Mississippi Attorney General Dares Reporters To Find Any Evidence Of Hollywood Funding... So We Did
from the oops dept
The saga of Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood and his cozy ties to Hollywood continue to come out. He's been claiming that, sure, he met with Hollywood's top lawyer, Tom Perrelli, had him prep Hood for a meeting with Google, and even took a ~4,000 word angry letter that Perrelli wrote for him, signed it as his own and sent it to Google -- but he did all that without knowing that Perrelli worked for Hollywood's top lobbying arm, the MPAA. Uh huh.And then in a press conference, he insisted that he was doing this out of his own interest in protecting the children -- but also admitted that his office didn't have any intellectual property experts and didn't have a million dollars to do an investigation (approximately the amount the MPAA's leaked emails show them discussing to fund this investigation) and that he needed to rely on such help from "victims" to make his case. It's fairly rare, though, that "victims" of a crime run the actual law enforcement investigation and fund it as well.
Still, in that last post, we also mentioned how Hood implied that anyone suggesting he was "paid off" might be defaming him, and apparently also stated that he wasn't getting any money from Hollywood, encouraging reporters to "check records."
Hood: Not getting any money from Hollywood as far as he knows. Encouraged us to check records.
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Filed Under: campaign contributions, funding, jim hood, mike moore, patrick lynch, tom perrelli
Companies: 20th century fox, comcast, fox, google, mpaa, nbc universal, riaa
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Encouraged us to check records
He's a colassal dumb-ass who doesn't know when to STFU and is trying to make a bigger dumbass of himself on the Internet, can you help???
Now we just need a demand letter sent to TechDirt full of vague threats and legal "thuggery" to make this story perfect!
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I must now insist that you owe Jim Hood an apology, as it's clear that the MPAA didn't give money to him!
/sarcasm
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Mississippi Attorney General Dares Reporters To A Chicken Eating Contest
Mississippi Attorney General Dares Reporters To Find Waldo In A Picture Of Elvis He Painted
Mississippi Attorney General Dares His Psychiatric Care Providers To Find His Slippers
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...umm?
That exactly suggests that Hood is beholden to that money, because that is the nature of politics, particularly in America, post-Citizens United.
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It was in the 70s that Tom Lehrer stated "political satire became redundant when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize".
Things have gone worse since then. Much of politics is really indistinguishable from satire these days.
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I think you missed a word...
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Careful what you wish for:
http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000022008
Google spent more PAC money than Goldman Sachs.
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/googles-pac-spends-search-political-influence
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Unless you're pushing the "Techdirt is for Google shills angle"...
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snicker
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Last one switches off the lights.
But seriously: try finding a single "representative" who is going to vote for that. All of them are either in somebody's pocket, or are in a position where they can afford to pocket others.
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But we've seen politicians influenced for less to act on behalf of particular lobbying interests.
And considering the career path of his predecessor upon leaving the position, this $5000 could be seen as a down payment on a future career in lobbying for the MPAA or an associated group once Hood is (hopefully) kicked or at least voted out of office due to the appearance (much less the possibility) of corruption.
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Money for Morons
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Hmmh
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Typo
That letter must be really angry to be 4000 angry.
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That's the whole point. They don't want an expert in IP; they want a big grumpy gorilla to thump his chest and repeat after the MPAA's talking points, then get that passed off as law somehow.
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While the occasional good apple might at some time have risen above his level of corruption, he'll be cut off the branch if he starts actually dealing with corruption. And turning a blind eye on corruption for too long is an actionable form of corruption itself, so at some point of time the inert apple has his interests better served by aligning himself with the corruption around him.
You'd really have to release all of the Holder-poisoned Department of "Justice" and its trickle-down into private practice, throw out "plea bargains" and other perversions of the law, and replace the personnel with people fresh from university. One cannot reasonably hope to salvage those barrels of rotten apples from the inside.
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Right now they've got several governments and a number of bought-and-paid-for politicians who would love to hit them with something major, and hacking another company? That would most certainly qualify.
And of course the bigger question would be: Why bother? Nothing that's been revealed to date is big enough to possibly justify that sort of action on their part, so the potential losses/potential gains would be very much not in their favor for something like that.
Sure having an incompetent/gullible or bought out AG harassing them is annoying, but if they had even the slightest connection to the hacking? That would make the problem exponentially worse, so they really would have nothing to gain by it.
However, even then, even in the extremely unlikely case that they were involved, it wouldn't really matter with regards to what's come out so far. The incriminating emails and other bits of evidence would still be valid. If Google was guilty of the hack, the *AA's, Sony, and various AG's would not suddenly be innocent in exchange.
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More specifically, those in Hood's state have gotten to see just how corrupt or incompetent their AG is, and just who owns him.
Google has gotten, what? Maybe a little less heat from one AG? A little more proof that no-matter what they do it will never be enough for the *AA's, confirming that it was foolish to ever even try?
As for 'capable of disguising it', given how weak the evidence pointing to NK are, I'd say any number of groups could have managed that. 'They used similar programs that NK has been known to use'? 'The source of the attacks seemed to have come from an area pointing to NK'? Please, with that level of 'evidence' needed to assign blame, it would have been laughably easy for pretty much any tech savvy group to manage it.
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Exposing such blatantly corrupt actions threatens to get people more interested in the process, which could affect the money politicians get from their 'friends', so of course they'll cast it in the worst possible light.
As for the media, well, the USG has had them tamed for a number of years now, so if DC get's outraged on something, so does the press. If DC says something is a 'serious threat', then so does the press. They do what they're told, like obedient little employees.
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So corporations have politicians in their pockets litterally, aswel as figuratively
And to those who say their not politicians anymore, im sorry, but when you leave the office, work for a company, and still work with the people in ANY capacity that still work in that job you left......YOU ARE working in the capacity of a politician, BUT, on behalf of a corporation and NOT the people......you corrupt sons of a beaches
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Im sick and tired of the one million pages plus infinity "law" book
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Dont give corruption a cop-out, they need whats due
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You think this is bad?
There is a man on death row in MS that Jim Hood wants very badly to have executed. The problem is, that the original prosecutor, Jimmy's very good friend, knew that a crime never occurred before he CHARGED Jeff Havard with Capital Murder (in 2002, Mike Moore's last year as Attorney General).
Jump forward to today; Jeff Havard is before the MS Supreme Court with newly discovered scientific exonerating evidence, (because the state has been hiding it for almost 13 years) but Hood and his band of cretins claim they didn't disclose it because it was not favorable to Havard. The fact that the medical examiner thought a crime never occurred is not favorable to Jeff Havard?
Six pro-bono world and nationally renowned experts agree that the evidence is in Havard's favor. That's not favorable, either according to the AG's office.
Havard must die, because he discovered the misconduct too late.
Hood tried to put a gag order on Jeff Havard's current appeal, something that is unheard of on a DP appeal. Because he has something to hide.
No luck there, thankfully.
Hood has also tried to set 4 execution dates in 2014 for people who had questionable death sentences.
Oh, I could tell you some hard truths about Jim Hood.
Well, what can you say? It is the most corrupt state in the nation. None of this surprises me, but I am so glad eyes are turned on him now.
Forgive the intrusion, all.
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Digital Citizens Alliance
the NY Times revealed that a Hollywood front group, the Digital Consumer's Alliance, which is funded by the movie studios, hired Moore as a lobbyist.
It's actually the Digital Citizens Alliance, not the Digital Consumer's Alliance. They are the same folks who released the ridiculously biased "studies," "Good Money Gone Bad" and "Behind The Cyberlocker Door."
Here's an interesting factoid about them: Ellen Seidler, the anti-Google filmmaker who runs popuppirates.com (and frequent Trichordist contributor), is on their advisory board:
http://www.digitalcitizensalliance.org/cac/alliance/advisoryboard.aspx
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