A very smart move by the political system to make activists hate some impalpable company moloch named "Disney" instead of the concretely named congressmen/congresswomen who voted for the law for copyright extension.
Notably, Sonny Bono for whom, along with the other sponsers I withhold invective purely out of respect of this community and its value of civil discourse.
I find the extension from 50 to 70 years extremely distasteful; manifest contempt by 'artists' for the commons and society's investment in their success.
Don't misunderstand; they're hated too. The US Congress has something like a low-teens approval rating.
But between the two organizations, gerrymandering means the politicians can't be voted out but people can "vote" to lower Disney's status with their dollars.
It's weird though, because they are roughly about as effective at lowering Disney's status as they are at voting the politicians out because collective action problems are hard.
I think the implication is that "rent seekers gonna seek" is a fact of life, and that "a government that resists rent seeking" is the part of the equation we might be able to control.
> Why should we accept rent seeking as inevitable?
In my mind, a couple big reasons.
One, for the same reason that we accept a lot of awful things like murder as inevitable. Of course we'd rather get rid of these things, but it's unrealistic to think we'll get rid of them completely, so the systems we have in place for dealing with them when they happen will always be very important.
Two, because these things are often in the eye of the beholder. What I see as "rent seeking", you might see as "providing a public good". Most people (on HN at least) think current US copyright law represents a lot of rent seeking by Disney. But most of the same people still support some notion of copyright. There's no clear line where "public good that most people agree with" ends and "rent seeking" begins.
No, preventing it is the responsibility of the government. :-p
On a more serious note, there's not a lot that individuals can do about this – even individual politicians. The systems involved have to change pretty fundamentally to prevent lobbying from working. How do you think those systems can be changed to accomplish that?
Maybe to start there could be mandatory disclosure of all donations/vacations/other lobbying tactics that each senator is engaged in, correlated with their track record of voting and publicly disclosed and actively monitored.
I agree it's a hard problem, but I think with a big enough pool of information everyone could get a letter/email saying that politician x cost you y amount this year by voting this way. I know I would be compelled to make some changes.
1. Promise to give lots of money to the senators who vote for their interests well enough. This doesn't even have to be targeted.
2. A neutral party collates all that information, and publishes it.
3. Wait until the first sufficiently-helpful senator retires, and is no longer bound by the rules.
4. Reward them.
5. Wait.
6. Profit.
Better than the status quo, since only huge companies will still be able to effectively lobby, but introduces problems of its own. That is, assuming the system works as intended. Which it won't.
Because how do you make sure the disclosure is mandatory? This punishes honest lobbyers (and honest lobbyees) more than it punishes dishonest ones; if all politicians are being lobbied evenly from all possible causes, but cause B's lobbying is secretive, politicians are incentivised to vote for cause B (i.e. against ¬B, which they are being publicly lobbied by).
This system does incentivise not being the ones to lobby, though – assuming there's no way to do lobbying that appears to be ¬B lobbying, so the politicians can be virtuous and vote B, which makes the “¬B lobbyists” lobby harder because obviously their bribes weren't big enough…
It's hard to tell the difference between a bribe and extortion.
"I'll give you $1M if you extend the copyright timeline."
"If you don't give me $1M I'll let your copyright expire."
Does anybody else believe that congresspeople should be paid $10M/yr, indexed to inflation? This would be a drop in the federal budget, but would do a lot I think to curb both bribery and extortion.
I definitely disagree about that. Look at how much time a Congressperson spends raising funds. They clearly don't have the funds necessary to influence their own behavior. They seek out donors and act in those donors' interest in legislative matters. (I'm not saying they work exclusively in donors' interest, but it's clear that donors' interests are taken into account.)
Eh?
Even if a person would not end up with enough funds to secure re-election if they chose to vote against a measure, does not mean that they don’t have the freedom to vote against it.
They are still responsible for their actions even if the alternative actions would be highly against their self-interest.
Even a person who is threatened with death if they don’t take an action, is still free to either take or not take the action. They might be justified in taking the action on the basis of said threat, even if the action would ordinarily be forbidden, but they are still making a choice.
Sure: Legislators have to prioritize lots of different things, not just copyright terms, and the skill of making deals while operating within the rules and traditions of a legislature is one they must learn on the job. Having a bunch of short-timers wouldn't make copyright law reform any more likely, and it certainly wouldn't make anyone more likely to vote their conscience. Further, copyright law isn't an issue of conscience for most legislators to begin with, no matter how long they've been in office, as most of them, like most of their constituents, don't understand the value of public domain or the importance of shared culture.
Courant died in 1973, so his copyright will expire at the end of 2043.