too?

Yes, you were wrong. You were being argued with. You are being deliberately provocative. I think you’re a fraud.

…here you go dude, this is your paid leave of absence where you go and write to your representatives. Also, I’m going to pay for you to go take classes on how the government works and how to write better

Why would we want to spend more money on you if you didn’t get anything out of our money the first time around? The government already taught you how it operates, and how to write a handy little letter to your representatives when it paid for your schooling, and I like to think of social security paychecks as being paid to take time off of work to bother your local government.

It’s got nothing to do with “counterfitting” as anyone would normally think of it. i.e. counterfitting money. But by wrapping the treaty in a name that no one can argue with, will automatically create some supporters.

i.e. You don’t want a “Clean Air Act”? What’s wrong with you?

This is more accurately described as a treaty to create a Copyright Cartel.

As the monopoly gets more money, they get more power, as they get more power, they get more money, until they have gobbled up everything.

And Berman should read my book Bounty Hunters. There’s a politician character in there (the “Mayor”) that describes him exactly.

His email address is howard.berman@mail.house.gov

Berman is chairman of the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property. Folks might want to go to the committee page and see if any representative from their state is on the committee and send them a note.

Or, folks can punch in their zip code here and send an email to all of their representatives at once.

Torporous, the reason they’re so cheap is that then they can tell themselves that they didn’t sell out, they were only taking care of the interests of their supporters.

If you were going to do nothing from the beginning, maybe you could have skipped the part where you preach the “abandon hope all ye who enter here” sermon to people who were actually doing something.

Oh, yeah, now I feel bad. I’ll just quit breaking my back day in and day out. Quit my daily struggle. I’ll throw off my yoke of debt and taxes and become a freedom fighter for the good of the people. I’ll starve to death or go to prison, but at least I’ll know I’ve thrown my rock at the goliath, eh? It’s all worth it, now that you’ve pointed your finger at me. Shame on me.

Now with that out of the way please proceed on to my comment. Sadly not so special anymore..

***

Is anyone else utterly amazed at just how little money it takes to buy a politician. These are (in Corporate terms) utterly paltry sums and shows just how scummy these politicians really are.

“Sony Corp of America $14,000″

Are you f’ing kidding me?

Why not just ask for a pretty new TV and blu-ray player…

These are mega corps..at least have the balls to ask for some real money.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080602-the-real-acta-threat-its-not-ipod-scanning-border-guards.html

This is a discussion paper of things that could, theoretically, be in such a treaty. It doesn’t mean that they are things that necessarily will be in the final proposal. I’m sure even politicians must have some sense.

It’s good that people get upset about this, because the more upset people get sooner, the more likely a lot of this stuff won’t be in the final treaty—but as Ars puts it, “Discussion of ACTA at this point needs a lot more ‘might’ in it.”