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Monopoly Lawyers Shouldn’t Write Monopoly Laws

41 points by Uncle_Sam 16y ago

Roritharr 16y ago
This pattern of circular logic for justification of presence is what enabled aristocracys to exist even in times where they were clearly better options. I think its a human error to allow such behavior, but one whose results will, given enough time, be detected and corrected. In the case of monopoly laws its worse in the us than europe, because our legal system only asks you to pay for your defense in the event of you losing the trial.
CallMeV 16y ago
But perhaps they could be paid with Monopoly money.
tzs 16y ago
His first assumption is wrong, at least for the US. Yes, lawyers are involved in lobbying for and suggesting the text of laws. However, lawyers that represent all sides are involved, and non-laywers can lobby just as well as lawyers. The rest of his argument is essentially that obeying the law costs him money as an entrepreneur if he gets caught, and so the things he wants to do should not be illegal.
- jbooth 16y ago
  However, lawyers that represent all sides are involved, and non-laywers can lobby just as well as lawyers. Citation needed. I don't see why this would necessarily be the case at all. If you're not either 1) a big corp or 2) running a public interest PAC, there's absolutely no reason you'd be involved or even aware that some committee member is working on a bill they're going to propose. Even then, the public interest pacs are shorter on cash and derided by half of the political spectrum as "community organizers" or whatnot so it's basically just the big corps and their lobbying firms. Randian paradise.
- rlpb 16y ago
  > non-laywers can lobby just as well as lawyers. Lobbying costs money. Using the same sort of analysis as in the article, it's easy to see that the available funds for lobbying are heavily biased in one direction.
  - tzs 16y ago
    By that analysis, we'd expect in the US most lobbying on abortion law to be on the pro choice side, yet in practice there is a tremendous amount of lobbying on the pro life side. Or look at business vs. labor issues. Again, heavy lobbying from both sides. How about health care? Massive lobbying from all sides. Environmental regulation? Same. Immigration? Same.
    - jbooth 16y ago
      Actually, in all of those cases it's the people with the most money. On abortion in particular, you've got a silent majority and an extremely vocal minority. I'm pro-choice and have never donated to planned parenthood, not because I don't support them, but just because I'm not that motivated on the subject. Business vs labor, I'm not going to bother to try and write a thesis tracking down the funding but I would suspect that there's more money on the business side. Heard of "Americans for Prosperity"? Same with healthcare. Note that Obama spent significant effort courting the health insurance lobby for his bill, combined with a little courting of labor and no courting of consumer advocates. Environmental regulation? The oil industry vs Sierra Club? Please. Immigration, I'm not even familiar with the sides involved, the minutemen don't seem organized enough to lobby effectively.
      - tzs 16y ago
        Note that in most of those cases, the side that you attribute the most lobbying to is the side that is trying to reverse current law. The pro lifers are trying to reverse the current pro choice laws. The oil industry is trying to get rid of environmental regulation. Under the article's thesis, we'd expect most of the lobbying to be from the supporters of the current laws, trying to strengthen them.
- alexqgb 16y ago
  You're aware that most lobbyists ARE lawyers, right? I mean, it's what the sharpest of the lot aspire to.
sunchild 16y ago
Why does OP expect the cost of defending a lawsuit to be at least thousands of dollars? Presumably because OP isn't a lawyer, and thinks: (1) it isn't cost-effective to learn to defense him/herself and (2) he/she would need to hire a lawyer to handle the court procedures and substantive arguments. I reject the OP's delineation of business vs. legal outright. If you're doing business on the web, you need to be able to defend yourself against C&D letters. Whether that means going to trial, settling the claim or calling the letter writer's bluff: you need to be able to do all three.
- jbooth 16y ago
  If you're going anywhere near a courtroom, or even anywhere near a mailbox where you would be mailing pieces of paper to a courtroom, you're into thousands of dollars. 10 relevant documents to be filed * 200 an hour = $2k, just to get out of the gate. Plus a couple hours of consultation, and a few 15 minute charges when they call you to confirm the spelling of your last name. Yes, they just did copy/paste on those docs, and yes, that's bullshit to bill you like that, but that's how lawyers work. The OP was lowballing it, even.
  - fleitz 16y ago
    He's definitely low balling it, I spent an hour in court for some preliminary motions and it cost me $3500. And yeah, I had to edit their documents for them because they were so fucked up, it was like they had someone who dropped out in grade 8 writing the documents. This was basic shit like fixing the year from 208 to 2008.
    - sunchild 16y ago
      Perfect example of why I became a lawyer. You made yourself the victim of a lawyer that doesn't need to care about your satisfaction. Bar association self-regulation ensures that people like yourself continue to pour bad money after bad on lawyers. But, really, you have no one except yourself to blame. You got duped.
      - 16y ago
grellas 16y ago
Lobbying and lawyers are one thing; ideas are another. Over time, the force of an idea is what carries the day, one way or the other, not short-term tactics aimed at pressuring politicians, distorting facts, or putting it over on the public. This particular debate - that is, whether a society should confer monopoly rights for the benefit of inventors and authors - happens to be several centuries old. An extremely articulate proponent for the anti-monopoly view was none other than Thomas Jefferson. Here is what he wrote to Isaac McPherson in 1813: "That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body." (see the full text of the letter, which is well worth reading in its entirety, here: http://www.temple.edu/lawschool/dpost/mcphersonletter.html http://www.temple.edu/lawschool/dpost/mcphersonletter.html) This is a philosophical argument against the idea of patents generally, beautifully expressed. In his day, Jefferson lost this argument and the framers of the U.S. Constitution added Article I, section 8, clause 8, which provides that the Congress shall have the power "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." This was followed by enactment of the first U.S. Patent Act in 1790 and by an unbroken body of law ever since upholding patents with a vigor that is quite remarkable. Today, patent and copyright laws are once again being re-examined from a philosophical perspective. Is it really true that monopoly grants of this type add value to a society by fostering creative activity? Do such laws truly benefit deserving persons or do they mainly promote the interests of faceless corporations and opportunistic trolls? Is it honest to call it "intellectual property" if this merely begs the important underlying question whether intangible rights (really, exclusive-right or monopoly grants) of this type should even be recognized by law? These are legitimate questions and the debate is a serious one. But there is also a very legitimate argument on the other side of this debate, what might be called the overwhelming majority position of the past two centuries that has favored patents and copyrights. That argument was certainly not lost on the nearly 7,000 authors, professors, and other persons of all non-lawyer ranks in society who filed such strong objections to the proposed Google book settlement based on threats to their copyright interests as to cause the judge to reject it. Nor is it lost on the major technology companies who continue to file patents in great number even as they advocate against frivolous patents (see, e.g., the "Latest Patents" site, which duly notes a large number of patent filings by Google made with great frequency: http://www.latestpatents.com/google-patent-applications-published-on-14-april-2011/ http://www.latestpatents.com/google-patent-applications-publ...). While there is obviously an aspect to this debate that involves lawyers, lobbying, and circular logic, those issues are in my view at the fringes of the debate, and it hardly promotes careful analysis to bring them front and center and to say that this is all that is involved in the fight. A superficial attack of this type is really no more defensible as a way of advocating a position than is the use of circular logic that is being criticized in the piece itself. Much more depth is needed to get to the most important issues at stake.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

41 points by Uncle_Sam 16y ago

This pattern of circular logic for justification of presence is what enabled aristocracys to exist even in times where they were clearly better options. I think its a human error to allow such behavior, but one whose results will, given enough time, be detected and corrected. In the case of monopoly laws its worse in the us than europe, because our legal system only asks you to pay for your defense in the event of you losing the trial.

CallMeV 16y ago

But perhaps they could be paid with Monopoly money.

tzs 16y ago

His first assumption is wrong, at least for the US. Yes, lawyers are involved in lobbying for and suggesting the text of laws. However, lawyers that represent all sides are involved, and non-laywers can lobby just as well as lawyers. The rest of his argument is essentially that obeying the law costs him money as an entrepreneur if he gets caught, and so the things he wants to do should not be illegal.

jbooth 16y ago
However, lawyers that represent all sides are involved, and non-laywers can lobby just as well as lawyers. Citation needed. I don't see why this would necessarily be the case at all. If you're not either 1) a big corp or 2) running a public interest PAC, there's absolutely no reason you'd be involved or even aware that some committee member is working on a bill they're going to propose. Even then, the public interest pacs are shorter on cash and derided by half of the political spectrum as "community organizers" or whatnot so it's basically just the big corps and their lobbying firms. Randian paradise.
rlpb 16y ago
> non-laywers can lobby just as well as lawyers. Lobbying costs money. Using the same sort of analysis as in the article, it's easy to see that the available funds for lobbying are heavily biased in one direction.
- tzs 16y ago
  By that analysis, we'd expect in the US most lobbying on abortion law to be on the pro choice side, yet in practice there is a tremendous amount of lobbying on the pro life side. Or look at business vs. labor issues. Again, heavy lobbying from both sides. How about health care? Massive lobbying from all sides. Environmental regulation? Same. Immigration? Same.
  - jbooth 16y ago
    Actually, in all of those cases it's the people with the most money. On abortion in particular, you've got a silent majority and an extremely vocal minority. I'm pro-choice and have never donated to planned parenthood, not because I don't support them, but just because I'm not that motivated on the subject. Business vs labor, I'm not going to bother to try and write a thesis tracking down the funding but I would suspect that there's more money on the business side. Heard of "Americans for Prosperity"? Same with healthcare. Note that Obama spent significant effort courting the health insurance lobby for his bill, combined with a little courting of labor and no courting of consumer advocates. Environmental regulation? The oil industry vs Sierra Club? Please. Immigration, I'm not even familiar with the sides involved, the minutemen don't seem organized enough to lobby effectively.
    - tzs 16y ago
      Note that in most of those cases, the side that you attribute the most lobbying to is the side that is trying to reverse current law. The pro lifers are trying to reverse the current pro choice laws. The oil industry is trying to get rid of environmental regulation. Under the article's thesis, we'd expect most of the lobbying to be from the supporters of the current laws, trying to strengthen them.
alexqgb 16y ago
You're aware that most lobbyists ARE lawyers, right? I mean, it's what the sharpest of the lot aspire to.

sunchild 16y ago

Why does OP expect the cost of defending a lawsuit to be at least thousands of dollars? Presumably because OP isn't a lawyer, and thinks: (1) it isn't cost-effective to learn to defense him/herself and (2) he/she would need to hire a lawyer to handle the court procedures and substantive arguments. I reject the OP's delineation of business vs. legal outright. If you're doing business on the web, you need to be able to defend yourself against C&D letters. Whether that means going to trial, settling the claim or calling the letter writer's bluff: you need to be able to do all three.

jbooth 16y ago
If you're going anywhere near a courtroom, or even anywhere near a mailbox where you would be mailing pieces of paper to a courtroom, you're into thousands of dollars. 10 relevant documents to be filed * 200 an hour = $2k, just to get out of the gate. Plus a couple hours of consultation, and a few 15 minute charges when they call you to confirm the spelling of your last name. Yes, they just did copy/paste on those docs, and yes, that's bullshit to bill you like that, but that's how lawyers work. The OP was lowballing it, even.
- fleitz 16y ago
  He's definitely low balling it, I spent an hour in court for some preliminary motions and it cost me $3500. And yeah, I had to edit their documents for them because they were so fucked up, it was like they had someone who dropped out in grade 8 writing the documents. This was basic shit like fixing the year from 208 to 2008.
  - sunchild 16y ago
    Perfect example of why I became a lawyer. You made yourself the victim of a lawyer that doesn't need to care about your satisfaction. Bar association self-regulation ensures that people like yourself continue to pour bad money after bad on lawyers. But, really, you have no one except yourself to blame. You got duped.
    - 16y ago

grellas 16y ago

Lobbying and lawyers are one thing; ideas are another. Over time, the force of an idea is what carries the day, one way or the other, not short-term tactics aimed at pressuring politicians, distorting facts, or putting it over on the public. This particular debate - that is, whether a society should confer monopoly rights for the benefit of inventors and authors - happens to be several centuries old. An extremely articulate proponent for the anti-monopoly view was none other than Thomas Jefferson. Here is what he wrote to Isaac McPherson in 1813: "That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body." (see the full text of the letter, which is well worth reading in its entirety, here: http://www.temple.edu/lawschool/dpost/mcphersonletter.html http://www.temple.edu/lawschool/dpost/mcphersonletter.html) This is a philosophical argument against the idea of patents generally, beautifully expressed. In his day, Jefferson lost this argument and the framers of the U.S. Constitution added Article I, section 8, clause 8, which provides that the Congress shall have the power "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." This was followed by enactment of the first U.S. Patent Act in 1790 and by an unbroken body of law ever since upholding patents with a vigor that is quite remarkable. Today, patent and copyright laws are once again being re-examined from a philosophical perspective. Is it really true that monopoly grants of this type add value to a society by fostering creative activity? Do such laws truly benefit deserving persons or do they mainly promote the interests of faceless corporations and opportunistic trolls? Is it honest to call it "intellectual property" if this merely begs the important underlying question whether intangible rights (really, exclusive-right or monopoly grants) of this type should even be recognized by law? These are legitimate questions and the debate is a serious one. But there is also a very legitimate argument on the other side of this debate, what might be called the overwhelming majority position of the past two centuries that has favored patents and copyrights. That argument was certainly not lost on the nearly 7,000 authors, professors, and other persons of all non-lawyer ranks in society who filed such strong objections to the proposed Google book settlement based on threats to their copyright interests as to cause the judge to reject it. Nor is it lost on the major technology companies who continue to file patents in great number even as they advocate against frivolous patents (see, e.g., the "Latest Patents" site, which duly notes a large number of patent filings by Google made with great frequency: http://www.latestpatents.com/google-patent-applications-published-on-14-april-2011/ http://www.latestpatents.com/google-patent-applications-publ...). While there is obviously an aspect to this debate that involves lawyers, lobbying, and circular logic, those issues are in my view at the fringes of the debate, and it hardly promotes careful analysis to bring them front and center and to say that this is all that is involved in the fight. A superficial attack of this type is really no more defensible as a way of advocating a position than is the use of circular logic that is being criticized in the piece itself. Much more depth is needed to get to the most important issues at stake.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]