LOBBYPLAG THE SELF-APPOINTED EU GATEKEEPER

LobbyPlag (a blending of lobby and plagiarism) aims to be an open source European tool on lobbying or should it be anti-lobbying? The platform will have the following features:

• Examination of amendments by EU Parliament Committee members
• Data imports from ParlTrack and possibly other sources
• Collaborative crowdsourcing contents of lobby papers
• Analysing of analogies between lobby proposals and EU documents
• Accessible, multilingual interface
• Integration of social media for collaboratio and sharing
• All code will be available as free source software
• All data will be published under Open Data Commons Database Licence (ODBL) so anyone can use it.

LobbyPlag contends that " this type of information is useful because it helps us (who is us???) look at whether all sides of an argument are getting an equal and appropriate hearing and it also helps us look at the amendments being proposed and analyse whether they are good or bad fo the public good".

What qualifies LobbyPlag to determine what is good or bad for the public good?? What is Lobbyplag's competence and authority to function as a Gatekeeper and assess the quality of regulatory policy??

LobbyPlag's fight is first and foremost against influence peddling. Their objective is very clear: "As we have all seen, they write, time and again, politicians fall pray to their lobbyist comrades.... so if you are in the mood to support the good fight and push back against influence peddling on the European continent.... support the LobbyPlag cause."

What LobbyPlag should understand is that there is a marked difference between influence peddling i.e. lobbying which is a daily reality in modern democracies and undue influence-peddling where vocal interests are favored over the public interest. Influence peddling is not illegal but undue influence peddling is an illegal act of lobbying.