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Comment by mwfunk | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if copyright extensions are exhibit A for the negative impact of money on politics. Copyright holders have a motivation to lobby for extensions but no big players have a motivation to lobby against them. Hence, both US parties are weirdly on board with continually extending the reach of copyright and IP laws in general. If there were no invisible hand constantly guiding politicians toward extending copyright, surely at least some politicians would have different views on it. It doesn’t help that it’s an issue that is so opaque to the general population, so there’s no popular opposition to it either. I love the EFF but when it comes to money and lobbying power they are much less influential over elected officials than the combined powers of most of the entertainment industries plus much of the tech industry.

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Another way to look at it is that with copyright, there is an important constituency who wants to make it stronger (not just Hollywood companies, but the hundreds of thousands of voters they employ), and essentially nothing on the other side. How many jobs does EFF create and how many votes do they represent?

The idea that it’s about money also is hard to reconcile with the relatively weak lobbying power of tech companies. Tech companies are vastly richer than Hollywood and have been for a long time. Facebook earns five times the profits of NBC Universal but employes just half the people.

Your idea also fails to explain things like FOSTA/SESTA. How much money do victims of sex trafficking have? Why couldn’t the tech industry, with its blinding amounts of cash, stop it?

Very well put, so thank you.

Just want to add that money has always been in politics. This trope that it was only a prob after the CU decision is (apparently effective) misdirection, IMO. The game of politics is about securing interests/power, period.

Ah yes, down-votes. As always, I welcome factual-based rebuttals, of which I thus far see none. Hmmm...

this isn't because the EFF is disorganized or incompetent. it's because of money. if a billion-dollar cartel supported the EFF, lawmakers would suddenly turn their heads.

Agreed 100%. The likes of the EFF are at a huge natural disadvantage because nobody stands to profit from rationally curtailing copyright. Groups like the EFF are literally just trying to do the ethically right thing for everyone (at least in their eyes and mine), and it costs them money to do so, money that comes almost entirely from donations (I think). Whereas those pushing for copyright extensions not only have their own revenue stream, they actually stand to profit from the results of their lobbying.

The EFF has to spend money they don’t have to fight for their beliefs, but the copyright extension people likely make a net profit over time fighting for their own interests. It’s like a negative sum game- the net result is worse for almost everyone to a greater degree than it benefits a few. If money played no role in politicians’ decision making, those decisions would be much more rational and responsible. For all I know, maybe most of them would still support copyright extensions, but it would at least be because in their judgement it was the right thing for the American people. The ridiculous amount of money in American politics muddies the waters and forces all participants into moral hazards and perpetual conflicts of interest.

>nobody stands to profit from rationally curtailing copyright

Except, of course, nearly everybody.

I'm assuming you mean nearly everybody would profit in a non-financial sense, or that more wealth would be created in the aggregate but not so much individually, and if that's what you mean, I generally agree.

IMO, it would be better for the group to curtail copyright somewhat in the US. But here I meant "profit" in the depressingly literal, "a specific individual or group, that can afford an IP attorney, who makes money on whatever they consider to be their IP" sense.

For better or worse, the system in the US currently favors those with the desire and resources to hire great IP attorneys, who are themselves motivated to always argue for stricter IP laws, whose firms have the resources to make huge campaign contributions.

There is no one spending equal amounts of money to push things in the opposite direction, therefore as long as there's money in politics there will always be an invisible hand guiding things in favor of "individuals or groups who stand to profit from something" over all other criteria.

I personally have a somewhat negative view of EFF https://www.wired.com/1996/02/digitel/

> both US parties are weirdly on board with continually extending the reach of copyright and IP laws

I don't think it is weird considering that US is a mass-exporter of Intellectual Property. Hollywood is big global business. It is good for the US economy if other countries respect the copyright laws and are willing to pay for movie-tickets.

US is also a massive software exporter. I don't have the numbers but we know US has Oracle and IBM and Microsoft.

Think about Intel and AMD, without copyright their processors could be copied by anybody and pirated and sold much cheaper.

What's the best length for copyright protection is a different discussion, I agree that "Monopolizing works for most of a century after the life of the author is bad policy." But I don't think it is weird that countries which benefit from it would support longer terms and better IP protections in general.

I’m not arguing against IP laws in general, I just feel that in many ways they’ve become weighted far too much in favor of IP holders, as a result of IP holders having all the money and thus power in Washington. I’m not anti-patent or anti-copyright as a rule. They are legal fictions (an actual term, not a disparaging one) which were created in order to benefit everyone. The fact that they directly benefitted IP holders was not the intention, just a side effect. The goal was to spur creation, which everyone would benefit from, not to protect anyone’s revenue stream.

The rhetoric seems to have shifted to treating IP as a fundamental right. No longer is it a legal fiction to benefit everyone, which had a side effect of allowing a few to reap more profits. Now politicians talk about it as if patent protections, etc. exist solely to protect the IP holders and their revenue, which for some reason is treated as an inalienable right, and not as a compromise for the greater good for everyone. At least that’s my impression as an observer.

The goal has always been to protect revenue streams - originally, it was the one of printers of music sheets. Most artists have always worked on patrons’ commissions and continue to do so; most musicians made money when performing, and continue to do so; most engineers made money when building things, and continue to do so. Copyright fundamentally benefits a tiny minority of middlemen and investors in the distribution chain, and that’s always been true. It’s one of the distortions of mass-market, where the real money-makers are subjects that have the resources and connections to operate at scale - like in retail.

I have a hard time imagining software companies benefitting from copyright extension. The vast majority of software is obsolete literally decades before copyright expires, in most cases the source code will be lost or otherwise unavailable even if the copyright expires, and the CPUs able to run the software will no longer be manufactured.

A movie or song might become a classic, but software just gets old.

I don't mean to be pedantic, but wouldn't chips be covered by patent rather than copyright?

> I don't think it is weird considering that US is a mass-exporter of Intellectual Property.

I wonder what would US trade deficit look like if we remove IP related trade from the statistics? My gut feeling would be that the deficit would look quite a lot worse, but is there some "official" measure on this?

Trade deficit is not bad per se.

I think your second reason is actually the primary reason. As long as people are hyperfocused on abortion, no politician loses votes on issues like this.

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