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Staffer axed by Republican group over retracted copyright reform memo

293 points by pflats 14y ago

mtgx 14y ago
Makes perfect sense. In the empire of lies, truth is the enemy.
pyre 14y ago
> His firing is a surprising move for a party that has > been looking for ways to attract younger voters. Apparently young voters aren't as important as old money.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  I don't have a problem with this. I hope the GOP fails entirely, so it can be replaced by a new party that advocates social liberalism and (true) fiscal conservatism. Trying to get young voters when you're talking about legitimate rape and not allowing gay marriage is a waste of time. But if a new fiscally conservative party embraces things like those issues and ones like marijuana legalization, I think a lot of young voters are willing to embrace a message of small government and free market economics.
  - bitteralmond 14y ago
    The problem is that the GOP doesn't truly support any of that stuff-- simply listening to what a wealthy few campaign donors tell you is right and blindly proselytizing this warped view until you have nearly 50% of the vote is a much easier platform.
    - protomyth 14y ago
      In the 2000's (I cannot find the figures for this last election), the Democrats were the party of big donors and the Republicans had more total donors each donating smaller amounts (avg was around $50). In other words, if you removed the over $1,000 donors the Democrats would be hurt more than the Republicans. The GOP leadership seems to have forgotten that this week with its shuffle of budget committee members.
      - pyre 14y ago
        > I cannot find the figures for this last election Relevant: http://www.waywire.com/v/3a3432fdf3549524a2f89bd63443fd12 http://www.waywire.com/v/3a3432fdf3549524a2f89bd63443fd12
  - zzzeek 14y ago
    This is the Ron Paul demographic and it has shown consistently that it's nowhere near being popular enough for national elections. The simple fact is, having an effective and well-funded government which takes on particular problems that don't respond well to free markets (health care, energy reform, infrastructure, social safety net) is seen by most non-ideological people as a good thing.
    - crusso 14y ago
      effective and well-funded government I think that first word there is probably the main problem "we" have with the whole notion. You even go on to list examples how our historically unrivaled well-funded government[1] has failed to do anything "effective" of the sort: health care, energy reform, infrastructure, social safety net You should really add in "education and housing" to the list of extraordinary government failures. [1] http://www.heritage.org/federalbudget/federal-spending http://www.heritage.org/federalbudget/federal-spending
      - rayiner 14y ago
        Our government is extraordinarily effective for what it is. We have one of the most sophisticated countries in the world, and our tax burden as a percentage of GDP is at the low end of any country you'd want to live in. By the way, the Heritage Foundation has gotten to the point where it's about as bad as DailyKOS. They've given up even the pretense of objectivity and descended into blatant ideological demagoguery.
        crusso 14y ago
        Heritage Foundation has gotten to the point where it's about as bad as DailyKOS It's impossible to find any news site, reporter, researcher, or article that doesn't have some angle. If I find information on the DailyKOS that appears factual and is worth considering then I do so. The Heritage article linked to has a wealth of research pulled from easily verifiable sources, mostly the government itself.
        14y ago
  - WiseWeasel 14y ago
    I doubt that party would be able to beat out a socially conservative alternative; there are likely more religious/morality-driven voters than libertarians in support of the GOP. Maybe if the DNC were to implode at the same time. As the security apparatus becomes increasingly intrusive, perhaps a new party could be swept in with the promise of dismantling it.
    - jeffool 14y ago
      >Maybe if the DNC were to implode at the same time. Right? It seems that's why neither party will ever lessen. It's like an arms race in which parties will never intentionally weaken their numbers by any means. It's led to piecemeal parties that would probably be better as separate-but-aligned than being a small voice in a large party. I just can't imagine anything to begin such a split at the same time. If, say, fiscal conservative/social liberal people all actually made the jump to Libertarian (or another party), maybe a further left liberal faction of Democrats party might follow, but probably not. I just can't imagine anything that would incite a sizable group to give up that balance. Shame. If large enough, and they pulled a few members from the other side, there's the potential they would become king-makers.
      - wonderzombie 14y ago
        Yeah, I don't see it. Liberals are generally in favor of improving and expanding the safety net, whereas fiscal conservatism typically espouses the opposite. Likewise for issues related to women and minorities, or income inequality; liberals generally favor more government intervention rather than less. Certainly there's a lot that liberals and libertarians have in common (drug war, religious freedom, wars), but they have very, very different principles and premises motivating their policy positions.
        AnthonyMouse 14y ago
        I blame that stupid political compass the libertarians are always trotting out. For example, suppose I want to leave government spending where it is, but take fifty billion dollars a year from Medicare and spend it on student loan forgiveness and basic research grants. Which quadrant does that put me in? We need to give up on the tired old categories and start over. We built parties around heuristics like "government spending bad" or "social programs good" instead of evaluating specific programs on their merits. Ideologically pure libertarians are really anarchists. I've encountered people who advocate private police forces and private roads. People who don't understand that there is no difference in the harm that can be caused by de facto and de jure governments when they go bad. But if you allow public roads and a public police force, why not public schools? Why not public universities, or public parks? Why not publicly financed scientific research? The answer to any of these questions is, at bottom, "because that program is better or worse than allowing private enterprise to handle it." But you have to answer that question on a case by case basis -- and it changes with demographics and technology and everything else. And of course, you have to throw in the nature of coalition politics. Publicly funded universities are an extremely valuable program for college-aged voters and those with college-aged children, but seen as a complete waste of money by childless retirees. So sure, you have to build a coalition, but the existing parties exist as they do only by historical happenstance. What could be interesting it to start a party with the following principles: First, for any given issue, evaluate what the majority of the population would want. Then, evaluate whether that position is manifestly unjust or based on assumptions contrary to the evidence. If not, adopt it as the party's position. Repeat for all issues. Take the platform that party puts out, it's pretty much guaranteed to win a majority of the votes by definition. Then the other party can try to pick off a group of minority positions to form an opposing coalition, but any success they have is liable to just change the majority's view on that particular issue -- which changes the first party's position on it going forward from the date of the next election. And if you want to change policy, get on your soap box and convince the majority, which will chance the party's position. It's kind of like direct democracy, but with a filter for extremely bad ideas.
  - charonn0 14y ago
    Failure to adapt leads to extinction. Which, ironically, is a theory the GOP tends to spurn.
  - jlarocco 14y ago
    I think you just described the Libertarian party...
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      Whatever you do, you cannot call it Libertarian though. The word has been tarnished by both crypto-anarchists (the disguised/hiding kind, not the strong crytography kind) who adopt the label to appear more mainstream and by mainstream pundits who paint a picture of Libertarians as anarchists. (Also Ron Paul not really being socially liberal but rather just being kind of "state's rights"-ish hasn't helped... but I think that is more of a particularly sharp edge-case and not a systemic issue. A social conservative wanting to cut back government isn't a Libertarian, it is just a Republican being what Republicans have always claimed to be, but rarely are.) The label is toxic now. Everybody knows that Libertarians exist, the reason today that they don't have the numbers is that nobody really wants to associate with the label.
  - crusso 14y ago
    I hope the GOP fails entirely, so it can be replaced by a new party that advocates social liberalism and (true) fiscal conservatism. Romney got less votes than McCain. Romney was more fiscally conservative and more socially liberal. He wasn't as "cool" as Obama, though. Unfortunately, issues have very little to do with the outcome of national elections. It's mostly about party identity and other groupthink cue following like hipness. It's not very surprising that our news media continues to be less and less distinguishable from our entertainment industry.
    - usefulcat 14y ago
      He was also running against an incumbent.
      - jlgreco 14y ago
        Of course McCain was running after 8 years of Bush. Even ignoring the Bushiness of Bush, running for a party that just had 2 terms is a disadvantage. I am not sure what to make of McCain getting more votes than Romney, but I think it is telling. Telling of what? Beats me.
    - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
      >Romney got less votes than McCain. Romney was more fiscally conservative and more socially liberal. Was he? McCain had always been kind of a moderate -- he only went crazy to secure the 2008 Republican nomination after the failure in 2000, and apparently once you go crazy it sticks. And Romney was the same way: He sure didn't look very socially liberal to moderates during the 2012 primaries. It seems like that's what doomed both of them, actually. To get the nomination they each had to move substantially to the right of their own previous positions, which convinced just enough of the base in order to secure the nomination while alienating the moderates. Then the general election comes around and neither the moderates nor the extremists like the candidate because he at one point or another expressed a number of positions they strongly disagree with. Romney also had a couple of issues McCain didn't: He was a notorious Wall St. guy running at the bottom of a recession notoriously caused by Wall St. guys, and he was running following the 2010 census which gave more electoral votes to typically Democratic population centers nationwide (which, unlike the Congressional elections, couldn't then be gerrymandered by Republican state governments for the presidency since states typically don't allocate electoral votes by district). The problem is that the same process is likely to play out again. Fox keeps giving airtime to the Huckabees and the Trumps to try to get out the base against the Democrats, but with those people going to the polls and voting on those issues, it makes it impossible for a moderate Republican to get nominated without taking positions that alienate moderate voters, and then they lose the general election. Am I the only one that remembers that Bush ran as a moderate in 2000 and won? It was only after 9/11 that he went cowboy, and then only won in 2004 by beating the terrorism drum that has, by this point, worn out and lost its effectiveness. I certainly don't mean to imply we need another Bush, but at some point the Republicans need to realize that pandering to crazies loses elections. (And in the meantime I'm happy to help them realize that by not voting for them, and I don't think I'm alone.)
- wheaties 14y ago
  Or favorable coverage by anyone other than Fox News.
btilly 14y ago
Silicon Valley, and the general public, are full of people who are upset with the Democrats on the issue of legal abuses by the copyright industry. The GOP had the opportunity to position themselves on the opposite side from the Democrats. And failed to do so. :-(
- tptacek 14y ago
  Did they really have any opportunity here? Silicon Valley also (reasonably!) requires support for gay marriage, believes in and fears anthropogenic global warming, is basically pro-choice, and has dovish foreign policy beliefs. Demographically, Silicon Valley is largely college educated and is more ethnically diverse than suburban America. I know hearing this upsets HN, and lots of smart people think I'm completely batshit when I say this, but copyright reform is a fringe issue. There are probably more people who vote for the gold standard, or to ban mosques.
  - ryanstewart 14y ago
    Well I'd say this issue was an example of where the GOP could burnish their free market ideals on an issue that people outside of their normal demographic care about. Clearly the GOP is doing some soul searching and this one issue wasn't going to make a gigantic impact, but it could have been one piece of a bigger strategy. As they (potentially) move away from traditionally social conservative issues and start focusing more and more on personal liberty and the free market, this could have been a good contrast to Democrats as part of a broader picture.
    - tptacek 14y ago
      Plenty of free market people believe that people and companies have a right to control the products of their own labor or of labor that they financed. The GOP is no more likely to move away from being the party of social conservatism than the Democrats are to move away from being the party of public school teachers. (Fair warning: I'm a casual browser of libertarian policy positions, but I am most definitely not a libertarian. My libertarian friends would call me a liberal statist.)
cooldeal 14y ago
The Internet alliance or whatever it's called formed by Reddit etc. after the SOPA fiasco needs to show their support for this person right away or there would be absolutely no point to it. Putting black badges on sites for SOPA was good but this needs to be taken up by sites too. Perhaps someone(Google?) can hire him to further write more papers analyzing copyright?
iyulaev 14y ago
The memo was widely hailed by tech policy scholars and public interests advocates. And also the internet. At least one thing is certain - there is vehement opposition to any sort of copyright reform, and it is embedded deep into the political system. I don't think I've ever heard of a policy proposal being met with this kind of reaction. Really pushed some buttons.
joshuahedlund 14y ago
Wow, this is on top of the GOP silently kicking younger members out of budget committees earlier this week for not bowing enough to the party line[1]. The GOP has had opportunities lately to shed some of their hypocritical big-government stances; their growing younger libertarian-ish/anti-special-interests wing (Rand Paul, Justin Amash, etc) is in my view their best hope for long-term survival, but the establishment seems to be denying that as much as possible. [1] http://blog.heritage.org/2012/12/04/huelskamp-amash-say-house-leadership-punished-dissent/ http://blog.heritage.org/2012/12/04/huelskamp-amash-say-hous...
- AmericanOP 14y ago
  The 'younger members' you reference were kicked out since they voted against the Paul Ryan budget because it did not cut spending enough. They were further to the right than Paul Ryan, and Republican leadership is trying to build support for some kind of budget deal. http://www.politicususa.com/fireboehner-hashtag-trends-war-escalates-gop.html http://www.politicususa.com/fireboehner-hashtag-trends-war-e...
  - joshuahedlund 14y ago
    > They were further to the right than Paul Ryan Not sure, but I think they're more open to military cuts, which is kinda 'further to the left.'[1] They think the leadership would rather raise taxes than cut a growing defense budget. You could say the leadership is more establishment-left (compromise by raising taxes) and the 'younger members' are more anti-establishment-left (compromising by cutting defense). From my bias I see it as more of an anti-establishment thing than a left-right thing; it's not that they weren't moderate enough, they weren't the right kind of moderate, which is why I think the GOP leadership is cutting off their only chance at courting the younger demographics. [1] https://twitter.com/repjustinamash/status/273070039597461504 https://twitter.com/repjustinamash/status/273070039597461504
rymith 14y ago
I'm okay with this. I'm not sure I want a party of bigots to lead the charge on copyright reform. It would put me in an awkward position. Firing the only intelligent person in the party seems to solidify this.
- pavel_lishin 14y ago
  On the other hand, it could have been a way for the GOP to segue from the "bigot party" into a group with reasonable beliefs. Parties change over time, and this could have been a good first step in the right direction.
  - jbooth 14y ago
    They're stuck in a local maximum. They can't throw their white, middle-aged religious base (40% of the population or so) under the bus in order to pick up a few extra points from young people who, if they've been paying attention, won't trust GOP pols anyways.
    - pavel_lishin 14y ago
      They don't have to throw them under the bus all at once. A significant portion of the GOP's support base is going to be dying over the next few decades.
      - rymith 14y ago
        The next few years. The only thing whiter than the GOP is the color or the average GOP's hair. Buddump pa! I'll be here all night.
bjhoops1 14y ago
Here's the line that probably got him the axe: "Today's legal regime is seen by many as a form of corporate welfare" Drawing attention to the existence of "corporate welfare" does not go over well in the GOP. And I was so proud of them for making a sensible stand on this issue!
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
sdafdasdfasdf 14y ago
Link to memo: http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/rsc_policy_brief_--_three_myths_about_copyright_law_and_where_to_start_to_fix_it_--_november_16_2012.pdf http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/rsc_policy_brief_--...
tptacek 14y ago
Copyright hawk here: Content is a $100Bn industry. Technology is 5-6x bigger, but the tech companies trying to disrupt content are an insignificant fraction of that industry. Meanwhile, set aside whether you believe in the reforms proposed in the Khanna memo --- reducing statutory damages, increasing cost of enforcement, reducing copyright terms. Ask instead, "was this a politically effective policy memo?" Were its goals in the 113th congress realistic? Were its arguments persuasive? Something like 35% of all congresspeople are lawyers, and this memo starts out with a highly dubious argument about the meaning of the copyright clause. It seems to me (and I am prepared to hear smart people tell me how wrong I am about this) that a reasonable short-term goal would have been to reduce the term of copyright, ratcheting it back to where it was, say, before Sonny Bono. Instead, this "RSC" memo proposed beyond that a gift basket of what seem like mostly not-useful policy trinkets for Redditors: expanded fair use for DJ culture (really? spend political capital to modify regulations on a $100bn industry for... DJs?), lower statutory caps for damages (the MPAA and RIAA already sue for a tiny fraction of the likely liability for many infringers), and punishing false copyright claims (the claims studios take to court are overwhelmingly not false; penalizing bogus DMCA takedowns wouldn't move the dials at all). The real copyright reform is probably something like reduced term and compulsory licensing. What was the value to the RSC of trolling the Content industry for reforms that had no chance of happening, that wouldn't have actually kept people from being bankrupted by lawsuits, that wouldn't make it easier to launch tech companies, and that at the same time manage to almost uniformly enrage rightsholders? Was this memo really "shockingly sensible"? A lot of smart people say it was. But I wonder whether they're more shocked that any conversation could have happened at all, and not really looking closely at the content of the memo itself.
- JagMicker 14y ago
  Research - Congressional education backgrounds: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_111th_United_States_Congress#Education http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_111th_United_Sta... http://www.crisp360.com/hosted-infographic/where-did-congress-go-college-full http://www.crisp360.com/hosted-infographic/where-did-congres...
- ry0ohki 14y ago
  I agree, the terms are insane, and I hope they don't keep extending them. I'm pretty sure every single person who worked on the original Disney movie Snow White is dead now, lets get that into public domain, the point of copyright isn't to have an income stream for one's family forever.
debacle 14y ago
Does anyone actually have this memo? It'd be an interesting read.
kno 14y ago
The GOP seems more and more against things going the way of the "public Interest" in favor of the few connected, this makes it even harder to build a future with the more and more progressive majority.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
Hmm, if this is an A/B test by the Republicans I hope they get the right feedback from the responses.
neeee 14y ago
link to the memo on scribd http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/113637600 http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/113637600
aswanson 14y ago
This probably violates HN guidelines, but I'd like to suggest a modification re: keeping the original article titles if they contain names of political parties. Remove them. They invite political arguments.

293 points by pflats 14y ago

mtgx 14y ago

Makes perfect sense. In the empire of lies, truth is the enemy.

pyre 14y ago

> His firing is a surprising move for a party that has > been looking for ways to attract younger voters. Apparently young voters aren't as important as old money.

w1ntermute 14y ago
I don't have a problem with this. I hope the GOP fails entirely, so it can be replaced by a new party that advocates social liberalism and (true) fiscal conservatism. Trying to get young voters when you're talking about legitimate rape and not allowing gay marriage is a waste of time. But if a new fiscally conservative party embraces things like those issues and ones like marijuana legalization, I think a lot of young voters are willing to embrace a message of small government and free market economics.
- bitteralmond 14y ago
  The problem is that the GOP doesn't truly support any of that stuff-- simply listening to what a wealthy few campaign donors tell you is right and blindly proselytizing this warped view until you have nearly 50% of the vote is a much easier platform.
  - protomyth 14y ago
    In the 2000's (I cannot find the figures for this last election), the Democrats were the party of big donors and the Republicans had more total donors each donating smaller amounts (avg was around $50). In other words, if you removed the over $1,000 donors the Democrats would be hurt more than the Republicans. The GOP leadership seems to have forgotten that this week with its shuffle of budget committee members.
    - pyre 14y ago
      > I cannot find the figures for this last election Relevant: http://www.waywire.com/v/3a3432fdf3549524a2f89bd63443fd12 http://www.waywire.com/v/3a3432fdf3549524a2f89bd63443fd12
- zzzeek 14y ago
  This is the Ron Paul demographic and it has shown consistently that it's nowhere near being popular enough for national elections. The simple fact is, having an effective and well-funded government which takes on particular problems that don't respond well to free markets (health care, energy reform, infrastructure, social safety net) is seen by most non-ideological people as a good thing.
  - crusso 14y ago
    effective and well-funded government I think that first word there is probably the main problem "we" have with the whole notion. You even go on to list examples how our historically unrivaled well-funded government[1] has failed to do anything "effective" of the sort: health care, energy reform, infrastructure, social safety net You should really add in "education and housing" to the list of extraordinary government failures. [1] http://www.heritage.org/federalbudget/federal-spending http://www.heritage.org/federalbudget/federal-spending
    - rayiner 14y ago
      Our government is extraordinarily effective for what it is. We have one of the most sophisticated countries in the world, and our tax burden as a percentage of GDP is at the low end of any country you'd want to live in. By the way, the Heritage Foundation has gotten to the point where it's about as bad as DailyKOS. They've given up even the pretense of objectivity and descended into blatant ideological demagoguery.
      - crusso 14y ago
        Heritage Foundation has gotten to the point where it's about as bad as DailyKOS It's impossible to find any news site, reporter, researcher, or article that doesn't have some angle. If I find information on the DailyKOS that appears factual and is worth considering then I do so. The Heritage article linked to has a wealth of research pulled from easily verifiable sources, mostly the government itself.
        14y ago
- WiseWeasel 14y ago
  I doubt that party would be able to beat out a socially conservative alternative; there are likely more religious/morality-driven voters than libertarians in support of the GOP. Maybe if the DNC were to implode at the same time. As the security apparatus becomes increasingly intrusive, perhaps a new party could be swept in with the promise of dismantling it.
  - jeffool 14y ago
    >Maybe if the DNC were to implode at the same time. Right? It seems that's why neither party will ever lessen. It's like an arms race in which parties will never intentionally weaken their numbers by any means. It's led to piecemeal parties that would probably be better as separate-but-aligned than being a small voice in a large party. I just can't imagine anything to begin such a split at the same time. If, say, fiscal conservative/social liberal people all actually made the jump to Libertarian (or another party), maybe a further left liberal faction of Democrats party might follow, but probably not. I just can't imagine anything that would incite a sizable group to give up that balance. Shame. If large enough, and they pulled a few members from the other side, there's the potential they would become king-makers.
    - wonderzombie 14y ago
      Yeah, I don't see it. Liberals are generally in favor of improving and expanding the safety net, whereas fiscal conservatism typically espouses the opposite. Likewise for issues related to women and minorities, or income inequality; liberals generally favor more government intervention rather than less. Certainly there's a lot that liberals and libertarians have in common (drug war, religious freedom, wars), but they have very, very different principles and premises motivating their policy positions.
      - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
        I blame that stupid political compass the libertarians are always trotting out. For example, suppose I want to leave government spending where it is, but take fifty billion dollars a year from Medicare and spend it on student loan forgiveness and basic research grants. Which quadrant does that put me in? We need to give up on the tired old categories and start over. We built parties around heuristics like "government spending bad" or "social programs good" instead of evaluating specific programs on their merits. Ideologically pure libertarians are really anarchists. I've encountered people who advocate private police forces and private roads. People who don't understand that there is no difference in the harm that can be caused by de facto and de jure governments when they go bad. But if you allow public roads and a public police force, why not public schools? Why not public universities, or public parks? Why not publicly financed scientific research? The answer to any of these questions is, at bottom, "because that program is better or worse than allowing private enterprise to handle it." But you have to answer that question on a case by case basis -- and it changes with demographics and technology and everything else. And of course, you have to throw in the nature of coalition politics. Publicly funded universities are an extremely valuable program for college-aged voters and those with college-aged children, but seen as a complete waste of money by childless retirees. So sure, you have to build a coalition, but the existing parties exist as they do only by historical happenstance. What could be interesting it to start a party with the following principles: First, for any given issue, evaluate what the majority of the population would want. Then, evaluate whether that position is manifestly unjust or based on assumptions contrary to the evidence. If not, adopt it as the party's position. Repeat for all issues. Take the platform that party puts out, it's pretty much guaranteed to win a majority of the votes by definition. Then the other party can try to pick off a group of minority positions to form an opposing coalition, but any success they have is liable to just change the majority's view on that particular issue -- which changes the first party's position on it going forward from the date of the next election. And if you want to change policy, get on your soap box and convince the majority, which will chance the party's position. It's kind of like direct democracy, but with a filter for extremely bad ideas.
- charonn0 14y ago
  Failure to adapt leads to extinction. Which, ironically, is a theory the GOP tends to spurn.
- jlarocco 14y ago
  I think you just described the Libertarian party...
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    Whatever you do, you cannot call it Libertarian though. The word has been tarnished by both crypto-anarchists (the disguised/hiding kind, not the strong crytography kind) who adopt the label to appear more mainstream and by mainstream pundits who paint a picture of Libertarians as anarchists. (Also Ron Paul not really being socially liberal but rather just being kind of "state's rights"-ish hasn't helped... but I think that is more of a particularly sharp edge-case and not a systemic issue. A social conservative wanting to cut back government isn't a Libertarian, it is just a Republican being what Republicans have always claimed to be, but rarely are.) The label is toxic now. Everybody knows that Libertarians exist, the reason today that they don't have the numbers is that nobody really wants to associate with the label.
- crusso 14y ago
  I hope the GOP fails entirely, so it can be replaced by a new party that advocates social liberalism and (true) fiscal conservatism. Romney got less votes than McCain. Romney was more fiscally conservative and more socially liberal. He wasn't as "cool" as Obama, though. Unfortunately, issues have very little to do with the outcome of national elections. It's mostly about party identity and other groupthink cue following like hipness. It's not very surprising that our news media continues to be less and less distinguishable from our entertainment industry.
  - usefulcat 14y ago
    He was also running against an incumbent.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      Of course McCain was running after 8 years of Bush. Even ignoring the Bushiness of Bush, running for a party that just had 2 terms is a disadvantage. I am not sure what to make of McCain getting more votes than Romney, but I think it is telling. Telling of what? Beats me.
  - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
    >Romney got less votes than McCain. Romney was more fiscally conservative and more socially liberal. Was he? McCain had always been kind of a moderate -- he only went crazy to secure the 2008 Republican nomination after the failure in 2000, and apparently once you go crazy it sticks. And Romney was the same way: He sure didn't look very socially liberal to moderates during the 2012 primaries. It seems like that's what doomed both of them, actually. To get the nomination they each had to move substantially to the right of their own previous positions, which convinced just enough of the base in order to secure the nomination while alienating the moderates. Then the general election comes around and neither the moderates nor the extremists like the candidate because he at one point or another expressed a number of positions they strongly disagree with. Romney also had a couple of issues McCain didn't: He was a notorious Wall St. guy running at the bottom of a recession notoriously caused by Wall St. guys, and he was running following the 2010 census which gave more electoral votes to typically Democratic population centers nationwide (which, unlike the Congressional elections, couldn't then be gerrymandered by Republican state governments for the presidency since states typically don't allocate electoral votes by district). The problem is that the same process is likely to play out again. Fox keeps giving airtime to the Huckabees and the Trumps to try to get out the base against the Democrats, but with those people going to the polls and voting on those issues, it makes it impossible for a moderate Republican to get nominated without taking positions that alienate moderate voters, and then they lose the general election. Am I the only one that remembers that Bush ran as a moderate in 2000 and won? It was only after 9/11 that he went cowboy, and then only won in 2004 by beating the terrorism drum that has, by this point, worn out and lost its effectiveness. I certainly don't mean to imply we need another Bush, but at some point the Republicans need to realize that pandering to crazies loses elections. (And in the meantime I'm happy to help them realize that by not voting for them, and I don't think I'm alone.)
wheaties 14y ago
Or favorable coverage by anyone other than Fox News.

btilly 14y ago

Silicon Valley, and the general public, are full of people who are upset with the Democrats on the issue of legal abuses by the copyright industry. The GOP had the opportunity to position themselves on the opposite side from the Democrats. And failed to do so. :-(

tptacek 14y ago
Did they really have any opportunity here? Silicon Valley also (reasonably!) requires support for gay marriage, believes in and fears anthropogenic global warming, is basically pro-choice, and has dovish foreign policy beliefs. Demographically, Silicon Valley is largely college educated and is more ethnically diverse than suburban America. I know hearing this upsets HN, and lots of smart people think I'm completely batshit when I say this, but copyright reform is a fringe issue. There are probably more people who vote for the gold standard, or to ban mosques.
- ryanstewart 14y ago
  Well I'd say this issue was an example of where the GOP could burnish their free market ideals on an issue that people outside of their normal demographic care about. Clearly the GOP is doing some soul searching and this one issue wasn't going to make a gigantic impact, but it could have been one piece of a bigger strategy. As they (potentially) move away from traditionally social conservative issues and start focusing more and more on personal liberty and the free market, this could have been a good contrast to Democrats as part of a broader picture.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    Plenty of free market people believe that people and companies have a right to control the products of their own labor or of labor that they financed. The GOP is no more likely to move away from being the party of social conservatism than the Democrats are to move away from being the party of public school teachers. (Fair warning: I'm a casual browser of libertarian policy positions, but I am most definitely not a libertarian. My libertarian friends would call me a liberal statist.)

cooldeal 14y ago

The Internet alliance or whatever it's called formed by Reddit etc. after the SOPA fiasco needs to show their support for this person right away or there would be absolutely no point to it. Putting black badges on sites for SOPA was good but this needs to be taken up by sites too. Perhaps someone(Google?) can hire him to further write more papers analyzing copyright?

iyulaev 14y ago

The memo was widely hailed by tech policy scholars and public interests advocates. And also the internet. At least one thing is certain - there is vehement opposition to any sort of copyright reform, and it is embedded deep into the political system. I don't think I've ever heard of a policy proposal being met with this kind of reaction. Really pushed some buttons.

joshuahedlund 14y ago

Wow, this is on top of the GOP silently kicking younger members out of budget committees earlier this week for not bowing enough to the party line[1]. The GOP has had opportunities lately to shed some of their hypocritical big-government stances; their growing younger libertarian-ish/anti-special-interests wing (Rand Paul, Justin Amash, etc) is in my view their best hope for long-term survival, but the establishment seems to be denying that as much as possible. [1] http://blog.heritage.org/2012/12/04/huelskamp-amash-say-house-leadership-punished-dissent/ http://blog.heritage.org/2012/12/04/huelskamp-amash-say-hous...

AmericanOP 14y ago
The 'younger members' you reference were kicked out since they voted against the Paul Ryan budget because it did not cut spending enough. They were further to the right than Paul Ryan, and Republican leadership is trying to build support for some kind of budget deal. http://www.politicususa.com/fireboehner-hashtag-trends-war-escalates-gop.html http://www.politicususa.com/fireboehner-hashtag-trends-war-e...
- joshuahedlund 14y ago
  > They were further to the right than Paul Ryan Not sure, but I think they're more open to military cuts, which is kinda 'further to the left.'[1] They think the leadership would rather raise taxes than cut a growing defense budget. You could say the leadership is more establishment-left (compromise by raising taxes) and the 'younger members' are more anti-establishment-left (compromising by cutting defense). From my bias I see it as more of an anti-establishment thing than a left-right thing; it's not that they weren't moderate enough, they weren't the right kind of moderate, which is why I think the GOP leadership is cutting off their only chance at courting the younger demographics. [1] https://twitter.com/repjustinamash/status/273070039597461504 https://twitter.com/repjustinamash/status/273070039597461504

rymith 14y ago

I'm okay with this. I'm not sure I want a party of bigots to lead the charge on copyright reform. It would put me in an awkward position. Firing the only intelligent person in the party seems to solidify this.

pavel_lishin 14y ago
On the other hand, it could have been a way for the GOP to segue from the "bigot party" into a group with reasonable beliefs. Parties change over time, and this could have been a good first step in the right direction.
- jbooth 14y ago
  They're stuck in a local maximum. They can't throw their white, middle-aged religious base (40% of the population or so) under the bus in order to pick up a few extra points from young people who, if they've been paying attention, won't trust GOP pols anyways.
  - pavel_lishin 14y ago
    They don't have to throw them under the bus all at once. A significant portion of the GOP's support base is going to be dying over the next few decades.
    - rymith 14y ago
      The next few years. The only thing whiter than the GOP is the color or the average GOP's hair. Buddump pa! I'll be here all night.

bjhoops1 14y ago

Here's the line that probably got him the axe: "Today's legal regime is seen by many as a form of corporate welfare" Drawing attention to the existence of "corporate welfare" does not go over well in the GOP. And I was so proud of them for making a sensible stand on this issue!

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

sdafdasdfasdf 14y ago

Link to memo: http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/rsc_policy_brief_--_three_myths_about_copyright_law_and_where_to_start_to_fix_it_--_november_16_2012.pdf http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/rsc_policy_brief_--...

tptacek 14y ago

Copyright hawk here: Content is a $100Bn industry. Technology is 5-6x bigger, but the tech companies trying to disrupt content are an insignificant fraction of that industry. Meanwhile, set aside whether you believe in the reforms proposed in the Khanna memo --- reducing statutory damages, increasing cost of enforcement, reducing copyright terms. Ask instead, "was this a politically effective policy memo?" Were its goals in the 113th congress realistic? Were its arguments persuasive? Something like 35% of all congresspeople are lawyers, and this memo starts out with a highly dubious argument about the meaning of the copyright clause. It seems to me (and I am prepared to hear smart people tell me how wrong I am about this) that a reasonable short-term goal would have been to reduce the term of copyright, ratcheting it back to where it was, say, before Sonny Bono. Instead, this "RSC" memo proposed beyond that a gift basket of what seem like mostly not-useful policy trinkets for Redditors: expanded fair use for DJ culture (really? spend political capital to modify regulations on a $100bn industry for... DJs?), lower statutory caps for damages (the MPAA and RIAA already sue for a tiny fraction of the likely liability for many infringers), and punishing false copyright claims (the claims studios take to court are overwhelmingly not false; penalizing bogus DMCA takedowns wouldn't move the dials at all). The real copyright reform is probably something like reduced term and compulsory licensing. What was the value to the RSC of trolling the Content industry for reforms that had no chance of happening, that wouldn't have actually kept people from being bankrupted by lawsuits, that wouldn't make it easier to launch tech companies, and that at the same time manage to almost uniformly enrage rightsholders? Was this memo really "shockingly sensible"? A lot of smart people say it was. But I wonder whether they're more shocked that any conversation could have happened at all, and not really looking closely at the content of the memo itself.

JagMicker 14y ago
Research - Congressional education backgrounds: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_111th_United_States_Congress#Education http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_111th_United_Sta... http://www.crisp360.com/hosted-infographic/where-did-congress-go-college-full http://www.crisp360.com/hosted-infographic/where-did-congres...
ry0ohki 14y ago
I agree, the terms are insane, and I hope they don't keep extending them. I'm pretty sure every single person who worked on the original Disney movie Snow White is dead now, lets get that into public domain, the point of copyright isn't to have an income stream for one's family forever.

debacle 14y ago

Does anyone actually have this memo? It'd be an interesting read.

kno 14y ago

The GOP seems more and more against things going the way of the "public Interest" in favor of the few connected, this makes it even harder to build a future with the more and more progressive majority.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

Hmm, if this is an A/B test by the Republicans I hope they get the right feedback from the responses.

neeee 14y ago

link to the memo on scribd http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/113637600 http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/113637600

aswanson 14y ago

This probably violates HN guidelines, but I'd like to suggest a modification re: keeping the original article titles if they contain names of political parties. Remove them. They invite political arguments.