In what ways is money able to influence the distribution of power? Who has money? Who doesn't? If money does influence the distribution of power, how does that affect those who don't have money?

Control of the creation and enforcement of laws in the U.S.A. is rapidly being usurped from the common population by a select few extremely wealthy corporations and special-interest groups. It has always been the case that political decisions could be influenced through lobbying, but more money is being spent by private groups to influence politicians than ever before. As larger and larger sums of money are being spent lobbying, organizations with less money are losing their influence, even if they represent a very significant portion of the population.

During the Democratic National Convention of 2000 in Los Angeles, California, the 11 companies who made campaign donations of over $1 million were given rights to hang banners and advertisements along the busy streets of the city. By donating $100,000 or more to the convention, organizations were granted a private meeting with influential members of the Democratic party. On the other hand, organizations with less funds had to resort to protests outside the convention, an activity that tends to come across as radical and undiplomatic. The city of Los Angeles and the organizers of the convention, as if expecting protests to become violent, surrounded the area with police in full riot gear. Such actions would seem to emphasize the point that money can buy influence and a lack of money earns nothing but distrust and anxiety.

There is certainly nothing wrong with the idea of organizations providing funding to political parties and candidates. It costs huge amounts of money to run a political campaign. However, studies have shown that by giving money to particular political campaigns, organizations are able to strongly influence the outcome of political decisions. For example, in the 105th U.S. Congress, legislation was proposed that would place a special tax on the purchase of firearms to finance computer assisted background checks on people attempting to buy firearms. Between the House of Representatives and the Senate, over 230 Congressmen had received campaign money from gun rights organizations, and of this group only four voted for this legislation. By making strategic donations of large sums of money, an industry was able to ensure that Congress voted in their favor regarding this legislation. In essence, the industry was able to buy a favorable vote, without regard to the opinions of the majority of the U.S. population.

Another example of corporations exerting strong influence over the legislative is that of the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" (DMCA) of 20 October, 1998. This law has far-reaching implications in the realm of intellectual property (IP) ownership and use and often seems contrary to the public interest. The law increases the rights of IP owners with regard to defense of their copyrights against infringement, but it does so in such a way that it allows IP owners to forbid individuals from exercising legally protected "fair use" rights. Additionally it forbids research (academic or otherwise) into copy protection technology. Such a law is extremely unlikely to met with the approval of the public, but was aggressively lobbied for by some of the largest IP producers in the world. These organizations donated, on average, over $14 thousand to each U.S. Senator and over $22 thousand to each Senate Democrat.

The ability to influence legislation with money leads to a number of problems. The most significant is that it takes power away from those who, according to the Constitution, should hold the biggest influence on the Government. The Constitution, particularly articles I and II, places the power to choose the legislative and executive officers with the people of the state being represented. However, in the current situation the entities with money have a disproportionately large influence on the legislative process. The government "of the people, by the people, and for the people," as described by Abraham Lincoln, is not serving the interests of the people.

Returning to the case of the DMCA and the intellectual property holders, it is easy to find examples of the government failing to act in the interests of the general population. By lobbying for the passage of the DMCA, IP holders were attempting to protect their short term interests, namely their current business model. As more and more intellectual property is encoded and distributed as digital media, the media companies became concerned that widespread copyright infringement would pose a major threat to their ability to make money. Digital media allows exact duplicates of IP to be made cheaply and quickly. It is fundamentally different than older analog media, which would necessarily diminish in quality with each duplication. Rather than undertake the difficult and expensive task of rethinking their mechanisms for distribution of IP, the media companies chose to lobby for government protection of their current business model.

Prior to the DMCA, consumers had certain legal rights regarding access to published IP. For example, it was legal to video tape a television program for viewing at a later date. The owner of a compact disc was allowed to make duplicates of this disc for their own use (i.e. copying of the disc to audio tape for use in a car stereo, or the copying of an LP to tape for use in a portable player). A library patron was able to make copies of brief passages of books for research or reference purposes. Since digital media can be duplicated exactly, the media companies felt that the fair use rights were now unacceptable, since they envisioned people mass-producing pirated copies of intellectual property and distributing them illegally. Therefore they pushed for passage of the DMCA, which not only makes it illegal to distribute duplicate copies of IP, but makes it illegal to possess or distribute any mechanism (hardware or software) that is capable of making duplicate copies. This has the effect of completely eliminating the legally protected fair use rights, as it's not legally possible to, for example, make a copy of a DVD to a videotape for use in a VCR.

The problem with laws like the DMCA is that they serve not to protect people but to protect the profit margins of companies. It is not likely that very many citizens would agree with the corporate point of view as the law forced them to give up long protected rights. The corporations, however, were very interested in the law because it serves to protect their business models in an era when technological advances made the business model largely obsolete. Rather than embrace new technology to its full potential, the media industry chose to limit the capabilities of the new technology to those of the older technology. Consumers lost the rights to fair use with regard to digital media. Although copy protection is easily defeatable, the quality of the copy protection is irrelevant as the very ability to defeat such copy protection was made illegal. The ability to analyze copy protection of digital media was also made illegal, an act which generated outrage from the academic community and has the potential to stifle the development of future technologies. If existing technology can not be analyzed by advanced researchers, it becomes very unlikely that technology will ever be developed that will allow for both fair use rights and protection against illegal duplication.

Since the passage of the DMCA, several organizations have made attempts at demonstrating to the government the problems inherent to the law. However, such organizations are not nearly as well funded as the media production companies. Some of the most prominent of these organization are the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Both of these organization are funded largely by donations from individuals and are involved in numerous political areas of debate. The EFF has a total annual budget of $2 million for all their political and legal activities, which is a small fraction of the amount of money that the movie industry alone spent on political contributions in 1998. As a result of this drastic difference in funding, the EFF has had to employ volunteer attorneys when challenging the DMCA in court and organize protests in an effort to influence public opinion. On the other hand, the media industry has been able to employ high priced corporate attorneys and even federal prosecutors in its effort to prosecute people suspected of violating the DMCA.

Corporations will always have more money than individuals, and they will always have an interest in the legislative activities of their government. What, then, can be done to ensure that the laws enacted by the government are in the best interest of the general public? A big part of the problem is that most Americans are not aware of the activities of their federal government. They don't know very much about pending legislation, and they don't know whose money is influencing their politicians. This lack of knowledge is likely a large contributor to the problem of low voter turnout in the election of legislative officers. In the case of the 2000 presidential election, a common complaint was that the two major candidates were too similar in their stances on most major issues, and that it didn't very much matter which one was elected. However, the financial contributions that these candidates received gave a strong indication about where there differences would appear and who would have influence on them during their term in office. Why would the energy industry (including oil and electricity producers) give thirteen times the amount of money to the Republican party as to the Democratic party between 1999 and 2000 if there was no major difference between the candidates? There was obviously a difference to that industry. The same question must be asked of the agribusiness industry, 74% of whose donations went to the Republican party.

Why wasn't such important information covered by the mass media? The mass media companies are extremely influential, both through their political contributions and their powerful position as provider of the vast majority of the news coverage that reaches the public. By reporting on political contributions, they would be forced to cover their own contributions, which could cause people to see a political bias in their contributions and thus their news coverage. This could inspire people to seek out alternate, independent sources of information, hurting the advertising value of mass media coverage thus diminishing their ability to make money.

In order for people to regain control of the government from corporate interests, they must recognize the effect that the corporate interests have. At this time, however, no mainstream news agencies will bring coverage of corporate influence to the forefront, and people remain ignorant. Unfortunately, in a time of media consolidation, it is not likely that such coverage is forthcoming. Independent news organizations often take an approach that is too radical for the mainstream public. In order to successfully communicate the the average citizen, such an organization would have to come across as being mainstream, while bringing attention to events that are not necessarily covered by everybody else.

Currenty the government is firmly under the control of corporations. Rarely is a problem encountered in any aspect of the government that isn't solved by giving more money to a select few powerful and influencial politicians. Unless the public is made aware of this problem, it will continue to have its rights stripped away to preserve the business interests of the wealthiest companies.