> I'm not quite sure what you mean by this? You mean you postpone your contingency plan activation, or do you mean warning people around it? But if you think it really is a doomsday scenario and you don't warn people until after it's done how do you keep it from happening in the first place?

What I mean is that I don't go screaming "the internet is doomed" for months before the actual vote like I've seen many forums posts and articles claim.

However I have no issue in warning people that "if the proposal is accepted as is it would do great harm".

>How would that not affect organizations like the EFF or ACLU or whatever the EU equivalents are? I know that most of the population, even if they're massively effected by the destructive effects of IP maximalism, are not actually cognizant of it at all. That makes those of us opposed to it "special interests" too doesn't it? We're trying to lobby for technocratic policy changes that will benefit us personally even if it will also benefit others too. It would likely benefit many of us commercially too, which isn't an inherently bad thing. How do you create an objective set of rules around that?

They can still organise, spread information and argue their point. I might have been a bit broad in my strokes. There should be no organised "secret" lobbying, that is I wish all that the politicians do and talk about in their official capacities should be recorded and open. This includes internal party meetings, lobbyist meetings etc. It is very hard to create this objectively but the end-game for me is to get back-door politics out in the open.

I once read a book by L.E. Modesitt Jr names "Haze" which has a system that I actually find very appealing. It's a bit much to recap it here but if one likes to explore different systems this is a good one imho.

>What I mean is that I don't go screaming "the internet is doomed" for months before the actual vote like I've seen many forums posts and articles claim.

The only reason this didn't pass is because people screamed at the tops of their lungs.

Yeah, the way I see it if the system only works because there was a bunch of hyperbolic alarmism to balance out the awful impulse of industry-aligned legislators, the system wasn't actually working that well. It may be functioning, but the fact that this battle will get harder and harder to fight every time it happens (which could be eternal) means that's not really something that works well.

Right, this result doesn't mean the system works, it means that the big red EMERGENCY STOP button works, as long as everyone screams loud enough.

We'll see if the system itself works if the next time the industry makes a push for stupid legislation like this and the politicians push back because they know their constituents don't want it from the last time. How confident are you that this will happen?

The internet escaped the impending doom because it didn't pass. It didn't pass because people acted. And People acted because of the numerous alarms about the impending doom.

Yes, that's not what I am arguing and I think it might be a distinction that is different from my mother tongue and English.

I've seen people arguing that "the internet is doomed" as if there is nothing one can do about it and the event that doomed it has already happened. I've even seen headlines of that form on HN. It is the same is if someone had written "the coral reef is doomed", then I would think that someone had dropped a nuclear bomb on it and that the event already happened.

As I said, I'm not against warning people what _can_ happen but I don't go around saying it already has happened. If it has happened then there is no action one can take (i.e., the dooms day scenario has already happened). That's what I wanted to convey in my first post really.

In any case it's very much a topic derailment in this case and I apologise for that.

Dude, people understand that "this copyright law has doomed the internet" means "if you stop this or undo it, it won't be a reason for the internet's doom". Fortunately, human interpretation is fluid enough that they understand this.

Just like if I say "damn it! I left the stove on! My house will burn down" the driver will say "oh shit! Let's go back" not "Since you have guaranteed that the house is going to burn down at this point I am not going to act. By a strict interpretation of your words, there is nothing that can be done. Let us continue onward to the cinema"

Seriously, man. Come on. This isn't a language thing.

I completely agree with you, however: My own native tongue actually has bigger strictness than English (since as a Slavic language with Germanic influence it has many grammatical features that are not a part of common English), so I can see where the GP us coming from. There indeed were newspapers that claimed that the Internet is already doomed and they can't do anything at all. Sadly in my country, fear mongering is the leading newspaper marketing strategy, so this is not uncommon, and some people have learned to take them with a huge grain of salt. The problem lies in the word "some" - I share the country with millions of people that believe them literally, and it can be clearly seen in our national voting results.

So my last reply on this and the nesting is not going further, as it is really very off topic. But your first example sentence is in past tense and implies that the law already has passed (at least that is my interpretation) and the second example sentence is in future tense, not present tense.

But it might also be a cultural difference and not language difference I don't know.

It doesn't really matter if the law is already passed. Undoing a law is harder than preventing a law, but not by all that much.

Transparency in politics has actually been shown to help rather than hinder lobbyists:

http://www.congressionalresearch.org/TransparencyProblem.htm...

But they can still have lunch with members of the general public (including lobbyists) in secret and make secret arrangement then present another argument for their motives in public.

If it was impossible to contact a politician in secret the amount of legal (you get a nice consultant position after the political career) and illegal bribes would hopefully go down.

This does not stop a politician from doing something in the hopes that it will be rewarded later without prior contact though.

Also to add, this is a pipe dream, something that the current crop of politicians would never accept as it would reduce them to merely being a spokesperson for the people they represent.

"If it was impossible to contact a politician"

this is why we should be voting on ideas and not on politicians. my opinions don't accept bribes for their new garage doors...

As I understand the research, it's specifically public voting records that give lobbyists a lot more power over members of congress (donations can be made conditional on certain votes, and lobbyists can verify that they are getting what they are paying for).

Interesting, but maybe lobbyists aren't 100% in it to get their putative goals. Maybe, just like managers, they get a lot of enjoyment out of manipulation and exercise of power.

That would certainly explain a lot.

I think it’s very dangerous to tell people not to go around claiming the internet is doomed.

People doing that appears to have been the very thing that built the consensus to stop the legislation.

Not to put words in anyone mouth, but I believe that what people like (my projections of) tyfon find irritating is when alarmism come without understanding.

For example people believing it had already passed or grossly misinterpreting the effects.

Of course a big part of the alarmism was thanks to memes, so it is understandable that using them as a medium left out some information...

> organizations like the EFF or ACLU or whatever the EU equivalents are

https://edri.org/ , https://www.openrightsgroup.org/ , and the various Pirate Parties. Green parties tend to be well-informed about this, although they do vary a lot from "bright green" to extremely nuts.

I'm not sure banning lobbying is possible, but banning bribery disguised as "contributions" might be. Although the UK system for this has recently collapsed.

How did the UK work out when it did run?

My libertarian side wants to push back on these controls but after seeing Sheldon Adelson basically write the recent legislation on online gambling that directly benefits his own interests in the industry I’m becoming far more skeptical of its value.

It’s sold as allowing more freedom for private citizens and industry but in reality the greatest winners will be the giant companies, who can naturally buy the most influence (and get their old private school buddies in Congress) to squeeze out their competition and build barriers to entry.

Which is fundamentally anti-private business. And which reflects a long trend in American politics where the “free market” label is used to sell things very much anti-free market, which then causes more people to blame free markets as the problem (when all along it was the business elite winning over the political elite for gain, not anything like a market).

To be honest, only marginally better, but there was a bit more sanity in the discourse before FB ads from anonymous sources, and a bit more restraint before someone figured out that they could exploit the NI-only rules allowing anonymity for donations to put half a million quid through for Brexit.

(NI politics has been deeply dysfunctional since the 60s; it managed a decade and a half of normal politics before collapsing in a fraud scandal. Its devolved government has been shut down for two years. A bomb has just gone off in Derry, perhaps a sign of more to come. Brexit and the small government majority has allowed this dysfunctionality to leak into meanland government)

Weak investigations have been made into all the breaches of rules during the Brexit campaign, but nobody has been prosecuted yet.

>How would that not affect organizations like the EFF or ACLU or whatever the EU equivalents are?

This reminds me of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s attempt to break down the political influence of special interest groups as California’s governor. Everybody was wholeheartedly behind this effort, until they realized the special interests “ruining California politics” were the police, fire, and teacher’s unions.

> How would that not affect organizations like the EFF or ACLU or whatever the EU equivalents are?

This seems like comparing apples to oranges. It's one thing for the EFF or ACLU to be very public about pushing this or that piece of legislation that they wrote for all practical intents and is in the public interest. It's another for XYZ lobbyists to be very private about pushing this or that piece of legislation that they wrote for all practical intents and caters to very private interests, with incidentally interested large donators reaching out to MPs about the legislation in question.

(Personally speaking, I'd love it if politicians were required, under penalty of fines and prison, to disclose lobbying efforts they were exposed to.)

Lobbying just means trying to influence someone’s opinion. Corporate lobbiests are lobbying corrupt officials. Lobbying isn’t the problem; corruption is

That definition of lobbying might have worked a few centuries ago. But nowadays it means trying to influence someone's opinion and throwing pre-written policies (and oftentimes money) at them.

Also, the definition of corruption you seem to have is not accurate IMO. Corruption is what Spiro Agnew did: trade explicit influence in exchange for some dosh in an envelope. That's not what politicians usually do today in western democracies -- which is to say, pay very close attention to what their major donors are worried about. There's a case to be made about how the two are equivalent in the end, but the fact of the matter is that in the first case the funds arrive in an envelope for the politician to pocket (minus some bagman commission) whereas in the second case the donations are (supposed to be) disclosed and (theoretically) benefit the politician's campaign.

It's not just campaign contributions though. When people step out of government they're often stepping into very cushy and lucrative jobs provided by people they helped while in government. You don't get to make that transition if your primary motive is looking out for the average citizen. It never even has to be agreed to explicitly, it's just understood by all parties how the system works. Very hard to prove corruption in that case, as it's institutional rather than individual.

Speaking personally, I'd rate that as a career choice/part of the job thing. It's like, if you've little to no interest in working for this or that large business, you've no reason to pull any punches against them - but it's a career choice at the end of the day.

Also, keep in mind that when a congressman leaves office, they usually have relationships with people that can move the needle in government. As such they can do valuable things for whoever is willing to hire them -- regardless of the positions they held while in office.