

Google threatens to cut ties with Chamber of Commerce over Protect-IP lobbying - HistoryInAction
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/67603_Page2.html

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AdamN
This is fantastic news - now if only they would just cut the cord. The US
Chamber of Commerce is straight out of the 50s and they need to wake up to the
fact that innovative businesses want an open market, not to be coddled by the
government.

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incomethax
Excuse my skepticism, but would Google pulling out ACTUALLY do anything? I can
understand the argument that innovative businesses don't want anything to do
with them, but again the Chamber of commerce is an organization aimed at
protecting old businesses anyway. They could care less about what innovative
businesses think.

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absentbird
I am not sure what Google pays in dues but I am willing to bet it is in excess
of $100,000 and probably closer to somewhere in 10 digit range. That is a
financial blow that would put pressure on them to stop alienating progressive
businesses.

~~~
jhamburger
I don't think they pay billions of dollars in dues

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nmcfarl
Chambers of Commerce are apparently only very loosely associated, and the
politics of various international Chambers of Commerce diverge a lot.

Perhaps there is room for another national level Chamber of Commerce for the
US - one with a more progressive outlook, with a look towards building new
businesses and industries, not protecting dying ones.

I wonder if the dues from Google, Yahoo, the CEA, and Apple (all mentioned in
the article for having or thinking about dropping out over politics), would be
enough to bootstrap such an organization…...

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joe_the_user
I believe we're seeing, or at least I hope we're seeing, a collision between
the rent-seeking faction of American corporations and the productive, profit-
making factions of American corporations.

It would be very nice to see a coalition of companies who stood together on
the principle of protecting the profits that come from creating more
opportunities instead of the rent that comes from a variety of state-supported
monopolies (Patents, "intellectual property" (Hollywood, patent trolls),
monopoly on the use of telephone poles(AT&T).

~~~
yuhong
Yea, I know. In fact, I believe the culture of greed of legacy MBAs is closely
related to rent-seeking.

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chrismiller
OP's link goes to the 2nd page of the article. The first page is here
<http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/67603.html>

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HistoryInAction
Not sure if it's proper HN form to apologize and take up space with a comment,
but I'm sorry for not noticing that.

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egor83
Why not just edit the post? I believe it's available for editing during the
first two hours after posting.

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HistoryInAction
Title, yes; link, no. I assume that's to avoid posting something, attracting
high upvotes, and then swapping over to a spam link while attracting the HN
hordes.

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HistoryInAction
Article also reports Yahoo quietly cut ties by failing to renew their
membership due to this issue.

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r00fus
Apple left long ago.

Google should have quit a long time ago when the CoC was revealed as nothing
more than a corporate-welfare front group.

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mcritz
_In particular, CEA members are up in arms over so-called private right of
action provisions in the bills that would allow trademark and copyrights
holders to seek court orders requiring ad networks and payment processors to
cut off business with an allegedly infringing site._

Tricky territory. It's a fight between content providers versus Google.

~~~
billswift
No, it's a fight between content providers and everybody else. Or _some_
content providers.

I have heard the Chamber of Commerce's position referred to as "Rotarian
Socialism - Free Enterprise, and Keep those subsidies coming." In this
particular case they want to expand some members legal privileges which is
even worse, long-term, than financial subsidies.

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zaknanny
Does this mean that google would have to stop linking to some of the pages on
its own website if the litigation goes through? ie: their 'secret books
project' where they scanned thousands of books into their google reader
database without first getting permission from the authors?

