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Web Giants Form US Internet Lobby Group
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.'"
Put simply, there are too few "voices of conscience" in that list for my comfort.
"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.
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.
N.B. this user is far too lazy to write a witty and intelligent sig.
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.
Great. It's good to see these underrepresented citizens with limited economic power finally have a voice in Washington.
Got to be In it to win it... Into corruption I mean, to win laws favourable to your industry. Ick, how "democracy" has degenerated...
How about outlawing Software Patents? It costs them more than it costs me, and it isn't even a barrier to entry.
Google is fine, they've only done a few things to upset me (privacy problems aside).
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 (warning: potentially NSFW). I will never, ever do business with them and I urge others to follow suit.
In the US 'x' gets corrupted by corporate interest. For 'x' of course
politics came first -- the rest is a cinch.
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.
If laws are bought by the lobbiest with the most cash, why not start kickstarter campaigns for various sensible laws and see if we can outbid the corporations. Some laws are bought with surprisingly desultory amounts of cash. Not that's it's a particularly important law, but as an example i bet if you started a kickstarter to lobby for the legalisation of cannabis, you'd get millions. And for the abolition of the TSA.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
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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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 government is a problem that can be solved adequately. Corporate government, or corporate anarchy, cannot be solved adequately except by democratic government.
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I mean, I like Google and all, but I can't say I trust them or Facebook to "make" internet policy...
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. Connecticut, who represents them : 1 Democrat President, 2 Democrat Senators, 5 Democrat Representatives?
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
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.
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.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
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 much authority and perceived "value" that these companies want a piece of
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.
-> Sometimes, you just gotta break free from the shackles of proprietary code.
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. I've always been part of the hip, young, generation and Google, Facebook, eBay, Amazon are the companies of my generation. Most were started (and most are manned) by my peers and I can remember the first time I heard about all of them. Now they are forming a Lobby, and it's only a few short years until these companies are the entrenched establishment and some young kids feel disenfranchised to rebel against their corporate and government and internet Big Brothers.
When do I get to start saying "Get off my lawn?"
For...who exactly? /sarcasm
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...
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
anyone else feel we're headed closer and closer to the idea of corporate enclaves?
If you can't beat them ... arrange to have them beaten.
This signature is false.
There is absolutely no possibility that this is going to benefit us peons in any way.
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 to do to be re-elected is convince enough people s/he's doing a better job than the [usually lone] opponent. And otherwise stay out of trouble, keep away from sex with interns, that sort of thing. And even that seems fairly difficult for many professional politicos. But voters, as a class, are stupid... and that's even just counting those who do vote.
Bottom line is, with all this non-individual money in politics, don't expect politics to represent the individual. And while We the People in theory have the ability to completely stop all Corporate spending in politics, stop all Lobbying, reclassify non-individual donations as bribery, pretty much whatever we want ... we're just not that organized. They are. Do the math.
-Dave Haynie
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, from which Google takes a small amount for each of the many piles. That is the classic advertising model, which Google reinvented with microtargeted marketing interactive with the actual sales transaction. It's extremely efficient, and the info model that controls distribution of the microtargeting lends itself to scale economies.
So like I said, Google is an excellent example of a company that wants your money, even just a little bit of it, and whatever power it needs to somehow get it. It turns out that the power it needs requires a global surveillance of everyone's research and telecommunications. Which it's got, despite the obviously overwhelming power to do more than just "get everyone's money" Google also now has. The fact that (AFAWK) Google uses that power only to get as much money as it can from us shows what it wants.
You're missing the government pointer, too. Democracy is rule by the people; America's people elect the government that rules. Those elected people are representatives, because we have a democratic republic: the public is represented by other people, not directly represented by itself. As far back as Plato (in "The Republic") people have wrestled with how to get representatives to represent the people. The challenge is to give representatives the power to lead the people when a meeting is better than a mob. America's democratic republic balances that challenge on a constitution, that prevents both the representatives and the people from doing whatever they have the power to do in the moment. Further our constitution specifies judges and processes that limit the power of the people and the representatives to act, at least not without the public cooperating with the representatives to do so. It also specifies an executive to represent what the representatives collectively would do, but accountable directly to the people so also embodying the cooperation between the public and the representatives. Indeed our entire Constitution specifies a machine to balance the people against ourselves, against our representatives, our representatives against each other, and all against fundamental principles that are rights of the people which would be ignored or violated by some of these other people if they weren't specified as the basis of any and all power.
The people are stupid because they ignore how private powers lie them into consenting to be ruled wrong, the purpose of the propaganda machine. Even today the people increasingly insist that corporations, which is private people forming a private government for concentrated private power akin to the public government's power, take the power to educate the people away from the government. The representatives who are sponsored more by corporations than by people are of course leading that conversion. Some people are stupider than others, even those who are cunning in their ways to get short term power for a few people including themselves, but who are stupid enough to wreck the balance that first put them in power (and educated their cunning), and later will be unavailable to protect them and their friends/family/neighbors when they've outlived their utility.
You are exactly right where you make the distinction that leaves the people both vulnerable and active against ourselves: organization. The government is deliberately organized to resist rapid action that any substantial amount of people, even a minority, prefer. However, the people organized into corporations do have a lot of competition with each other, which inhi
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