The Privatization of Copyright Lawmaking 213
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from TorrentFreak:
"The biggest misperception about [the Stop Online Piracy Act] is that it is somehow unprecedented or extraordinary. It is not. SOPA represents just the latest example of copyright law defined and controlled not by the government but by private entities. Copyright owners will deploy SOPA in the same way they have behaved in the past: to extend out their rights. They will disrupt sites that do not infringe a copyright, interfere with fair uses of copyrighted works, and take other steps that evade the limits that the Copyright Act sets on a copyright owner's actual rights."
America is NOT a democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
America is totally corrupt. How many of the current US politicians are not taking corporate handouts, accepting meetings with lobbyists, or preaching 'free market' ideology. It has to be accepted that America is a banana republic, run by a mafia of corporate interests, and a collection of crazed religious zealots. I am just so glad I don't live there.
In a democracy, there is a choice of government. Choice is impossible in the United States, because the Republican/Democrat Party, is the only party that can attract enough campaign contributions. The Republican/Democrat Party, is consequently the only party that can buy power. This is not democracy.
Re:The flaw in democracy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Rule by corporation (Score:5, Insightful)
Over recent years there has been an accelerating plunge into rule by corporation in its interests rather than rule by government in the interests of all. This has resulted in the loosening of regulation or oversight, laws allow corporations to do things that are effectively disallowed to individuals. The results of this include: the financial woes of recent times; copyright abuse; globalisation for corporation but not individuals (think: they buy where it is cheap in the world, but stop you doing so, eg by region encoding).
This has happened by a variety of means: bribing of law makers (whoops silly me, I mean - donations to campaigns and pet causes, promises of jobs on leaving office, ...); threats to move to another country; ...
Don't get me wrong: not everything about corporations is bad, not all corporations are problematic. A restoration of balance is needed.
Re:The flaw in democracy. (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't due to any flaw in democracy; it has nothing at all to do with democracy. These kinds of abuses come from autocratic structures that do not answer to any outsiders. A better way to describe these kinds of systems is 'totalitarian.' Of course, democracy is a nice word that we have all been taught applies to our systems of centralized planning and property, but just 5 minutes of thinking about it should induce uncontrollable laughter. The fact that most Americans don't laugh is a sign of how deeply indoctrinated much of the population, especially the political and technical class, has become. The Soviet system was similar. The intelligentsia (including the technical intelligentsia) needed to be well-indoctrinated. The remaining 80% would follow, as guided by the 20% of `proper' thinkers and the truly mass media. In the US, the situation is nearly indistinguishable. The mass media depends on things like publicly subsidized sports (franchises run by universities with the profits primarily going to private owners) and `popular' music and movies. It is crucial that these means of mass control remain firmly in the grip of private power; mass media is the primary means by which popular consent is shaped in the US and projected abroad.
The reality is that no modern corporation -- be it a financial institution, a mass media distributor (RIAA/MPAA/etc), or whatever -- can tolerate democracy. We can see how the machinery respond to even modest democratic initiatives, such as the occupy movement: hysteria. They can't tolerate 'free markets' either, but that's a different (though related) story. What we see now are interrelated systems of global mercantilism backed by state power and by a hugely profitable propaganda system, which we now call the media and public relations, and those propaganda systems depend on favorable 'IP laws.'
Re:The flaw in democracy. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like the old Communist joke:
"Communism is for the best of man. And at the last parade, I've even gotten to see that man."
It's kinda sad if the old dictatorship jokes start to apply to nominally democratic systems.
Re:The flaw in democracy. (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is fundamental to our system: corporations can continue to lobby, year after year, until the goverment finally caves in -- even if that requires corporate employees to temporarily join the government in positions of power.
Until this changes, we're going to be slowly become more and more fucked.
Re:The flaw in democracy. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that you're the chicken.
Re:America is NOT a democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't act surprised, the system forces them to.
There is no way in hell a "honest", i.e. really and completely independent politician could get elected. The reason: Campaigning. And the cost of it. How should any politician afford it if he can't get a fund raiser going? And fund raisers by definition means that some corporations will chip in. And of course they'd expect something in return for their investment.
Over here there was an outcry when in the 70s our back-then socialist government demanded that political parties and people should get their campaigning expenses reimbursed from tax money if they get at least (IIRC) 2% of the votes. Right now, I'm fuckin' glad they did that.
I consider it heaps better if I buy my politicians with tax money rather than corporations do it with lobbying money.
Re:America is NOT a democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
And let's not forget how many people try to flee to China...
There's always someone who is worse off than you. Does that mean that he should be the standard? Why take someone who's worse than you as a role model?
Bread and circuses (Score:5, Insightful)
The answer is, that the system delivers what most of people consider to be most essential, namely: Bread and circuses. Of course this reasoning preceded the Roman Republic's transformation into the Roman Empire before it's ultimate collapse
Re:The flaw in democracy. (Score:4, Insightful)
And why does the American people still tolerate this again? Surely, in a democracy, every law should be in its people's best interest, no?
How sad is it that this got modded 'funny'. I am not laughing
Re:America is NOT a democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the Republicans and Democrats both pander to their donors, but at least the tend to have different, conflicting. donors,
Really? That would be incredibly stupid of the donors. If i was in that position i would be sponsoring both sides to make sure i won. Hedge my bets kind of thing. I'm pretty sure big corporations are doing this.
Re:Rule by corporation (Score:5, Insightful)
...[L]aws allow corporations to do things that are effectively disallowed to individuals. The results of this include: the financial woes of recent times; copyright abuse; globalisation for corporation but not individuals (think: they buy where it is cheap in the world, but stop you doing so, eg by region encoding).
Bingo.
To say that treating corporations as persons is to state only half of the problem.
The other half of the problem stems from treating corporations as a privileged class of persons.
Re:The flaw in democracy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now laws are in the best interests of the biggest bank accounts.
Not familiar with The Golden Rule? "He who has the gold makes the rules."
Not disagreeing with you, by the way, just wanted to point out that what you said is similar to a Mitch Hedburg joke.
"I used to do a lot of drugs. I still do, but I used to, too."
I'm still waiting for corporate entities to be executed for capital crimes - until then, I won't actually believe they're people. A possible alternative would be to make the CEO of the company directly and personally responsible for everything the company does, as if the CEO had done it him/her self - make 'em earn those golden parachutes by risking life in prison.
Re:The flaw in democracy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Freedom is not something you achieve and then enjoy for the rest of your life. It's something that you have to fight for every day of your life. So what you are talking about — is nothing new. Corporations have their interests, you have yours. They will keep trying to get what they want, so should you. The whole idea of democracy is based on balance: everybody is trying as hard as they can to get what they want and everything ends up in a compromise. If the balance is shifting somewhere — you should push harder, it's just that.
Re:America is NOT a democracy (Score:3, Insightful)
Is "but we're still better off than a tribe in civil-war torn African country" really passes for an argument this days?
Re:America is NOT a democracy (Score:4, Insightful)
It makes sense for anyone living in an abused colony, to try to move to the heart of the Empire that conquered it.
Re:The flaw in democracy. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Rule by corporation (Score:5, Insightful)
American dream is dead
I would be delighted to see that happening. "American dream" is essentially an aspiration to obtain massive amount of wealth by whatever means, and use it to elevate yourself into position of control over other people (supposedly ones who implemented that dream at your expense before, or would implement it if you didn't stop them first), abusing them for your own pleasure. It is imposed on all population by propaganda, to make sociopaths in position of power seem normal.
The problem is, this thing is still alive.
Privatization of COPYRIGHT lawmaking ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The flaw in democracy. (Score:5, Insightful)
That ruling was only a "problem" because washington is full of corrupt assholes that allow themselves to be legally bribed.
Trust me, the biggest wallets have ALWAYS outvoted the little folks. The court ruling just made obvious what was already going on behind the scenes.
Re:America is NOT a democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
And you should also realize the same corporations also own the media and are going to do everything they can to keep things the way they are by smearing anyone they don't like.
Which means that almost by definition an honest politician isn't going to even make it to the primaries before he fails the corporate kiss-ass test and squashed out of the running.
Re:The flaw in democracy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, but his point is that noble causes are frequently used as fig leaves. Larger issues remain outside of the scope of public discussion and are typically counter to the interests of the population. This tactic serves to give the population the illusion of participation in political issues. Of course, go on all day talking about gays or abortion (again, important issues in their own rights). Just don't get too worked up over the issues that affect your owners. In a democracy, *all* of those issues would be discussed, not just the ones that are inconsequential to real power.
Re:The flaw in democracy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem: Fighting for rights takes time and effort.
We have lives, they have enough money to pay people to sit on the phone all day doing it for them.
Re:America is NOT a democracy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The flaw in democracy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Competitive and free are mutually exclusive. A free market always ends up as a collection of monopolies or oligopolies due to the simple fact that free means no constraints on the advantages of scale and accumulated wealth to stamp out competition. The US prior to the Sherman act is an illustrative example.
Re:The flaw in democracy. (Score:5, Insightful)
You've just illustrated the point: you're so distracted by the gay marriage issue that you've missed the fact that the government is destroying all our other civil liberties (free speech, due process, no illegal search and seizure, etc.)!
Re:The flaw in democracy. (Score:5, Insightful)
What does gay marriage or the lack thereof actually do? Nothing at all.
Unless you're gay and want to marry your partner, in which case it does quite a lot.
Never assume that the freedoms you care most about are the ones that are most important to other people. You want to live your life as you see fit; so does everyone else, and what you see fit to do may well be something that's of no interest to them.
Support other people's freedoms. It gives them a motivation to support yours.
Re:The flaw in democracy. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm still waiting for corporate entities to be executed for capital crimes - until then, I won't actually believe they're people. A possible alternative would be to make the CEO of the company directly and personally responsible for everything the company does, as if the CEO had done it him/her self - make 'em earn those golden parachutes by risking life in prison.
Unfortunately, we're long past the point where that could ever be a possibility. We can't even get corporations to pay meaningful fines for breaking the law, let alone something like a corporate-equivalent of capital punishment. In fact, I am not sure of any non-trivial criminal penalty (even as a sizable fine) has ever been levied against a corporation in the last century. We rely entirely upon lawsuits to keep corporations in line, which both stacks the deck heavily in favor of the near infinite legal budget of the corporation and carries a stigma of injustice against the poor, benevolent, victimized corporations.
No, corporate personhood is all about granting nearly all individual rights to a faceless entity and taking away nearly all responsibilities from the entity and those who control it.
Re:The flaw in democracy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Though apathy is definitely a large part of our current dilemma, it is not the point made above. Rather, the point is that your average person would be homeless and hungry if they spent all their time fighting the good fight, while on the other side, lobbyists are *paid* to fight against our rights. In no universe is that a balanced equation.
The counterbalance to that proposed by the founding fathers was that our representatives were to be intelligent, selfless, benevolent leaders of men which would fight for the best interests of their constituents. These representatives would have paid, full-time duties towards that end.
We can see in hindsight that this was a naive, idealistic view of things, only made worse by the formation of political parties and the distillation of seats in Congress to an increasingly small ratio of the population.
Re:Because elections are decided by the stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
The media has convinced people that if they don't pick a team and vote for that team no matter what the team does, they must be stupid. The newspeak has worked, and it has worked on you specifically.
Re:The flaw in democracy. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, corporate personhood is all about granting nearly all individual rights to a faceless entity and taking away nearly all responsibilities from the entity and those who control it.
Corporate personhood is not the problem. The problem with Citizens United is not "corporations are people." It's not even "money is speech." It's the inherent fact that speech costs money, so people with no money get no speech. And there is an easy fix for that: Public financing of elections. But people don't like it, because they don't want their dollars going to political campaigns. (Apparently they would prefer that it be AT&T's dollars.)
People just don't seem to understand what limited liability is. If you're the CEO of a corporation and you hire an assassin to kill your competitor's engineering team, you go to jail for murder. Limited liability has nothing to do with it.
If you sell toys with lead paint, the victims sues and gets a judgment. If the corporation is not bankrupted by the judgment, limited liability doesn't do anything. The corporation pays the victims, the end. If the shareholders want the CEO to pay the judgment, they can put that in his employment contract before it happens, or they can condition his future employment on him paying it. It's completely between the CEO and the shareholders.
All limited liability does is make it so that if the judgment is so large that it bankrupts the entire corporation, the victims can't go after the shareholders or the officers too. Unless the corporation ceases to exist, it doesn't really come into play. It isn't the cause of corruption in Washington and it isn't the cause of music labels ripping off the artists.
What it is is a moral hazard in finance: The corporation can take your money and make a risky bet at a 40:1 margin. If they win the bet then they make the corporation a billion dollars and take home a fair chunk of that as a bonus. If they lose then the entire company goes bankrupt but the officers don't have to pay for it. And the solution there isn't even to eliminate limited liability, it's disclosure requirements. If you're a securities trader making a trade that, if you lose, will cause you to be unable to pay what you promised, you should have to disclose that to the other party or be subject to criminal penalties. Then nobody in their right mind will be willing to be the other side of those transactions and the problem will go away.
Corporate personhood is not the problem. Limited liability is not the problem. The problem is that we have more government spending than tax revenue but nobody wants to pay more taxes and nobody is willing to gore their own ox. The problem is that wealthy and organized parties like record labels and telecoms are better able to shape legislation than unorganized parties like artists and consumers.
You can't take the money and power out of money and power. All you can do is see to it that you get your share.
Re:The flaw in democracy. (Score:4, Insightful)
I hope you didn't construe my post to mean that gay marriage is less "real" than other civil liberties; it's important too. My point was that myopically focusing on gaining a new right blinds us to the erosion of the ones we already have.
As for an "official" list, just read the Bill of Rights. Almost all of them are under attack, and the only reason the 3rd Amendment isn't is that quartering troops in people's houses is less profitable for the military-industrial complex than constructing new barracks!
Here are some examples of attacks on our rights that (in my opinion) need to be dealt with more urgently than gay marriage:
Re:The flaw in democracy. (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a handful of fabulous gay neighbors. Really, they're awesome. I have gay clients and honestly enjoy their company more than most people's.
Perhaps you don't feel affected by the enormous loss of rights yet. However, what I think people are trying to say is that the foundations of a country are not predicated upon marriage or abortion issues. They are built on basic, inalienable rights of all people. Erode those, and clinging to other rights is just clinging to the top of the mast on a sinking ship.