>"Media companies" is the wrong word to use--I was talking about movies and music.
They're mostly the same companies. NBCUniversal owns NBC/MSNBC and Universal Studios, News Corp. owns Fox News and 20th Century Fox, CBS owns Columbia records, TimeWarner owns CNN and HBO and New Line Cinema, etc.
>There is no compelling counter-narrative from the tech side here, just a bunch of handwaving and bellyaching about how much Chris Dodd makes from the RIAA.
Well, that's the irony, right? Hollywood puts together these commercials about how some union carpenter is going to starve to death if you don't pay $20/head to see American Pie 5, meanwhile the people who are actually working unsustainably long hours for weeks or months at a time to put together applications that help dissidents not get executed in oppressive countries are getting shut down and harassed because of the same laws. But the latter are actually instances of The Little Guy, so they don't have a huge organization that can pay to put ads on the television or lobby Congress. So even though the sum total of jobs and economic growth by small start ups is greater than it is from Hollywood, Hollywood is more organized.
What we get is lobbying efforts from the likes of Google, because they have the resources and the cohesiveness to make things happen. But that only works for the times when they're on our side. Things like DMCA 1201 cause the greatest harm to the smallest companies. They may harm the big guys too, but not as much, and often not enough to get them to push back hard enough to stop it.
It's basically a collective action problem. How do you get a million "internet nerds" to work together to make Congress understand the harm in the things they're doing to us?
They're mostly the same companies. NBCUniversal owns NBC/MSNBC and Universal Studios, News Corp. owns Fox News and 20th Century Fox, CBS owns Columbia records, TimeWarner owns CNN and HBO and New Line Cinema, etc.
>There is no compelling counter-narrative from the tech side here, just a bunch of handwaving and bellyaching about how much Chris Dodd makes from the RIAA.
Well, that's the irony, right? Hollywood puts together these commercials about how some union carpenter is going to starve to death if you don't pay $20/head to see American Pie 5, meanwhile the people who are actually working unsustainably long hours for weeks or months at a time to put together applications that help dissidents not get executed in oppressive countries are getting shut down and harassed because of the same laws. But the latter are actually instances of The Little Guy, so they don't have a huge organization that can pay to put ads on the television or lobby Congress. So even though the sum total of jobs and economic growth by small start ups is greater than it is from Hollywood, Hollywood is more organized.
What we get is lobbying efforts from the likes of Google, because they have the resources and the cohesiveness to make things happen. But that only works for the times when they're on our side. Things like DMCA 1201 cause the greatest harm to the smallest companies. They may harm the big guys too, but not as much, and often not enough to get them to push back hard enough to stop it.
It's basically a collective action problem. How do you get a million "internet nerds" to work together to make Congress understand the harm in the things they're doing to us?