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1. Most Republicans don't understand DRM 2. Most Republicans favor DRM because the Chamber of Commerce favors it. 3. The primary proponents of DRM in the Cham
by mnemonicsloth 7y ago
1. Most Republicans don't understand DRM
2. Most Republicans favor DRM because the Chamber of Commerce favors it.
3. The primary proponents of DRM in the Chamber of Commerce are groups the Republicans hate: the RIAA, MPAA and a few others.
4. Republicans sign on for things like DRM and copyright extension because they think they're "good for business".
5. Point 3 says Republicans could have an interest in weakening some kinds of intellectual property protection. They are prevented from doing this by their ideology (Point 4).
6. All that said, writing a whole piece that will encourage republicans to double down on that ideology [1] is not doing the world a favor.
[1] Doubling down on ideology is what people do when you make fun of their ideas. They just yell louder. This has been the heat source for every flame war that has ever been.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y agoThe DMCA had broad bipartisan support, and as far as I'm aware no political leaders are proposing to revoke DRM protections.
- mnemonicsloth 7y agoYes, like I said, the Democrats did it because the entertainment industry is an important constituency of theirs. The Republicans did it because they thought it would be good for business. But the businesses that benefit most from expanding IP protection (record companies, movie studios, publishers) are not very big as big businesses go. Sony pictures made $9 billion last year. Exxon-Mobil made $279 billion -- probably more than all the major studios put together. So it's possible that the Republicans could be persuaded to cut the entertainment industry loose. You could tell them they'd be helping millions of smaller businesses who could benefit from lower IP costs and that the departing RIAA and MPAA members weren't their kind of businesses anyway. This is a longshot. I'm not pretending it isn't. But if it did work, looser IP laws would fall clearly on one side of the political spectrum, making it possible for them to get enacted in time. When they aren't on either side of the spectrum, there's no chance.
- rhino369 7y ago1) I don't think you did say "Democrats did it because the entertainment industry is an important constituency of theirs" in your OP 2) Why do you seem to be more angry at the party you think earnestly made a mistake rather than the one who whored out to a special interest group.
- gowld 7y agoYou forget the infamus "Sen. Fritz Hollings (D -Disney)", the Democrat whose constituency was called "Disney" instead of his state of South Carolina.