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Well, I think it's a bit more than: "pretty please take away people's freedom to protect our profits". That's the only thing they have the power to do." More a

by nroach 15y ago

Well, I think it's a bit more than: "pretty please take away people's freedom to protect our profits". That's the only thing they have the power to do." More along the lines of: "Pretty please take away people's freedom and here's a huge bucket of cash set up as an anonymous corporate shell donor. If you don't support us we'll give this huge bucket of cash to your opponent. kthxbye." But I agree that a lack of term limits or accountability means that its the career politicians who are ultimately responsible.

yummyfajitas 15y ago
"Pretty please take away people's freedom and here's a huge bucket of cash set up as an anonymous corporate shell donor. If you don't support us we'll give this huge bucket of cash to your opponent. kthxbye." Ok, more precisely: "pretty please take away people's freedom or else we might tell everybody that you're a poopy head."
- jbooth 15y ago
  It's not "tell everyone you're a poopy-head", it's "run saturation-level advertising claiming that you voted to take away medicare, raise taxes and make it illegal for people to visit certain websites", unless you agree to our bill making it illegal to visit certain websites. Advertising works. I've canvassed the last 4 or so national election years and every single time I hear a lot of people echo the latest attack ad as truth, or say "I just don't know who to believe".
InclinedPlane 15y ago
In reality it's more like this: Step 1: Use bucket of cash to gain access to and develop a rapport with a politician, increase the rapport and dependency with campaign contributions Step 2: Convince said politician of your perspective, namely that the works of art your company has struggled to create are threatened by people who want to "steal" them without paying. Step 3: Convince said politician that it's necessary to go to special measures to protect content from being "stolen" because it's such a big and growing "problem". In many cases these steps can be quite natural and good seeming. The biggest problems are that the MPAA/RIAA have a lot more access to politicians than and a much more well honed "pitch" than any organization seeking to defend individuals.
- DanielBMarkham 15y ago
  Agreed. It amazes me when people see a bad result and insist that there must be a bad person behind it all somewhere. Do people not realize that more evil will come from a bad system full of good people than will ever come from a few bad people in a good system? Germany wasn't bad in WWII because of Hitler -- there are a million little Hitlers running around the world at any given moment. Germany went bad because the Weimar republic was in such a state of disarray [insert long discussion here] that armed political gangs thrived. People see the problems with the patent laws and content industry and they insist on "attack!" when the only thing that will do is make the system less stable and open to more of the same exact kinds of things they're upset with in the first place. Why do we insist that every story have a villain?
  - nate_meurer 15y ago
    Absolutely, I agree. That diffusion of culpability is what makes social ills like this so damned difficult to change. I would say, though, that identifying a villain is immensely helpful in mobilizing opposition, even if the villain is more caricature than reality. Hitler is a great example; no one cared that the reality of the Nazi state was a diffuse and dreary bureaucracy of Eichmanns and Speers. It was Hitler's face that went on war posters.
  - jbooth 15y ago
    I don't think those of us blaming lobbying are hung up on the MPAA/RIAA lobbyists here as a villain so much as upset at the general state of the system as it regards lobbying.
- cft 15y ago
  The reason why say MPAA has unprecedented access to politicians is because MPAA is used for political propaganda, overall consistently favorably portraying the government.

by nroach 15y ago

yummyfajitas 15y ago

"Pretty please take away people's freedom and here's a huge bucket of cash set up as an anonymous corporate shell donor. If you don't support us we'll give this huge bucket of cash to your opponent. kthxbye." Ok, more precisely: "pretty please take away people's freedom or else we might tell everybody that you're a poopy head."

jbooth 15y ago
It's not "tell everyone you're a poopy-head", it's "run saturation-level advertising claiming that you voted to take away medicare, raise taxes and make it illegal for people to visit certain websites", unless you agree to our bill making it illegal to visit certain websites. Advertising works. I've canvassed the last 4 or so national election years and every single time I hear a lot of people echo the latest attack ad as truth, or say "I just don't know who to believe".

InclinedPlane 15y ago

In reality it's more like this: Step 1: Use bucket of cash to gain access to and develop a rapport with a politician, increase the rapport and dependency with campaign contributions Step 2: Convince said politician of your perspective, namely that the works of art your company has struggled to create are threatened by people who want to "steal" them without paying. Step 3: Convince said politician that it's necessary to go to special measures to protect content from being "stolen" because it's such a big and growing "problem". In many cases these steps can be quite natural and good seeming. The biggest problems are that the MPAA/RIAA have a lot more access to politicians than and a much more well honed "pitch" than any organization seeking to defend individuals.

DanielBMarkham 15y ago
Agreed. It amazes me when people see a bad result and insist that there must be a bad person behind it all somewhere. Do people not realize that more evil will come from a bad system full of good people than will ever come from a few bad people in a good system? Germany wasn't bad in WWII because of Hitler -- there are a million little Hitlers running around the world at any given moment. Germany went bad because the Weimar republic was in such a state of disarray [insert long discussion here] that armed political gangs thrived. People see the problems with the patent laws and content industry and they insist on "attack!" when the only thing that will do is make the system less stable and open to more of the same exact kinds of things they're upset with in the first place. Why do we insist that every story have a villain?
- nate_meurer 15y ago
  Absolutely, I agree. That diffusion of culpability is what makes social ills like this so damned difficult to change. I would say, though, that identifying a villain is immensely helpful in mobilizing opposition, even if the villain is more caricature than reality. Hitler is a great example; no one cared that the reality of the Nazi state was a diffuse and dreary bureaucracy of Eichmanns and Speers. It was Hitler's face that went on war posters.
- jbooth 15y ago
  I don't think those of us blaming lobbying are hung up on the MPAA/RIAA lobbyists here as a villain so much as upset at the general state of the system as it regards lobbying.
cft 15y ago
The reason why say MPAA has unprecedented access to politicians is because MPAA is used for political propaganda, overall consistently favorably portraying the government.