Shopping for a better ereading app for Android or iOS? Start here—and also see how toxic DRM is for competition

Do you really think an Obama-to-Clinton administration will take on Amazon? Never forget that Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post and, next to the NY Times, that’s the most influential newspaper in the country. Either paper can make an administration’s life hell and, in the case of Hillary, they ‘know where the bodies are” in a body count rivals that of Auschwitz.

Indeed, this crazy election only makes sense when you realize that the press in this country did their best (successfully) to puff the weakest and most scandal-prone of an otherwise good field of Republican nominees, as well as crushing Bernie’s grassroots challenge on the left. What was the reason?

I’ve already given one illustration—Bezos owning the Washington Post. The once lucrative income big city newspapers got from advertising is gone. That from network TV news is collapsing fast. I watched NBC News at a relative’s not long ago. It was ad after ad for prescription medicines for old people. Those are virtually the only people watching NBC News, and when they’re gone, they won’t be replaced by a newly aged cohort. Without an audience, how do you get advertisers? Without advertisers, how do you pay lucrative salaries?

From the perspective of news executives and their ever-obedient staff, the fix for our mainstream press woes lies subsidies by billionaries, either directly (Bezos) or through ownership by giant corporations. Do not forget that the MS in MSNBC is “Microsoft.”

These news sources are already selling themselves cheaply. That is why this election is a horror. They’re going after the most lucrative source of income possible, billionaires who like pay-to-play politics because they’re the ones who have the money to pay. (Think of those huge speaking fees Bill and Hillary got from Goldman Sachs.)

And in exchange the billionaire-favored candidates—in this election that’s chiefly Hillary—will get unabashed boosting. The chief problem this bought-and-paid-for press is facing is that Hillary’s decades-old record of corruption and incompetence is so dreadful, it’s impossible to hide. In the Internet era, no story can be hid for long.

And in this horrid cesspool, issues that could have easily been dealt with in the past are issues that can’t get enough attention to get fixed. For instance, all the attention that’s devoted to Hillary’s email scandal, is diverting attention away from a host of issues such as:

1. Huge budget deficits that have doubled our national debt in the last eight years.

2. Chronic unemployment in many areas of our country. I was talking to someone on Friday who lives in a small town where the chief source of income is rapidly becoming old people living on Social Security. With no local jobs, the young are leaving.

3. An increasing aggressive China and Russia, along with a soon to be nuclear Iran.

A press that wants to elect Hillary and defend Obama simply can’t allow those issues to become important since the blame for them rests primarily on Democrats, particularly Obama. In that environment, copyright and DRM will never be an issue. If important issues can’t be addressed, then neither can little ones.

Also, in the past parties had reasons not to run trashy, corrupt candidates. The press might be heavily partisan, but until Bill Clinton corrupted it, it would have gone after even crooked Democrats.

And once upon a time, the Republicans had ample motivation to run clean candidates, since any flaw in their candidate would be ruthlessly exposed by a partisan press. But any motivation for doing that ended completely in 2012, when the liberal press went after a candidate as talented and squeaky clean as Romney. All too many Republican and independent voters have concluded that there’s no reason to support polite and clean candidates, since they’ll be attacked anyway. In the context of a press that always attacks Republicans, for many voters the best candidate will be one that kicks back and fights dirty. That is Trump.

Most Americans understand the problem—two candidates, neither of whom is qualified for the presidency. But far too few realize that the cause lies in a once mainstream press that, in the interest of survival, has sold itself out. That is where their anger should be directed.

That’s why I’m not focusing on who wins this one. I’m focusing on doing my best to ensure that, starting in 2020, this bought-and-paid-for press will never have the influence to shape an election again. It’s their corruption that matters the most. It is their corruption that lies at the heart of the woes of Election 2016.

And in the end, this is why smaller problems such as copyright don’t get fixed. Why haven’t our copyright laws been amended in any substantial way since the late 1970s, despite all that has happened? Because one powerful group, publishing and the movie industry, wants strict copyright, while another, high-tech giants such as Google, was soft and squishy copyright law. When two powerful, pay-to-play groups clash, neither can win and nothing gets done. The interests of the public (and impoverished authors) never get considered.

–Mike Perry

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