SOPA lives—and MPAA calls protests an "abuse of power"

<i>&#62; A so-called “blackout” is yet another gimmick, albeit a dangerous one, designed to punish elected and administration officials who are working diligently to protect American jobs from foreign criminals.</i><p>This statement, in my eyes, shows just how ridiculous the whole thing is. Regardless of your political leanings, I think most folks in the US right now agree that Congress is doing a pretty shoddy job of representing the people's interests. It's basically a joke, on both sides of the aisle at the moment, when politicians claim to be doing what's best for the public.<p>There are a lot of things that go right every day, and we don't hear about them, which is unfortunate.<p>But the things that politicians are beating their chests over right now are so obviously in the interests of lobbying groups and "big money" that it's ridiculous. Lady Gaga might lose money to piracy, but she is hardly a starving artist. And those artists that are usually are happy to get ANY kind of exposure, even if it's through piracy.<p>Also, and this is lost sometimes in the debate, piracy is responsible for the spread of a lot of ideas. And almost everyone does it at some point in their life. Even Lars Ulrich from Metallica - he and James bonded while Lars was at James's house, ripping LPs to tape. Times have not changed much.

"It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests."<p>Man, I HATE it when companies do that.

Chris Dodd went from being a senator in 2010 to being head of the MPAA in 2011... and he calls political protest an abuse of power? He is the canonical example of what's wrong with our revolving door political system.

"some technology business interests are resorting to stunts that punish their users..."<p>I wonder if the MPAA has heard of DRM. Of course, said 'interests' have evaluated the cost of annoying their customers against the social and economic cost of SOPA and make their own decision.<p>"... or turn them into their corporate pawns"<p>Because, in the eyes of the MPAA, information is bad and/or people are stupid.<p>"It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today."<p>Using their market freedom to protect their market freedom? How dare they!<p>Etc.<p>"...designed to punish elected and administration officials who are working diligently to protect American jobs from foreign criminals."<p>Yes, the poor and weak American elected official must be protected from the wrath of the informed populous.<p>Le Sigh.

Chris Dodd? That name sounds familiar. Wasn't that guy a U.S. Senator for 30 years? Oh right...<p>&#62; In February 2011, despite "repeatedly and categorically insisting that he would not work as a lobbyist," Dodd was identified by The New York Times as the likely replacement for Dan Glickman as chairman and chief lobbyist for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). The hiring was officially announced on March 1, 2011.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Dodd" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Dodd</a><p>Between this and the "debate" on MSNBC the other day, it makes me despair when the other side has that kind of firepower and disregard for fair play. Classic example of regulatory capture (in this case, of the US Congress, which is explicitly designated in the Constitution as having the power to establish copyright).

The great-great-grandpappy of whoever authored this press release, in late August of 1831, in a dispatch from Southampton County, VA:<p>"It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on [Negroe slaves] for [labor] and use their services. It is also an abuse of power given the [sunshine and fresh air] these [Negroes] enjoy in the [cotton fields] today. It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the [Negroes] that serve as gateways to [cheap cotton] intentionally skew the [shovels and pitchforks] to incite their [fellow human witnesses] in order to further their [basic human] interests."

So protests and black outs in protest of a bad bill are an abuse of power but funneling millions of dollars to create a bill that censors the Internet isn't? I don't think I could detest the MPAA more than I do at this very moment.

I have to give it to Wikipedia, they're blackout is having the desired effects.<p>Ever since they've announced the blackout, it's been all over Australian newspapers and radio. I hope it's having the same effect in America.

Yeah and what does Dodd and the MPAA call those stupid warnings and crap they add at the beginning of every movie telling us we are thief etc. ?<p>If you don't know what I mean, here is a funny parody of these warnings: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg</a><p>The Hypocrisy is at an all new level.

Oh the irony...<p>Remind me, the next time I write to my MP, that I'm abusing my power and trying to subvert democratically elected representatives.

"Abuse of power," say the people who are bribing politicians to break the Internet in an attempt to preserve their outdated business model.

He has a valid point. Blacking out in protest is obviously an abuse of power, while bribing politicians isn't at all. Shame on the tech companies.

It's so disgusting that Chris Dodd just retired from being a senator for 30 years and now is the CEO of a corporate lobbying firm pushing legislation in congress. He represents everything that is wrong with politics in the country. Fuck him.

"It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts"<p>You know what I've noticed about this? When it comes to this topic, the people on the PIPA/SOPA side of things who are saying the facts are getting skewed NEVER get around to actually discussing the substance of the facts and trying to set the record straight.<p>Go ahead, Mr. Dodd. Educate us -- if you can. You and the clients you've sold yourself to have a pretty big media platform for speaking yourself. Surely it wouldn't be too big of a challenge to address <i>specific</i> misconceptions, rather than just using weasel words to imply that there's a problem that you can't seem to actually explain.

This sentence is often abused, but it does look incredibly apt in this context:<p>"First they ignore you <i>(the 90s - "internet what? here, buy some CDs instead")</i><p>then they laugh at you <i>(2000s - "we can shut down those nerds in seconds!")</i><p>then they fight you <i>(2010s - "let's write laws all over the world to criminalize new technology")</i><p>then you win." <i>(2020s...?)</i>

Hmmm.... what about the abuse of power by the Copyright Lobby pouring millions of millions of dollars into the legislator's campaigns and PAC's? That kind of lobbying is OK, while net.lobbying isn't?<p>Sigh...

I think the /real/ abuse of power here isn't the RIAA/MPAA at all... it's the US (or rather, govt and certain corporations thereof) thinking that because key Internet infrastructure is located on their territory, they have a right to screw with it.<p>If the US were to start messing with, say, DNS, it seems fairly obvious that they couldn't restrict the effects to their own country (especially since the Internet is canonically /not/ organised around national boundaries). So, they'd be breaking not only their own internet but everyone else's too - and they simply do not have that right, morally speaking.<p>If bills like SOPA/PIPA pass, I intend to write to my MP about the importance of establishing a separate infrastructure that co-operates with, but is not dominated by, the existing system. The US has too much control over things like name authorities and SSL root CAs. ICANN is a US corporation. If the US wanted to break the BGP routing table, they wield enough power to do it (heck, AS7007 did it by /accident/).<p>It is becoming increasingly clear that the US cannot be trusted with stewardship of the global Internet; a still more decentralised approach is needed.<p>(Maybe, if they break it entirely, we can build a new one with all the lessons we've learned over the past few decades about how to build peer-to-peer decentralised internetworking. Plus, y'know, we could use IPv6 from the start)

someone should go on Foxnews and explain to those viewers that this is:<p>1., Big government grabbing the freedom of its people<p>2., After freedom of speech, your guns are next. They will raid your homes without warrants on the pure premise that someone has maybe placed a gun there.<p>Turn the Foxnews/Tea Party monster against Murdoch.

Ya know, for a 30 billion dollar market (disks: <a href="http://www.degonline.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.degonline.org/</a> + tickets: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_the_United_States</a>), they're getting a lot of special attention.

What would be the other reasons to have power?<p><a href="http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1997-08-04/" rel="nofollow">http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1997-08-04/</a>

Good grief. Have we gone back to third grade?<p>Funnily enough, this is the same attitude GoDaddy copped just as the shit started to hit the fan.<p>Tomorrow should prove to be fun.

"It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use their services."<p>You (i.e. Mr. Dodds and cohorts) are more than welcome to support the book industry, who, like you, are having some difficulty adjusting to technological advances (though not as much), and purchase a copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica for information to replace Wikipedia, which, as we all obviously know, is made up of copyright thieves (just look at all the [WP:Copyvio]s that exist!). But obviously that's not the solution, since you want free (as in gratis) information. /sarcasm<p>I'll admit it's not hypocrisy yet, but I'd say it's bordering on it.

"A boy testifying in court after murdering his parents, begging mercy on the grounds of being an orphan."<p>Canonical example of chutzpah.

I think rather than saying that this is an abuse of power, MPAA with its massive lobbying power should really reconsider its position. Lobbying was particularly helpful way to reduce information inefficiencies to the government prior to the existence of the internet. The opinion of the smaller, individual voters would only be reflected on a voting day, hence every 2 or 4 years depending on if we are talking about a congressmen or a senator. However, with the progression of free flowing information, aka the internet, the opinion of the public became more readily available, to a point where it is in direct competition with an older form that is the lobbying system. Of course, I'm not saying that lobbyists are completely obsolete. But what I am saying is that the new form of information and opinion expression using the internet will take a bigger and bigger share of the way the constituents actually express themselves to the politicians. Hence, instead of complaining about it, they really just got to embrase it, and learn that what if they are indeed plotting to hurt the consumers, that even if they go around the consumers and directly to Washington, they will not be able to get away with it without consequences.

If you run media companies that own nominally-independent news operations, it is not an abuse of power to 'discourage' their coverage of your legislative agenda. If a media company that opposes this agenda successfully spotlights your non-abuse of power, it is a clear abuse of power.<p>Likewise, it's not a class-war until they hit back. In both cases the logic is entirely consistent.

I know there are blackouts, and boycotts of other SOPA supporters, but I would love it if there were a significant boycotting of the going to the movies and purchasing dvds/blurays.<p>I know it's unlikely, but this organization could use a reminder we're not just political opposition, we're part of their customer base.

The bully plays the victim....

So voluntary blackouts in protest of SOPA are to be stopped because they are dangerous gimmicks, but a bill that will allow the government to blackout websites isn't?<p>How exactly are these people so blind to this kind of obvious contradiction? It completely baffles me that any intelligent human can see this bill as a good thing.<p>It also scares me that politicians and lobby groups are using the idea of protecting "American" jobs as one of the main selling points for getting this bill past. It is far to obvious that American hasn't realized that to survive in this world one must join the global community and not either separate oneself from it nor try to rule it.

One of the major problems is copyright. The copyright laws have gotten so out of hand in this country that things still retain copyright long after the creator is dead. Back when it was first issued, it use to be only 28 years in 1710, but it has just increased and increased... I mean, what good is money if your dead? Does the media industry really need to make more than billions and billions of each year? And its not like they're that original, they release old films and books countless times and you're telling me its impossible to turn a profit in 28 years? It's ridiculous www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk862BbjWx4

Credit Chris Dodd with this: the man knows how to troll.

I'd be happy to see the RIAA and MPAA blackout forever.

It seems like everyone in this thread is falling for a false dichotomy. I would argue that both the MPAA and many internet sites are abusing power. In an ideal system, neither one of them would be able to do what both parties are doing. Now, we don't have an ideal system, so I'm still in support of the blackouts, but I'm going to call a spade a spade and say this is an abuse of power.

Chris Dodd was my senator, and I can tell you this: he ain't in a position to be talking about abuses of power.

Apparently the MPAA is made up of a small group of individuals nobody really knows. They are generally shrouded in secrecy and have very odd subjective systems. They tried it with Howard Hughes 90 years ago, ultimately they must adapt.

Yessss.. make it easy for more people to hate you. Please spout more nonsense.

Chris Dodd's sanctimonious bluster translated back into English: <a href="http://j.mp/MPAAbluster" rel="nofollow">http://j.mp/MPAAbluster</a>

They're routinely publicly accusing Google of supporting piracy.<p>Why isn't Google, in turn, publicly accusing them of corruption and bribery?

"...stunts that punish their users or turn them into their corporate pawns"<p>But totally cool to pay for government pawns.

tl;dr - Pot calling the kettle black: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot_calling_the_kettle_black" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot_calling_the_kettle_black</a>

LOL ... I love it, "an abuse of power".

I wish they'd just stop making movies

Now that we're playing their game, it's only natural that we get hit with the political soundbite insults that survive not a moment's scrutiny. Battle won, war ongoing... but maybe we can start shouting insults too.<p>Only ours will have the weight of truth.

It's about time to actually begin punishing Hollywood for the evil shit they're doing. It's not enough to just respond in defense when they try, time and time again, to destroy the Internet.<p>It's time for a boycott, along with a large campaign, something along the lines of: Americans against Hollywood. It's necessary to turn their public image into a giant black mark that nobody wants associated with.

Politics by the numbers, wound a politically motivated entity and it uses every tactic at its diaposal to destroy you. Lets show them that we can play politics too.

Wait, having the LAW work for only lobbied interest isn't an abuse of pOWER?!

Just to be clear, I don't support SOPA/PIPA, and I'm all in favor of the blackouts. I don't think it's an abuse of power. As a display of power, it's a little bit unsettling. Ask yourself, if Wikipedia went dark over something you didn't agree with, would you be OK with that? Along the same lines, are you OK with them <i>not</i> going dark about other things you may care about?

The 'abuse of power' claim will not seem absurd to many of the casual users of blacked-out sites.<p>Take Wikipedia, for example. To the extent users are aware of Wikipedia as a cohesive unit, they probably assumed that its highest value was to inform people, always working through controversies/technical-problems/legal-problems/etc. to achieve that goal. Wikipedia has been granted credibility via that understanding.<p>In a way, it's a bit like a doctor's duty, to treat even those they dislike. Or a lawyer's, to defend even criminals.<p>The blackout sends a message that, for at least 24 hours, lobbying on one topic is a higher duty than informing people about everything else.<p>Of course, as an entity sovereign over its own operations and property, Wikipedia has the "power" and right to do what it wants.<p>But Wikipedia has earned another dimension of "power" that's been freely granted to it by readers, based on their estimation of its mission. <i>That</i> power is somewhat conditional, and it's that power that even a well-intentioned blackout could be seen as abusing and undermining.<p>As of the day of the blackout, Wikipedia is no longer providing information like air, free to all. It's rationing information as power, to be withheld occasionally for political advantage.