Libel is about the harm done to the reputation of the speech's subject (indirect harm due to the effect of the speech on third parties). This bill is about the harm done to the emotional state of the speech's subject (direct harm; the effect of the speech on the subject).
Which is exactly why this proposed law is so ridiculous. Everyone has a different emotional state and something can affect two people very differently. Proposing that we should all walk on eggshells for fear of saying something that might make someone else cry is just antithetical to the first amendment. You don't have any right to not be offended by something, even if it was intended to offend you or make you feel bad. You can feel however you want. Nobody else is responsible for that.
I never said that my comments applied to everyone on slashdot. I did say that, in my opinion, they applied to a majority. It's obviously anecdotal. I didn't do any sort of survey or poll, and never claimed otherwise.
Still don't see how you can even figure it's anywhere near a majority.
I'm not even basing my comments on the number of posts that I've seen along those lines alone. My impression was also based on the +5 Interesting, and +5 insightful mods that I saw attached to the posts when I read them. For each one of those posts there were at least 3 more people with mod points that agreed enough to use their points, than there were people with mod points that disagreed enough to use their points.
Did you miss the 50 other +5 posts rebutting those few and hammering the idea of the bill? I think we have very different ideas of what constitutes a majority.
There are levels to outrage. In my experience, the outrage is usually proportional to the offense unless the Republicans are involved. Then the outrage is frequently disproportionate to the offense.
There are a few million registered/. users now, yet you take a couple posts as being indicative of the feelings of an entire group of people, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of posts are ready to hang the sponsors of this bill? Why do so many Republicans seem to have a serious persecution complex? Even when they're running things they still seem to have it. It's weird.
Since I may not post again in this story, I'd just like to add myself to the list of folks that calling for the heads of the sponsors of this bill. I'd also like to agree with the AC post way up above that went off on them for trying to turn the country into a giant playpen. Right on. Also agree with the post that nailed the ACLU for supporting the 1st amendment but not the 2nd. That's all I think:)
No matter how much techs and the department leads complain, IT and the department directors refuse to give people adequate access.
Ok, so massive fail on the part of the IT group then. If there's a reason they won't give access to those users, then it's probably due to poor design of the system. If there's no real reason why they shouldn't have access, then it's a failure of management. This is why there needs to be standards and auditing of these systems. They're responsible for very sensitive material. If they can't protect it properly, then they should be facing sanctions for putting our personal data at risk. We should have at least the same level of security for medical records that we do for financial records, if not more.
The fact that MS is going to give away Windows free for a years, says that they ARE losing their monopoly.
No, it means that they screwed the pooch with Vista and that their own biggest competitor is previous versions of Windows. Apple and Linux are not gonna eat Microsoft's lunch anytime soon.
They're like people who run NN4... things don't work right, but they're used to it and consider it par for the course, so they don't complain about it.
Big difference between running legacy software like NN4 and Windows Vista and Office 2007. The vast majority of the market is running either XP or Vista right now. Hardly comparable to NN4. The kind of people you're referring to would still be running something like Windows 95, 98, or ME.
Basically, lots of company can own it. Holding it is hard. If the monopoly with OS-Office gets broken, then MS will likely lose that 90% desktop.
Microsoft is going on 2 decades of being the 900 lb. gorilla. Get back to me when they lose that OS-Office monopoly. Network effects dictate that it will be pretty damn hard to break unless someone else is able to create something that works nearly as well and can read and write the same data formats without any problems. While many have tried, none have succeeded yet.
Personally, I don't consider them to be particularly relevant anymore. The exciting new technology doesn't come from Microsoft anymore, and hasn't in years...
Yeah, but it's kind of hard to consider having ~90% of the market to be irrelevant. They may not be the hip new thing, but they're definitely relevant to most people.
Information is not free, nor does it want to be anything.
Information does not want anything.
You want it to be free, both in terms of cost and in terms of liberties associated with it.
Do not try to anthropomorphize information as wanting to be free so you can pretend to be a righteous liberator fighting for it's cause.
All you are doing is stealing shit because you don't want to pay.
The natural state of things is for the information to be freely available once published. Only a mess of laws, lobbying and corruption have made it into the atrocious situation we have today that makes a mockery of the constitutional purpose for copyright. The industry has massively overreached and screwed the public in the process. Hence the lack of respect for copyright and the difficulty of defending it to anyone who has the first inkling of an idea of its real purpose.
It would only discourage the RIAA if the penalties outweigh the gains, probably by a significant margin.
Otherwise, like many other companies do when the fine is less than the [gain], they'll just factor in the penalties as the cost of doing business.
Whoever was involved in paying him for the emails should be in prison for at least several years. That might serve as a bit more of a deterrent.
As someone who once worked in the ISP game I can say with confidence they don't care how you leeches feel, they wish they could run you off.
How are they being leeches by using the connection that they pay for to the fullest, especially when it was advertised as this awesome thing that would let you have access to all the cool stuff on the net like music and video? Leeches? I think the cable companies are just panicking because their strategy of overselling their capacity by a huge margin is coming back to bite them. That and the fact that they never put the money that they were supposed to into infrastructure when they got those huge tax breaks in the 90s. They've been making ridiculous profits year after year, doing fuck all to improve infrastructure, and now they have the nerve to blame the users? Fuck them.
One of the replies to the comment that you posted links to an SEC filing that has actual numbers that that poster says back up the OP. The overall profits for the company were lower due to writedowns in other areas apparently. Just skimming that document made my head hurt though.
For a 8mb/s connection, you could theoretically transfer over 2.5TB in a single month, and that's just counting downloads. If the cap is, say, a rather reasonable 100GB, do you really think the plan that used to cost $50 should now cost $2? Does that sound reasonable to you, or maybe you're missing something?
Probably not missing anything. The 7Mb connection that I have is never a sustained 7Mb/s. The terms spell that out. It will operate up to that speed in bursts, but only for the first few MB of a transfer, after which it is reduced significantly. So the maximum amount I could actually transfer is much lower than the theoretical example you give.
They talk about how some users are hogging the bandwidth and being subsidized by those who only use about 1GB a month, yet I don't see them offering any reasonably-priced plans for those folks, who they admit are using next to nothing.
They also neglect to mention that the bandwidth hogging is only really an issue (insofar as it's ever really an issue) during peak hours. During non-peak hours that bandwidth would go unused anyway. Kind of like how cell phone companies used to charge more during peak hours before they got their shit together and increased their capacity enough to meet the demand. So now most plans you get have a set amount of minutes that you can use anytime you like.
Usually we (I work for a small ISP that competes with big DSL and cable ops) end up paying more to the local electric companies for pole access than anyone else. See, they charge us to put more line on their pole (between $30 a pole up to ~$100 a pole). Imagine how many poles there are in a city? Now multiply it. Oh, don't forget that we need to apply man power to relocate our lines when they repair or move a pole. Oh, and that twat building a new hotel? Yeah he cut our fiber, so we need to do a fusion splice and maybe even use a directional bore to relocate the line if hes done it before.
This is why it seems ridiculously inefficient to have the last-mile infrastructure privately owned. Seems that it would make a LOT more sense for the city to run fiber everywhere and then allow any ISP to provide services over it for a fee that would be used to maintain and upgrade as necessary.
"until congress can pass another ex post facto law"
Fixed.
So what? The courts already decided they can do it with copyrights. So if we can get fucked by such changes, then surely we should also be allowed to benefit from them by saving $8 billion in our tax dollars from being handed out to some assholes who were acting in bad faith.
That is a good point. And as long as they hold their monopolies, then this particular aspect needs to be regulated. That is, with respect to services that they offer over their lines, they have to behave like common carriers.
We've tried incentives like huge tax breaks to get them to modernize their networks to increase capacity, but they tend to just pocket most of that money and go right on raping their customers. I blame government corruption and incompetence for that. If you're gonna put the carrot out there, you'd damn well better have a stick too.
As long as they're allowed to have control over the last mile to homes and businesses, we're all gonna get screwed. That infrastructure should be a municipal asset where we can contract out maintenance and upgrades, and then allow any provider that wants to compete to have access to deliver service over that infrastructure. Right now we are pretty much stuck with them whining about how it's so expensive to provide service and increase capacity. That's bullshit when they've been given more than enough time and money to do so, in addition to the ability to charge duopoly-size fees already. I won't be crying for them.
many phones have the ability to limit messages received, plus providers also have many options for adding blocks and such as well.
I don't see how that's even remotely helpful. I want to receive messages from people that I know or do business with. What I don't want are unsolicited advertisements being sent to me at my expense. If all the flyers and other junk mail in my mailbox were sent to me postage-due, I'd be pissed as well. Blocking all messages isn't a solution, and blocking one sender at a time won't work either. So yeah, it's a problem.
Not that I agree with these insane price structures, but I have to admit, comparing data delivery to water delivery is actually a pretty good analogy. It certainly makes sense to charge more for higher usage.
The water analogy is definitely flawed, but to a certain extent, it does make sense to charge for higher usage. The problem is that there is very little competition due to the nature of the infrastructure necessary to deliver the service. That's why TW thinks it can get away with charging several times what other companies are charging for the same capacity.
While DSL and cable do compete in a way, they are different, and are not direct substitutes for many customers due to a variety of reasons having to do with the limitations of the services and infrastructure in the area. To pretend that we have a free market for internet service is just crazy, so I do see a need for regulation of the market. As long as one or two companies are controlling access to the last mile, there will never be a free market.
It was after the Democratic Primary that Obama changed his tune, and supported sending "2 combat brigades to finish the work in Pakistan". There are several google links to credible sources that detail in fact, Obama had campaigned (for a period of time) for increasing troop strength in Afghanistan.
Not sure I'd take allegations by another candidate at face value. He has been pretty consistent over the last few years. Some quotes from speeches going back to January 2006:
"One of the things that I think is critical, as the next president, is to make absolutely certain that we not only phase out the Iraq but we also focus on the critical battle that we have in Afghanistan and root out al Qaeda. If we do not do that, then we're going to potentially see another attack here in the US."
Source: 2007 Dem. debate at Saint Anselm College Jun 3, 2007
this one from April 2007:
"Afghanistan is an area where we should be focusing. NATO has made real contributions there. Unfortunately, because of the distraction of Iraq, we have not finished the job in terms of making certain that we are driving back the Taliban, stabilizing the Karzai government, capturing bin Laden and making sure that we've rooted out terrorism in that region."
Source: 2007 South Carolina Democratic primary debate, on MSNBC Apr 26, 2007
this one from May 2007:
"I have always thought that we did the right thing in Afghanistan. My only concern with respect to Afghanistan was that we diverted our attention from Afghanistan in terms of moving into Iraq and I think we could have done a better job of stabilizing that country than we have in providing assistance to the Afghani people."
Source: In His Own Words, edited by Lisa Rogak, p. 5 Mar 27, 2007
and this one from January 2006:
"Part of the reason that we neglected Afghanistan, part of the reason that we didn't go after bin Laden as aggressively as we should have is we were distracted by a war of choice. That's the flaw of the Bush doctrine. It wasn't that he went after those who attacked America. It was that he went after those who didn't. As a consequence, we have been bogged down, paid extraordinary--an extraordinary price in blood and treasure, and we have fanned the anti- American sentiment that actually makes it more difficult for us to act in Pakistan. It is absolutely true that we have to, as much as possible, get Pakistan's agreement before we act. And that's always going to be the case. But we have to make sure that we do not hesitate to act when it comes to Al Qaida. Because they are currently stronger than they were at any time since 2001, partly because we took our eye off the ball."
Source: 2008 Facebook/WMUR-NH Democratic primary debate Jan 6, 2006
Even this quote from 2004 seems to support the Afghanistan war while condemning the Iraq war:
KEYES: "What probability was there that there was going to be a biological or nuclear attack against the US [from Iraq]? Bush acted to reduce that probability to zero."
OBAMA: "There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. This war has made us less safe because it betrayed a set of international rules that were in place to protect us, that could have helped us defeat terrorism. Mr. Keyes implied that by fighting this war in Iraq we have reduced the probability of a terrorist attack to zero. That cannot be the case when we have nuclear fuel lying around in the former Soviet Union. We still have ports that are insecure. We have nuclear and chemical plants that are still insecure. The notion that we have eliminated the terrorist threat while Osama bin Laden roams free in the hills of Afghanistan is simply not the case."
You pretty much described my experience with EVE as well. I don't have time for MMOs. Best I can manage in the multiplayer arena is to get in some TF2 or L4D a few times a week. I've trended more towards single-player games that I can play at my own pace, and more casual games like Puzzle Quest, etc.
Depends on whether you want to pay for your own health care or would like others to pay for your health care.
We always pick up the slack to a large extent for people who don't have health insurance. The alternative is letting them all die in the streets and that's not a conscionable solution. Seems like it would be a better financial choice to ensure that everyone is covered by at least some sort of insurance. We've already seen plenty of examples where the market, left to its own devices, will arrive at the wrong solution due to the conflict between doing the right thing and profits. This often results in some pretty twisted incentives that lead to tragically bad care for many people. Even those with insurance often don't get what they thought they were paying for, due to lack of regulation of the insurance companies and the incomprehensible (often even to lawyers) terms they tend to offer. So you pay your dues every month and then something bad happens and the company says they don't cover that. Good luck figuring out why it's not covered, or what they actually would cover for you. You're pretty much stuck taking their word for it, or trying to fight them in court. Even if you manage to eventually win, you'll probably be dead by then.
I'm not sure what they have influence on, beyond the internet. I don't really see why they would care, anyways.
Influence over the rules of the Internet is a big thing given the vast amount of business that is done over it. This translates directly to power and money.
I would say that one, more than any other, is the factor pushing this decision. Apparently the ICANN people learned nothing from the collapse of the financial markets in the US that followed the massive de-regulation of the same.
I think they learned what the rest of us learned, namely that the people at the top get obscenely rich and face no real consequences for their actions.
Slashdot Mirror
Libel is about the harm done to the reputation of the speech's subject (indirect harm due to the effect of the speech on third parties). This bill is about the harm done to the emotional state of the speech's subject (direct harm; the effect of the speech on the subject).
Which is exactly why this proposed law is so ridiculous. Everyone has a different emotional state and something can affect two people very differently. Proposing that we should all walk on eggshells for fear of saying something that might make someone else cry is just antithetical to the first amendment. You don't have any right to not be offended by something, even if it was intended to offend you or make you feel bad. You can feel however you want. Nobody else is responsible for that.
I never said that my comments applied to everyone on slashdot. I did say that, in my opinion, they applied to a majority. It's obviously anecdotal. I didn't do any sort of survey or poll, and never claimed otherwise.
Still don't see how you can even figure it's anywhere near a majority.
I'm not even basing my comments on the number of posts that I've seen along those lines alone. My impression was also based on the +5 Interesting, and +5 insightful mods that I saw attached to the posts when I read them. For each one of those posts there were at least 3 more people with mod points that agreed enough to use their points, than there were people with mod points that disagreed enough to use their points.
Did you miss the 50 other +5 posts rebutting those few and hammering the idea of the bill? I think we have very different ideas of what constitutes a majority.
There are levels to outrage. In my experience, the outrage is usually proportional to the offense unless the Republicans are involved. Then the outrage is frequently disproportionate to the offense.
There are a few million registered /. users now, yet you take a couple posts as being indicative of the feelings of an entire group of people, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of posts are ready to hang the sponsors of this bill? Why do so many Republicans seem to have a serious persecution complex? Even when they're running things they still seem to have it. It's weird.
:)
Since I may not post again in this story, I'd just like to add myself to the list of folks that calling for the heads of the sponsors of this bill. I'd also like to agree with the AC post way up above that went off on them for trying to turn the country into a giant playpen. Right on. Also agree with the post that nailed the ACLU for supporting the 1st amendment but not the 2nd. That's all I think
No matter how much techs and the department leads complain, IT and the department directors refuse to give people adequate access.
Ok, so massive fail on the part of the IT group then. If there's a reason they won't give access to those users, then it's probably due to poor design of the system. If there's no real reason why they shouldn't have access, then it's a failure of management. This is why there needs to be standards and auditing of these systems. They're responsible for very sensitive material. If they can't protect it properly, then they should be facing sanctions for putting our personal data at risk. We should have at least the same level of security for medical records that we do for financial records, if not more.
The fact that MS is going to give away Windows free for a years, says that they ARE losing their monopoly.
No, it means that they screwed the pooch with Vista and that their own biggest competitor is previous versions of Windows. Apple and Linux are not gonna eat Microsoft's lunch anytime soon.
They're like people who run NN4... things don't work right, but they're used to it and consider it par for the course, so they don't complain about it.
Big difference between running legacy software like NN4 and Windows Vista and Office 2007. The vast majority of the market is running either XP or Vista right now. Hardly comparable to NN4. The kind of people you're referring to would still be running something like Windows 95, 98, or ME.
Basically, lots of company can own it. Holding it is hard. If the monopoly with OS-Office gets broken, then MS will likely lose that 90% desktop.
Microsoft is going on 2 decades of being the 900 lb. gorilla. Get back to me when they lose that OS-Office monopoly. Network effects dictate that it will be pretty damn hard to break unless someone else is able to create something that works nearly as well and can read and write the same data formats without any problems. While many have tried, none have succeeded yet.
Personally, I don't consider them to be particularly relevant anymore. The exciting new technology doesn't come from Microsoft anymore, and hasn't in years...
Yeah, but it's kind of hard to consider having ~90% of the market to be irrelevant. They may not be the hip new thing, but they're definitely relevant to most people.
So if I neglect to feed or clothe my baby that's not abuse?
That's abuse of your baby. Copyright infringers are not abusing the legal system, they're just breaking the law.
Information is not free, nor does it want to be anything. Information does not want anything.
You want it to be free, both in terms of cost and in terms of liberties associated with it.
Do not try to anthropomorphize information as wanting to be free so you can pretend to be a righteous liberator fighting for it's cause.
All you are doing is stealing shit because you don't want to pay.
The natural state of things is for the information to be freely available once published. Only a mess of laws, lobbying and corruption have made it into the atrocious situation we have today that makes a mockery of the constitutional purpose for copyright. The industry has massively overreached and screwed the public in the process. Hence the lack of respect for copyright and the difficulty of defending it to anyone who has the first inkling of an idea of its real purpose.
It would only discourage the RIAA if the penalties outweigh the gains, probably by a significant margin. Otherwise, like many other companies do when the fine is less than the [gain], they'll just factor in the penalties as the cost of doing business.
Whoever was involved in paying him for the emails should be in prison for at least several years. That might serve as a bit more of a deterrent.
Let TWC or whoever service the last mile. FORCE them to resell that last mile to any tom dick or harry that wants to be an ISP.
Yes, and forcing a company to resell at a fair price would require regulation.
As someone who once worked in the ISP game I can say with confidence they don't care how you leeches feel, they wish they could run you off.
How are they being leeches by using the connection that they pay for to the fullest, especially when it was advertised as this awesome thing that would let you have access to all the cool stuff on the net like music and video? Leeches? I think the cable companies are just panicking because their strategy of overselling their capacity by a huge margin is coming back to bite them. That and the fact that they never put the money that they were supposed to into infrastructure when they got those huge tax breaks in the 90s. They've been making ridiculous profits year after year, doing fuck all to improve infrastructure, and now they have the nerve to blame the users? Fuck them.
(I'mma ask the OP for a citation.)
One of the replies to the comment that you posted links to an SEC filing that has actual numbers that that poster says back up the OP. The overall profits for the company were lower due to writedowns in other areas apparently. Just skimming that document made my head hurt though.
For a 8mb/s connection, you could theoretically transfer over 2.5TB in a single month, and that's just counting downloads. If the cap is, say, a rather reasonable 100GB, do you really think the plan that used to cost $50 should now cost $2? Does that sound reasonable to you, or maybe you're missing something?
Probably not missing anything. The 7Mb connection that I have is never a sustained 7Mb/s. The terms spell that out. It will operate up to that speed in bursts, but only for the first few MB of a transfer, after which it is reduced significantly. So the maximum amount I could actually transfer is much lower than the theoretical example you give.
They talk about how some users are hogging the bandwidth and being subsidized by those who only use about 1GB a month, yet I don't see them offering any reasonably-priced plans for those folks, who they admit are using next to nothing.
They also neglect to mention that the bandwidth hogging is only really an issue (insofar as it's ever really an issue) during peak hours. During non-peak hours that bandwidth would go unused anyway. Kind of like how cell phone companies used to charge more during peak hours before they got their shit together and increased their capacity enough to meet the demand. So now most plans you get have a set amount of minutes that you can use anytime you like.
Usually we (I work for a small ISP that competes with big DSL and cable ops) end up paying more to the local electric companies for pole access than anyone else. See, they charge us to put more line on their pole (between $30 a pole up to ~$100 a pole). Imagine how many poles there are in a city? Now multiply it. Oh, don't forget that we need to apply man power to relocate our lines when they repair or move a pole. Oh, and that twat building a new hotel? Yeah he cut our fiber, so we need to do a fusion splice and maybe even use a directional bore to relocate the line if hes done it before.
This is why it seems ridiculously inefficient to have the last-mile infrastructure privately owned. Seems that it would make a LOT more sense for the city to run fiber everywhere and then allow any ISP to provide services over it for a fee that would be used to maintain and upgrade as necessary.
"until congress can pass another ex post facto law" Fixed.
So what? The courts already decided they can do it with copyrights. So if we can get fucked by such changes, then surely we should also be allowed to benefit from them by saving $8 billion in our tax dollars from being handed out to some assholes who were acting in bad faith.
We happen to be discussing the broadband market here, so anything else is irrelevant. We need true openness and competition in the broadband market.
That is a good point. And as long as they hold their monopolies, then this particular aspect needs to be regulated. That is, with respect to services that they offer over their lines, they have to behave like common carriers.
We've tried incentives like huge tax breaks to get them to modernize their networks to increase capacity, but they tend to just pocket most of that money and go right on raping their customers. I blame government corruption and incompetence for that. If you're gonna put the carrot out there, you'd damn well better have a stick too.
As long as they're allowed to have control over the last mile to homes and businesses, we're all gonna get screwed. That infrastructure should be a municipal asset where we can contract out maintenance and upgrades, and then allow any provider that wants to compete to have access to deliver service over that infrastructure. Right now we are pretty much stuck with them whining about how it's so expensive to provide service and increase capacity. That's bullshit when they've been given more than enough time and money to do so, in addition to the ability to charge duopoly-size fees already. I won't be crying for them.
many phones have the ability to limit messages received, plus providers also have many options for adding blocks and such as well.
I don't see how that's even remotely helpful. I want to receive messages from people that I know or do business with. What I don't want are unsolicited advertisements being sent to me at my expense. If all the flyers and other junk mail in my mailbox were sent to me postage-due, I'd be pissed as well. Blocking all messages isn't a solution, and blocking one sender at a time won't work either. So yeah, it's a problem.
Not that I agree with these insane price structures, but I have to admit, comparing data delivery to water delivery is actually a pretty good analogy. It certainly makes sense to charge more for higher usage.
The water analogy is definitely flawed, but to a certain extent, it does make sense to charge for higher usage. The problem is that there is very little competition due to the nature of the infrastructure necessary to deliver the service. That's why TW thinks it can get away with charging several times what other companies are charging for the same capacity.
While DSL and cable do compete in a way, they are different, and are not direct substitutes for many customers due to a variety of reasons having to do with the limitations of the services and infrastructure in the area. To pretend that we have a free market for internet service is just crazy, so I do see a need for regulation of the market. As long as one or two companies are controlling access to the last mile, there will never be a free market.
It was after the Democratic Primary that Obama changed his tune, and supported sending "2 combat brigades to finish the work in Pakistan". There are several google links to credible sources that detail in fact, Obama had campaigned (for a period of time) for increasing troop strength in Afghanistan.
Not sure I'd take allegations by another candidate at face value. He has been pretty consistent over the last few years. Some quotes from speeches going back to January 2006:
this one from April 2007:
this one from May 2007:
and this one from January 2006:
Even this quote from 2004 seems to support the Afghanistan war while condemning the Iraq war:
You pretty much described my experience with EVE as well. I don't have time for MMOs. Best I can manage in the multiplayer arena is to get in some TF2 or L4D a few times a week. I've trended more towards single-player games that I can play at my own pace, and more casual games like Puzzle Quest, etc.
Depends on whether you want to pay for your own health care or would like others to pay for your health care.
We always pick up the slack to a large extent for people who don't have health insurance. The alternative is letting them all die in the streets and that's not a conscionable solution. Seems like it would be a better financial choice to ensure that everyone is covered by at least some sort of insurance. We've already seen plenty of examples where the market, left to its own devices, will arrive at the wrong solution due to the conflict between doing the right thing and profits. This often results in some pretty twisted incentives that lead to tragically bad care for many people. Even those with insurance often don't get what they thought they were paying for, due to lack of regulation of the insurance companies and the incomprehensible (often even to lawyers) terms they tend to offer. So you pay your dues every month and then something bad happens and the company says they don't cover that. Good luck figuring out why it's not covered, or what they actually would cover for you. You're pretty much stuck taking their word for it, or trying to fight them in court. Even if you manage to eventually win, you'll probably be dead by then.
I'm not sure what they have influence on, beyond the internet. I don't really see why they would care, anyways.
Influence over the rules of the Internet is a big thing given the vast amount of business that is done over it. This translates directly to power and money.
I would say that one, more than any other, is the factor pushing this decision. Apparently the ICANN people learned nothing from the collapse of the financial markets in the US that followed the massive de-regulation of the same.
I think they learned what the rest of us learned, namely that the people at the top get obscenely rich and face no real consequences for their actions.