Intellectual property is a broken and harmful system that is really holding us back.
Wikipedia is a household brand. They could, but they don't need it for anything.
What? The IA’s book lending represented a threat to no power. The Wayback Machine does, in that it holds people accountable, but nobody is dinging them for that.
Folks are trying to pitch this as a David v Goliath situation. That’s emotionally satisfying. But it isn’t true.
Especially at EU level it doesn't matter much who sits in the parliament when it comes to business interests. Such matters are dictated by the lobbyists.
For this, and many other more important changes, we need people in the streets to bring about change... Same as always.
How many times have you called your elected?
I’ve literally added language into state and federal law because I was the only one in my district who called on a niche issue. It was a battleground bill somewhere else. But not where I was.
They are careerists politicians because thats what this system optimizes for, literally no successful politician gives a shit about constituent input beyond when it helps them.
Define material. If it’s contentious, of course not—no one party can nor should be able to dictate on something like that. But lobbyists don’t make headway on headline issues. They do so in the shadows. That’s also where private interest can have a material impact. Again, I’ve helped redraft legislation because my Congresswoman literally hadn’t read the bill, nobody—lobbyist or voter—had contacted her on it, it was a nothingburger in New York but a big deal to me.
Lobbyists are mostly paid persistence. They don’t have superpowers, and the myth of campaign donations swinging electeds’ positions on major issues (versus new entrants) is mostly untrue.
> no successful politician gives a shit about constituent input beyond when it helps them
Of course. It would be naïve to expect otherwise. If you’re saying “I want x,” that’s N=1. Useless. If you make the case, however, that there is unseen donor or voter or turnout potential in an issue they’d ignored, you can generate a win win.