Some Temporary Good News: None Of The Really Bad Internet Bills Seem To Have Made It Into The NDAA

Phew. As we've noted over the past few weeks, there's been a big push by some in Congress over the last couple of weeks to sneak in some really terrible bills, among them JCPA, KOSA, INFORM, and SHOP SAFE. We've covered the problems with each of these bills and the very serious problem with trying to slip them into year end must pass" bills like the NDAA, often skipping over several levels of congressional process while doing so.

Last night Congress came to an agreement on the NDAA and released a 4400 page draft. And, somewhat amazingly, none of the bills we talked about ended up making it in! Much of this was due to people speaking out and calling their Senators and Representatives.

It's a stupid, stupid process, but because of the nature of it, Congress will often try to slip in non-controversial" bills just to get them over the finish line. All the talk and buzz over the last few weeks about these bills was really Congress testing the waters" to see if they could sneak the bills through this way. People speaking up made it clear that including them would create controversy, and thus helped keep them out of this bill.

Of course, I'm sure there's a lot of other garbage in the bill as well (there always is), but for the moment, the worst bills that we were most concerned with seem to have been kept out.

That said, this congressional session isn't over yet, and there's still the other big year end must pass" bill: the omnibus spending bill. That one is also prone to adding questionable laws like these. Hopefully the controversy from this past week about them will help keep them out of the next bill as well... but we can't be sure until the bill is finally released.