Yes. People need to understand that are whole teams of people whose full time jobs are to get this kind of thing passed. They don't care what's right or wrong. The Nuremberg defence is perfectly acceptable in business, unfortunately.
While I recognize and admire the sentiment, I'm not sure I agree with the practice in law. Legislation should be as transparent as possible since it affects a populace and doesn't exist in a vacuum among involved parties.
As to what intent there is with those names, it could be boycotting products/services from certain organizations -- which is a very valid and legal form of protest.
You shouldn’t be able to hide when you’re assisting with the dismantling of democracy.
If you’re fearful of your name being public, associated with this line of work, you should probably reevaluate your actions.
If you support or participate in the further tightening of copyright (when considering how extreme copyright law already is), you are the enemy, and citizens are well within their rights to publicly document your actions.
When you make bad ideas your enemy, you can promote real change and bring more people peaceably to your side. When you make people your enemy, you are likely to make things worse.
A worthwhile counterexample at the time, but imagine how it would play out today. If the suffrage advocates didn't turn it into a personal fight, the other side would. The opponents would win some battles, then they would lose some bigger ones... and then they'd do what's necessary to take over institutions ranging from market-leading TV news channels to the Supreme Court, and fix the "problem" once and for all. These days, anyone who tries to take the high road in politics finds that it ends at the top of a cliff.
Unfortunately I have a feeling we're about to see this scenario unfold with respect to gay marriage and LGBTQ issues in general. Theocrats do not like to lose, any more than copyright maximalists do.
This has not been my experience engaging in the political process in the US, both on individual campaigns and when working on specific issues (drug decriminalization and incarceration and gerrymandering, specifically).
Whether people are married to their ideas through money or ideology, you are left with little recourse. History is written by the victor, not the noble.
Think beyond the single issue and realize that making enemies of people has cascading effects that ultimately polarize the nation and close you off to any possibility of modifying your opinions or learning new things.
At least with my nation, the US, while neither side is really for the people one side is so vastly against the interests of the majority in general and the interests of me and mine in particular that I expect there is no reasonable middle ground.
When one group wants people like yourself to lose medical care and die where is the middle position?
Ultimately I expect them to eventually react violently to losing power and have to be put down by force in order to preserve some notion of democracy.
On perhaps your side of the pond it seems that one side wants to strangle the medium for culture and civilization in order to make a few bucks in hopes that a fraction will stick to their hands. These people are surely personally your enemy whether you recognize it or not.
>assembling lists of peoples' names that are your opponents
If you want to defeat your opponents, a great thing to do. Keep track of them. The best service you can give to an enemy, is to forget him.
>My opponents are bad laws and bad ideas. Let's make lists of those.
Don't you think that bad ideas are possessed by bad people?
In my view of the world, the root of all good and bad are the people. People's deeds and ideas don't live separate lives from physical human beings having/doing them.
Ideas can’t be shamed or ostracized. Ideas don’t respond to incentives. Ideas can’t engage in debate. Trying to fight ideas is futile without also opposing the people with boots on the ground implementing the ideas.
Corporations don’t do things.
People within corporations do things. You’re not going to get anywhere with a protest website that says: “BigMediaCorp is trying to take away your rights!” But, if it says “Mark Smith, VP Government Affairs at BigMediaCorp, who lives at 155 Spruce St., Los Angeles, leads the team that lobbies to take away your rights!” ...you’ve got a real person to oppose who does real things.
I'd publish the name and maybe a small photo of the person so that he/she can get opinions by people he/she happens to see during the day, but adding any personal address would be like inviting criminals to stalk the person.
No matter how much we hate those corrupt lowlives, we must fight them from within the law fence. Keep in mind that those people control most of the information sources, and those they don't control are mostly aligned on their side anyway, so it is safe to assume that everything will be used against us.
A news announcement such as: "Activist burns politician's house. All safe including their loved puppy" (cue photos showing the puppy big sweet eyes) won't bring a single person to sympathize with the cause, but rather make even more enemies. This is a war where every move has to be planned with extreme care; hic sunt leones.
Politicians don't really deserve any privacy. These people should be under public scrutiny at all times. This isn't some private company that you can choose not to do business with if you don't like it. They have the power to pass laws that will apply to everyone. People should keep track of them and denounce them publicly and loudly when they do things people don't like.
It's ludicrous to believe that publishing the names of people and companies requesting a change in law is somehow nefarious. People should be happy to have their names associated with laws they support, and if they aren't, that definitely speaks to the desirability of the law for the rest of us.
I fully agree any protest should be peaceful, but transparency is important.
Let's imagine a world where as you suggest, corporation names are revealed but not individuals. Well, where does that leave us? Maybe I'll just go as myself instead of my company. I won't represent my company, I just happen to be its CEO, its chief lobbyist, or whatever.
So no, we'd need full transparency. This kind of thing is common among various branches of democratic governments. Presidents' schedules are usually mostly public, fundings of various sorts are public, etc.
