70 year-old senators should not be allowed to influence technological law.

That was the first time I crossed paths with Orrin Hatch. He was a man always short on time, and when it came time for the photoshoot, he maintained a scowl until seconds before the shot was taken.

Later, one of my classmates ended up working as his aide. From what I was told, Hatch refuses to use his office computer and still hand-writes all of his manuscripts. What's more, he responds to all of his emails by printing them out and writing a response — a lackey will then type in the response.

I don't understand how he's still on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Although this is purported to be Leahy's brain-child, Hatch almost definitely had a hand in the scarier revisions.

To add to the problem, senators are not picked based on their technological competence. I would assume they're selected because they can contribute some form of sagacity to the majority of issues. Take Buffet for example (although this is a business tangent). He's great at what he does, and stays away from technology, presumably because he realizes his own limitations.

That is, of course, a rhetorical question. The fact is that I don't elect "my Senator on economic policy," and "my Senator on foreign policy," "my Senator on technology policy," etc. I elect "my Senator," period. Because the law touches on almost everything, there is no way for any given legislator to be an expert on all of the subjects involved, or even on more than a handful. That's why legislators have staff: people they trust, who are experts, who help them to reach informed decisions. Of course, some legislators do a better job of selecting and working with their staff than others, but that's what the ballot box is for.

Senators should not be picked based on their technological competence, nor their competence in any particular area of policy: they should be picked on their ability to exercise sound judgement in the best interests of their constituents.

Technological competence is a prerequisite for exercising sound judgment in the best interests of this particular constituent. Further, why can't we elect separate representatives for separate tasks? Technology policy seems to take a back seat to big copyright since the vast majority of people don't realize how widespread the effects of bad tech policy can be. Having separate representatives for each category of law would allow, for example, the tech representative to be fully focused on technology issues.

Then vote accordingly. Other people have different priorities. More importantly, this misses my point about legislators relying on expert staffers to inform their decisions. The staffers bring the subject knowledge, the legislators bring judgement and knowledge of their constituencies.

>why can't we elect separate representatives for separate tasks?

Where do you draw the lines? One man's technology issue is another man's economic issue, is another man's foreign policy issue.

>Technology policy seems to take a back seat to big copyright since the vast majority of people don't realize how widespread the effects of bad tech policy can be.

I could easily replace "technology" and "copyright" with several other pairs of nouns and the sentence would remain just as true. In many cases, you and I would be among the ignorant majority. Having dedicated-subject legislators would not make things any better because those dedicated-subject legislators would still be elected by that same "vast majority of people [who] don't realize how widespread the effects of bad...policy can be." There is no guarantee that subject-specific legislators would be the true experts in their fields, or even that they would be loyal to the best interests of the public. Powerful special interests will still spend wheelbarrows full of money to convince otherwise ignorant people to vote in a certain way, and breaking up legislative responsibilities by subject won't change that.

Probably the best way to get better tech policy is to support public-awareness efforts in regards to important technology issues. If you can get enough people to see things your way, legislators will start to be affected.

people always learn faster when they're younger

Do they? And even if they do, so what? They don't teach about laws or the internet at school. So they're not actually learning anything about it.

I'd listen to Bruce Schneier or Linus Torvalds any day over Mark Zuckerberg. Who was it who came up with 'Javascript: The good parts'. Was it a young 20 year old programmer maybe? No. A 35 year old who was 18 when it came out? No.

Your example of Buffet is disingenuous, he chooses to stay away from it because he's not learnt about it, not that he can't.

Even IF people learn faster when younger (as the GP asserts), older people have more existing knowledge and experience. Given equal interest and dedication in learning some New Thing (such as internet law issues), and a superior starting point (such as knowledge and experience about other law issues, other social issues, and past changes in the structure of society), I would expect the older person to achieve mastery of the New Thing sooner, or more deeply, or both.

(In some cases, of course, greater experience means more unlearning to do; I wildly speculate that the relevance of this is very very poorly understood, both over- and under-estimated.)

Most politicians: more control by federal government!

Paul: less control by federal government!

btw Slavoj Žižek argues, that capitalism cannot handle imaginary property, and actually this dichotomy is strong enough to take it down eventually down the road.

This sits very poorly with the government-out-of-my-house-and-off-my-land version of libertarianism, since it inherently requires agreeing that it's the rightful role of government to police what you do in your own living room. It feels more like social engineering than anything libertarian: the government has decided that, in order to promote the good of society (encourage artistic production, technical innovation, etc.), it must police what you do on your land.