Copyright For Sale: What the Sony Docs Say About MPAA Buying Political Influence

An anonymous reader writes: The linkage between political funding and the major copyright lobby groups is not a new issue as for years there have been stories about how groups like the MPAA and RIAA fund politicians that advance their interests. Michael Geist digs into the Sony document leak to see how the MPAA coordinates widespread buying of politicians with political funding campaigns led by former Senator Christopher Dodd to federal and state politicians. The campaigns include efforts to circumvent donation limits by encouraging executives to spend thousands on influential politicians, leading to meetings with Barack Obama, the head of the USTR and world leaders.

Comments

Just Hire Politicians for Speeches

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why anyone gets caught in a bribery scandal these days. It's easiest just to pay a politician an absurd amount of money for a speech. Getting paid $50,000 a couple of times doesn't influence anybody?

(Hiring their relatives is always a safe alternative.)

Re:We can learn from this

[pastafazou]

Good luck fixing it...all those that are in the game, don't want the game to change, and will do everything they can to prevent someone who wants to change it from getting in. Read this to see how far they'll go: District Attorney, Judge, and Police force persecuting political foes. Fascism is alive and well.

Re:This seems appropriate

[neghvar1]

Unfortunately, the Senate has to approve both of those and when they figure out it means they can't accept bribes any more, they will kill it faster than patent reform.

Incorrect. The states can open a constitutional convention to create an amendment to ban financially influencing politicians. If 3/4 of the states approve of the amendment, then it by-passes congress and becomes part of our constitution.

Re:We can learn from this

[lorinc]

Why is it broken? These rules are the consequence of human behavior at a global scale. As long as the global human behavior is to increase the maximum individual achievable wealth, instead of increasing some sort of minimum collective value, I bet you will see these kind of rules emerging. Which means they are not broken, but rather a good solution to the problem.

I was born in East-Germany, where people did a pacific revolution to free themselves from a dictatorship. That's what your history book says. The truth is, people wanted to have the opportunity to get rich which is not possible in a socialist country. Some of them did eventually, but the vast majority is now poorer than they were before, having a high unemployment rate, mini-jobs with low income, etc. Are people happier by now? Frankly, I'm not sure. But as soon as basic needs are fulfilled (home, food, day activity), people tend to be very sad if they don't see any opportunity of growth. So maybe they are indeed happier by now, even if basic needs are less achieved.

You have to accept that we are a competitive species, not a collaborative one. We may do things together, but only in the perspective of self-fulfillment. It's as if individual growth is hard-coded in our genes. Maybe not you, certainly not me, but in average, yes.