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Posts Tagged ‘Forbes’
January 23rd, 2017 at 3:43 pm
Intellectual Property: Trump Administration Can Reverse Eight Years of Erosion Under Obama
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In Forbes today, intellectual property (IP) attorney Howard Hogan highlights the importance of IP to the American economy (38% of GDP and 30% of jobs) and considers the opportunity for positive change under a Trump Administration after eight years of poor leadership under Barack Obama.

Hogan highlights the pernicious influence of Google during the past eight years, given its self-interest in weakening America’s historic protection of IP rights and free-riding off of others’ creations:

Arguably, no company has been more influential than Google in setting policy in America in recent years…  White House officials met with employees of Google or related companies 427 times – an average of more than once a week, while approximately 30 Google personnel have taken positions in the Obama Administration, and about 20 former members of the White House staff have landed at Google…

One of the consistent goals of this political machine has been to promote policies that have the effect of weakening legal protections for IP rights.  The reason for these policy preferences lies in Google’s role as content distributor and advertiser.  Google does not create the overwhelming majority of the content that its users seek;  it generates much of its revenue by displaying ads while connecting users to content created by others, or by selling platforms to access such content.  For Google, the ability to distribute popular third-party content or sell rights to use other companies’ trademarks with few strings attached is tantalizingly profitable.”

Among the destructive agenda items pushed by Google?  The “set-top box” proposal within Obama’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which we at CFIF continue to emphatically oppose:

A recent example was the so-called ‘set-top box rule’ proposed by the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.  The proposal would have used a statute designed to promote competition among cable television set-top boxes as a vehicle to force cable companies to give tech companies like Google free access to raw video and data feeds that cable companies provide to their customers.

While much about the proposed rule remains controversial, there is no doubt that it would have benefited the Googles of the world, who could sell devices and advertising based on content that they had not licensed from copyright owners, without paying royalties, and with little fear that the owners would be able to enforce the licensing restrictions that led them to offer the video content to cable companies in the first place.  Google and its allied advocacy groups all filed comments in support of the proposal.  Even President Obama threw his support behind the rule, prompting some to question whether he was exerting undue pressure on a supposedly independent agency.”

As Howard concludes, companies like Google contribute a great deal to the American economy and our lives, but we must also do a far better job of protecting American IP rights, which may be our greatest comparative advantage over other nations in an increasingly competitive global information economy.

September 11th, 2010 at 1:36 pm
Ground Zero Imam Threatens Violence If Opposed

In a Wednesday night interview with CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf engaged in the following exchange:

Asked if it’s really a good idea to go ahead with his plans to build a mosque and Islamic center at an address so close to Ground Zero that it has become a flash point, Rauf gave a reply that boils down to a threat. Rauf said that if his Cordoba House does not get built on his chosen site near Ground Zero, “The headlines in the Muslim world will be that Islam is under attack.”

Citing Muslim attacks on Danish embassies during the riots in 2006 over Mohamed cartoons Rauf went on to say that the result of this current “crisis” could be that “anger will explode in the Muslim world.” That, he said, could lead to “something which could really become very, very, very dangerous indeed.”

Forbes columnist Claudia Rosett rightfully argues that Rauf’s position amounts to blackmail: either let me build my $100 million mosque at Ground Zero or risk other attacks.

A lot of hand wringing has been indulged making this decision primarily one about prudence instead of law.  That’s silly.  The Ground Zero mosque isn’t about the First Amendment; it’s about national security.  Rauf just admitted as much with his threat of violence.

The U.S. Constitution requires the U.S. government to protect citizens from enemies; both foreign and domestic.  It’s time to stop acting like the Constitution handcuffs America into ceding our land to a man fronting a group – Cordoba House – whose name recalls the farthest Islamic expansion in European territory.

We’re better than that.