Showing posts with label Democrats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Democrats. Show all posts

Monday, January 30, 2012

Moulitsas: Democrats ‘incredibly stupid’ for still backing SOPA

Eric W. Dolan Wednesday, January 18, 2012
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/18/moulitsas-democrats-incredibly-stupid-for-still-backing-sopa

Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas on Wednesday blasted the Democrats who continue to support the House’s Stop Online Piracy and the Senate’s Protect IP Act.

Although a number of Republican lawmakers dropped their support of the anti-piracy bills after the largest online protest in history on Wednesday, some prominent Democrats like DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Sen. Chuck Schumer still support the bills.

“You had a bipartisan group of people who supported it,” Moulitsas said on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. “Today, Republican after Republican has backed out and abandoned support for SOPA and PIPA — Democrats haven’t. They cling to this fiction that this can be fixed, and not only is this incredibly stupid, its incredible tone deaf.”

“You’re basically seeing a generation of web savvy, web-immersed people who are obsessed with protecting what they see as their very birthright. They’re watching Republicans come out and see the light on this issue while Democrats continue to cling to the Hollywood studios.”

Senator Leahy Hands Republicans A Gift

Senator Leahy Hands Republicans A Gift By Giving Them Credit For Delaying Vote On PIPA/SOPA

Mike Masnick
Tue, Jan 24th 2012
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120124/04252717523/senator-leahy-hands-republicans-gift-giving-them-credit-delaying-vote-pipasopa.shtml

from the do-these-people-have-no-clue? dept

We've noted how intellectual property issues are historically non-partisan. Sometimes, that's good, because it means that debates on the issues don't fall into typical brain dead partisan arguments. Sometimes, it's bad, in that it basically means both Republicans and Democrats are generally really bad on IP issues... happy to give industries greater and greater monopoly rights for no good reason. However, we noted an interesting thing happening on the way to the collapse of PIPA and SOPA: the Republicans were first to come together as a party and decide to speak out against these bills, recognizing the groundswell of public interest. That resulted in Republican leadership coming out against the bills, and Republican Presidential candidates all rejecting the approach in the bill. The Democrats, who have traditionally been considered more "internet friendly," simply couldn't bring themselves to go against Hollywood and unions -- two regular allies.

However, as many more net savvy Democrats have explained, this appears to be a major miscalculation on the part of Democratic party leadership -- potentially losing an entire younger generation of voters to the Republicans. Already, mutliple strategists have been suggesting that the Republican Party use this as a chance to cozy up with Silicon Valley, despite its typically "blue" leanings (though, generally with a strong libertarian bent). It certainly appears that the Republicans are ready to do just that. House majority leader, Eric Cantor recently tweeted about meeting with Sergey Brin.

The Democratic leadership, however, still doesn't seem to recognize the importance of the tech community and the wider internet. Rather than learning anything from what happened last week, PIPA sponsor Senator Leahy is actually trying to blame the Republicans for killing PIPA. It's (yet again) an amazingly tone deaf response. It's as if he's pushing the internet and the tech community right into the Republicans' arms. Perhaps he's making a bet that those constituencies don't matter as much as Hollywood... but that seems like a pretty risky bet to make.