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

[Guru गुरु]

On 01/25/2013 03:35 PM, Roland Perry wrote:
> In message <066a01cdfa5a$01b28610$05179230$@gmail.com>, at 09:41:02 on 
> Thu, 24 Jan 2013, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> writes
>> I think the issue is whether or not the outcome is in the (general) 
>> public
>> interest or rather serves narrow sectional (corporate) private 
>> interests.
>>
>> http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/22/local/la-me-att-20120422
>>
>> The US system appears skewed towards the latter and this is shocking and
>> disturbing to those (including many in the US) who find this to be a 
>> form of
>> corruption and as undermining democracy.
>
> What I was trying to point out is that the general public can 
> influence lawmakers completely free of charge. They may not be very 
> persuasive one at a time (either because they aren't a very good 
> advocate or they don't have a very good cause) but lots of them added 
> up can have an effect.
>
> As for the issue of private funding for political parties (and 
> individual candidates) there are some democracies that place limits on 
> the amount that can be raised (and spent) and I believe there are some 
> where that limit is zero and campaign funds are allocated from a 
> national fund for the purpose.
>
> But that's a bigger discussion of how different countries implement 
> different forms of democracy, and somewhat outside the scope of this 
> list.
=============
Dear Roland,

When large IT companies (and IT sector is indeed conspicuous for the its 
global and largely oligopolistic nature which means the companies are 
really huge) use their revenues to lobby; citizen groups/communities by 
and large, will not be able to hold a candle to it. And comparing FB 
lobbying monies to its revenues (as Adam does)  is a red herring, the 
comparision ought to be of lobbying power of these IT corporates (which 
would push their private/commercial interests) vis-a-vis those of public 
interest groups.

Such lobbying efforts will impact the nature of policy making as well as 
policies made, and many of these policies will be critical to IG. Such 
as the acceptance of net neutrality principle, digital rights 
management, copyright law, privacy of user data etc etc. We are seeing 
how policy is being made to favor corporate interests and which is 
detrimental to public interest (for instance see 
https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp for the extension of copyright laws). 
Also it would be naive to believe that these corporates would support 
public interest (it is basic economic logic for them to promote their 
shareholder interests/private interests).. For sometime Google (there we 
go again!!) was a leader for net neutrality movement and one day 
announced with Verizon that net neutrality would not be applicable to 
mobile internet!

Hence the distortion due to highly disproportionate influence, will 
affect the nature of democracy and of internet governance and hence 
clearly IT corporate lobbying is an important issue for IGC to consider.
Guru
(you say 'different forms of democracy', is plutocracy another form of 
democracy?)

-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t