[governance] Facebook spent $4 million to lobby U.S. lawmakers in 2012

[Tapani Tarvainen]

On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 08:42:56PM -0500, McTim (dogwallah at gmail.com) wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 7:56 PM, Guru गुरु <Guru at itforchange.net> wrote:
> 
> >  "Tech companies are spending exorbitant sums to advance their agendas in
> > Washington. In 2012, Google spent $16.48 million and Microsoft spent $8.09
> > million to lobby U.S. lawmakers."
>
> These are not "exorbitant sums" by any stretch of the imagination in terms
> of lobbying in DC.

I guess exactly that is the problem. I remember the time I was
lobbying agains the software patent directive in Brussels,
the budgets of NGOs (= everybody on our side I know of)
were smaller than that by about three orders of magnitude.

> > ... I wonder what are the implications for democratic internet governance
> > and democracy?? ...

> Isn't this democracy in action?  a citizen (or business owner) wants to
> shape policy and they spend time and effort to get the attention of
> policymakers.

When "time and effort" there is replaced by "money", what you
have is called plutocracy.

-- 
Tapani Tarvainen

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