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Marco's heart is in the right place here, but campaign finance reform actually ends up disproportionately empowering media outlets. While various kinds of direc

Marco's heart is in the right place here, but campaign finance reform actually ends up disproportionately empowering media outlets. While various kinds of direct donations to candidates are capped or made more difficult by CFR, newspapers and television outlets aren't banned from writing stories on particular candidates, even up to the day or morning of the election. Because advertising can't happen, but articles can, newspaper coverage under CFR amounts to a (huge) in-kind contribution in the form of PR. And especially when it comes to the MPAA, many of its member companies own media outlets in addition to movie studios. Rupert Murdoch, for example, put the Wall Street Journal and Fox News to work in promoting SOPA/PIPA as that furthers the interests of 20th Century Fox. So because no conceivable campaign finance regulation is going to muzzle the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times during an election, we may have to look elsewhere to check the MPAA's power. I think it's going to have to be something like a souped up version of Xtranormal, which makes production of high quality movies just as easy as distribution of said movies. This isn't that unrealistic. Blogger made production and international distribution of high quality opinion possible with a few keystrokes, which led in part to the ongoing revenue collapse in print media. Video and audio are obviously much more complex on a frame-by-frame basis than text, but I have to believe that authoring tools can get far better than where they are. Make them web based, build in all kinds of samples and templates akin to blogger templates, use some of the new HTML5 toys to make authoring easier and easier. Most of the results will be terrible, but most blogs are terrible. As long as enough high quality open access audio/video content is produced, the MPAA/RIAA will start to face the same financial fate as print media. Producing a technically and ethically superior product will always be more effective in the long run than a boycott.

lukifer 15y ago
Have you seen Lawrence Lessig's plan [1]? It involves offering tax vouchers to citizens to spend on candidates who pledge to only raise funds via those vouchers. Plenty of money would be spent on candidates, it would just happen in a more flat, distributed fashion. Also? The current system already gives an immense amount of power to media companies; a huge sum of campaign finance contributions wind up in their coffers, and they have tremendous incentives to maximize controversy and conflict, indirectly forcing candidates to spend more and more on advertising. And at the end of the day, they still have a strong voice in creating self-fulfilling prophecies over who is "electable". [1] http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-december-13-2011/exclusive---lawrence-lessig-extended-interview-pt--2 http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-december-13-2011/exclu...
mrdingle 15y ago
Campaign finance reform and biased media coverage are different beasts entirely. Murdoch owns Fox whether corporations are people or not, and he loves your disparaged argument. Besides, I'd rather be lied to in the face by the news that have my senators bought and sold behind closed doors. Also, all of the plan you propose is already happening. It's called the creative process. I bet a large portion, if not the majority, of your entertainment is now facilitated by self published content given away for free on the internet. Youtube videos, remixes, wikipedia, flickr, twitter, facebook updates. All of this stuff is 'High Quality' culture that is available to you for free. Copyright is great. It's necessary. It facilitates things like Creative Commons and the GPL. Abusive copyright holding organizations on the other hand are not so great. They exist only to exert control over their holdings and have recently risen to unprecedented levels of power because of the money we directly give them. To call a boycott against these organizations futile is to miss the point of the boycott. It's not about putting them out of business. It's about awareness and slowly changing the overall public perception of an issue so fundamental and important as copyright reform and voting with your dollars. So try not to get so discouraged and remember you give them the power. Seriously. Vote with you dollars (and with a ballot).
- armandososa 15y ago
  I may be wrong, but I think his point is: even if they couldn't bribe politicians, they still could blackmail them with bad coverage.
  - jiggy2011 15y ago
    That's true, or reward them with good coverage. Here in the UK we actually have rules that say that TV news shows must remain non partisan. Of course people still accuse them of bias, but they are nothing like Fox news. I imagine the 1st amendment would prevent a similar thing happening in the US. Our newspapers however are often extremely partisan however and Murdoch still has much influence here through "The Sun" paper. I guess with more content online , people could do something similar. "I have 100,000 followers, don't pass SOPA or I'll make a mean youtube video about you".
cookiecaper 15y ago
I actually think that the new unidirectional media monopoly that has emerged as TV and radio have become dominant is a large contributor to today's biggest problems in social thought. Before radio, local newspapers ruled and while they certainly do not accept input, it is easy to launch a competing paper; while presses weren't cheap necessarily, they were obtainable to men with reasonable means, and such men can be found on almost every side of an issue. It was common in the 1800s for a retaliatory newsletter or paper to publish and get roughly common circulation with the item whose claims it sought to address. Thus, people received both sides of an issue, and with some legwork could create a response and receive a more or less equivalent initial readership. That changed immensely as we entered the radio age, where extremely expensive equipment was required to broadcast and there was some competition for a limited spectrum of airwaves. No longer could one semi-wealthy backer get a viewpoint published; it now took some very serious capital and/or investment only available by forming large amalgamations of wealthy people (or having a SERIOUSLY large backer on par with Rockefeller or other barons), and even if you got that together, you had to file requests for airspace which the government does exactly distribute loosely or quickly. The problem was exacerbated even further as television took over and expensive cameras, lights, and other equipment became necessary to produce a piece with equivalent credibility. The internet has restored the equivalence and access of publication that existed in the days of paper and taken it further than it ever existed before; now there is almost no barrier to entry whatsoever to publish something across the whole world. Naturally, the corporations and interests that thrived with an exclusive voice among the people are beginning to wane and they are going down kicking and screaming. We will see what is ultimately required to root them out entirely. Just think what would have become of the revolution if Thomas Paine's Common Sense went unread because everyone was too busy watching TV broadcasted by what were indeed 4 separate entities, but entities all friendly to the Crown which had already allotted them privileges and protection, and entities which were in identical businesses and therefore shared the same legal interests. I think we have been thoroughly manipulated the last 70-100 years or so and I believe that we are continually reaping the consequences of that manipulation. Thank God for the internet and the freedom to publish which it restored, and which makes it among the most important structures in the world today.
- pnathan 15y ago
InclinedPlane 15y ago
Campaign finance reform is a bad idea. Not only would it also limit legitimate free speech it also wouldn't solve the problem. The real problem is excessive power in the hands of the government. Today congress has its fingers in every industry, to a degree that can easily result in causing the success or failure of one or another company based on their more or less arbitrary decisions. This creates a natural need to try to control or influence that power. If we take away the ability to contribute to campaigns then corporations and moneyed interests will simply turn to more direct forms of corruption. In short corruption is a symptom, trying to stop the least objectionable types of it will merely drive it underground and more direct. The problem we need to solve is the ability of corruption to be successful.
- comicjk 15y ago
  I don't think this is a reasonable position at all, especially in my own industry, chemical engineering. The externalities that some businesses can impose on the public are so large that the public MUST have regulatory powers. If that encourages corruption we have to prosecute the corrupt, not weaken the oversight.
  - InclinedPlane 15y ago
    I do not mean an absence of regulation, I mean limits on regulation, regulation as nothing more than the rule of law, and far less excessive government spending and "earmarks". A company should properly be concerned with whether or not it is complying with the law, and that should be an existential concern especially when it comes to significant externalities. A company should not be concerned with whether or not it has enough influence in Washington relative to its competitors. I'd speculate that for most industries the latter tends to be a higher level of concern than the former, and that is not in any way ok.
  - anamax 15y ago
    > The externalities that some businesses can impose on the public are so large that the public MUST have regulatory powers. If that encourages corruption we have to prosecute the corrupt, not weaken the oversight. You're confusing "MUST" (actually SHOULD) with "CAN". Look into regulatory capture. You can't ignore it or legislate it away any more than you can ignore or legislate away gravity.

lukifer 15y ago

Have you seen Lawrence Lessig's plan [1]? It involves offering tax vouchers to citizens to spend on candidates who pledge to only raise funds via those vouchers. Plenty of money would be spent on candidates, it would just happen in a more flat, distributed fashion. Also? The current system already gives an immense amount of power to media companies; a huge sum of campaign finance contributions wind up in their coffers, and they have tremendous incentives to maximize controversy and conflict, indirectly forcing candidates to spend more and more on advertising. And at the end of the day, they still have a strong voice in creating self-fulfilling prophecies over who is "electable". [1] http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-december-13-2011/exclusive---lawrence-lessig-extended-interview-pt--2 http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-december-13-2011/exclu...

mrdingle 15y ago

Campaign finance reform and biased media coverage are different beasts entirely. Murdoch owns Fox whether corporations are people or not, and he loves your disparaged argument. Besides, I'd rather be lied to in the face by the news that have my senators bought and sold behind closed doors. Also, all of the plan you propose is already happening. It's called the creative process. I bet a large portion, if not the majority, of your entertainment is now facilitated by self published content given away for free on the internet. Youtube videos, remixes, wikipedia, flickr, twitter, facebook updates. All of this stuff is 'High Quality' culture that is available to you for free. Copyright is great. It's necessary. It facilitates things like Creative Commons and the GPL. Abusive copyright holding organizations on the other hand are not so great. They exist only to exert control over their holdings and have recently risen to unprecedented levels of power because of the money we directly give them. To call a boycott against these organizations futile is to miss the point of the boycott. It's not about putting them out of business. It's about awareness and slowly changing the overall public perception of an issue so fundamental and important as copyright reform and voting with your dollars. So try not to get so discouraged and remember you give them the power. Seriously. Vote with you dollars (and with a ballot).

armandososa 15y ago
I may be wrong, but I think his point is: even if they couldn't bribe politicians, they still could blackmail them with bad coverage.
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  That's true, or reward them with good coverage. Here in the UK we actually have rules that say that TV news shows must remain non partisan. Of course people still accuse them of bias, but they are nothing like Fox news. I imagine the 1st amendment would prevent a similar thing happening in the US. Our newspapers however are often extremely partisan however and Murdoch still has much influence here through "The Sun" paper. I guess with more content online , people could do something similar. "I have 100,000 followers, don't pass SOPA or I'll make a mean youtube video about you".

cookiecaper 15y ago

I actually think that the new unidirectional media monopoly that has emerged as TV and radio have become dominant is a large contributor to today's biggest problems in social thought. Before radio, local newspapers ruled and while they certainly do not accept input, it is easy to launch a competing paper; while presses weren't cheap necessarily, they were obtainable to men with reasonable means, and such men can be found on almost every side of an issue. It was common in the 1800s for a retaliatory newsletter or paper to publish and get roughly common circulation with the item whose claims it sought to address. Thus, people received both sides of an issue, and with some legwork could create a response and receive a more or less equivalent initial readership. That changed immensely as we entered the radio age, where extremely expensive equipment was required to broadcast and there was some competition for a limited spectrum of airwaves. No longer could one semi-wealthy backer get a viewpoint published; it now took some very serious capital and/or investment only available by forming large amalgamations of wealthy people (or having a SERIOUSLY large backer on par with Rockefeller or other barons), and even if you got that together, you had to file requests for airspace which the government does exactly distribute loosely or quickly. The problem was exacerbated even further as television took over and expensive cameras, lights, and other equipment became necessary to produce a piece with equivalent credibility. The internet has restored the equivalence and access of publication that existed in the days of paper and taken it further than it ever existed before; now there is almost no barrier to entry whatsoever to publish something across the whole world. Naturally, the corporations and interests that thrived with an exclusive voice among the people are beginning to wane and they are going down kicking and screaming. We will see what is ultimately required to root them out entirely. Just think what would have become of the revolution if Thomas Paine's Common Sense went unread because everyone was too busy watching TV broadcasted by what were indeed 4 separate entities, but entities all friendly to the Crown which had already allotted them privileges and protection, and entities which were in identical businesses and therefore shared the same legal interests. I think we have been thoroughly manipulated the last 70-100 years or so and I believe that we are continually reaping the consequences of that manipulation. Thank God for the internet and the freedom to publish which it restored, and which makes it among the most important structures in the world today.

pnathan 15y ago

InclinedPlane 15y ago

Campaign finance reform is a bad idea. Not only would it also limit legitimate free speech it also wouldn't solve the problem. The real problem is excessive power in the hands of the government. Today congress has its fingers in every industry, to a degree that can easily result in causing the success or failure of one or another company based on their more or less arbitrary decisions. This creates a natural need to try to control or influence that power. If we take away the ability to contribute to campaigns then corporations and moneyed interests will simply turn to more direct forms of corruption. In short corruption is a symptom, trying to stop the least objectionable types of it will merely drive it underground and more direct. The problem we need to solve is the ability of corruption to be successful.

comicjk 15y ago
I don't think this is a reasonable position at all, especially in my own industry, chemical engineering. The externalities that some businesses can impose on the public are so large that the public MUST have regulatory powers. If that encourages corruption we have to prosecute the corrupt, not weaken the oversight.
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  I do not mean an absence of regulation, I mean limits on regulation, regulation as nothing more than the rule of law, and far less excessive government spending and "earmarks". A company should properly be concerned with whether or not it is complying with the law, and that should be an existential concern especially when it comes to significant externalities. A company should not be concerned with whether or not it has enough influence in Washington relative to its competitors. I'd speculate that for most industries the latter tends to be a higher level of concern than the former, and that is not in any way ok.
- anamax 15y ago
  > The externalities that some businesses can impose on the public are so large that the public MUST have regulatory powers. If that encourages corruption we have to prosecute the corrupt, not weaken the oversight. You're confusing "MUST" (actually SHOULD) with "CAN". Look into regulatory capture. You can't ignore it or legislate it away any more than you can ignore or legislate away gravity.