Web Giants Form US Internet Lobby Group 94
judgecorp writes "Google, Facebook, eBay and Amazon have apparently set up the Internet Association to lobby the US government on issues relating to online business. From the article: 'The Internet Association, which will open its doors in September, will act as a unified voice for major Internet companies, said President Michael Beckerman, a former adviser to the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Committee.'"
Ick (Score:5, Insightful)
Put simply, there are too few "voices of conscience" in that list for my comfort.
Got to be In it to win it... (Score:3)
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Mathematically democracy is about what you deserve as a collection, so you can't really degenerate it. Corruption is just part of the reward. The thing about what's best is a bit of a myth.
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Re:Got to be In it to win it... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Got to be In it to win it... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Executives juries, better known as Sortition [wikipedia.org].
Let the parties present governing strategies and work similarly to experts in trials by jury, but let the jury decide on the ultimate actions. Juries must be large enough to statistically represent the population they --you know-- represent.
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That is so true. Look at the options we are given. A guy who ignores that America's creit card is maxed out and still wants to spend spend spend. And a guy who has more money than God and wants to be Prez simply because he's bored and wants to be very very powerful. We are doomed either way. Do I choose to jump off the cliff or be eaten by the lion?
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That's the problem with corruption in government: Once it begins, it only gets worse until "We, the People" get hyper-aggressive about trimming it back is if it were derelict hedges in the yards of a neighborhood's abandoned houses.
Re:Got to be In it to win it... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Got to be In it to win it... Into corruption I mean, to win laws favourable to your industry. Ick, how "democracy" has degenerated...
The only true form of self-sustaining government is anarchy, Are we there yet?
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What a great idea. What could possibly go wrong? (cue immense wall of text)
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And when the People's Revolutionary Army of Facebook defeats the actual people's army the people will be (better/worse off). Remember to read some non-libertarian history books before answering.
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Name one time in American History that the average citizen has been able to successfully defend themselves from civil authorities. The Branch Davidians? Ruby Ridge? The Whiskey Rebellion? Just holding a gun at the wrong time is often called 'suicide by cop'. The American Revolution and the Civil War ware both revolts of the local civil authority against the wishes of many of it's constituents.
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Name one time in American History that the average citizen has been able to successfully defend themselves from civil authorities. The Branch Davidians?
In a Govt v. Loonies fight, I know who I'd want to win.
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Civil war - Two comparably trained armies fighting each other - not civilians ... ...so even those do not count as civilian's prevailing against the government
American Revolution - the militia was losing until they got proper training and support (from France, Spain and the Dutch Republic) and became an army
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I would be so happy to see a huge number of corporations in USA to form one coalition and build an army and send it to take down the fucking government, that would be a good start.
Scratch a libertarian and fascist blood comes out.
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Scratch an US libertarian....
Like many terms libertarian seems to mean different things in the USA, see also Democrat, Republican, Political Right, Left etc ...
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Scratch an US libertarian...
roman_mir is (apparantly) from Russia.
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By the way, whoever is moderating you is just as much an idiot as you are. Definition of a fascist is somebody who wants to see the private people fight government power that consists of politicians and preferred monopolies?
You are all a joke.
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The headline says "lobby" and you say "conscience"?
It'd be a mistake to think these companies have our interests at heart. Our interests just coincide when it comes to stuff that hurt both internet companies and internet users - like repressive copyright legislation, and a lack of net neutrality. On other matters - like privacy - they shouldn't be trusted.
Goal (Score:2, Interesting)
"Lets figure out how we can keep people communicating insecurely without privacy, while exploiting their ignorance and hunger for low-quality goods"
Ideally, this leads to a future with virtual cars that no longer consume gas. We just probably lack the proper MMORPG to represent life, but I am sure we can do wonders with some better government support. We just need to grease the wheels with more campaign contributions.
Call me a cynic but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it's a sad reflection on our political system that we need to do this.
The next question is will it be it be dishonest enough to grease the right palms and have some real influence?
But it's good that such a large industry now has a voice there.
Re:Call me a cynic but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Good: The greater web gets a voice in the US lobby
The Bad: The voice belongs to people who make fortunes about exploiting web participant's data...
Really this can be a win situation or a lose situation. No one will know until they actually bring something up.
Still it is very soon to be just running around yelling "Hurray"
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Any tool can be used well, or abused. And yeah, lobbies are usually abused.
But if you look at the folks involved, there are some good attributes. Sure, none of these guys are likely to be privacy advocated. On the other hand, they may well be able to stand up for an Open Internet against the telco and Hollywood lobbies, since they all benefit from an open internet.
And I'm sure, like most lobbying groups, they'll be hiring the same kind of K-Street rats that all the other guys hire. So it's not as if they'll
Gee, thanks SOPA. Sort of. (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember this being something that came up during the fight over SOPA: Namely, that while the entertainment industry is used to lobbying the government, the tech industry was fractured and didn't see lobbying as a high priority, so the success Hollywood had at railroading some of those crazy ideas just blindsided them. (Stacked hearings, deliberately ignoring experts, etc.) It became clear that something would have to level the field, and since we know the RIAA, MPAA and friends aren't going to back off on their lobbying (and we know the government isn't going to stop listening to lobbyists), the solution is a tech lobby.
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If the internet is the wild wild west then I reserve the right to rope Chris Dodd and Jan Brewer together and drag them down a dirt road behind a crowdfunded fucking horse.
Most of us would rather not live in the mythic wild west that so distorts the US psyche.
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Ideally this lobby will push an anti-SOPA too that enshrines in law all the things that would prevent the RIAA from arbitrarily censoring the internet, would prevent companies having to give up user data, or even retain it etc. etc.
Something the net would actually get behind, just like it worked against SOPA, and would hence likely have a strong chance of passing.
I really hope they put the same effort into lobbying as those they're claiming to compete against, and push back in the other direction - to push
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would prevent companies having to give up user data, or even retain it etc. etc.
Google and Facebook are never going to give up retaining user data. If anything, it's in their interest to push for laws which would enable them to store as much of it as they can for as long as they please. This is what allows them to get advertisers, who are their customers. We, the users, are their commodity.
Free Lunch on K Street (Score:5, Funny)
Great. It's good to see these underrepresented citizens with limited economic power finally have a voice in Washington.
An Idea they should raise (Score:5, Interesting)
How about outlawing Software Patents? It costs them more than it costs me, and it isn't even a barrier to entry.
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I'm 50-50 on this, I guess. (Score:1)
Amazon is... tolerable. They do some questionable things now and then, but overall they're all right.
Facebook is bad in that while they seem as intent on invading your privacy as much as Google, they contribute little back, unlike Google.
eBay, or rather PayPal, is flat out evil for reasons better explained in (of all places) an Encyclopedia Dramatica article [encyclopediadramatica.se] (warning: potentially NSFW). I will never, ever do business with
Re:I'm 50-50 on this, I guess. (Score:4, Interesting)
"they [facebook] contribute little back"
http://opencompute.org/ [opencompute.org]
https://github.com/facebook/ [github.com]
Facebook is giving back some rather large projects to the global open source community.
That's the end of the internet as we know it (Score:1)
In the US 'x' gets corrupted by corporate interest. For 'x' of course
politics came first -- the rest is a cinch.
finally! (Score:1)
Silicon Valley makes more money than Hollywood, it's time they made their voices heard.
Now I'm sure it's not all going to be good stuff for intance Facebook and Google writing a law for mandatory "internet ID" using their services of course. That would be bad.
But putting an end to the shenanigans of horrible people like Chris Dodd may be worth it.
Either way, Hollywood needs to step aside and make way for Silicon Valley.
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Either way, Hollywood needs to step aside and make way for Silicon Valley.
Revenge of the Nerds indeed.
The people's lobby (Score:5, Insightful)
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Think about how long it would take Government to kill kickstarter. How long before it appears on Kickstarter: "We need 1 million dollers to buy the legalisation of cannabis from Government" At the moment they are just about able to hide the cold fact that you can buy any law you like, but if you put that up on Kickstarter, then it would become impossible to ignore.
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See also: American People Hire High-Powered Lobbyist To Push Interests In Congress [theonion.com].
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The corporation doesn't just want your money. It wants whatever possible power might be used somehow to get any of your money, even a little bit of it.
At least the government is controlled by a majority of voters, each of whom gets one vote. With exceptions where corporations have actually rigged the vote. The main problem is getting a majority of adult citizens to vote for people they're adequately informed about. Which fails mostly where corporations actually rig the turnout and the informing.
Democratic g
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Your government - You are represented by :
Two senators : Selected by one of the two parties, and in a lot of states got in almost automatically due to the voting of other people
Several Representatives : Selected by one of the two parties, and in many areas got in almost automatically
A President : Selected by one of two parties then voted by electoral college which may mean not a strict majority of the people
I assume there are republicans and independents in e.g.
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Well, hey, not always. Some companies, like Google, have realized correctly that you don't have any money. So they don't want your money, they want the information about you they can sell to someone who actually has money.
In theory, yeah, the government IS us, in a Democracy. But in practice, not so much. Your elected representative doesn't have to necessarily represent your interests, particularly when s/he's dependent on millions in campaign funds coming from somewhere else. All this person really needs t
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No, you've got your pointers to streams garbled.
You have some money. Otherwise Google wouldn't get any money for selling the info about you to someone who has money. And in fact they don't sell info about you, they use that info about you to sell you, or at least the part of you that spends money. The people whose money Google takes for access to you get their money from you. Google's model is for advertisers to aggregate through sales lots of small amounts of money into piles of large amounts of money, fro
Internet Cartel (Score:5, Insightful)
This "association" is a gang of monopolists who grudgingly admit they can't eliminate each other as competition, so they join together to avoid competing. In other words, a cartel. That plans to enforce their cartel with government power.
Why not? They're basically 21st Century phone companies. The telco cartel worked out so well in the 20th Century that it hauled in many hundreds of $BILLIONS, and even wiretapped every American for years with impunity - forging the basis of power for this new generation cartel.
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Facebook and Google paving the way.... (Score:2)
I mean, I like Google and all, but I can't say I trust them or Facebook to "make" internet policy...
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Alright, the internet's clearly circling the drain.
Let's all start a new internet - call it something like interweb, innernet... I don't care. Let's just do it.
How bout it, Science?
The first thing to do is to make the new interweb impossible to use for commerce.
That then automatically rules out Facebook, Amazon, Google and the rest of the for-profit organisations from having any interest in it.
Lobbying should not be allowed (Score:3, Insightful)
RANT
Lobbyists are one of the major problems with the U.S. government, they serve no legitimate function and are nothing but vectors of corruption. Corporate apologists will argue that corporations need representation too but they would be lying to you. Corporations are made up of people, and each person (that is a citizen) has one vote, the same as everyone else. Corporations, through lobbyists, should not be allowed to buy specialty legislation (like the extension to copyright that was purchased by Disney). All legislation that comes out of Washington should support the public good, not a few of the rich and powerful.
More rent seeking (Score:2)
This shows a really sad state of affairs for the U.S. government. The fact that these companies feel it is worth their time and money to lobby the U.S. government to get what they need shows:
1. That they no longer believe that they can control their own corporate destiny sufficiently without the government mandating new laws to their liking
2. That it's more efficient for them to lobby the government to get what they want than to risk doing things without the government
3. That the U.S. government has far too
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My solution is simple: reduce the size and scope of the government and these companies will no longer feel like they have anything to gain from lobbying the government.
...or have anything to lose by ignoring their laws.
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My solution is simple: reduce the size and scope of the government and these companies will no longer feel like they have anything to gain from lobbying the government.
...or have anything to lose by ignoring their laws.
So by your "logic," a government should have as many laws as possible, because this is ultimately what makes people and corporations moral. What you're lamenting, in reality, is that people don't behave the way that you desire them to. People (and companies and other organizations) are diverse. The best government is the least government (I didn't say none). Set a very consistent set of basic rules, provide an efficient and fair judicial system, and then live people to live their lives as they see fit. If y
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The best government is the least government (I didn't say none).
This is where we fundementally differ, size has nothing to do with good governance.
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The best government is the least government (I didn't say none).
This is where we fundementally differ, size has nothing to do with good governance.
Ok, that's fair that we differ. Then in your opinion, what is it that defines good governance? How does good governance go bad? How is it that a country goes from bad governance to good governance?
So this is the moment of my Generation Maturing (Score:2)
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At 26, I'm the first generation to grow up with a home computer, a computer lab at school, to learn using video games, and to learn programming as I grew up....[yawn]... When do I get to start saying "Get off my lawn?"
At 40... I'm the first generation to grow up with home computer, a computer lab at school, to learn using video games, and to learn programming as I grew up... Now pick up your skateboard and GET OFF MY LAWN!
A "unified" voice? (Score:3)
So we've got an ad company, a company that steals and sells personal data, a dwindling marketplace, and a growing marketplace.
Yes, these four companies are totally represent the internet well...
Snowcrash (Score:2)
anyone else feel we're headed closer and closer to the idea of corporate enclaves?
Well (Score:2)
Wonderful! (Score:2)
There is absolutely no possibility that this is going to benefit us peons in any way.