Copyright For Sale: What the Sony Docs Say About MPAA Buying Political Influence 163
An anonymous reader writes: The linkage between political funding and the major
copyright lobby groups is not a new issue as for years there have
been stories
about how groups like the MPAA and RIAA fund politicians that
advance their interests. Michael Geist digs
into the Sony document leak to see how the MPAA coordinates
widespread buying of politicians with political funding campaigns
led by former Senator Christopher Dodd to federal and state
politicians. The campaigns include efforts to circumvent donation
limits by encouraging executives to spend thousands on influential
politicians, leading to meetings with Barack Obama, the head of
the USTR and world leaders.
We can learn from this (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems to me like this is a pretty solid way to identify most of what's wrong with our political structure so that we can fix it.
Unfortunately it will probably just be used as a "how to" manual.
Re:We can learn from this (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup, essentially the politicians have set it up so they can be openly bribed/bought off to give corporations more consideration than the rest of us.
If this doesn't show how corrupt and broken the system is, I have no idea what will.
There's no way the politicians will change the law so they can no longer get paid ... it's simply too lucrative.
They're all crooks, and should be thrown in jail.
Re:We can learn from this (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but... but... Assange! Look at that guy, a fugitive from the law, hosting these documents to boost his own ego! Forget the corruption, look at THAT guy!
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It's more than just them, look up the word "ICANN".
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They are just playing by the rules of the system, as is. Not sure you can fault them for that. We are mostly a plutocracy. If you don't want the players to play by the rules, then end the damned plutocracy.
Unfortunately, they've used their well-honed corporate marketing skills to dupe most of the population into thinking the fat cat plutocrats are blessed by God to be fat cat plutocrats. Thus, the sheep population won't vote to fix it. I'm not suggesting at a
Re:We can learn from this (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering they used their money to make this into the system, I see absolutely no reason to simply say "it's okay, they're using the rules they created".
That's 100% wrong and dishonest.
Re:We can learn from this (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, horseshit.
Corporations bought and fucking paid for those rules. That doesn't make them good.
It means the politicians have been corrupt long enough that idiots think that a broken and corrupt system is just "the rules of the system".
Eat the rich, and shoot the politicians if this is the fucking status quo.
Re:We can learn from this (Score:4, Interesting)
Why is it broken? These rules are the consequence of human behavior at a global scale. As long as the global human behavior is to increase the maximum individual achievable wealth, instead of increasing some sort of minimum collective value, I bet you will see these kind of rules emerging. Which means they are not broken, but rather a good solution to the problem.
I was born in East-Germany, where people did a pacific revolution to free themselves from a dictatorship. That's what your history book says. The truth is, people wanted to have the opportunity to get rich which is not possible in a socialist country. Some of them did eventually, but the vast majority is now poorer than they were before, having a high unemployment rate, mini-jobs with low income, etc. Are people happier by now? Frankly, I'm not sure. But as soon as basic needs are fulfilled (home, food, day activity), people tend to be very sad if they don't see any opportunity of growth. So maybe they are indeed happier by now, even if basic needs are less achieved.
You have to accept that we are a competitive species, not a collaborative one. We may do things together, but only in the perspective of self-fulfillment. It's as if individual growth is hard-coded in our genes. Maybe not you, certainly not me, but in average, yes.
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I was born in East-Germany, where people did a pacific revolution to free themselves from a dictatorship.
Small vocabulary lesson: although in theory the word pacific and peaceful mean the same thing, in reality English speakers would not use the word pacific in that way. Because if you say pacific, people think you're talking about the big ocean. So you'd wanna say peaceful revolution or bloodless revolution. Hope this helped ;)
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Thanks! I'll try to remember that.
Re:We can learn from this (Score:5, Insightful)
Great post! But I take exception to this statement especially in the current context where people think it is wrong that we have the best government money can buy:
You have to accept that we are a competitive species, not a collaborative one. We may do things together, but only in the perspective of self-fulfillment. It's as if individual growth is hard-coded in our genes. Maybe not you, certainly not me, but in average, yes.
I agree that in general we all want to improve our lot in life. I disagree that it is built into our genes for us to screw over our fellow humans in the process. It has been documented in books such as Mutual Aid: a factor of Evolution that cooperation within a species is a much more effective (and prevalent) strategy than competition within a species.
In addition, even if some mild forms of competition within a species are beneficial, I totally reject the carte-blanche you offer to even the most sadistic and psychopathic behavior in the name of "my genes made me do it".
If your assumption that we are for the most part all psychopaths is true then we as a species are completely and totally fucked. The overwhelming evidence is the vast majority of humans are not psychopaths. The problem is that almost literally by hook and by crook we have developed a system where psychopaths tend to rise to positions of leadership in corporations and they have used their power to almost totally subvert the government to their antisocial whims.
If you look up the definition of "psychopath":
a personality disorder characterized by enduring antisocial behavior, diminished empathy and remorse, and disinhibited or bold behavior.
you will see that what you described is psychopathic behavior. While this aberration may have a genetic component, that doesn't make it right; it doesn't mean it is widespread; and it certainly doesn't mean we should develop a system that puts psychopaths in positions of great power.
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What you aren't seeing in the OP's intent is this:
Even alliances are done with the potential benefit of each certain individual in the mind of each certain individual.
Morons use people as a short-term source of benefit.
Brilliant people realize that there is value in the collective, in the form of burger flippers and shelf stock people and other ubermensch.
All roads lead to Rome.
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You have to accept that we are a competitive species, not a collaborative one. We may do things together, but only in the perspective of self-fulfillment. It's as if individual growth is hard-coded in our genes. Maybe not you, certainly not me, but in average, yes.
We have to accept that it is in our biology, but civilization is impossible without trying to curb it.
It is also in our nature to kill, steal, and maim. Should we then say: "Well, apparently we should allow that or even cater for it."?
The answer is no.
Many things that enable civilization are based on preventing our selfish and animalistic biological nature from manifesting itself. Laws and customs we introduced because we rationally analysed a current situation and said: "Fuck, this shit isn't working. In f
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We have to accept that it is in our biology, but civilization is impossible without trying to curb it.
It is also in our nature to kill, steal, and maim. Should we then say: "Well, apparently we should allow that or even cater for it."?
The answer is no.
That's exactly the reply I was hoping to get, and you should be moded up.
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It's broken because it subverts democratic representation and allows the already fantastically wealthy to get a bit more wealthy at the expense of moving everyone else closer to a situation like East Germany before the fall.
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Humans will go where the carrots and sticks lead them. That's just human nature. I believe it would be better to focus on fixing the system to reduce the chance of carrots and sticks pushing human leaders to act a certain way.
For example, a constitutional amendment stripping companies of most person-like legal "rights", directly limiting campaigning contributions to small amounts, and strong anti-trust enforcement.
"Bad human; stop acting like a talking ape!" -- Uh, but we ARE talking apes.
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And if they aren't outright bought out, then they are offered cushy jobs post-retirement, often lobbying the very people they used to work with. The revolving door goes round and round.
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Not the artists, but the labels and owners.
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Re:We can learn from this (Score:4, Insightful)
I've always said we should make our politicians wear their sponsors' logos on their suits, just like the nascar drivers.
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This, and the respective Logo's should be appropriately sized compared to the size of the donation.
Re:We can learn from this (Score:5, Insightful)
And what's more trying to restrict the flow of money has the perverse but economically predictable effect of making influence cheap to buy. The typical congressman spends five hours a day in fundraising related activities, and two hours a day doing constituent services. That alone should tell you who they really work for.
If you banned political contributions outright, then congressmen would just spend *more* time trying to drum up support for people to spend on their behalf. There's really only one way to eliminate the corrupting influence of money in politics: public financing. I don't particularly like that option, but it's the only one that is guaranteed to work, the only way to restore the status quo ante, before the rise of mass media campaigning, where elections were entirely a matter between the politicians running and the voters.
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So, you would repeal the First Amendment?
The only way "public financing" will eliminate the corrupting influence of money in politics is if you forbid ALL political advertising not paid for by public funding. Which pretty much puts paid to the First Amendment, since as long as it exists *I* (or you) could buy an ad for my (your) favorite politician. As could Bill Gates, Elon Musk, [Hollywood actor of
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The only way "public financing" will eliminate the corrupting influence of money in politics is if you forbid ALL political advertising not paid for by public funding. Which pretty much puts paid to the First Amendment, since as long as it exists *I* (or you) could buy an ad for my (your) favorite politician
Under my proposal you'd still be free to do anything with your money that you now do. You can give money to your favorite politician, although that would trigger a matching grant. You could take out a totally independent ad which would not trigger a matching grant, but experience has shown that such ads tend to reflect the political positions of the purchaser rather than the marketing message of the candidate.
Would rich people still be more influential under my proposal? Sure. I am not proposing the estab
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Does a challenger get a matching grant every time a politician gets his name on a new law? If Dianne Sawyer (yeah, I know she's history, but she used to be an anchor for one of the big three) mentions a politician in a news story, do any and all of his opponents get handed some money?
How about if I put together a really bad ad fo
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You're quibbling irrelevant or implementation details. A lawmaker sponsoring legislation is part of his record; it has nothing to do with influence peddling.
The kind of dirty tricks advertising you warn about is possible today, so I don't see this as a point of objection. The solution is an orthogonal approach to combatting influence peddling --transparency.
As foe the matching fund criteria, the need to set them is not an objection to the scheme either. You can set them however you like. You could do it o
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You might want to check your theory against the history of the 20th century.
Politicians get _worse_ when they stop having to hustle for contributions. Take money out of the picture and all they have left is power to suck up to.
You dismiss as 'implantation details' the fact that your plan would set they current two parties in concrete.
Plan rejected. Will make things worse, not better.
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Money is a surrogate for production and economic value associated with that production. It is used to represent that value, in lieu of bartering the goods themselves directly. It is not speech, nor is the spending of it on something 'speech.' Buying an ad is not 'speech' any more than buying a megaphone so you can shout over the rest of the people around you is 'speech.'
And that's the problem. Money isn't used to express someone's opinion, it's used to
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Yeah, that's what I said - repeal the First Amendment.
How else are you going to prevent me from talking about MY favorite candidate? How about David Muir? How are you going to prevent, say, President Obama from mentioning a candidate he likes in a speech?
Any of those things raises name recognition of a candidate, and thus his chance
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If people are free to volunteer their time then you can't object to volunteering money as a surrogate. Time==money.
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I think you've identified the problem quite well. I don't think the carte blanche "public financing" is a sufficient solution however. If you look at countries with public financing, it's not as if money is any less of a problem in their elections. The biggest wallet is still the strongest competitor. Even without PACs and SuperPACs buying up the airwaves, even if everybody knew everything via the most democratic form of communication, i.e. Internet, there are still numerous ways for money to enter the elec
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That works great for really small donations, but those aren't the problem. If I had a ten million dollar donation chances are I know damn well where it came from.
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ahahah
OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE RESPONSE TO
Use the State of the Union to call for a constitutional amendment to get big money out of politics.
You're right. Let's continue this conversation.
In this year's State of the Union address, President chose to prioritize an economic agenda to create jobs and invest in infrastructure, clean energy, and education. He also called for a National Commission to address the long lines and other chronic problems at the polls every election.
But that doesn't mean fighting the influ
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If you take money out of the campaigns what are you left with ? The media just directly picking the winners ?
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LOL "Should"
What makes you think anything you could do would stop it ?
What would you replace it with that's any better ?
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They may fight us, but I refuse to roll-over and play dead.
I'm moderately active in trying to raise awareness of such practices:
- I contact politicians and express my dissatisfaction
- I contact advocacy groups / unions / etc and show my support
- I add comments on popular Australian newspaper forums, aiming to raise awareness and expose the hypocrisy and moral corruption of our politi
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There's no way the politicians will change the law so they can no longer get paid ... it's simply too lucrative.
Lucrative like Enron. Only in the very short term.
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You are beautiful and brilliant.
Re:We can learn from this (Score:4, Informative)
Re:We can learn from this (Score:5, Funny)
Indeed... I believe the count is 4 our of the last 8 Illinois Governors (dating back to the '60's) ended up in federal prison. I'm amazed they found anyone to run for the office last year - it's like a 50/50 chance if you are elected that you will end up incarcerated. And that's just counting the ones doing stuff openly enough to get caught...
No, Illinois has just implemented the term limits that everyone wants: 2 terms: 1 in office, 1 in prison.
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Federal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
State and Local: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
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Here again, we have the whole "lesser of two evils" problem, or in Batman's case, "do we choose not-evil but ineffectual, or evil and over-effectual?" Batman won't do anything to the politicians because he doesn't believe in killing people, just delivering them to justice, and other than knocking some heads, he's completely powerless when the justice system itself is too corrupt or powerless to act. Ras Al Ghul would be effective, but too effective, since he'd simply poison the entire city and destroy eve
Re:We can learn from this (Score:5, Insightful)
People like the folks at MPAA do not need a "how to" manual. That's what they do as a business. They are like leeches which are perfectly adapted to the political ecosystem. The only hope you can have, is to have judicial system independent enough to tackle the issue.
I've read here on /. a lot of critique to the leaking of the Sony dataset and how it was further spread by Wikileak. Taken aside the peculiar personalities linked to Wikileaks and problems one might have with them, THIS is exactly why it is good to have this information out in the world. I can only hope judicial instances will pick up this dataset and start their own investigations, for the little it may help.
It will only help a little, because those leeches are also expert in finding loopholes through regulations. Remember, this is what they do... which is quite ironic for anti-piracy lobbyists. Some countries/regions are fast in finding and closing loopholes, but not in the reign of the MPAA and especially not when it is linked to political corruption / financing of political parties and/or figures.
Re:We can learn from this (Score:5, Insightful)
How about we not say Sony (or other corporations) did it, but actually name those individuals orchestrating these bribes and those cutting the checks?
Re:We can learn from this (Score:5, Insightful)
But is the problem that we can't identify what's wrong, or is the problem that we're powerless to do anything about it?
My understanding is that you could find plenty of people with enough expertise to lay out exactly what the problem is, but the problem is essentially, "There are a bunch of legal loopholes that effectively make bribery legal, thereby handing control of our government over to those who can pay the most."
You might ask, "Well if we know what the problem is, we can fix it! Why not close the loopholes?" The fundamental problem there is that the people in position to close the loopholes are the ones receiving the bribes, and they want the bribes to keep coming. The only thing that could get them to change the law would be if their corporate overlords, i.e. those providing the bribes, bribed them to make it illegal. The problem with that is that the corporate overlords also want the bribes to remain legal, so that they can influence public officials.
Finally, you might say, "Well why not just vote those bribe-takers out of office?" The problem there is that the bribes are used to buy elections. Without that money, you can't run ads, you can't get on TV, and you can't even participate in the public debate.
It's just a catch-22 situation. The only solution would be for voters to somehow elect someone who they've never heard of, who basically can't campaign, and just hope that that new elected official is both honest and effective. And then that has to happen in a couple hundred other elections at roughly the same time.
Re:We can learn from this (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only that, but those in power can change the district lines to make sure they remain in power. Congressional re-election rates [opensecrets.org] are over 80 percent. You have to go back to 1980 for the lowest rate and that was 55% in the Senate. So even at the worst, a Congressman had a better-than-a-coin-flip chance of staying in office. In some elections, you would have better luck betting on 4 numbers on a Roulette wheel than you would betting against a random incumbent.
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Good point. And then someone is going to say, "Well why don't we just change the laws that allow incumbants to redraw district lines to improve their reelection prospects?" It's the same catch-22 problem. The people who have the power to make it illegal are the same people redrawing the lines.
And note that this kind of thing isn't new. The Ancient Greeks complained about the same kinds of catch-22 problems regarding politics.
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You might ask, "Well if we know what the problem is, we can fix it! Why not close the loopholes?" The fundamental problem there is that the people in position to close the loopholes are the ones receiving the bribes, and they want the bribes to keep coming. The only thing that could get them to change the law would be if their corporate overlords, i.e. those providing the bribes, bribed them to make it illegal. The problem with that is that the corporate overlords also want the bribes to remain legal, so that they can influence public officials.
I don't remember the exact wording, but I read somewhere where I think a lawyer said something like this - "You pass a law. I use a hole in your law. You plug the hole. I drill a hole in your plug." This is the real reason why the loopholes can't ever be closed. Lawyers, which is what most politicians are, are simply too good at finding ways around everything.
Finally, you might say, "Well why not just vote those bribe-takers out of office?" The problem there is that the bribes are used to buy elections. Without that money, you can't run ads, you can't get on TV, and you can't even participate in the public debate.
I think the real problem is that probably about 70-75% of the US electorate votes only on party affiliation and nothing else in a general ele
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Too bad both parties are equally corrupt and bribe-taking scum.
Solution: You need an engaged electorate (Score:2)
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If fascism is alive and well, it is because WE allow it to be so.
Any law is for sale (Score:4, Insightful)
Politicians are dependent on campaign contributions. And as long as they are, they will be little more than corporate whores.
I think it's time to get a crowdfunding scheme going. Maybe we can at least buy one congressman who's working for "the people".
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I think it's time to get a crowdfunding scheme going. Maybe we can at least buy one congressman who's working for "the people".
This is exactly the idea behind Lawrence Lessig's[*] brainchild: MAYDAY PAC. It's a PAC whose mission is to end all PACs (including itself). It raised some money and tried some things in the last election cycle, but didn't succeed. However, Lessig says they learned some lessons and are gearing up to try again.
Check it out at http://mayday.us./ [mayday.us.]
[*] If you don't recognize that name it's because you haven't been paying attention to these issues. Among other things, Lessig is the founder of Creative Commons.
Those skeletons don't like daylight (Score:5, Insightful)
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Seeing as the people who are the biggest part of the problem are the only ones with the power to fix it, the only way it will be fixed is the American Revolution 2.0....
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The problem is American Revolution 2.0 will be viewed as a terrorist attack in today's political and cultural environment. It would be better if state governments took the lead to reign in the political issues at the Federal level. I'm not saying that States don't have their own corruption problems but their leverage would be more substantial than that of the general population rather than a bunch of crackpots flying gyrocopters onto the capital mall.
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If it isn't swift enough it will be stopped before it can go far is the problem.
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agreed but again, where does this get labelled as "insurgency" rather than "patriotism." The ninnies in DC see wound up constituents as the former rather than the latter. Ref: IRS E-mails.
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The problem would be any government setup by our current population would undoubtedly be worse than the current one.
If America was a pure democracy we would already be completely over.
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We've learned a fair bit in the few centuries this country has been around that honestly we could easily create a better system to replace the one we have now. If nothing else, we've identified the problems with the current system.
Oh, and let's not forget pure democracy was choosing people at random to be representatives, and required voters to perform some type of civil service (in Athens case, military service) before they could vote.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org]
There is no doubt in my mind that would
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Well American Revolution I was a total failure, I don't think anything changed in the government of Great Britain. It did morph into a successful war of American Secession though with the American people going their own way from the people and government of Great Britain.
The second war of American Secession was a failure, and that was a pretty clear line with the southern states deciding to form their own government and the northern states deciding to make a stronger federal government.
Now, it might work if
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Because before Wikileaks you needed to download a copy of a torrent client?
This has all been out there. Its just wikileaks doing their weekly publicity whoring.
Post an archive of Wikileaks on Cryptome and forget about them.
Just Hire Politicians for Speeches (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't know why anyone gets caught in a bribery scandal these days. It's easiest just to pay a politician an absurd amount of money for a speech. Getting paid $50,000 a couple of times doesn't influence anybody?
(Hiring their relatives is always a safe alternative.)
Root Cause (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is not that corporations are buying politicians for favors, or that corporations are people, or that politicians are venal.
The problem is that politicians have the power in the first place to hand out favors, to discriminate, to meddle, to obstruct or promote, subsidize or penalize. Remove these powers, and money will evaporate from the influence system and pathological deviants will no longer run for office.
Re:Root Cause (Score:4, Insightful)
How would you suggest we create a government without the power to "meddle"? Or are you an anarchist?
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Set a maximum number of laws. Require they repeal one for every new one they want.
Against Wikileaks smear campaign on Slashdot (Score:3, Informative)
The US State Department recruited Hollywood to boost “anti-Russian messaging“. [sputniknews.com]
Sony pirated [dailydot.com] multiple books about hacking, while aggressively campaigning against piracy.
Emails reveal concerns [radionz.co.nz] in the US over the secrecy of the TPP talks.
The leaks included a draft [twitter.com] of the international VOD and DHE agreement between SONY and Google
Sony received nearly $48 million in tax breaks [lohud.com] in 2011 and 2012 after donating to New York Governor Cuomo.
Ben Affleck demanded [pagesix.com] PBS program “Finding Your Roots” hide his slave-owning ancestor.
Sony changed [wikileaks.org] the Snowden film press release to remove “illegal spying” from the description of NSA’s activities
Sony cameras are used as a part of the guidance system [blogspot.com] for Israeli rockets bombing Gaza
Sony Chiefs met with [thisdayinwikileaks.org] David Cameron ahead of the Scottish referendum
Corrupt product placement practices [vox.com] used in Dr. Oz show
I really hope that slashdot doesn't become another place of pro-government propaganda, as that really pisses me off. The information was already out there, but their republishing obviously did us a favor (us that care about government accountability or knowing the truth anyway). We already have enough media outlets against information out there, let's keep this one useful.
I would never know the above facts if it wasn't for them, as 1. I believed the propaganda that it was mostly employee information and didn't feel comfortable downloading it and reading, and 2. it would be too much work for me to look into the e-mails.
Now that I know these stuff I feel like someone more informed than before. I hope the Slashdot community stops being against information.
By the way, since I haven't seen here a link to their press release, with the leaks, here it is [wikileaks.org].
There is one answer (Score:2)
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Next problem (maybe the first problem) is, what is the text of an amendment that would actually fix the problem?
This seems appropriate (Score:2)
http://www.thewizardsmanse.com/congress-for-sale/ [thewizardsmanse.com]
Congress extends copyright every time Disney throws money at them.
The Senate killed patent reform because trial lawyers threw money at them.
Congress is rushing through a bill to kill Net Neutrality because Comcast et al. threw money at them.
The smartest thing they did was to create lobbying loopholes in the bribery laws so they could accept bribes with impunity. The only way to "fix" the system is to outlaw lobbying and pass an amendment overruling SCOTUS'
Re:This seems appropriate (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately, the Senate has to approve both of those and when they figure out it means they can't accept bribes any more, they will kill it faster than patent reform.
Incorrect. The states can open a constitutional convention to create an amendment to ban financially influencing politicians. If 3/4 of the states approve of the amendment, then it by-passes congress and becomes part of our constitution.
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"Because of Obamacare, a constitutional convention has been in the works for a balanced budget amendment"
Obamacare prompted state legislatures to start applying 4 years before Barack Obama was born? That's some foresight you don't often see from elected representatives!
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Why would state legislators be any more favorable than federal legislators? Even if the US Congress chooses state conventions for ratification it still requires state legislators to apply.
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Congress extends copyright every time Disney throws money at them.
The Mickey Mouse Protection Act will reach its end in 2018. You can bet that Disney will dump millions into another extension. One potential source of influence against Disney and other supporters is software publishers. Present copyright terms for software copyright is pointless because of how quickly the programs become obsolete and unusable due to lack of hardware and OS support. Software publishers have no valid reason to extend copyright. Who will still be using Windows XP in 2096 when the copyrig
The system is corrupt... (Score:2)
I used to think the Democrats were evil, and Repubs could do no wrong. Wow, They pretty much all suck now.
It reminds me of "wrassling" (WWE) where they work together to make the fight between them look real, and the "actors" don't get hurt, except we get hurt all of the time when done by Washington.
Politics makes me sad now. Voting is like going to the dump, it stinks to high heaven, but I have to do it.
I need a drink
Sony is a multinational corporation (Score:5, Insightful)
Has anyone looked for their lobbying efforts on 1H-B visas? If Sony is able to buy access that influences legislation, what about TATA? They surely have an economic interest in the number of 1H-B visa jobs available. Do you think they would want to get more visas, and be willing to spend money to make that happen?
Our current campaign contribution system makes it impossible to tell who is spending money to on elections. Even if Sony is not technically breaking the law, does that mean that everyone else from overseas is being equally careful in following the rules?
Could China take advantage of these loopholes? Even if the Chinese government is not, why would Chinese business interests ignore the advantages?
What's in the secret Trans Pacific Partnership treaty? The bill has been given fast track status, so the only vote that will be taken by congress is to either accept it or reject it. Just like the DMCA, there will be no time to review a very complex document. Just look how that turned out.
The lack of transparency in political funding didn't happen by magic. It was a result of a long process that including having a right wing majority on the Supreme Court. Defending the current situation by saying it's legal is another way of sidestepping the issue of corruption in the political process. When there is no accounting for money in politics, the law will obviously be for sale to the highest bidder. In the current global economy that means anybody in the world. Does that seem like a good idea?
We need more heros ... (Score:2)
Keep it up, Kim Jong-un.
Re:So they petition to protect their hard work (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it a democracy when the outcomes are bought by corporate interests by giving money to greedy politicians to influence the outcomes?
I think not.
This is just a corrupt system masquerading as something else.
This is how banana republics operate, but that seems to be where we're going.
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No.
What you have here is Government for Special-Interest Groups.
The ones who spend the most are ones in danger of being obsolete - owners of coal mines for example. There is no correlation between "working hard" and increasing influence this way.
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Big deal. Everyone does it. You can bet that Google is out there arguing that all of the content should be free so they can sell more ads alongside it. And you can bet that the unions are looking for political influence to protect their hard work too. It's called living in a democracy.
I wouldn't have a problem with the whole thing if our taxes weren't the linchpin in enabling the whole process. Seems anti-democratic..
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>> Big deal.
Actually I think it IS a big deal that the most powerful country in the world has a political system that literally requires the people running it to be blatantly corrupt.
Re:So they petition to protect their hard work (Score:5, Informative)
No, it's not a democracy, it's a plutocracy
Re: So they petition to protect their hard work (Score:3)
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Big deal. Everyone does it. You can bet that Google is out there arguing that all of the content should be free so they can sell more ads alongside it. And you can bet that the unions are looking for political influence to protect their hard work too. It's called living in a democracy.
It's called corruption.
Hope it helps.
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Of course, my problem with this bullshit statement is it is a complete fucking lie.
This is not groups of individual citizens, this is the CEO and a couple of other executives pushing for what they want.
This has nothing at all to do with the collective will of groups of citizens. This is a handful of people who act as if they're nobly representing the views of groups of citizens.
What they're
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The classic phrase is "film at 11".
Your reasoning is also highly suspect, as it rests on the completely unwarranted assumption that corporate leaders act on the collective will of their employees, or even of their shareholders.
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Re: Why is Anyone Surprised? (Score:3)
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Its been tried, the first thing that happens is the corporations or other moneyed interests do is pay the government to expand its power so they can sell laws. In the extreme cases they hire mercenaries to push regime change to get their obedient government.
There has been times in history where the government was weak and the moneyed interests were strong and having private armies fighting for power did not make a better society. At least in a representative democracy the government has to pay some attentio