Corruption Or Carelessness? GOP Deletes Its Own Copyright Reform Report
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
The big corporations (that run America) don't want patent reform. They buy up all the patents and force the little guys either out of business or to pay them large sums of money that shouldn't have to be paid. The patent system allows big corporations to keep a monopoly.
When I see a company get a patent for page turns, I can't help but put my hand to my face and just worry about the future of innovation.
At the end of the day, some change must happen in US else the technology of the future is developed elsewhere...
A large number of big corporations "running america" really do want patent reform. How do i know? I've been there, in meetings with congressmen and senators, listening to them push for it. I've watched them do everything they can to push the bills forward.
I've watched them get beaten down by other big corporations, like pharmaceutical companies, or patent trolls (Intellectual Ventures).
So please define who the big corporations you think are trying to stall it are. I know who has stalled it in the past, and at least the first few times, it was never the usual suspects in the tech industry.
Also note that at least from where I sit, the senators and congressman I've seen really do want to do the right thing (most of the time). They just don't know what it is, and they are often being told, by people they trust on both sides, to do opposing things.
Also, anybody who thinks this kind of politics is about money should be forced to be a legislative assistant for a few years.
To rephrase the original concern differently, I think a big part of the problem is that 90% of the opinions these legislators hear are from people who's full-time job is to get in front of them, and those people are generally for sale.
Another thing, the senators and congressmen certainly say they want to do the right thing, and they probably even believe it, yet they'll often compromise between the right thing and the thing that keeps them in office.
Most of them spend more time dialing for dollars than they do reading legislation. Keep that in mind when you see them interact with lobbyists.
The point is regulation is determined by the highest bidder. Does it matter who the highest bidder is? It doesn't change the fact that America is a whore.
Do you think Chris Dodd made more money as a Congressman, or do you think he makes more as the head of the MPAA?
A Congressman would make a lot more money being a lobbyist. Most of the money they get goes towards reelection campaigns, which are wildly expensive, and deplete a large percentage of their funds. They are not Congressman because it pays a lot of money personally. If that was the goal, they'd all do short stints and move to being lobbyists. Instead, they stay in Congress for a long time.
Don't get me wrong, i'm not defending anything. I'm more trying to get folks to see that it is dangerous to equate money with power in America. Power is power. Money is money. Some of one may get you some of the other. But they are not the same, and until folks get around to realizing this, they'll never change anything.
Copyright (as opposed to patents, pushed by Intellectual Ventures et al) is pushed by Hollywood. Hollywood, composed of television and radio media, which heavily cross-hires with film and music. In other words: the same people who own a radio station might use their knowledge of acoustics, their installations, their relationship with relevant engineers, bring in appropriate celebrities, and so forth, so that this form of horizontal expansion is an effective, and therefore common one. Film and TV, radio and music, and all four, are frequently in the same hands. So we have the voice and the asset: entertainment being the asset, news coverage being the opinion-forming political capital.
Hollywood's greatest political asset is not, as many believe, its lobbying. Certainly it engages in lobbying; most industries do. But the true, cocky power of Hollywood is its influence over its viewers.
I forget most of the numbers, but I remember that in Peru, during the Fuji Mori (dictatorship) years, the government paid bribes to members within and without it. Within it: judges, and many others. Without it: television station owners! Yes sir, the largest bribes, far and away, were paid to television station owners; bribes in the millions, in a country where nobody had millions. The moral of the story? Media has a lot of political capital.
So what we're left with is, Hollywood would have a strong, even gravitational, influence over Congress even without lobbying, merely because of the millions of people it influences into voting one way or another.
In other words, it molds the consent of the governed.
No legislator can get reelected without a multimillion dollar campaign fund. Threatening to tweak the laws one way or the other allows legislators to extract funds from both sides - "Hey, you want this tweak? Pay up! Hey, you don't want this tweak? Pay up!" Depending on who actually pays, the tweak may or may not get made, but the important thing is to revisit the issue often and to revisit the donors with outstretched hands.
In some sense, the corporations are as much victims of this scheme as the public is.
Ars Technica had a bit of a profile on the "tech-savvy" Derek Khanna who authored the memo: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/influential-gop-g...
There are plenty of things on the Democrat side that are just as questionable..but they aren't talked about. Why is that?
Here is a good example:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57552225-38/senate-bill-re...
The only thing this article made me think was "Damn it, we were so close!"
"The bias of the media is towards sensationalism and laziness"
Thanks