Seattle Cops Crowdsourcing Legal Battle Against DOJ-Imposed Excessive Force Remedies

from the cops-ask-public-to-front-money-in-return-for-gunshot-wounds-later dept

Reaping what you sow doesn't seem to be an operative metaphor in the law enforcement world. Years of excessive force and biased policing by the Seattle PD resulted in a Dept. of Justice investigation. The final outcome was a series of reforms being ordered to address these issues [pdf]. These reforms -- including a new use of force policy -- went into effect at the beginning of 2014. And probably not a minute too late. 2013 saw the Seattle police officers performing 20% of the city's homicides (6 out of 29 total).

But some officers on the force seem to prefer excessive force and discriminatory policing. The Oregonian reports that a group of Seattle police officers has set up a crowdfunding campaign to finance its legal battle against these reforms, which they say "violate" their "rights." (via Techdirt reader hoare)

A Seattle police officer suing to block new use-of-force policies has set up an Internet fundraising page to help pay for the legal fight, calling the federally mandated reforms "the greatest threat to the city's public safety in our time."

Robert Mahoney, the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit brought by 113 officers, created the crowdfunding page Saturday on the website GoFundMe.

The manifesto delivered there is impressive in its assertion of nonexistent rights and misrepresentation of the dangers Seattle cops face.

We would prefer to just be doing our jobs rather than having to also wage a legal battle for our rights. However, as well as being public servants, we are also fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors. We have the right and the duty to go home at the end of each watch. Requiring us to take unnecessary risks that will inevitably prevent this is not only unreasonable, it is immoral.

No one has the "right" to make it through work safely. There are plenty of safeguards in place in hopes of assuring this happens, but it's a stretch to say that anyone has the "right" (guaranteed by what?) to not die while on the clock. To be sure, wrongful death suits can arise out of workplace-related deaths, but this is a civil remedy that deals mainly with employer negligence, not the normal, known hazards of the work environment. If you don't want to face these known risks, then your best bet is to find alernate employment.

The crowdfunding page tries to turn a statement by the Supreme Court dealing with self-defense into a "right" to live through a shift.

The Supreme Court has long acknowledged that self-defense is a natural individual right possessed by every citizen, regardless of profession, i.e. "the rules which determine what is self-defense are of universal application, and are not affected by the character [of a person's] employment."

Even if self-defense is a right, staying alive until the end of the shift is not. The government has never portrayed police work -- or any other dangerous work -- as subject to a right to remain alive. What these officers are doing here is turning self-defense into something much more proactive than it really is. It's a defensive method ties to justified force, not a blank check for excessive/deadly force. These cops seem to believe in preemptive self-defense, which helps explain why the Seattle PD was responsible for 20% of homicides last year.

This fact points to uglier truth: do these Seattle cops believe only the police have a "right" to make it home safely? Is that only guaranteed for some people? Because six people didn't "make it home safely" in 2013 as a direct result of police force. And yet, all we're seeing here is an argument that because police work is inherently dangerous, there should be nothing standing between a police officer and a safe return home -- even if it means "violating" other people's "right" to self-defense/make it home alive. This statement pushes for everyone to make the assumption that at all times, it is civilians who are the aggressors. Fighting back -- even in self-defense -- isn't really an option for civilians. That behavior tends to make members of the public more bruised/bleeding/dead.

Further "justification" for the removal of DOJ-ordered remedies takes the form of phrases delivered without citing any evidence whatsoever.

Being a cop has never been more complicated, unpredictable, and dangerous. We work in a city, like many American cities, faced with increasing criminal violence…

Being a cop is actually safer than it's been in over 50 years. Police have access to a greater variety of offensive and defensive options than they've ever had. The assertion that Seattle is "facing increasing criminal violence" is just plain wrong. Crime rates nationally have been in a steady decline since the late 1980s. Seattle is no exception. Its crime rate is now half of what it was in 1985.

The statement leans heavily on depicting self-defense as a Constitutionally-guaranteed right to deploy whatever amount of force the officer deems necessary when faced with a potentially dangerous situation. The Constitution does not guarantee an "any means necessary" approach to threats -- not for police officers and not for members of the public.

Officers will find themselves in more dangerous situations than most members of the public, but they also have Kevlar vests, openly-carried weapons, Tasers, nightsticks, etc. on hand at all times. What these officers want to do is roll things back to the days when they could go hard on certain ethnicities and dole out excessive force as they saw fit. And now they want the public to help fund a fight for worse policing -- the same public that's on the hook for every settlement handed out to excessive force victims, as well as paying for any legal action the city of Seattle takes in response. That's beyond tone-deaf. That's audaciousness bordering on sociopathy.

Filed Under: crowdfunding, doj, excessive force, police, police brutality, seattle

Pro Music Artists/Reps Force Shutdown Of Awesome Fan-Music Contest For Video Game

from the way-to-go,-guys dept

I've never hidden my perhaps strange fascination with video game music. Everything from soundtracks to fan-made remixes, it's something that I love. But, for some reason, video game music for many people isn't so much a lark as a point of major industry contention. Recently we discussed how one composer's union turned into his enemy when he was simply working on a video game. The latest example, however, details how apparently professional musicians and/or their representatives got a game developer to shut down a fan-music contest out of what seems to be pure spite.

Some background is in order. Several years ago, developer Red Thread Games produced two insanely good point-and-click adventure games, The Longest Journey and Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. For the third installment, the team decided to turn to Kickstarter for funding, asking for $850k to produce the game and instead getting over one and a half million dollars in funding from fans. It's everything you want out of a Kickstarter story, with a great team organizing their rabid fan-base to both make money and produce another awesome game. And, while Red Thread Games already had a music composer on staff to create the larger soundtrack composition, the team wanted to give a nod to their dedicated fans and set up a contest by which fans could compose background/ambient music for small sections of the game, with the winners of the contest having their compositions included in the eventual release.

And that's when everything went to hell.

Supposedly professionals within the music arena felt as if the contest was designed to exploit fans and get a hold of royalty-free music for the game, a similar argument that originally caused The Fine Young Capitalists campaign to get shutdown.An update on the official Kickstarter page for Dreamfall: Chapters The Longest Journey details that the contest had been cancelled due to the conflict surrounding the event. As noted on the update, the decision is final and the contest won't be returning.

“We do understand the different points of view and the reasons behind some of the backlash, even though we also feel our intentions were perhaps misrepresented and misunderstood. This was not an attempt on our part to commission free music for the game — we already have a fantastic score, a professional composer and some diegetic music — but rather a response to the community asking for a chance to get their music into the game. We felt this competition could benefit both the game and our fans.”

And so concludes the attempt by Red Thread Games to connect with their fans in possibly the most meaningful way: inclusion within the project. A fan contest for small amounts of music was done in by industry musicians with no skin in the game. The backlash in the comments on the project, as well as on Twitter and other social media, made the developers out to be greedy robber barons looking to avoid paying a professional musician, which is an interesting theory considering the game already has a professional composer on staff. This was all about letting the fans have some fun, but the industry shouted it down until the project was shut down.

The sad reality here is that someone who could have been thoroughly talented, and just needed an opportunity to get their music out there, had a potential avenue to a career in music cut short. This isn't to say that anyone who submitted music to the contest could have become the next Jesper Kyd or Marty O'Donnell, but killing these kind of opportunities to bridge the connection between developers and gamers only hurts game culture. Could you imagine if the same thing extended to the games arena and game jam contests came under the same fire? It's like killing off the potentiality of future artists before they even have a chance to shine.

That last bit is of extreme importance, because it's the correct rebuttal to anyone involved in blasting this contest who also says they were doing so to protect the music industry. No, you weren't. You were just being dicks. As a result, a great game is a little less fun and none of you are any more hired for the project today than you were yesterday. Bang up job all around.

Filed Under: context, creativity, crowdfunding, culture, dreamfall, fans, longest journey, music, musicians, video games

Awesome Stuff: Solar Chargers

from the charge-me-up... dept

For this week's awesome stuff of interesting crowdfunding projects, we take a quick dive into solar powered chargers. There are a ton of solar power projects on Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms out there -- some more ridiculous than others. Here are four more interesting ones that really just focus on charging up your personal devices.

• Solarpod Pyxis The Solarpod Pyxis is a decent looking 5,000 mAh battery that charges in the sun. They claim the entire battery charges in 4.5 hours, only slightly slower than charging it directly via USB (also an option if you want it). The battery can then be used to charge your phones and tablets and such. They also tossed in 32GB of memory (and an SD card slot) which is a nice add on.
• Gidgi Okay, how about the Gidgi, which is really a phone case/wallet that also happens to include some solar cells as well. As they note, this way the phone charges any time it's out of your pocket in the light (which I guess assumes you'll be leaving your phone out somewhere to charge it during the day). Looks a little bulky to me, but might be right for some folks.
• Solar Socket This is for installing in your home. The Solar Socket is a small solar panel and battery that you install on your home (battery size varies based on which model you get), and then you put in a wall socket that has some USB ports that allow you to charge directly off the solar powered battery. Consider it a simpler way of using solar energy without converting your entire house.
• The Sun Strap And, finally, we've got the Sun Strap. The problem with some of those other solutions is that you have to be willing to leave the devices out in the sun somewhere for long enough that the charging is actually useful. But how many people sit in direct sunlight for that long? The Sun Strap focuses on getting a solar charge while you're out walking around by putting the solar cells on a strap that goes on your backpack straps. As they note, there are other solar backpacks out there, but putting the panels on the strap just seems... nicer (and a lot less expensive).

That's it for this week. Go get some sun.

Filed Under: awesome stuff, crowdfunding, innovation, solar

Awesome Stuff: Flying Cars, Hover Bikes And Ultrasonic Levitation

from the float-away,-float-away... dept

For this week's awesome stuff post about interesting crowdfunding projects, we've got three campaigns that have to do with... leaving the ground behind in some form or another. I'm not sure any of them are practical, but let's not let reality get in the way of fun ideas.

• The OverDrive Flying Car Where's my flying car? That line has been repeated for decades, after the futuristic promises of the 1950s never really came to be. Every so often someone tries it, though, and the latest is The OverDrive -- a sports car that turns into a flying car. Well, in theory. At this point, it doesn't seem to be much beyond a plan and a remote controlled-scale model. It's kind of a moonshot idea and you'd have to believe in the guy behind it to bet on it -- especially since you're not actually buying much here, just supporting his vision. So far, it doesn't look like he's going to get anywhere near the $250,000 he's seeking, but dreamer's gotta dream.
• Hoverbike Okay, moving slightly down the "ambitiousness" scale, how about a Hoverbike that is kind of like a giant quadcopter drone... but that a person can (theoretically) ride. That's sort of the idea, though what these guys are really selling is the 1/3-scale model drone. In other words, it's really just a drone that they're selling, with the idea that one day they'd like to make a hoverbike version of it.
• Ultrasonic Levitation Moving way, way, way, way down the ambitiousness scale to something that's actually more plausible, there's the ultrasonic levitation device that will allow you to make tiny, little things float in the air. Kinda neat in a science-experimenty way. The guy behind it hopes that it will inspire people to build real hoverboards, but I wouldn't bet on it.

That's it for this week. Feel free to go outside without too much worry about flying cars and hoverbikes zooming around just yet...

Filed Under: awesome stuff, crowdfunding, drones, flying cars, hover bikes, ultrasonic levitation

Another Area Where There's Tremendous Innovation Without Patents: Wallets On Kickstarter

from the pay-attention dept

Among friends who pay attention to my Kickstarter-backing habits, it's become a bit of a joke that I seem to be obsessed with wallets. And it's somewhat true. By my count, I've backed 11 wallet projects on Kickstarter. I will also admit that there was a period of time (basically all of 2013) where I would actually make sure to check Kickstarter for new wallets once a day, though that's since stopped. It definitely did border on obsessiveness. Another friend of mine has ordered about the same amount (I think at last count he was at 13 such projects). We've joked that we should set up the "museum of Kickstarter wallets" between the two of us. I still can't fully explain what made me so fascinated with finding a better wallet, but I think it was a combination of factors. After years of using a Costanza wallet, I saw a friend's minimalist wallet, and it just made sense to me. The problem, though, is that for all the neatness and organization of a minimalist wallet, you're definitely giving up some features to shrink down the wallet. And thus began the perpetual hunt for the more perfect minimalist wallet.

Kickstarter has now posted an article that feels like it was written with me in mind specifically, discussing why there are so many wallets on Kickstarter, since others have noticed that Kickstarter is basically the place to go for everything in wallet innovation, among other things. There are a few reasons for this that the article presents, including the fact that wallets are, generally speaking, a relatively simple product to make. Thus, for many creative folks, it's a good "test" project, to see if they can design, sell and manufacture something straightforward. But, there's another reason described that I think is much more interesting, and it explains in part why I started to become infatuated with seemingly minor differences between the various wallet projects. It's that there are so many different variations on how to make a wallet, and it's really tempting to find that "perfect" variation:

Answering this question is where we step into the realm of true maker geekdom. Wallets are ultimately all about the small details — those tiny pebble-in-your-shoe subtleties that suit one person’s needs and ruin the next person’s day. “It’s a product that has to do a lot of different things at the same time,” says Dimatos, “and you can’t push one part of it without pulling on the others. Make your wallet too slim, and congratulations, it now fits nothing.”

Scan through the history of wallet-project designs, and you’ll see the same broad strokes repeated. Zoom in on the details, though, and what you see isn’t simple repetition — it’s more like a strange form of evolution and natural selection. There are certain basic wallet forms: the slim leather billfold, the elastic sleeve, the two rigid plates. But each iteration of them tweaks one element, or optimizes another, to find its own niche, like bird species evolving to pick berries from different parts of the same tree.

Obstructures’ design for the Aluminum Plate Wallet, for instance, owes a bit to one of Kickstarter’s earliest slim-wallet hits. The picture on the left above is the Humn: two carbon-fiber plates, held together by a flexible band. One member of the Obstructures team had tried out the Humn, and noticed an issue: when he spread the two plates apart, tension on the band stayed high. If his fingers slipped, the plates could snap back together on them. So the Aluminum Plate Wallet (in the center) was designed to release the tension when the wallet was opened. Obstructures band the plates together with two O-rings; to open the wallet, you roll one ring out of its notch and down toward the other. Tension adjusts accordingly. (There’s a manufacturing perk, too: O-rings are common, easy to source, and don’t need to be cut to measure.)

This month, you could find the same notch-and-ring system in the Bracket Wallet (on the right). But the Bracket design tweaks something else: where the Aluminum Plate has a solid, substantial, elegant look and feel, the Bracket runs back toward the same breezy minimalism as the Humn, with bright, slim carbon-fiber plates.

Similar things happen to every design. The elastic sleeve keeps mutating, evolving niche features to suit different backers. “They’re all very different,” says Sutter. “Things like the Crabby versus the Slim versus TGT — they’re all using similar principles, but I don’t find them redundant.” It’s more like one big process of crowd-based personalization; wait long enough, and there’s a good chance someone will tweak the wallet in a way that suits you. “Everybody’s got their own way of innovating within that archetype,” says Hall. “The metal wallets aren’t terribly different, but they appeal to different sensibilities. Some people like more tools integrated. Some people prefer making it as compact as possible. I think there’s still a lot of room to play with it.”

That describes my view of it as an outsider perfectly. The deeper I dove into the new wallet pool, the more quickly I could look at different projects, and the little tweaks they had made, to judge whether they were an improvement on something I'd already seen, and worth experimenting with (one other factor: if you focus on cheap wallets, it doesn't get too expensive, and while some wallets are pricey, many are quite inexpensive).

But what also struck me about the quoted section above is that it so directly repeats one of the key points we've made for years about the general process of innovation. As we've noted, innovation is an ongoing process of experimentation, as different people try different things and figure out what works. If you've spent much time in truly innovative environments, you'd know that this is a key part of the innovation process. For years, we've talked about the difference between ideas and execution, and that becomes quite clear in cases like this. Some of the wallets may seem like good ideas, but the execution is terrible. A few of the wallets I've received have been close to unusable (which also helped convince me to back off my wallet obsession). But it's also why competition is such a huge part of the innovative process.

What you see in the wallet/Kickstarter space is a really interesting innovation petri dish -- happening because of lots of easy experimentation and tons of competition, as different folks try to innovate around a few basic concepts to make a more perfect product. The Kickstarter article describes it as evolution, but it comes down to Elon Musk's idea of the velocity of innovation.

The larger point, however, is that all of this innovation and competition and evolution is happening because so many different folks are trying to make that perfect wallet for a group of customers. That is, what's driving people is the ability to make a better product and better serve a market. Note that nowhere is there any discussion on "intellectual property" or locking up an idea. If someone patented the use of o-rings to bind together two plates, or some of the other common structures, it would actually slow down the innovation as there would be fewer opportunities for others to innovate and improve on one another's ideas.

This is why it gets so frustrating to see people insist that somehow you need intellectual property protections to create innovative markets. We see all the time that there's often much greater innovation in markets where there's much greater competition and where the focus is on making the best thing for the customer. As a result, we see a much more rapid pace of innovation in such markets.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, my personal favorite Kickstarter wallet projects are (in order) the FITT, the Ainste and the TGT. Those three have come the closest to what I like, but I've checked out plenty of variations to see if anything improves on those designs. And, of course, none of those may meet your personal needs, but that's why this competitive market is so useful. There are probably other projects that are more interesting to you.

Filed Under: competition, crowdfunding, innovation, patents, wallets
Companies: kickstarter

Thank You For Supporting Our Net Neutrality Reporting

from the you-are-amazing dept

Just a couple hours left to
support our net neutrality coverage »

Hey everyone, I just wanted to post a massive thank you to each and every one of you who helped us reach our goal in our crowdfunding campaign for our net neutrality reporting. Having spoken to people who have run crowdfunding campaigns in the past, they talk about how nerve-wracking it is, and that's absolutely true. Something you don't quite understand until you actually go and do it. We had no idea if people would be willing or able to contribute, but so many of you did -- and many others who couldn't afford to still helped out by sharing and spreading the word. That's amazing to me. If you haven't read former Congressional staffer Jen Hoelzer's explanation for how we can make a difference, please do so, because it really explains everything.

There are just a couple hours left in the campaign, and wherever we end up, this was an amazing and enlightening experience that has left me awed by the passion and support that many of you have shown over this issue and over the work that we do. Here at Techdirt, this process has really just begun. The net neutrality fight is heating up very rapidly, and we need to take the success of this campaign and turn it into something. Thank you for believing in us.

Just a couple hours left to
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Filed Under: crowdfunding, net neutrality, techdirt

Yes, The Guys Using Legal Loopholes To Screw Over An AirBnB Host Likely Also Scammed Kickstarter Backers

from the this-happens dept

Recently, Russ Roberts had YCombinator's Sam Altman on his absolutely wonderful podcast Econtalk, and the discussion is fantastic and worth listening to (which is true of most Econtalk episodes). Among many interesting and thought-provoking points that Altman made about innovations and new startups like AirBnB and Uber was that with those kinds of new solutions there were always the growing pains -- the stories of crazy drivers or the AirBnB guests throwing crazy house parties. Those stories generate a lot of attention, and they tend to highlight issues where service can be improved, but they do little to slow down the momentum of those startups (in some cases, the publicity actually helps). The simple fact is that there are some people who will always abuse the system, but that alone doesn't deny the amazing opportunities created by some of these services.

But still, with the stories of scams and loopholes, there are always going to be some people who actively seek to take advantage of them. That's just something that happens. These are the same people who take advantage of loopholes in traditional ways as well. I knew a guy in college who bought a really expensive TV, but always returned it right before the 6-month money-back guarantee was up -- only to buy another TV to do the same thing over and over again. Same guy would also figure out ways to drop certain classes strategically to get better grades. He basically spent his life looking for loopholes. Such people exist, and apparently two Russian brothers who are good at that sort of thing are getting some attention for trying to effectively build some scams off of two popular online platforms these days: AirBnB and Kickstarter.

The AirBnB side of the story got attention first. Apparently, one of the brothers, used AirBnB to "rent" a condo in Palm Springs for 44 days, paying the first month in advance. However, he then stopped payments, and made use of a California renters/squatters law that says if you reside in a place for more than 30 days you're a "tenant" and if the owner wants to get rid of you they have to go through (very complicated) evictions. It seems clear that this was the plan all along.

A few days later, however, it came out that the brothers staying at the condo were Maxksym and Denys Pashanin, who also had a history of running a big Kickstarter project that raised $40,000, but hasn't delivered. They've also set up a second Kickstarter campaign, but (not surprisingly) it seems to be having trouble finding backers.

Making the situation even more bizarre is that Maksym appears to have logged into the Kickstarter account for the first game to comment on the story by joking about the situation: In the end, though, some are trying to make a big deal out of what this means for "the sharing economy" or for these kinds of new platforms that are all the rage online these days. And the answer is: absolutely nothing. It may provide some details on how these companies can do better fraud prevention in the future, but the simple fact is that there are always people who are going to look to pull scams. That was true a thousand years ago and it was true a hundred years ago and it was true ten years ago. It's still true today. In fact, the difference might be that these guys, in pulling these scams, are getting plenty of attention for it. Their latest Kickstarter campaign is a dud, and it seems likely that they'll now have this reputation stuck to them going forward.

Of course, the other possibility is to use some of these new platforms to get them back as well. Forbes reporter Kash Hill has already suggested (jokingly, we're sure) perhaps using TaskRabbit to beat these guys up...

Filed Under: crowdfunding, denys pashanin, eviction, maxksym pashanin, sharing economy, tentant laws
Companies: airbnb, kickstarter

24 Hours Left To Support Our Crowdfunding Campaign On Net Neutrality: Now With Stretch Goals

from the almost-at-the-finish-line dept

Home stretch: Less than 24 hours left
to support our net neutrality coverage »

In the last 24 hours or so, you guys came through in an amazing way to shoot us past our target goal in our crowdfunding campaign to support our net neutrality reporting. Following yesterday's amazing post from former Congressional staffer Jen Hoelzer about how much reporting like Techdirt's can make a difference in DC, there was a flood of support, which was great. There's still another 24 hours or so to go in the initial campaign and we've decided to add some stretch goals, because all the crowdfunding kids are doing it (and we can't resist the peer pressure). The support has continued to flow in, but the more support we can get in these last 24 hours, the more we can do, and the more impact we can hopefully have in making sure that the public's voice is heard in DC and that the future of the internet isn't just decided by "DC insiders."

Home stretch: Less than 24 hours left
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Filed Under: crowdfunding, net neutrality, stretch goals
Companies: floor64, techdirt

If You Want To Know How Supporting Techdirt Can Help Shift The Debate In Washington DC, Read This

from the and-then-donate dept

The following is from Jen Hoelzer, who for years worked as Senator Ron Wyden's Communications Director and Deputy Chief of Staff. During the SOPA/PIPA fight, she was perhaps the key person in Congress getting the press (and others in Congress) to understand the importance of SOPA and PIPA and what it meant for the internet. This morning, completely out of the blue, she sent this over. I think it does an amazing job highlighting just how important independent coverage of important tech policy issues, like what we provide, can be on these debates. Plenty of cynical people said that the SOPA/PIPA fight couldn't be won. Those same people are saying that the net neutrality battle is already lost. Good, independent reporting on these issues does make a difference, which is why we're asking you to support us in our net neutrality coverage.

Click here to support our crowdfunding campaign »

Hi. My name is Jen... and I was once a Congressional staffer who knew so little about Internet policy that I had no idea how little I knew about Internet policy. (I think this is where you're supposed to supportively say, "Hi, Jen," and reassure me that this is a safe space for me to continue my embarrassing confession. Because it gets worse.)

In late 2010, when my former boss -- U.S. Senator Ron Wyden -- announced that he was putting a hold on the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) – the predecessor to PIPA and later, SOPA -- I not only didn't know how the DNS system worked, I'm not sure I knew what infringement meant. (I'm not proud of these things, but they're true.)

If my boss hadn't involved himself in this issue, odds are I would never have heard of it and, heck, if by some chance I had learned that the Judiciary Committee had unanimously passed legislation giving law enforcement (what their press release called) "important tools" to go after illegal activity, I probably wouldn't have given the issue any thought beyond thinking it was nice that Democrats and Republicans remembered how to work together.

Worse yet, when my chief of staff stopped by my office to let me know that the Senator would be placing a hold on the legislation, I didn't drop what I was doing to alert reporters or ask one of my deputies to pound out a press release. I'm not sure I even looked up from my computer.

Honestly, it didn't occur to me that anyone would consider what my boss did that afternoon news, until I got a Google News Alert that a blog called, Techdirt, had written about it.

Now, in my defense, the above does not mean that I was lazy or willfully ignorant. From the outside, I realize Congress doesn't appear to do anything, but there are so many bills and issues swirling around Capitol Hill at any one time that it's a challenge just to stay on top of the sliver of them that pertains to your job. On an average day, Senator Wyden could go from a breakfast forum on health reform, to a committee hearing on tax reform, to introducing legislation on renewable energy, to questioning the forest service on resources for firefighting, before giving a floor speech on NSA surveillance, and that would just be before noon. So, the odds of my being on top of something that happened in a Committee my boss wasn't assigned to -- like the Judiciary Committee -- were slim.

Furthermore, my deputies and I -- as Wyden's communications director -- could barely keep up with all of the questions and requests we got from reporters. We didn't have the time or resources to tweet about everything he did, let alone proactively promote all of his work. I mean, just writing and distributing a press release can take a few hours, coming up with a messaging strategy, educating reporters, planning events and writing the various one-pagers, FAQs, op-eds and speeches needed to support a successful advocacy campaign can take days, weeks, even months and that's if nothing else is going on (which is rarely the case).

The day Senator Wyden put a hold on COICA, was the same day he introduced legislation to amend the Affordable Care Act with Senator Scott Brown. I was getting inundated with questions from reporters and bloggers wanting to understand "why in the hell he'd do such a thing," plus the Democratic caucus wanted us to put out and promote a statement pushing for the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, which had my deputy tied up, in addition to the various other things that tended to make the end of session a sprint.

I didn't jump at the opportunity to publicize my boss's hold announcement, because I didn't know enough about the issue to judge its news value, let alone explain it to reporters or write a quick press release, and I didn't have the time to learn enough about it to do any of those things before the end of the day. So, I told my chief of staff "great" and went back to talking to reporters about health policy.

Again, I'm not proud of the above story, but I was moved to share it, when I read that Techdirt's coverage of the COICA/PIPA/SOPA debate ultimately cost them more than 50% of their advertising revenue and has since forced them to operate at a loss.

I don't want to imagine a tech debate without Techdirt in it.

I can't even begin to imagine how the COICA/PIPA/SOPA debate would have gone without Mike Masnick and Techdirt's coverage.

But I can imagine where I -- personally -- would have been without Techdirt's coverage. All I have to do is close my eyes and remember November 18, 2010. Now, as much as I'd like to tell you that Mike's November post on Ron Wyden's COICA hold changed everything for me, it didn't. One post couldn't make me an expert on Internet issues any more than a single story could have won the debate. But I can say the more I learned about the issues surrounding COICA and later PIPA and SOPA – and the more confident I grew in my knowledge and ability to explain those issues -- the more involved I got, the more press releases, speeches, FAQ's and blogs I wrote in support of Ron's work, the more reporters I talked to, coverage I influenced, and interviews I secured for the senator.

I can also say, I wouldn't have been able to do any of those things (at least not well) without Mike Masnick and the rest of the guys at Techdirt, because they're the guys who taught me tech policy.

That's not to say, I didn't work with really smart people who taught me a lot, I did and they did; but with Techdirt, I never had to ask a stupid question or admit what I didn't know. (I just kept reading.) Techdirt's posts were consistently straightforward, easy to understand and timely. Sure, another site might put together one or two good posts or a definitive explainer, but reading Techdirt every day was like taking a college course on the issues with every new post helping me understand a new aspect of what I'd learned previously. I often found some of the site's shorter posts and illustrative examples the most helpful, because they were the examples I ultimately used to explain the issues to others. For example, I've yet to find a better way to get someone to see the potential harm bills like SOPA and PIPA can do to free speech than pointing out that Universal once tried to blacklist 50 Cent's personal website, a fact I learned from a 6/21/11 Techdirt post, entitled "Did Universal Music Declare 50 Cent's Own Website A Pirate Site?" (Seriously, that story alone helped me convince at least a dozen – non-tech – reporters to write about the issue, not to mention all of the Hill staffers I shared it with.)

Now, I understand that some of you may be tempted to write my experience off as unique (or flame me for asking you to sympathize with Congressional staffers), but I guarantee not having enough hours in the day was not an affliction unique to my experience. I'd also argue that good lobbyists derive less power from campaign contributions than they do from helping tired, overworked, Congressional staffers "understand" complex issues.

Lobbyists are experts at framing their client's positions in ways that sound like non-controversial no-brainers. They're so good at it, that most of them have even been convinced by their own arguments. A seasoned staffer who understands the issue at play will see through the lobbyist's ploy (and realize the offers of assistance aren't really "help"), but there aren't very many seasoned staffers who work on Internet and tech policy. To create those staffers and make the lobbyist's job harder, means helping those overworked staffers learn these issues, with short, easily digestible information that makes the problems with the lobbyists' sales pitch easy to discern. And, speaking from experience, no one is better at that than Techdirt.

Now, one of the sad realities of our political system is the fact that helping for-profit entities maintain the advantages that made them profitable pays a lot more than advocating for the public interest, which – if you're lucky – might yield you a pat on the back. But just because something isn't done for the money, doesn't mean those who do it don't have to earn a living. Saving the Internet shouldn't force Mike's staff to take pay cuts or his kids to go hungry.

If you care about a free and open Internet, you want Techdirt to be at full strength in the Net Neutrality debate. You want them to be educating more lawmakers and their staffers (like my former self) to understand these issues and be confident enough in their knowledge to take a stand against the cable companies and their lobbyists.

I'm donating to Techdirt's campaign because I know where I would have been without their work and I don't want a tech debate to take place without them. I hope you will do the same. It's also a great way to say thanks.

Click here to support Techdirt's crowdfunding campaign »

Filed Under: coica, crowdfunding, independent reporting, internet policy, net neutrality, pipa, ron wyden, sopa

As Deadline Approaches, Imgur Pledges Matching Funds To Support Techdirt's Net Neutrality Campaign

from the helping-out dept

Final days to support our crowdfunding campaign »

Last week we gave a special thanks to Twitch and Namecheap for providing matching funds for our big crowdfunding campaign, and today we want to welcome (and thank!) the greatest photo site on the internet, Imgur, for joining the campaign as well. As the company's CEO, Alan Schaaf said:

Imgur would not have been possible without the tidal wave of innovation that net neutrality makes possible. We're stoked to support Techdirt in paving the way for a genuine, important public dialogue about these issues.

It's been great to see these three companies step up to support the campaign, but it's been you guys, our community, that has gotten us so far already. We're still a bit short of the target -- and I know that money is tight for many and that there are lots of competing offerings where you can put your money (though, if you donate money to the Potato Salad Kickstarter thing and not to us, I don't think we can be friends... because, really?), but any help that folks can give to either get us over the target or to share with others, recognizing how important this issue is, would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again to all of you who have already supported it or shared it with others. With a little more help we'll be able to meet our goal, and focus that much more of our time and energy on bringing you the best reporting on the fight to keep the internet free and open. As noted earlier, our plan is to bring in additional voices on this issue, to interview key players, to dig deep into some of the more unexplored stories around this fight and much much more. But it's only possible with your help, and the deadline is rapidly approaching.

Please support our net neutrality reporting today »

Filed Under: crowdfunding, net neutrality, techdirt
Companies: floor64, imgur, techdirt