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Comment by narrator | Hacker News Reader

Why is the tech sector always on the defensive? Tech companies should pitch in to start a lobbying campaign to limit all copyright to 25 years or something like that and pursue it relentlessly, if only to keep the RIAA and MPAA lobbyists busy instead of letting them have all the time in the world to make trouble.

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This is especially strange when you stop to think that Apple's profits alone are around double the total revenue of all RIAA members. It's hard to imagine that the RIAA is the one that gets to bully apple around.

A lot of the MPAA members also own a majority of the news stations and newspapers. They sway voters a lot more than Apple ever could.

Has Apple actually clarified their position on SOPA?

Apple makes some of that money from works more than 25 years old, so it's not necessarily in their interest.

Hm, really? 25 years ago was 1987. I'm sure if Apple lost the copyright to 1987-era NeXTStep, virtually all of Mac OS X would still be locked down. There's scarcely anything else they still make money from, in copyright terms. Unless you mean iTunes revenue, but that's a break-even for devices anyway, and I'm not sure their profits would be hurt that much by music from before 1987 going into the public domain. In fact, it might help because there's a lot of movie and even TV content pre-1987 they'd suddenly be able to offer without one bit of negotiation.

With iTunes, Apple is one of the media companies' best friends in Silicon Valley. I don't think either of those parties is really interested in attacking the other.

If that is the case those companies don't know it. The labels hate Apple even though they gave them a business model to survive in the digital age. The studios think the same will happen to them (it will eventually) and they're afraid of Apple and every other tech giant.

What can the tech industry do to really disrupt the film and music industries?

What innovations can really change their business model?

What can really take the power out of the hands of these huge companies with their armies of lawyers and lobbyists?

If Silicon Valley is all about innovation, how can that strength be used to win this fight once and for all?

I know it's probably not right, but I was thinking this morning of one way to get rid of the control. I would love to see one of the big tech companies go to each one of these politicians and offer them a ridiculous amount of money to publicly declare their new found opposition and vote it down.

And then I want to see that company public remand that politician for being all about the money. Taken to an extreme, if there were a handful of these guys that would take some cash to turn around (and I know that may be lots of cash) and then for the company to then take out a full page ad in the major newspapers: "This person is so easily swayed by money... do you really want them in charge?". Destroy them. Publicly humiliate them and see how quickly they all stop playing these games.

Who knows, you might even be able to skip step one and just take out the ad "This person gets paid $X a year by the recording industry and they are destroying your freedoms".

That's what I'd love to see, at least...

This is the logical next step.

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