Reaching out to the technical community for Ron Paul

[rodent]

..

[billv]

It's definitely worth a shot

[Gee]

He may not be aware of the problem, maybe send his campaign an e-mail? I don't think I've ever seen him say anything on the subject.

[AlexAmore]

Definately do what the other poster said and email Ron's HQ. This looks perfect though for some big coverage. You can just copy and paste what you said.

[Bryan]

Welcome to the forum. As someone who has used /. for a long time (not so much recently however) this is something that I totally agree with.

The best way to do this is a good discussion. One past way that /. has done this before (and something they often do) is to request the best 10 questions from their users to ask someone, they then give these to the person and the answers are later posted in another article. Obviously however this requires involvement from the campaign but it could be a good considering for very large online groups such as Slashdot.

Here is an example from 2004:

Libertarian Presidential Candidate Michael Badnarik Answers
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/20/1423219

[kylejack]

I am strongly in favor of this idea. Slashdot is packed full of libertarians, and his internet policies should go over well with the community as a whole. Ron Paul's campaign needs to contact Slashdot.

[specsaregood]

//

[mdh]

There's a #ronpaul channel on freenode. Doesn't get much geekier than that.
Actually, a lot of Ron Paul supporters I've met are technically savvy folks. See my post on IP reform on this forum for more discussions on that particular topic;
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=748

[Bob Cochran]

I'm thrilled that Dr. Paul is pro Internet freedom. I am a software engineer myself and I run a business related to fully automated currency trading.

[kylejack]

I sent an e-mail to the campaign about this. I think this is a really important venue.

Subject: Get On Slashdot

I've been rooting for a Ron Paul presidential run for a long time, and I've been ecstatic to see it come to fruition. I've been watching every media event using ronpaulforums.com as a home base and salivating for more.

Slashdot.org is an enormous community of technically-savvy people that tend to be very libertarian, and I think it would be an excellent group of voters to solicit. Every so often, they will have a celebrity (often a programmer, or the CEO of a tech company or the like) offer to answer the questions that get rated the highest by the userbase. The questions are e-mailed to the person being interviewed, and then they post an article with the celebrity's answers to those questions. I think this would be an excellent opportunity for Dr. Paul to once again stress that he's never voted to regulate the internet and other similar points.

As an example of how this has been used in the past, here was the original article requesting questions to be asked of Michael Badnarik during his 2004 run:

http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/13/1249231

And here are Mr. Badnarik's answers:

http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/20/1423219

A few samples of the questions he answered:

" Libertarianism certainly is an appealing ideology, but are you concerned that ideological based politics (whether yours or others) often precludes the adoption of pragmatic solutions to real problems?"

"As the official Libertarian party candidate for president, where do you stand on the issue of intellectual property? Should it be considered the same as traditional property, or should IP be not subjected to the same protections that physical property is? And do you feel that your personal views on the subject reflect the views of the majority of the party itself, or is this an issue that has the potential to polarize your party much the same way that abortion does for the Democrats and Republicans?"

"What are you views and hopes for privacy and security for the citizens of the internet age, and how do you proactively aim to safeguard and give back our rights that have been eroded away. (INDUCE act, PATRIOT act, et al)"

Mr. Badnarik's response to the questions received 1,309 comments, but perhaps more importantly, Slashdot started covering Badnarik's campaign. After this interview took place, Slashdot ran 8 more articles on Badnarik's campaign, all of which received plenty of attention and thousands of comments: http://politics.slashdot.org/search.pl?query=badnarik

Slashdot recently asked who was the best presidential candidate for nerds: http://ask.slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl?qid=1457&aid=-1 Ron Paul is winning with 44%.

To offer to answer questions for the Slashdot community, the best way is to submit using this form making the offer: http://slashdot.org/submit.pl

I really think this would be a fantastic way for Dr. Paul to continue to spread his message. Best of all, it is not a live interview, so it can be answered at his leisure.

Wishing you continuing success,
Kyle

[NewEnd]

silly ron paul voted against net neutrality
I think from now on, he should get advise form the EFF on these matters

[kylejack]

silly ron paul voted against net neutrality
I think from now on, he should get advise form the EFF on these matters

Net neutrality is actually regulation of the internet, which Dr. Paul doesn't believe in.

Hey, I'm as pissed off as anyone that these companies like Verizon and such are talking about charging fees to Google and Youtube, but this is unfortunately something the free market is going to have to work out. If my provider starts trying to bill content providers, I'm going to cancel my service. We don't need a law to fix it. Good old free market outrage will keep them in line.

And hey, at least Ron Paul isn't talking about a series of tubes! ;)

[Ratteler]

It's true. Net Neutrality is government regulation. The problem is that paid political lobbying has tipped the scales. There is already federal and local laws that create an environment where there is no REAL competition for broadband service in most places. New York City for example... the number one Television market on the planet has a system in place that prevents Cable providers from having to compete with each other by slicing up the city into zones.

Where you live depends on what "choice" of cable provider you can have. On paper it looks like Time Warner, Cablevision, Verison, and several others are all duking it out, but in reality they have divided up their markets so none of them can offer service in the others region.

Unless you choose where you live based on what kind of Internet/TV service is available, you have no choice for cable.

You can choose between Satellite, Cable and Telco. But the reality here is that the services are VERY different. For instance if you go with satellite, you usually need use a DSL phone line to get broadband Internet anyway. You not able to compete for the same quality of service from different provdiers.

As far as I'm concerned this kind of co-operative price-fixing circumvents the free market entirely. An upstart can't come in and provide better service at a better price because the monopolies have already “regulated” them out with the co-operation of City and State.

This is why we need net-neutrality. There is already bad regulation at work against us. A Federal regulation could at east insulate the consumer from the State and Local corruption.