Congressman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) took to Reddit this morning to answer questions about a recently introduced piece of legislation that would place a two-year ban on legislators and regulators from creating new laws or regulations that would negatively affect the Internet.

“I’m not advocating for no rules or laws on the Internet ever. But it has been made abundantly clear to me, and to a lot of other people, that both legislators and regulators have gone down the road of trying to take actions that impact the Internet without knowing their full effect,” Issa said during a Q&A session on the community news sharing site. “This is the case today both domestically and internationally.”

Issa’s new bill, officially titled the Internet American Moratorium Act (IAMA), seeks to put the majority of tech policy (regarding the Internet) on hold for the next body of congress, federal regulators like the FCC, and the White House administration. Issa said he modeled the bill after similar legislation that prevented congress from passing laws regarding an Internet sales tax for two-year periods, which gave the Internet economy a chance to thrive naturally and eventually allowed it to make sense in the grand scheme of things. For instance, goods sold on the Internet fall under the same tax laws as the state that you originally buy them from, rather than a universal Internet tax.

“The intent of this law is clear – it is to stop both formal regulations and administrative actions” that warp and change to fit a particular circumstance, Issa said in response to a Reddit user. “Often, government can exercise power without rule-making.”

Issa is referring to the power that the FCC has to regulate the Internet, as well as executive orders created by the president. One example of bad tech policy getting implemented despite failing a congressional vote is CISPA, which gave businesses greater leeway to share information with federal authorities without fear of getting prosecuted over violating basic constitutional privacy rights. CISPA failed to gain approval in the Senate, despite a rubber stamp of approval by the White House. And as a result, President Barack Obama passed a cyber security directive earlier this month that’s very similar to CISPA.

[Note: VentureBeat reader "CS" pointed out to me that Issa was an early co-sponsor of CISPA when it was introduced in late 2011. He officially added his name as a co-sponsor January 31, 2012, and was one of 106 representatives from both political parties that co-signed the bill when it passed a vote in the House back in April 2012 . While Issa should be criticized for keeping his name on the CISPA legislation, it seems he's at least learned enough to know that congress should take a break from creating new tech policy.]

But unlike previous two-year bills that prevented overreaching Internet sales tax laws/regulations, Issa’s IAMA bill has a much broader scope that includes privacy rights, copyright infringement, freedom of speech, and more. It’ll be difficult to pin down exactly what would be considered an “Internet matter,” without being extremely vague. That said, it’s unlikely to pass a vote by both bodies of congress, and even less likely to get signed into law by the President without an initial veto.

Still, it’s hard to label Issa’s actions as anything but positive. The congressman is actively seeking to get young, passionate citizens to participate in policy making in a way that hasn’t really been done in the past.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Yet, when it comes to the Internet, there are plenty of politicians who believe something is broken.

But many active Internet users — especially those that frequent community news sharing site Reddit — wholeheartedly disagree. With this in mind, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) introduced a new piece of legislation yesterday that, if signed into law, would prevent politicians from passing laws or regulations that might burden the Internet over the next two calendar years.

Over the last two years, congressional leaders have attempted to pass a handful of really bad laws or international trade agreements (including SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, and CISPA)  that would have tragically warped the Internet. Each of the failed laws promised to prevent digital theft/piracy, protect privacy, or afford the government greater leeway to carry out these actions.

Issa has rallied against these bills. In the past, he’s participated in Reddit Q&A AMAs (Ask Me Anything) to help explain bad tech policy, and he’s helped create the Internet Defense League. He’s sort of an unofficial champion for Reddit users, which could explain why his new bill’s official title is the Internet American Moratorium Act or IAMA for short — that’s the same abbreviation used for another of Reddit’s popular Q&A sessions, “I Am A…“

As for the bill itself, Issa will be answering questions about it at 7:30 a.m. PST/10;30 a.m. EST  tomorrow via Reddit. We’ll be keeping you updated with his responses either here or in a future post.

Image via Monika Wisniewska / Shutterstock

Well, almost all.

The top-rated questions range from how fast you can you type on the Touch Cover (one team member replied 65 words per minute, another said an astonishing 86!) to why no 3G/4G option (Wi-Fi is used FAR more on tablets) to when will it be available in $country, where country is not USA (no announcements yet).

One of the most interesting responses is on the Touch Cover digitizer, which senses impact and profiles key presses an astonishing 1,000 times each second to detect and ignore spurious contact … meaning that yes, you can rest your fingers on the keys just like a normal keyboard without triggering uncontrollable key presses.

Another insight when the Surface team was asked about cellular connectivity revealed that of the 33 percent of tablets selling today with 3G or 4G capability, only half were actually activated. Which means, of course, that consumers are voting with their wallets and not paying for yet another connection toll to the internet.

Other questions include one on whether Microsoft was working on a docking station, to which the Surface team responded that the Kickstand and the Touch-Type Cover is your docking station, offering USB and HD connections, and saying that “we specifically thought of this scenario and optimized for it. It is a pretty cool experience.”

And another that I personally resonate with focuses on the design philosophy behind Surface, something that I’ve admired since seeing it unveiled for the very first time.

The questioner, anexahhume, calls Surface design “a refined industrial look. It’s like Motorola products if they weren’t cheesy or ’80s-inspired, or Apple products with a dose of testosterone and a dash of fighter jet inspiration.”

Microsoft’s creative director replied that:

We started at looking at the software and thought about how to extend it into a physical product. We tried to stay away from any classic design language stuff, we didn’t want to have a bunch of styling in the way, we wanted to build a bridge between you and your digital things.

We developed the idea that later turned into the keyboard covers and kickstand. Most of the time we spent on revealing the essence of this idea: How can we make it comfortable to hold? How do we fit our connectors, and so on.. Step by step we found the design. The language behind it is a point of view to make a very useful product. I don’t believe in defining a design language in shape. A design language should be a consistent approach to execute the vision you have.

Using magnesium allowed us to make our product thin, light and strong. The color we chose lets the physical product fade into the background and pronounces the screen as the main act … a stage for your software.

One question that so far has not been asked is about Microsoft’s biggest tablet competitor.

When will Apple do something like this?