Sylvie Forbin, lobbyist for Vivendi, is new head of copyright at WIPO | Hacker News Reader

Sylvie Forbin, lobbyist for Vivendi, is new head of copyright at WIPO

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98 pointswalterbell23 comments

I don't know anything about Forbin, but will point out that people said very similar things about Tom Wheeler at FCC ("he's a cable company lobbyist!"), and that analysis turned out to be pretty facile.

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=author:tzs%20wheeler&sort=byDa...

I'm not sure Wheeler's turncoat, pro-consumer behaviour was predictable (or, for that matter, predicted) by anyone, you or otherwise. I think it's both more likely and more rational to assume duckness if walking and talking are both ducklike. Put another way, this sure looks like a Bad Thing, and until a Wheeler-like situation arises and transforms it into a Good Thing, I don't think the HN hoi polloi can be blamed for reacting to the Bad Thing.

I'm not saying I told you so: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7713588.

Firstly, I'm glad you're not, as you can't! I wasn't an HN member that long ago! :P

Secondly, I'm glad you're not, because even 800 days ago when you posted that, someone brought up the extremely inconvenient fact of Wheeler's 12-year tenure at the "Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association", a lobbyist group for telcos, starting in '92. The perception that he was a lobbyist who ascended to a regulatory body seems to hold up!

...although the truth of the statement "no one could have seen that coming" is clearly disputable. :P

Cable, cellular, now cloud: Wheeler started backing each of these industries when they were the underdog. His policies as Chairman are not a surprise.

When Wheeler was nominated, he had a blog on the topic of telecom public policy, going back several years, with a lot of very deep and nuanced commentary on issues like the natural monopoly that arises in telecom infrastructure. I read a lot of it. It was obvious that he was not a last minute "turncoat". Wheeler's behavior was very predictable, if people only read primary sources instead of letting themselves get led around by the nose by clickbait/outrage farms.

Consider me having been led around by the nose by clickbait/outrage farms. I wish you'd been around to provide the link to Wheeler's blog when this was news. If you follow the other subthread, you'll find another HN user who's provided a link to his commentary when all this was going down, and if the HN of that time didn't have access to Wheeler's blog's information (do you have a link, btw?), I feel I'm in pretty reasonably poorly-informed company.

This outlines a particularly pernicious problem with redditalikes as platforms for news and commentary -- if the parent is telling the truth about Wheeler's public musings about how he couldn't abide by the monopolistic behaviours of American telcos, how and why did reddit/HN/etc not jump on it and shout it loudly from the commentthreads, riding the (perhaps more reddit-y) trope of the top comment being a stringent correction of the incorrect info in the actual submission? The only thing redditalike media platforms like more than being right is being able to correct someone, after all...

Amusingly, it seems that he allowed his blog's domain/hosting to lapse. You can find some of it on archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20110206171653/http://www.mobilem... I've only been able to access a subset of the posts, and I can't find the particular post that really convinced me that he wasn't the example of lobbyist/regulator revolving door that everyone was saying he was.

I wasn't on HN at the time. However, I did post links to his blog on reddit in the relevant threads, my posts linking to his blog just didn't get much traction. They got mildly upvoted and started a few small conversations, but absolutely nothing compared to the witty one-liners and ranting about lobbyists, shills, and Obama being a sellout.

I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but showing me that the blog you're describing exists yet somehow doesn't have the thing you're trying to show me doesn't really fill me with surety.

The post itself is hardly a smoking gun, either. It's hard to tell whether a soft-SIM, as described in the 2010 blogpost, would be pro-consumer or pro-Big Whatever. In the post, Mr Wheeler characterizes it as "handset subsidy vs consumers' ability to switch cell providers at will". Is that the part that's supposed to dramatically reveal that he was on our side all along? My understanding of current 'soft-SIM' deployment is that it's basically only present in newer iPads and isn't really a soft-SIM.

Sorry, but I still see no proof that Wheeler was 'obviously' pro-consumer. For all that we love to bash reddit et al, I still think that if there was obvious proof that the pro-hivemind opinion was wrong, someone would post it and contrarians would get it to the top post. I presume you deleted the reddit account in question?

I read a bunch of the posts that are still accessible, I still think it makes the point: it's not surprising that Wheeler is reasonably pro-consumer. It's just that I can't find the particular post that has stuck in my head all this time.

I'm shocked that Wheeler's pro-consumer leanings are so obvious to everyone but me. I wonder if we're reading the same archived blog?

Would you still say this:

> I'm not sure Wheeler's turncoat, pro-consumer behaviour was predictable (or, for that matter, predicted) by anyone, you or otherwise.

After reading this[1], written by Wheeler?

> Back in the original analog-to-digital days I can remember AT&T’s representatives warning of catastrophic job losses and damage to the national security if innovative competitors were allowed into their business. The same echoes surround the proposed NASA changes. Many of the Old Guard, launch system contractors, and their congressional supporters are bemoaning the thought of a competitive manned launch environment. We’ve heard all that before at the time of another “analog-to-digital” conversion. The earlier warnings not only failed to materialize, but just the opposite occurred as new, innovative and less expensive services came forward and economic growth and a new generation of jobs exploded.

Is it really that surprising that someone who wrote that turned out to be a regulator with reasonable positions on things like net neutrality?

Maybe "obvious" was a bit strong of a word (Wheeler's writing is a bit heavy on long-winded metaphors...) but I also definitely do not think that the vitriol directed at him starting the day of his nomination was warranted, and I do not think that Wheeler's behavior was so unpredictable.

1. http://web.archive.org/web/20110206170617/http://www.mobilem...

Uh, yeah, totally! Note the language used in your excerpt -- it's all finance and macro-scale consequences, job loss and less expensive services and economic growth. He talks about NASA trying to import "Internet age" thinking (by which he means, of course, entrepreneurship and disruption) into an analog world. Read some of the other posts and they're awash with the same language.

>Is it really that surprising that someone who wrote that turned out to be a regulator with reasonable positions on things like net neutrality?

No, not at all! The position I've been trying to take throughout this thread is that the perception of Wheeler being an ascended lobbyist (read: hostile to consumer interests) was reasonable, in the absence of mainstream knowledge otherwise (like eg this blog we're discussing). After reading the post from which you've excerpted, I still think that perception holds. He's not pro-consumer, he's pro-capitalist. Just because the view espoused here ("established corps should not have the ability to extinguish potential competition, via regulation or fearmongering or citing national security") happens to benefit consumers does not mean he's taking those actions for consumer benefit.

>Maybe "obvious" was a bit strong of a word (Wheeler's writing is a bit heavy on long-winded metaphors...)

Really? I think I've established myself as a fellow sentient, but whatever, maan.

You're presuming that Wheeler would have behaved exactly the way he has without the criticism that was leveled at his appointment. I'm not sure that is accurate.

I do not at all regret my assumptions about Wheeler or my criticism of his appointment. He has been much better for consumers than expected, but he has hardly been perfect. There is still no real competition in the US for broadband. Broadband innovation has been basically nil for most US consumers. Broadband and wireless pricing are both at gouging levels for most US consumers as well.

So while, yes, he has done some good things for consumers, it has largely been in the form of protecting the status quo rather than pushing the needle.

I dont really know anything about WIPO. Its this surprising? Or is announcement similar to 'Darth vader appointed as new head of the Empire' ?

i think its more like north korea heading the UN commission on human rights.

Saudi Arabia is chairing the United commission on human rights currently. Pretty crazy eh?

It's the human rights council now, but you're right. Didn't think the UN was a particularly effective body at any rate, but that's ridiculous.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Human_Rights_Co...

> Didn't think the UN was a particularly effective body at any rate, but that's ridiculous.

I'm not sure ridiculous is strong enough here..

Positions of power attract the power hungry. Positions of authority attract authoritarians. I think any sane citizen of any country would love to have top-level government positions such as these have decisions relegated directly to the citizens instead. There is no reason why, with our technology now, we couldnt facilitate direct-democracy for such critical positions that control the outcome of decisions that affect society.

I used to think this, but how do you actually get fair and accurate representation of people? The digital divide is still real. We don't need any more hindrances keeping the poor and disadvantaged from participating in the system.

For anybody interested in a comprehensive overview of copyright in the internet age, I can highly recommend the book "Information doesn't want to be free"

What could possibly go wrong?

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