70 Groups Tell Congress To Put The Brakes On Any Further Efforts To Expand IP

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120206/11033317671/70-groups-tell-congress-to-put-brakes-any-further-efforts-to-expand-intellectual-property.shtml

by dazbradbury • 14 years ago

131 14 14 years ago

techdirt.com

dazbradbury• 14 years ago

Here is the PDF of the letter sent to congress, signed by all parties (inc Mozilla, Reddit & Amnesty):

http://www.publicknowledge.org/files/Public_Knowledge-Intern...

CWIZO• 14 years ago

It's interesting that Google is not on that list, especially after they have participated in the black-out. I'm going to play the devil's advocate here and ask: did they black-out simply for publicity?

yaks_hairbrush• 14 years ago

I also don't see Wikipedia. Strange.

Radix• 14 years ago

Wales asked the Wikipedia itself to vote on whether there would be a blackout. Here on HN there were a couple comments that they were disappointed to see Wikipedia doing advocacy. I think asking Wikipedia itself is a good line to follow as far as protecting its interests without Wales and the other people who physically control Wikipedia using it for their own political goals. So it is in character.

wisty• 14 years ago

It doesn't matter. The US just has one vote on the UN's WIPO http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Intellectual_Property_Org.... I've no idea how you get 185 member states to decide that 50 years after death is a good minimum length for copyright. Imagine the good they could do if they agreed on anything useful!

disgruntledphd2• 14 years ago

The one vote of the US doesn't matter. Historically, the US has been the biggest funder of the UN, and traditionally the organisation is dependent on the dues of the US being paid. The US tends to use this as a bargaining chip, which is an awful lot more powerful than just one vote. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_United_Na...

Bear in mind that we're not even talking about US diplomatic efforts here, which typically sway many nations in exchange for other favours.

MBlume• 14 years ago

Historically, the copyright lobby has been even more successful in lobbying the state department to bully other nations to adopt draconian copyright laws than it has been in lobbying our own congress to adopt such laws.

fpp2• 14 years ago

Maybe it's time to have a closer look at the numbers that matter here and who it is that is pushing so hard to get these kinds of licenses to collect money through.

Certainly none of these oppressive regulations with all their side effects from censorship, loss of civil rights to medicine and industrial espionage would even be discussed if it wasn't for the music industry.

As we are constantly flooded with their products, let's have a look at how big that industry really is. The IFPI - their industry body - has just published global music sales at $16.2bn for 2011. Yes this is the industry as a whole and globally - not just one company. And it includes all digital music sales (strongly rising), subscriptions etc. With these revenues the global music industry as a whole does not even make it into the list of the 200 largest corporations.

Now what would you do when - for lack of a better example - the global Christmas Tree industry (was about the same size but due to recent effects of globalization has lost substantial revenues) would treat every citizen like a criminal, put up surveillance measures that would make every totalitarian state proud, put you or your children into prison with punishments similar to murderers, tries to extort fees from you / your children for minor offences that could make up the last 10 years of revenues of one of their mid-size member companies, and would ask everyone who buys a blank DVD/CD to pay them because you could actually save an image of a Christmas tree on it. Let alone all the gardeners that are really responsible that nobody wants to buy 10 Christmas trees every year for $100 each. Those really have to be hunted down.

This metaphor aside, if you look at these numbers ($16.2bn) that on a global scale are very small even for a single business to attract such attention (these are revenues not income), it becomes obvious that something is substantially wrong here latest when you look at the hundreds of millions of "lobby-money" paid in the U.S. alone.

Besides that I believe it is fair to say that the damages from such legislation for all citizens and other companies will most likely be on par with the $300bn damages recently calculated from excessive IP/Patent "usage". That is millions of jobs and the lives of millions of families.

Maybe it will help to tell your congressman that (s)he is selling the lives of thousands of people in your constituency for a dinner sponsored by a local shop in Hollywood. A small Christmas tree might also help ;)

(IFPI numbers at http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/23/global-music-sal... )

dodedo• 14 years ago

Very insightful comparison, thank you.

The push is not only coming from the IFPI, however. There is also the movie industry, which is a much larger industry. I can't find exact numbers offhand, but this article places global box-office receipts at $31bn -- and that's not including media sales or rental revenue. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2011/0...

rayiner• 14 years ago

What might media sales be? Another $20 billion? Let's say $40 billion. That's $70 billion + $16 billion = $85 billion, or less than Apple by itself. That puts the entire music + movie industry somewhere around the same revenue as Kroger (the grocery store): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kroger. Does Kroger have anywhere near the political clout of the music+movie industry?

jeffreyg• 14 years ago

quoting a comment I read here a few months ago, the MPAA has a combined market cap of $250 billion.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3245520

fpp2• 14 years ago

Sounds interesting - would make it about the size of Microsoft

Some market cap vs annual revenue ratios: Microsoft (MSFT) $255bn market cap - $72bn revenue - ratio 3.54 Apple (AAPL) $437bn market cap - $128bn revenue - ratio 3.41 IBM (IBM) $224bn market cap - $107bn revenue - ratio 2.09

average market cap / revenue of above: 3.01

this avg ratio would estimate a total annual revenue of about $83bn for all MPAA members.

maeon3• 14 years ago

Censoring the Internet should be demonized and ridiculed as people using botnets to ddos sites. Its the same thing really, getting a bunch of people together and deciding something should be unavailable to everyone without including the justice system.

I hope one day to see some politician convicted of conspiracy to destroy a national asset in exchange for bribes as a convicted botnet user who used it to ddos sites.

benologist• 14 years ago

Why submit or upvote a 3 sentence summary of http://www.publicknowledge.org/70-groups-ask-congress-halt-w...

70 Groups Tell Congress To Put The Brakes On Any Further Efforts To Expand IP

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