Today, the union drive at Amazon in Alabama, which drew unprecedented political and media attention, was defeated by a 2-to-1 margin.
Last month, as we stood in the parking lot of Amazon’s warehouse and spoke with 32-year-old Ashley Beringer about her take on the Amazon union vote, it became apparent to us then why the union was headed for defeat.
“I guess I’m more so against it because I don’t know much about [unions], I’ve never had to deal with unions until now,” she said.
The coordinated moves by Silicon Valley to silence Donald Trump are having unintended consequences, but consequences that the legions of Big Tech lawyers must have thought through. Setting aside the fact that they took down so many accounts so quickly on Twitter that they must have been working from a list prepared long ago, and setting aside the obvious collusive signaling by the Big Tech oligarchs that bad things might happen to anyone who didn’t follow suit (anyone remember SOPA and GoDaddy?), there are existential issues for these companies regarding Senator Ron Wyden’s singular legislative achievement, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
European Commissioner for Internal Markets Thierry Breton sets out this discussion–can one call a statement of fact an argument?–in an op-ed posted in Politico’s European edition titled Capitol Hill — the 9/11 moment of social media. Although 9/11 was the Internet’s 9/11 moment, I take his point. However, as Mr. Breton makes clear, Europe is proposing legislation in the form of the Digital Services Act that would hold Big Tech accountable way before there’s a riot.
Mr. Breton writes:
The dogma anchored in section 230 — the U.S. legislation that provides social media companies with immunity from civil liability for content posted by their users — has collapsed….
Regardless of whether silencing a standing president was the right thing to do, should that decision be in the hands of a tech company with no democratic legitimacy or oversight? Can these platforms still argue that they have no say over what their users are posting?
While it may be “too soon” to have these clear eyed discussions that Mr. Breton forces us to face up to, it is important to understand his essential point. These are not lemonade stands. Apple,Facebook, Google and Amazon are well known defense contractors. Amazon has suffered during the Trump administration in its quest for a place at the government trough. All of these companies that are participating in crushing their competitor Parler have skin in the Section 230 game and opposing any legislation to roll it back. Any lobbyist who’s being candid with you will acknowledge that stopping legislation to roll back Section 230 is at least a two Tesla job if not a two Gulfstream job with a Vineyard house bonus.
So let’s heed Mr. Breton’s admonishment to focus on what really just happened. They all acknowledged they don’t qualify for Section 230 anymore and Europe intends to hold them accountable. As he says:
These last few days have made it more obvious than ever that we cannot just stand by idly and rely on these platforms’ good will or artful interpretation of the law. We need to set the rules of the game and organize the digital space with clear rights, obligations and safeguards. We need to restore trust in the digital space. It is a matter of survival for our democracies in the 21st century.
Europe is the first continent in the world to initiate a comprehensive reform of our digital space through the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act, both of which the European Commission tabled in December. They are both based on one simple yet powerful premise: What is illegal offline should also be illegal online….
The DSA [gives] online platforms clear obligations and responsibilities to comply with these laws, granting public authorities more enforcement powers and ensuring that all users’ fundamental rights are safeguarded.
With the DSA, Europe has made its opening move. Our democratic institutions will work hard and fast to finalize this reform. But the challenges faced by our societies and democracies are global in nature.
.Any guesses on who is fighting the DSA with all guns blazing?
RikiMusic is pirating dozens of articles from Hypebot as well as allegedly uploading tracks from indie artists to Spotify and Amazon Music without authorization….
Caleb Jackson Dills, who first wrote about the music theft for Artists Rights Watch, also noticed that the content on the RikiMusic blog looked familiar.
Virtually all of the dozens of posts on the RikiMusic site were pirated directly from Hypbot.com and illegally published verbatim without attribution.
The Federal Trade Commission issued Special Orders to five large technology firms, requiring them to provide information about prior acquisitions not reported to the antitrust agencies under the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act. The orders require Alphabet Inc. (including Google), Amazon.com, Inc., Apple Inc., Facebook, Inc., and Microsoft Corp. to provide information and documents on the terms, scope, structure, and purpose of transactions that each company consummated between Jan. 1, 2010 and Dec. 31, 2019.
The Commission issued these orders under Section 6(b) of the FTC Act, which authorizes the Commission to conduct wide-ranging studies that do not have a specific law enforcement purpose. The orders will help the FTC deepen its understanding of large technology firms’ acquisition activity, including how these firms report their transactions to the federal antitrust agencies, and whether large tech companies are making potentially anticompetitive acquisitions of nascent or potential competitors that fall below HSR filing thresholds and therefore do not need to be reported to the antitrust agencies.
“Digital technology companies are a big part of the economy and our daily lives,” said FTC Chairman Joe Simons. “This initiative will enable the Commission to take a closer look at acquisitions in this important sector, and also to evaluate whether the federal agencies are getting adequate notice of transactions that might harm competition. This will help us continue to keep tech markets open and competitive, for the benefit of consumers.”
The Special Orders require each recipient to identify acquisitions that were not reported to the FTC and the U.S. Department of Justice under the HSR Act, and to provide information similar to that requested on the HSR notification and report form. The orders also require companies to provide information and documents on their corporate acquisition strategies, voting and board appointment agreements, agreements to hire key personnel from other companies, and post-employment covenants not to compete. Last, the orders ask for information related to post-acquisition product development and pricing, including whether and how acquired assets were integrated and how acquired data has been treated.
The Commission plans to use the information obtained in this study to examine trends in acquisitions and the structure of deals, including whether acquisitions not subject to HSR notification might have raised competitive concerns, and the nature and extent of other agreements that may restrict competition. The Commission also seeks to learn more about how small firms perform after they are acquired by large technology firms. These and related issues were discussed during several sessions of the FTC’s 2018 Hearings on Competition and Consumer Protection in the 21st Century, and this study is part of the follow-up from those Hearings.
The FTC has a statutory right under the HSR Act to review acquisitions and mergers over a certain size before they are consummated, and the study will help the Commission consider whether additional transactions should be subject to premerger notification requirements. The orders will also contribute broadly to the FTC’s understanding of technology markets, and thereby support the FTC’s program of vigorous and effective enforcement to promote competition and protect consumers in digital markets.
The Commission vote to approve issuing the Special Orders was 5-0. Commissioners Christine S. Wilson and Rohit Chopra issued a joint statement.
Emmanuel Legrand reports in his excellent newsletter that:
Music industry trade group the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has asked the US government for tougher measures against infringers, in particular in the online marketplace. The proposal was part of a submission to the US Department of Commerce, as part of its request for comments on the state of the state of counterfeit and pirated goods.
Counterfeiting and pirating of physical music products facilitated by online platforms continues to cause harm to our members. In 2019, we conducted two studies to identify the amount of counterfeit offerings of music CDs on popular online platforms, including a study on the prevalence of high quality counterfeit box sets on certain platforms and a study on the prevalence of high quality counterfeits for a broad sample of current and evergreen album titles released by the major U.S. record labels. As further discussed below, each of these studies showed significant counterfeit activity on the noted online platforms, including findings that:
A recent sample purchase program found 100% of new high quality box sets offered for sale through eBay or AliExpress in the U.S. were counterfeit; and
A recent sample purchase program found 11% of new CDs offered for sale on Amazon were counterfeit, and 16% of new CDs sold on eBay were counterfeit.
For the study on box sets of music, we identified and made test buys on eBay and AliExpress’s U.S. platforms of 10 well known artist box set titles released by major U.S record labels. Each purchase was made after a search for “brand new” box sets of the titles selected, and a purchase of the 4 lowest priced box sets on each platform, without regard to seller location. We then examined the products that were shipped to us. On both eBay and AliExpress, 100% of the test buys of the box sets were counterfeit. This is of particular concern as box sets are premium physical music products designed for the superfan that often contain the most significant sound recordings in an artist’s repertoire.
The conclusion is:
Trafficking of counterfeit and pirated goods, whether in the form of physical CDs, box sets or artist merchandise, as well as online infringement of music and music videos in digital form, continues to significantly impact the music industry. We believe more can be done, including implementation of voluntary measures as well as governmental action, to deter and reduce such activity, and create a healthier online ecosystem where all can thrive.
Amazon apparently was the only one of the bootleggers who responded, and did so with the usual non answer and deflection:
Our customers expect that when they make a purchase through Amazon’s store—either directly from Amazon or from one of its millions of third-party sellers—they will receive authentic products. Amazon strictly prohibits the sale of counterfeit products and we invest heavily in both funds and company energy to ensure our policy is followed. We work with and empower brands through programs like Brand Registry, Transparency, and Project Zero to ensure only authentic products are sold in our stores. We investigate any claim of counterfeit thoroughly, including removing the item, permanently removing the bad actor, pursuing legal action or working with law enforcement as appropriate.
Sound familiar? Kind of like how YouTube responds to the community flagging? Investigating after the illegal goods are being sold is not the point. Getting caught is not the point. The point is stopping the illegal goods from getting onto the platform in the first place.
The reason this drivel from Amazon sounds like tired crap is because it is tired crap. And crystalizes that they think the problem is getting caught and that what they really want is to keep getting away with it.
And this is where I disagree a bit with RIAA–the time for voluntary measures has passed. Someone needs to go to jail–someone high up who almost invariably knew what was going on (for example, grand jury documents told the U.S. Attorney for Rhode Island “Larry Page knew what was going on“).
Then we can talk again about voluntary measures to keep their butts out of the slammer–not their pathetic little “Project Zero.” I got your project zero right here.
Remember the great continuum that has driven homo sapiens for millennia:
FEAR <———> GREED
We need Jeff Bezos closer to the FEAR end than the GREED end.
Remember that data is the new exposure, streaming is the new physical and that both these tropes have something in common–artists are being driven to substitute away from low to no margin streaming and away from sustainable margins on physical like CDs with no revenue replacement. (Unless you’re in the 5% of tracks that account for 90% of streaming revenue in the hyper efficient market share distribution of streaming revenue.)
Against that background, we find that the online platforms like eBay, Alibaba and Amazon are going even further toward evil and doing little or nothing in their rush to drive physical retail out of business to stop the sale of counterfeit CDs delivered to your door by Amazon Prime or Ali-express. And most honest business folk would probably think they are pretty shameless about it and ask how could they get away with sucking up the revenue from counterfeits into their maelstrom of cash?
But before you go down that rabbit hole, you need to understand an important fact about the mind set of Silicon Valley–and it’s the same mindset that gave us both Google and Theranos. It’s not that they made a choice to do evil. It’s that they don’t understand there is a choice about doing evil. It’s how these little soulless people sit in front of Congress and lie and feel good about themselves. The Internet is their Ring of Gyges and they are unconcerned about justice because their thing is getting away with it, not getting caught and getting richer than Croesus.
Somewhere in their development they lacked the normative guide–or “sherpa” in their case–that should have developed a self-governing code to map their behavior. Parents, pastors, priests, rabbis, teachers, all failed to make a dent. These are the kind of people who don’t stop when the European Commission fines them billions. They don’t care how they treat their employees as long as they’re the richest man in the world. They don’t care about ripping off artists. Their reaction to getting caught is not fixing the problem, their reaction is to buy the shillery and try to make us look greedy for expecting them to behave.
If a $5 billion fine didn’t work, how about $50 billion? Let’s try that. But even in the Silicon Valley dual class system, the corporate royalty might start thinking about offering up an executive to save the company.
This is why the solution probably isn’t voluntary. It probably has a lot more zeros on it than any normal person would think reasonable, or is a court order for very specific behavior, or simply prison.
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