[danielweber]

Microsoft is an American company that employs 100,000 people, more than Google, Twitter, Yahoo!, and Facebook combined.

This is a key point. Whatever arguments you can make about the economic efficiency of IP laws[1], favoring the industry that employs a lot more people isn't "un-democratic." It's democracy, good and hard. [2] Those 100,000 people can easily outvote all the other companies. It's exactly the opposite of favoring the oligarchs, which would be the sharehodlers of GOOG, TWIT, YHOO, FACE.

[1] Those latter companies indeed make more with less workers, which to a first order approximation is what you want to encourage in the long term. It's not the final answer and there are good arguments to make the other way, like GOOG needing other people's IP in order to have something to index and put ads on top of.

[2] As my allusion to Mencken suggests, I really don't like populist arguments. But when defending the populists' jobs becomes "defending the oligarchs" I know I'm in some kind of bizarro world.

[ulfw]

Well it depends on wether 1 company employing 100,000 people is better or 10,000 companies employing 10 each. Of course it's easier to represent the will of 1 vs the not-always-overlapping-voices of 10,000.

[rayiner]

This is a good point, but remember the small business coalition is split. Congress sees some small businesses saying that troll lawsuits hinder their business, while others, particularly in capital-intensive areas like telecoms or medical devices, saying that patents give them protections from larger competitors and provide leverage in getting funding and or being acquired.

[ulfw]

Very much agree. Which goes to my point that 10,000 companies with 10 employees each won't ever be able to speak with one voice/have one agenda or one opinion. Much easier to do with a 100,000 people mega corp ;)

[Shebanator]

So lets see if I have your argument straight: when we do something in Microsoft's interest, it helps their 100,000 employees. But if we do something in Google/Twitter/Yahoo/Facebook's interest, it helps the oligarchs who own their stock. Sure glad Microsoft doesn't have to worry about pleasing any of those pesky oligarch shareholders.