[qalmakka]

I think that until the USA gets rid of legal lobbying from interest groups (aka, legalized corruption), this kinds of things will keep happening. Having to pull content down without any order from a judge is nonsense. These companies would be more careful if they had to go through some legal process instead of just ordering their lawyers to send empty threads to people that can't financially afford the economic burden of a long and expensive litigation.

[matheusmoreira]

People should have the right to legal representation no matter the circumstances. Judges also need to be biased towards the less powerful party for obvious reasons. Some huge corporation wasting an individual's time with clearly bogus lawsuits should be heavily punished.

I completely agree with you on lobbying.

[bdowling]

> Having to pull content down without any order from a judge is nonsense.

An ISP is not required to pull content down when they receive a DMCA takedown notice. If the ISP takes the content down, however, they receive immunity from liability for any alleged copyright infringement. The ISP usually doesn't have the time or money to investigate whether the takedown notice is legitimate or not, so their first reaction is to take the content down.

Cases like this, where the person sending the takedown notice doesn't seem to understand that the ISP isn't hosting any infringing content, are pretty rare. If the ISP in this case reinstated the content, then the copyright owner would do more investigation before actually filing a lawsuit. If that happened, they would find that there isn't any actual infringement, so they wouldn't file a lawsuit.

[merpnderp]

Keeping organized advocacy from financially supporting representatives they approve us would mean what? Only the rich can be elected? Only the already popular can run? Only those the media and our tech overlords approve of can run? Would we even know of AOC if your rules were passed?

I absolutely agree with your point that the laws need to be passed so that corporations can't threaten abusive litigation over this kind of crap. But muzzling organized advocacy isn't the answer.

[plussed_reader]

How do you propose a group of 50,000 people interface with their elected congress critters? Individual email? A chosen spokesperson to 'lobby' their interest?

If an individual company chooses one employee(say someone with a legal background) to interact with an elected official is that person a lobbyist or an employee?

I'm not sure what you're suggesting.

[nitrogen]

Representatives were supposed to scale with the population so that one rep could reasonably represent all of the people in their district.

There are tons of ways to restructure the US legislative system that would ameliorate the current problems -- uncap the number of reps, allow individuals to override a fractional vote of their rep, split representation into technocratic branches and let everyone vote for a different rep on each domain, let people vote for committee membership, switch to approval voting or proportional representation, introduce term limits for reps and their staff, etc.

[myko]

This totally makes sense. The US House is about 1000 (or more) members short.

[syshum]

The Wyoming Rule (i.e no District should be larger than the the least populous State AKA Wyoming) would put the US House at about 850-860 Representatives

I think this would be the best approach

[Accujack]

>How do you propose a group of 50,000 people interface with their elected congress critters?

Setting aside the reasons this situation exists and the problems it's creating, I believe the usual methods are mail, e-mail, and phone calls.

Or if that doesn't work, then torches and pitchforks.

Everyone who knew about the DMCA before it went into effect hated it, but the monied interests pushed it through. Corruption in action.

[mdpopescu]

> Or if that doesn't work, then torches and pitchforks.

It's America. I think the Matrix quote "guns; lots of guns" is more appropriate :)

[pmiller2]

Call me old fashioned, but I like guillotines, myself.

[qalmakka]

The main issue is that when the industry lobbies the politicians, in the USA, it tends to mean that they are writing them big fat checks as "political donations". This is corruption plain and simple, and a huge stain on the integrity of American politics. This kind of crap also does pass elsewhere, but at least when the industry lobbies politicians in other places it tends not to be so open and blatant.