My contribution to the SOPA/PIPA debate
I woke up this morning, the day of the SOPA/PIPA blackout, and wrote the following letter to my representatives:
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am a deeply cynical fellow when it comes to politics. I am 32 years old, having grown up late in the wake of the cynicism left by Vietnam and lived through an apex of nationwide corruption. I have come to basically expect, at a fundamental level, that the realm of politics exists to serve politicians, who work directly in their own self interest and for whom a cottage industry of lobbyists has arisen who understand the people far better than politicians, working at the behest of far more sinister interests. Politics is the career for the otherwise unemployable - educated people whose ability to network outstrips their real aptitudes, who appear ignorant about anything that does not affect their bottom line and who are either soft-headed enough to allow themselves to be convinced that the interests of giant business or enormous government truly represents the interest of the people, or are legitimately sociopathic enough to feel no shame about exploiting their constituents.
In short, I assume by default that politicians both to the Right and the Left are dirty, crooked and corrupt. Very few have ever proven otherwise and those who have fight a noble fight against the unmovable inertia of our nation's slothful behemoth of a government. When I vote, I tend to be immediately biased against any incumbent, for any seat at any level, because I tend to think that they are tainted. If we were a caste society modeled after my own preconceptions (woe if such a thing were ever to occur), the political class would be Untouchable - free to mix amongst its own ranks but kept at arm's length by those of us who actually work for a living and attempt to contribute as best we can, despite the often poor use of our contributions.
Perhaps I am being incredibly unfair. I wouldn't know. I've written a very few letters to politicians before and gotten wonderfully terse and beautifully meaningless form replies in return. If any of them actually persuaded a change in policy, I've yet to find out about it. So I write this letter with such vitriol because I assume that it will go unread into the circular file, or perhaps scanned by software algorithm for keywords and aggregated into a rollup chart delivered by a staffer whose job it is to "understand" the voice of the people. The reason that I am so disgusted, and that disgust comes through in this letter with little filtration, is that I recall the way in which SOPA was given voice. I remember how a completely ignorant government let it pass without any understanding of the implications - without even hearing a counterargument. So convinced were these ignorant idiots that they just let it mosey on through without so much as a peep. Way to be circumspect. I would mention at length all the good that the government does in keeping our infrastructure together, but I'm not feeling terribly circumspect either.
I'm in the software field and I work in the online industry. I'm pretty aware of some of the ramifications of this. For what it's worth, I don't actually think that it will do as much immediate damage as its opponents think it will. After all, there is a distinction between how things work in principle and how they work in reality, as our government has shown. I do not think that this will cause the End of the Internet Forever, or any other such armageddonist nonsense. However, it sets a terrible precedent. It allows a level of control to which people should naturally object. Most importantly, it completely fails to solve the problem it is engineered to address. It does nothing whatever to stop online piracy. It does nothing to protect the interests of artists and intellectual property holders, for which these sorts of policies are ostensibly designed, and very little to protect the industries that promote artists and intellectual property holders, for which these sorts of policies are very transparently and actually designed. This is feel-good legislation for tyrants, allowing them to know that their power is ever consolidating. It is nothing more.
I won't belabor this point. You and yours have already failed to comprehend this, and I don't expect you to start today. Know simply that I oppose this legislation and I vote.
Sincerely,
David Lucas Parker
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am a deeply cynical fellow when it comes to politics. I am 32 years old, having grown up late in the wake of the cynicism left by Vietnam and lived through an apex of nationwide corruption. I have come to basically expect, at a fundamental level, that the realm of politics exists to serve politicians, who work directly in their own self interest and for whom a cottage industry of lobbyists has arisen who understand the people far better than politicians, working at the behest of far more sinister interests. Politics is the career for the otherwise unemployable - educated people whose ability to network outstrips their real aptitudes, who appear ignorant about anything that does not affect their bottom line and who are either soft-headed enough to allow themselves to be convinced that the interests of giant business or enormous government truly represents the interest of the people, or are legitimately sociopathic enough to feel no shame about exploiting their constituents.
In short, I assume by default that politicians both to the Right and the Left are dirty, crooked and corrupt. Very few have ever proven otherwise and those who have fight a noble fight against the unmovable inertia of our nation's slothful behemoth of a government. When I vote, I tend to be immediately biased against any incumbent, for any seat at any level, because I tend to think that they are tainted. If we were a caste society modeled after my own preconceptions (woe if such a thing were ever to occur), the political class would be Untouchable - free to mix amongst its own ranks but kept at arm's length by those of us who actually work for a living and attempt to contribute as best we can, despite the often poor use of our contributions.
Perhaps I am being incredibly unfair. I wouldn't know. I've written a very few letters to politicians before and gotten wonderfully terse and beautifully meaningless form replies in return. If any of them actually persuaded a change in policy, I've yet to find out about it. So I write this letter with such vitriol because I assume that it will go unread into the circular file, or perhaps scanned by software algorithm for keywords and aggregated into a rollup chart delivered by a staffer whose job it is to "understand" the voice of the people. The reason that I am so disgusted, and that disgust comes through in this letter with little filtration, is that I recall the way in which SOPA was given voice. I remember how a completely ignorant government let it pass without any understanding of the implications - without even hearing a counterargument. So convinced were these ignorant idiots that they just let it mosey on through without so much as a peep. Way to be circumspect. I would mention at length all the good that the government does in keeping our infrastructure together, but I'm not feeling terribly circumspect either.
I'm in the software field and I work in the online industry. I'm pretty aware of some of the ramifications of this. For what it's worth, I don't actually think that it will do as much immediate damage as its opponents think it will. After all, there is a distinction between how things work in principle and how they work in reality, as our government has shown. I do not think that this will cause the End of the Internet Forever, or any other such armageddonist nonsense. However, it sets a terrible precedent. It allows a level of control to which people should naturally object. Most importantly, it completely fails to solve the problem it is engineered to address. It does nothing whatever to stop online piracy. It does nothing to protect the interests of artists and intellectual property holders, for which these sorts of policies are ostensibly designed, and very little to protect the industries that promote artists and intellectual property holders, for which these sorts of policies are very transparently and actually designed. This is feel-good legislation for tyrants, allowing them to know that their power is ever consolidating. It is nothing more.
I won't belabor this point. You and yours have already failed to comprehend this, and I don't expect you to start today. Know simply that I oppose this legislation and I vote.
Sincerely,
David Lucas Parker