
53 VCs from 40 firms send letter opposing PROTECT IP - akozak
http://www.usv.com/2011/06/the-protect-ip-act-will-slow-start-up-innovation.php
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acabal
Since it's a commonly-held sentiment that politicians and the laws they make
are bought and paid for, I don't understand why some of the shockingly wealthy
VC firms don't start buying up their own lobbyists. Surely it would make
business sense for them to purchase laws in favor of internet openness?

While the media corporations are throwing buckets of cash at our lawmakers,
the best that wealthy VC firms ($13B wealthy!) can come up with is a strongly-
worded letter? Am I just misinformed, or being overly cynical?

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joe_the_user
I sometimes think that...

Then I remember why corruption isn't good for business.

1) A corrupt rent seeking company that depends on the government makes huge
profits and has lobbying as a necessary expense in this process. Companies in
competitive industries would have a hard time matching those money levels even
if the industry itself was larger and created more jobs.

2) The corruption of the current US government is not simply on the level of
buying people but rather based on the "revolving door" - congress people
become lobbyists become industry executives become regulators etc. This
system, again, benefits the most concentrated, rent-seeking
companies/industries which depend on the government long-term (defense,
health, etc, etc). These have the lifetime jobs available and have been
milking this approach for ... a lifetime.

So a government up for bid is definitely a bad government, no escaping it.

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yuhong
I still remember reading about how the Google vs telco lobbying on net
neutrality turned into a mess.

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forensic
There are a lot of names missing. From my quick scan I don't see any of the
well-connected old players signing on to that document.

The omissions speak more loudly than the inclusions.

This does not look like a politically influential list to me:

    
    
      Andreessen Horowitz
      AOL Ventures
      Avalon Ventures
      Benchmark Capital
      Betaworks
      Court Square Ventures
      Draper Richards
      EDventure Holdings
      First Mark Capital
      First Round Capital
      Floodgate
      Flybridge Capital Partners
      Founder Collective
      Foundry Group
      Greycroft Partners
      Greylock Partners
      IA Ventures
      Index Ventures
      Khosla Ventures
      Lerer Ventures
      North Bridge
      OATV
      Rand Capital
      RRE Ventures
      Softbank Capital
      Spark Capital
      SV Angel
      True Ventures
      Union Square Ventures
      Venrock

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Aloisius
Well SV Angel is Ron Conway's. How much more well-connected do you want?

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forensic
I'm talking about connected to politicians

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mrschwabe
When injustice is law, rebellion is duty.

~~~
rosser
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury,
and ammo. Use them in that order." — _Unknown_

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dminor
Didn't Wyden already place a hold on this?

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Bud
Pity that this guy leans on McKinsey to support his argument. That will cost
him some credibility, as recent events in the health care debate have shown
that McKinsey is more than willing to discard any notions of scientific,
impartial research if they have a political bone to pick.

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mariuskempe
Could you all send a similar letter for the patent reforms?

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phlux
At some point there just has to be a disobedience of some laws. Just everyone
flat out ignoring them.

Why is it that we cannot hold lawmakers accountable for shit?

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nextparadigms
I agree with that. Lawmakers should be a lot more accountable than they are
now. Either that or we need a mixed system between what we have now and the
public being able to vote on some laws, even if the final decision is not
taken by the public. But it would be great if people could have a more direct
influence on the laws being made, even if it's just only a few of them where
the public can participate.

For example it could be a 2 step process where for laws that _could_ be very
important and they think the public might want to weigh in on the matter, they
could vote whether the law should be voted by the public or not. And even then
if say 60% of the public vote NO and are against the law, the politicians
could still decide to pass the law, but obviously they could get a lot of bad
press if its considered they didn't respect the people's wishes.

I think a mixt system like that or something similar, could be better than
what we have today because then we wouldn't have politicians do everything
regardless of what the public says, and it also not go to the extreme where
you'd have a completely liquid democracy and all votes would be voted by the
public.

I'd like to see a system that takes the best of both worlds. I don't know what
the exact balance should be, but it could be debated and eventually we could
come out with a realistic formula. For example it could be decided that if 51%
says NO, then the public has the final decision. But we'd also have to
consider a minimum number of voters to make sure the decision would be
statistically correct for the whole population.

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Pent
Unfortunately in this case, if the public were voting on the PROTECT IP Act, I
can imagine the majority would vote for it because Piracy is Bad.

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Wilduck
My family has somehow associated the word "download" with stealing. If I say
anything about downloading a piece of software, I get lectured that Piracy is
Bad, regardless of the fact that it's usually open source/free.

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startupcto
So VCs are really in for the money but who are they to say the IP Protection
is pointless and useless and retards innovation.

