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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.
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.
How about outlawing Software Patents? It costs them more than it costs me, and it isn't even a barrier to entry.
"they [facebook] contribute little back"
http://opencompute.org/
https://github.com/facebook/
Facebook is giving back some rather large projects to the global open source community.
Agreed, however the biggest bidder of all is the Military Industrial Complex. They have developed lots of new toys and techniques to "control crowds". All specifically designed so that you, citizen, are never allowed to trim that derelict hedge... ever. Just look at what they are throwing at Julian Assange/Wikileaks, the first modern journalist/publishing platform designed to inform citizens on how corrupt, dirty and vile our governments have really become.
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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make install -not war
A lot of problems could be solved if we just took the D and R off the balots. Just think if you had to know the name of the guy you were voting for!
As if the system is not personalised enough! People should vote for policies, not faces. We don't need any more vain politicians with bloated egos spitting out demagogic bullshit while taking bribes^H^H^H^H^H^H contributions from big corporations.
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.