BP Hires Former RIAA Boss For PR Work

from the why-don't-you-just-sue-all-the-oil? dept

Fri, Jun 4th 2010 12:39pm — Mike Masnick

It's been a little while since we last wrote about Hilary Rosen, who ran the RIAA for many years, and presided over its initial disastrous decision to fight the internet and go after users. However, we have to say that it's somewhat amusing to find out that BP has now hired Rosen for PR help in dealing with the oil spill in the Gulf. Hopefully "suing all the people who live along the coast" isn't one of her suggestions. But, perhaps she can figure out a way to blame the spill on "pirates" of some kind, right?

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Filed Under: hilary rosen
Companies: bp, riaa

31 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 4 Jun 2010 @ 12:42pm

BP has already sued to try and limit their liability.
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Anonymous Coward, 4 Jun 2010 @ 12:48pm

"But, perhaps she can figure out a way to blame the spill on "pirates" of some kind, right?"

Well, the spill occurred in the ocean where pirates of the high seas reside, so yeah, why not? ARRRR!!!
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The Infamous Joe (profile), 4 Jun 2010 @ 12:56pm

Pirates
There wouldn't be so much extra oil in the earth if the dirty pirates stopped downloading and drove to theaters.
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TPBer, 4 Jun 2010 @ 12:59pm

Oh No..
the pirates stole the plug in the bottom of the ocean. They are now holding out for ransom.
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Nastybutler77 (profile), 4 Jun 2010 @ 1:17pm

I'm guessing she left her failed war on pirates off her resume.
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Dark Helmet (profile), 4 Jun 2010 @ 1:29pm

No...
"Hopefully "suing all the people who live along the coast" isn't one of her suggestions."

Mike, that's an absolutely silly thing to suggest she'd do. Why would she sue the people affected by this disaster? The more proper courses of action are listed below:

1. Sue Mother Nature on behalf of those afflicted coast members. After all, the ocean was the delivery vehicle of the harmful oil, not unlike torrent sites are to infringing material.

2. Sue the Gulf of Mexico. They had this oil. HAD it. And then the stupid, thieving ocean swept it away on their watery water water. And they didn't ask BP's permission first! The Gulf of Mexico is a piratey raporist!

3. Release conflagoriffic studies suggesting that animals aren't harmed by oil. Didn't you know that everglade storks actually consume oil as a requirement for breeding?

4. Sue Jammie Thomas. My sources tell me that Hilary isn't sure why, but somehow this is all Jammie's fault. Probably for having a ridiculously spelled first name....
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Yakko Warner, 4 Jun 2010 @ 1:31pm

They might sue Twitter
Someone's running a Twitter account in BP's name. It's been absolutely hilarious (well, as much as it can be in the face of this tragic mess), but with an RIAA goon in charge, I could see a suit against a satirical PR account forthcoming.

http://twitter.com/bpglobalpr
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SpacePirate, 4 Jun 2010 @ 1:36pm

Thieves
She just released her first statement:

"Those rotten scoundrel thieving pirate Gulf Coast residents are stealing BP's oil! It's BP's oil and they are storing it in the World Wide Ocean but just because its in the World Wide Ocean doesn't mean anyone with access to the World Wide Ocean can just have it.

BP created that content and they have every right to be paid by everyone who's gone to the World Wide Ocean and taken some of that oil content."
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Mikecancook, 4 Jun 2010 @ 1:47pm

Hilarious! That's exactly what I was thinking. Sue the wildlife for inducing infringement as their dead oil soaked bodies float ashore and then sue the Gulf States for secondary liability since their residents live there.
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Phil, 4 Jun 2010 @ 2:24pm

She'll probably sue the Gulf Coast residents for "stealing" oil since they're mopping it up during the cleanup efforts.
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SpacePirate, 4 Jun 2010 @ 2:39pm

Re: Thieves
"All residents living within 10 miles of the coast will be sent pre-settlement offers from BP. The offers will implore they pay BP $5,000.95 or be taken to court for oil royalties."
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Dark Helmet (profile), 4 Jun 2010 @ 2:54pm

Re: Re: Thieves
"or be taken to court for oil royalties"

Not converting oil royalties to roilties = opportunity fail....
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Griff (profile), 4 Jun 2010 @ 3:40pm

Wait for the seabird pictures
When the awful pictures of oil soaked seabirds start to arrive, HR will say that the oil (which belongs to BP) owns the copyright to it's photographic likeness, and sue to prevent publication in the papers.

But does BP actually own "escaped" oil ? Or only oil it captures straight from the well ?
This is a serious question - if someone else mounted a salvage operation that captured 5000 barrels a day before it hit the beach, who would own the oil ?
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AnonCow, 4 Jun 2010 @ 3:57pm

Suing waterfowl that try to steal BP's oil by coating themselves with it.

Hmmm, interesting PR spin....
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Anonymous Coward, 4 Jun 2010 @ 4:16pm

Re:
And they don't care if you've got a desalter, vacuum distillation unit, naphtha hydrotreater, catalytic reformer, distillate hydrotreater unit, fluid catalytic cracker, hydrocracker, visbreaking unit, merox unit, coking unit, alkylation unit, dimerization unit, isomerization unit, steam reforming unit, amine gas treater, and claus unit to refine all that crude or not!
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Hephaestus (profile), 4 Jun 2010 @ 5:06pm

Re: No...
DH - Congrats!! I saw the word "raporist" on two other sites this week.
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NAMELESS ONE, 4 Jun 2010 @ 5:12pm

CAN you see tomorrows headline
BP - THE OIL DISASTER ( NOW IN 3D)
and everyone runs and pays a GILLION dollars and BP GETS
PROFIT

RIAA / MPAA business is infecting everything
CANT wait to see the next law that comes out will be
COPYRIGHT OIL OR
YOUR CAR DOORS ARE TPMS and are copyrighted
THUS THE MPAA/RIAA can fine you if you have non approved people in the car and dont drive where they tell you

OH the joy as the ISPS er gas stations/mechanics are then forced into throttling your speed to 5 miles an hour anytime you want to drive the car.

NO WONDER THE USA ECONOMY IS IN A TURD
SAME WITH EUROPE
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Hephaestus (profile), 4 Jun 2010 @ 5:14pm

Actually ...
I think the president may have suggested her hiring. He is after all very tight with that crowd.
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wallow-T, 4 Jun 2010 @ 5:27pm

unfair to PR flacks
I believe this is somewhat unfair to Ms. Rosen. As far as I can tell, she advised privately against the RIAA strategy of suing individual file sharers, and she left the RIAA job as the lawsuit campaign began. The RIAA's strategy is directed by the four major labels, not by the person at the top of the organization chart.

Somewhere there is a post-RIAA interview with Ms. Rosen, but I do not have time to search for it tonight.
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Anonymous Coward, 4 Jun 2010 @ 5:34pm

I found this to be an interesting video regarding how to clean up the oil

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/blackhat-lounge/199074-solution-gulf-oil-spill-solu tion.html#post1769129

(as a side note, I submitted my own idea of how to plug the hole on Techdirt but then someone on another form shot it down and made me look retarded. lol).
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The Pirate, 4 Jun 2010 @ 7:06pm

Not so crazy talk.
If you consider the target audience.

It is not the public they are targeting, it is their representatives with which the RIAA have very good relations and knows the inside outs of the system and actually have hundreds of fronts to lobby in its favour so BP feeling threatened run up to them to contain the situation.

Society doesn't matter they are not the target of the PR campaign the government is.
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Anonymous Coward, 4 Jun 2010 @ 7:39pm

Re: Not so crazy talk.
I was kinda thinking the same thing but am not sure. What I was thinking is that the RIAA PR person would have more relations with federal agencies like the USPTO, FCC, and perhaps the FTC along with those IP Czars. Not sure how that relates to this oil spill though.
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Anonymous Coward, 4 Jun 2010 @ 7:42pm

Re: Re: Not so crazy talk.
Oh, and the RIAA PR people would also have relations with the USTR, perhaps Hilary wants to use her relations with the USTR to influence international and foreign policy over this spill? I don't know.
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Anonymous Coward, 4 Jun 2010 @ 7:50pm

Re: Re: Not so crazy talk.
Images from birds dying will get a lot of people upset, this in turn will lead to government officials to say things in public like "we will make them accountable" which scares BP a lot and because it could mean legislation on the way, so to counter that they will use who?

People who has good relations inside the government and know where to push.
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Jay (profile), 4 Jun 2010 @ 9:42pm

I was glad she was gone out of the picture and now she's back?

Her comments, when read, seemed quite belligerent when I saw them on Dmusic.com.

Pardon my french but:
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU------------

*ahem* Yeah, I never liked her or the MPAA's equivalent, Jack Valenti. Yes, I know he retired but his speeches are what roused the giant that is Hollywood to the "piracy" threat in the first place. Sad that his lobbying efforts were quite successful.
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Dark Helmet (profile), 5 Jun 2010 @ 4:38am

Re: Re: No...
"DH - Congrats!! I saw the word "raporist" on two other sites this week."

You're shitting me. Where? RIAA blog? ;)
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Jun 2010 @ 7:18am

Maybe she plans on suing everybody that photographs BP's oil without permission.
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Karl (profile), 5 Jun 2010 @ 11:06am

Re: Actually ...
Actually, it's mostly the VICE president.
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Michael, 7 Jun 2010 @ 4:15am

Re: No...
I think they can sue the people along the coast for pirating their oil.

We have, in fact, found their oil on the property of these pirates, so it must be the property owners on the coast that caused the disaster so they could collect the oil as it reached land.
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BBT, 7 Jun 2010 @ 8:26am

well, the people on the coast are pirating BPs oil. They didn't grant a public performance license to their oil to American beaches, and they're just using it without permission!
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Jun 2010 @ 6:55pm

It's a sign of a broken government when negative PR is the biggest thing a big corporation has to worry about after doing something wrong.
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