Tag Archives: Copyright Alliance

GAG’s Friends: Not So Earth Friendly

I haven’t bothered writing much about the Graphic Artists Guild this past year, mostly to preserve my peace of mind and save energy for more productive matters, but every now and then something comes to my attention that tempts me to write more about them. A recent news item posted by the Guild about Milt Glaser’s climate change message, “It’s not Warming, It’s Dying” finally caused a big enough spike on my irony-o-meter for me to go to the trouble, not to mention that with Earth Day being here the timing’s exactly right.

Milt’s work is great and I love it, but it kills me that the Guild can talk about climate while at the same time their Copyright Alliance friends are up to no good when it comes to the environment. In case you haven’t visited my previous posts or learned this elsewhere, the Copyright Alliance is a front group created largely by associates of former Sen. Don Nickles (R-OK) and his lobbying firm, the Nickles Group LLC, that caters to the interests of a few corporate interests and not so much those of the individual creators as they frequently claim. Despite knowing this the Guild continues to support them and has sent them a fair amount of money. (Directly to the D.C. office of the Nickles Group, as a matter of fact.) Sen. Don Nickles is a staunch conservative and longtime opponent of organized labor, workplace safety regulation, affordable healthcare, equal rights, and he has supported ALEC and other conservative causes during and after his time in the U.S. Senate, making it not the least bit surprising that both he and the people around him have quite a track record on the environment.

 

The Copyright Alliance and the Nickles Group on the Environment

The Copyright Alliance has been advocating for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which has been widely denounced as a serious threat to laws protecting the environment both within the U.S. and around the world. This effort by the Alliance is part of a larger campaign by the MPAA and the other corporations it serves to get the TPP passed.

The Nickles Group Lobbies for Koch Industries. Other high profile fossil fuel clients of the Nickles Group: Anadarko Petroleum, Exxon Mobil, and National Oilwell Varco.

Don Nickles has been a vocal opponent of renewable energy, recently pushing for the elimination of tax credits for renewable energy producers.

Don Nickles was a board member of fracking giant Chesapeake Energy, which has not only polluted aquifers, but also screwed landowners with abusive pipeline contracts while doing it. Nickles resigned from the Chesapeake board in 2012, however, after being involved in CEO Aubrey McClendon’s troubles. It appears he’s still on Valero’s board of Directors.

Mitch McConnell’s new policy director is Hazen Marshall, a top aide to Don Nickles, and until taking the new position had been a lobbyist at the Nickles Group serving their oil and gas clients. If you heard about Sen. McConnell’s call for states to block President Obama’s initiatives on climate change, well then, you now know of one of the players behind the scenes who might have had a hand in formulating that bit of politicking.

The Nickles Group’s top client is the notorious patent troll Intellectual Ventures LLC, reported to be attacking the renewable energy industry. Intellectual Ventures has been harshly criticized for its modus operandi of threatening businesses with expensive lawsuits unless licenses to the patents owned by IV are purchased. Tech industry startups have been particularly hard hit by trolls; a past epidemic of poorly defined and very broadly written patents on items such as software code and other new technologies not sufficiently understood at the patent office has handed Intellectual Ventures and other trolls the opportunity to demand victims purchase licenses to dubious patents, or risk wasting millions on a legal fight even if they stand to win in court. This bloodsucking is now being done to companies in the renewable energy business with the help of the Nickles Group. Here’s the punch line- Cindi Tripodi, a key architect of the Copyright Alliance, is a founding partner of the Nickles Group and one of the lobbyists helping Intellectual Ventures do its damage to renewable energy.

So maybe now you’ll understand why I don’t take the people at the Graphic Artists Guild to be all that environmentally conscious. At some point I’ll probably also get worked up enough to write more about how they’re also not entirely credible when it comes to copyright and the economic interests of individual creators.

(P.S.- I must have done something right in a past life, because HBO just aired “Last Week Tonight” in which John Oliver did a marvelous job explaining patent trolls.   Must see!)

 

 

Big Cleanup Job, Tip #1

 

Tip: When facing a large mess, forget about developing a plan of attack. You’ll only waste time standing around rather than actually making progress. Just reach in, grab the nearest thing, haul it out into the light, and deal with it. Step and repeat.  Mind the spiders.

Cleanup02_700x

Lots of stuff has piled up in the last few months; so following my own advice, I’m just going to grab one or two items from the pile and drag them out in no particular order. Additional posts will follow as I work my way through the accumulated junk.

Proposed COMCAST / Time Warner Merger

While this has been pushed back in the news by impending climate catastrophe, revival of the cold war, and planes falling from the sky, this is still something you should be paying attention to. After all, it would really suck to not have anything decent to watch on TV as the world crumbles. The New York Times continues its “who the hell knows, make up your own damned mind about things” approach to covering the COMCAST deal, with a positive article in today’s business section by James B. Stewart- A Vision Beyond Cable for Comcast After Merger . This merger-friendly article contrasts with a piece by David Carr on Feb. 16- Stealthily, Comcast Fortifies its Arsenal, as well as a doubtful editorial on Feb. 13-  If a Cable Giant Becomes Bigger.  I find it hysterical that Stewart, supporter of  COMCAST taking over Time Warner, mentions he’s a Time Warner customer and hates them.  Carr, in opposition to the deal, states he’s a customer of COMCAST, and loathes them.

Susan Crawford, author of “Captive Audience- The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age” has also spoken out in opposition to the merger.  In a presentation at Harvard on March 04 and also in an interview with the Harvard Law Record, she gives numerous reasons for concluding the merger will not be good for consumers.  Here’s an excerpt from her interview:

For most Americans, the only choice for high capacity Internet connection is their local cable monopoly, . . . A Comcast-Time Warner merger would make an already terrible situation incrementally worse in that Comcast would have additional scale. And scale is the secret to this business.    -Susan Crawford

The NY Times had another interesting piece by Eric Lipton, on Feb. 20- COMCAST’s Web of Lobbying and Philanthropy that focused on COMCAST’s lobbying machine, and mentioned that  former Sen. Don Nickles, the Copyright Alliance’s facilitator, is now on COMCAST’s newly formed merger strategy team.  The article digs into the web of charities and special interest groups that receive support from COMCAST and which might now be expected to lend a hand in getting the merger with Time Warner approved.

But don’t worry, Graphic Artists Guild members and defenders of the Copyright Alliance!! I’m sure this has nothing to do with you. Oh, wait, that’s right, the Copyright Alliance lobbyists work for Sen. Nickles at the Nickles Group LLC, and Executive Director Sandra Aistars was a Time Warner VP before coming to the Alliance. Move along!  Nothing to see here, folks.

 

Net Neutrality and Creators

My sense is that when artists think about or discuss their economic and political interests, copyright law is often the dancing elephant in the center ring that unfortunately draws too much attention from other issues that creators should also be worried about.  One very important issue is net neutrality, which has been in the news recently.

On September 9 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit heard arguments from Verizon, which is challenging FCC rules designed to keep the internet open and neutral.  If net neutrality hasn’t been on your radar, and you don’t know anything about common carrier rules, or how they affect the internet, I would recommend you catch up by reading this article by Timothy Lee in the Washington Post (Sept. 10, 2013).  Net Neutrality is on Trial in Washington.  Here’s What You Need to Know.  (See also the other resources listed below).

Net neutrality matters to all creators, if you consider what the marketplace for artistic services might look like if Verizon, AT&T, Time-Warner, and COMCAST win their fight to lock up internet access and content.  Increased costs just for access, plus arbitrary data caps with associated high fees and penalties, will mean fewer consumers buying less content; suppression of competitors will reduce the need for providing quality service and programming; fewer buyers of creative works will mean that the big players will have increased leverage over what they pay you for your work.  And that’s just looking at a loss of net neutrality from a purely business and financial bottom-line viewpoint; from an ordinary citizen’s vantage, allowing a handful of corporations to monopolize the internet and choose what content is favored, or even available, would be an unthinkable assault on the basic rights of all Americans.

It’s worth mentioning here that the Graphic Artists Guild, as an associate member of the Copyright Alliance, is actually in league against the interests of creators.  While the Alliance regularly sends out its clowns to keep everyone’s attention focused on the copyright elephant, its lobbyists are busy at their real day jobs representing Nickles Group LLC clients COMCAST and AT&T, not to mention a slew of other corporate interests that are very unfriendly to the creative community.

Here are a number of other articles and resources for catching up on the issue of net neutrality, and what the telecoms are up to:

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Eli Clifton. The Telecom Astroturf Lobby. The American Independent. Sept. 11, 2013.

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Michael J. Copps. The New Telecom Oligarchs. The Nation, April 3, 2013.

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Michael Weinberg. If You Are Streaming Video, You Can’t Cap Your Rivals (Time Warner Cable Edition). PublicKnowledge.org, August 28, 2013

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Timothy Karr.  Verizon’s Plan to Break the Internet.  Common Dreams, Sept. 21, 2013.

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Moyers & Company.  Susan Crawford on Why U.S. Internet Access is Slow, Costly and Unfair.  Video interview, Feb. 8, 2013.

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TPP and Telecom News

(NOTE: Originally published June 20, 2013, this post was re-edited for public display, Sept. 20, 2013.  The IAG is no longer my interest group at the NYC chapter of the Graphic Artists Guild, and I am no longer an officer, volunteer, or member of the Graphic Artists Guild.)

If you’re interested in the big picture of copyright and IP policy, and wish to know a little bit about the political sausage-grinding that will likely have an impact on the graphic arts industry, not to mention the U.S. economy and citizen’s rights, here are a few items you might want to dig into:

Why Should I Care About the TPP? (Video by PublicKnowledge.org)

There’s additional background information on Public Knowledge’s TPP page.  If you watched the video or are already aware of MPAA’s and RIAA’s support for SOPA/PIPA and now TPP, then you’re probably not very comfortable with the Graphic Artists Guild’s support for them through their front group, the Copyright Alliance.  While the Guild is very quiet about its membership in the Alliance, please note how the Guild’s logo is prominently displayed on the Copyright Alliance Members’ page.

In addition to the TPP continuing to roll along, there have been two noteworthy events in the past several days;

Michael Froman is Confirmed by Senate as the New USTR (U.S. Trade Representative)

(Huffington Post, June 20, 2013.)  Michael Froman, President Obama’s pick for USTR, will be overseeing negotiations on TPP and upcoming trade deals between the U.S. and Europe.  He was overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate, with all Republican senators voting yes, and only 4 Democrats voting no.  However, the dissenters Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Carl Levin (D-MI) Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), have some serious concerns about the current lack of transparency in trade negotiations and Froman’s lack of support for more public disclosure.

Confirmation Hearings for Thomas Wheeler, Nominee for FCC Chairman

I spent a couple hours watching C-SPAN’s coverage of the Senate confirmation hearing for nominee Thomas Wheeler on Tuesday. (C-SPAN Videos- Part I,  Part II)  While he appeared thoughtful and sympathetic to concerns across a wide spectrum of political viewpoints, (something all nominees have a tendency to do) I have more homework to do on him, since there will be some very large questions concerning copyright, net neutrality, corporate mergers, and god-knows what else coming before him as chair of the FCC.  His background as a lobbyist, investor, and corporate telecom executive has raised some eyebrows; see the New York Times editorial of May 08, 2013-  An Industry Man for the FCC.

Copyright Alliance News (3)

(NOTE: Originally published June 12, 2013, this post was re-edited for public display, Sept. 20, 2013.  The IAG is no longer my interest group at the NYC chapter of the Graphic Artists Guild, and I am no longer an officer, volunteer, or member of the Graphic Artists Guild.)

It’s obvious that most Guild members are far more concerned about those things that provide a direct benefit to their careers, such as creative and business skills training, than about a lot of stuff that falls under the broad heading of “advocacy.”  It’s entirely understandable; putting out better promotions brings in more work; enlarging skill sets lands better jobs; sharpening business practices really, really matters to your bottom line.  What’s happening in the Copyright law, Trade negotiation, and Tax Policy Jungles of Washington, D.C. is both extraordinarily complex and of indirect and uncertain consequence to your daily survival as a creative professional.  Who the heck can spare the time to make sense of it?  Particularly time that’s already stretched thin just trying to keep up on all the stuff having a direct impact?

Whether or not it matters all depends on what you think the Guild’s mission should be.  If you think the Guild should be your voice and advocate, dealing with what’s happening in the jungle so that you can concentrate on your daily critical tasks, then it does matter.

That brings us to current news and events involving the Copyright Alliance, an organization that the Guild supports both financially and by tacit endorsement as a member of the Alliance.   If you can find a few minutes, please read about what the lobbyists for the Copyright Alliance (a.k.a., the Nickles Group, LLC) have been up to.

AT&T’s Deregulation Campaign

As the company moves to Internet-based telephone service, it’s looking to shed regulatory obligations that benefit low-income Americans.
Leticia Miranda, June 10, 2013. The Nation Magazine.

“Since 2010, AT&T has been waging a deregulation campaign in several states across the country while aiming to move its traditional, wired telephone services to Internet Protocol (IP)-based services, which transmit voice communications digitally. With the help of corporate “bill mill” the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and support from companies like AT&T, state legislators have introduced a series of “model” bills aimed at preventing regulation of IP-based services in more than thirty states across the country, from Idaho to Georgia, Texas to New Hampshire.”

How are the regulatory changes that AT&T seeks bad for professional creators?  It takes sorting out and understanding a good-sized chunk of the economics and the history of telecommunications regulations. (Sure, like you have a whole lot of time to dedicate to that.)  Essentially what’s happening is that AT&T and the other major players in the communications game are questing for that ultimate goal in our not-quite free market system; the one really big principle that you were never taught in Economics 101, and that’s never, ever uttered by the serious people in discussions about economics: Providing the Least Amount of Goods and Services, While Charging the Most Possible.

As creators of content, our interests are served by having a broad and vibrant market in which to sell our products and services.  Unfortunately, the major telecom corporations are whittling away at regulations that preserve competition and keep costs under control, harming our base of potential clients and customers.  The terms we’ll need to agree to and the rates we’ll receive for our services are going to suffer in a market controlled by only a handful of corporations, who are working hard at maximizing their profits at the expense of service.  This is the reason SOPA was such a bad deal for creators; it would have placed legal weapons into the hands of the largest telecoms, enabling them to suppress their competition.  Reducing or eliminating net neutrality policies would likewise suppress competition, cut down on the number of our  potential clients, and raise costs for the mere transmission of content.  Dollars wasted on excessive transmission and access fees to phone and internet service are dollars not going to content creators.  Powerful telecoms using their lobbying muscle to rake in bigger profits while being allowed to provide service of lesser quality is not in our interest.

The Nation article points to one element of AT&T’s strategy, which is to shut out many consumers that are in rural or poor regions that are harder to provide service to, and are therefore less profitable.   From our standpoint, though, these are potential content consumers that are left out of the marketplace.   If you find the AT&T article too indirect and tiresome, however, or you need more background first, I highly recommend that you view the video available online of Bill Moyers’ interview of Susan Crawford, to get a clearer view of what’s going on.

Susan Crawford on Why U.S. Internet Access is Slow, Costly and Unfair.

Moyers&Company. February 8, 2013.

The lobbyists that represent the Copyright Alliance, who are supposedly looking out for the interests of “creative individuals,” are all from the Nickles Group LLC with only one small exception.  Simultaneously while representing the Alliance, the Nickles people are also representing: AT&T, COMCAST, and the MPAA, Motion Picture Association of America.  Yup, the same interests that are frequently doing bad things to the marketplace you depend upon.

In case you are not familiar with the Nickles Group, LLC, mentioned in other posts, they are a lobbying firm that Sourcewatch.org lists as a supporter of ALEC.

More Alliance, Nickles, and Patent Troll News

(NOTE: Originally published Feb. 10, 2013, this post was re-edited for public display, Sept. 20, 2013.  The IAG is no longer my interest group at the NYC chapter of the Graphic Artists Guild, and I am no longer an officer, volunteer, or member of the Graphic Artists Guild.)

Geez, I didn’t have to lift a finger this weekend to find fresh news relating to our friends at the Copyright Alliance.  Within 10 minutes of sitting down with my coffee and the New York Times on Saturday morning, I came across Joe Nocera’s op-ed on patent trolls, Innovation Nation at War, a subject which I wrote about in my very recent post Copyright Alliance Update.

A short while later when I checked my e-mail inbox, I was presented with a link to Friday’s “Moyers and Company” program, Susan Crawford on why the U.S. Internet is Slow, Costly, and Unfair.    Bill Moyers interviews Susan Crawford, author of “Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the Gilded Age” who provides yet another unsettling view of the mischief that the backers of the Copyright Alliance and its parent, the Nickles Group LLC, are into:

Susan Crawford:

“What’s happened is that these enormous telecommunications companies, Comcast and Time Warner on the wired side, Verizon and AT&T on the wireless side, have divided up markets, put themselves in the position where they’re subject to no competition and no oversight from any regulatory authority. And they’re charging us a lot for internet access and giving us second class access.”

Crawford discusses the role these companies have had in actually stifling broadband access across America, and how their efforts to preserve and increase their profits are doing great economic and social harm.  To remind you, these are the same corporations that pushed for SOPA  (Stop Online Piracy Act) that similarly would have done great harm to the internet in the name of corporate profits.  You helped them, by the way; the Guild’s executive membership in their proxy, the Copyright Alliance, gave substance to their claims of “grassroots” support for their pro-SOPA lobbying efforts.

The small amount of digging I did this weekend was to follow up on Susan Crawford’s account of municipalities trying to create their own independent broadband networks being stymied by corporate-sponsored legislation.  Efforts by town and city governments to treat the internet as a vital utility rather than merely a luxury commodity, have been met by state legislatures who’ve passed laws banning them from doing this, which of course might endanger the monopolistic power and profits of the big telecom service providers.  This sounded to me like the work of ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), and a quick Google search turned up a number of articles confirming this, such as this one at ars technica, South Carolina Passes Bill Against Municipal Broadband.   If you’ve read my report on the Copyright Alliance, you might recall that its parent organization, the Nickles Group LLC, is a supporter of ALEC, and that ex-senator Don Nickles was a contributor to ALEC while serving in the senate.