Movie Theaters' Top Lobbyist Resorts To Making Up Facts Concerning SOPA/PIPA

from the oh-please dept

Okay, the lies and ridiculous claims from SOPA/PIPA supporters just keep getting more and more ridiculous. On a panel at Sundance about the whole SOPA/PIPA issue, it appears that John Fithian, president/CEO of the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO), was able to sound even more tone-deaf and out of touch than the MPAA's Chris Dodd! That's really saying something these days. Let's start with this:

NATO’s Fithian said he had never witnessed such a reversal in momentum considering the legislation’s passage seemed all but assured in October. "This was the most amazing turnaround of public opinion in the 25 years I’ve been a professional lobbyist. We were up there since Day One and took 25 of my [exhibitor] CEOs and met with 50 members of Congress. We asked each member of Congress if there was anything they need to make the legislation clear and nobody said anything. Google read the legislation at the same time and didn’t say a word. But in November the greatest backlash ever occurred."

First of all, Google had been complaining publicly about the bill since it was introduced in the Senate back in May. For Fithian to claim that the company had no complaints in October is simply laughable. As for questions from legislators, the fact that they didn't have any questions isn't a point in your favor, it's a sign of just how corrupt the system is. When Hollywood hands them a bill, they don't bother taking the time to understand it until after the public speaks out on it.

Fithian went on, "The backlash occurred, Google made its point, they’re big and tough and we get it. Hopefully now reasonable minds will prevail. Senator Dodd and his team are quite good at this. We’ll sit down with them and ask what has to be done to make legislation more narrowly tailored...."

And here's the sign that they really just don't get it. They still think that this was all Google. While Google did speak out publicly against the bill early, it had almost nothing to do with the protests that erupted last week, and only jumped on board very late in the game. You wouldn't believe how much complaining there was in various online communities about just how little Google was doing to fight this bill. The idea that this was driven by Google is laughable to anyone who was involved in these events. 14 million people spoke up about this bill. That wasn't Google. That was the wider internet. Pretending that this was Google flexing its muscles shows that this is someone who still isn't paying attention.

"But the reality is we have to stop these rogue websites. They’re stealing jobs from my members. It’s not Senator Dodd’s big wealthy studio executives, it's the 160,000 Americans who earn on average $11 an hour at my cinemas. Those are the jobs at stake.”

Almost nothing in this statement is true. As we discussed recently, employment at theaters has been dropping rapidly over the last decade. It peaked in 2003, but has steadily trended downward since then. Over that same time period, however, box office revenue has continue to rise at a pretty significant clip, setting new records almost every year until 2011, when it finally took a slight dip -- which many people attribute more to the crappy experience at theaters. You know why there might be a crappy experience? Because the theater owners that Fithian represents consolidated, built up giant, impersonal multiplexes, and then completely understaffed them.

Furthermore, $11/hour is hardly a living wage these days, and a large percentage of folks working at movie theaters aren't full time/lifetime employees, but high school kids looking to earn some extra beer money.

Either way, there is simply no evidence -- at all -- that "foreign rogue sites" have had any impact whatsoever on theater employment. As theater revenue continued to go up and up and up, theaters were firing more and more employees in an effort to cost-cut. Even the MPAA folks have repeatedly claimed that infringement has little to do with theater revenue and is almost entirely (in their minds) about in-home revenue (the same revenue stream the MPAA wanted to kill off 30 years ago in the Betamax case).

So it's difficult to see how anyone can take Fithian/NATO seriously. He claims that it was just Google. It was not. He references jobs in theaters, which have nothing to do with any of this. He claims that Google wasn't concerned about the bill. Is he saying anything that is backed up by fact? Well, perhaps the bit about our elected officials being too clueless/unconcerned to actually understand the bill that Hollywood handed them. That part is believable...

Amusingly, in another article about the same panel, it mentions that even Fithian's son was against him on this issue, and agreed with the anti-SOPA/PIPA folks. Also, it shows the real thinking on Fithian's part. It's not "piracy" he's concerned with, it's any form of competition whatsoever. Apparently during a discussion on the best way to compete with infringement, some people suggested the studios supplying "more content in new, affordable avenues to undercut the temptation to" infringe. Not only does that seem reasonable, but it's the only thing that's actually been proven (repeatedly) to work. But Fithian dismisses anything that would compete with theaters -- mocking both Netflix and Redbox as "bad business models." In other words, Fithian is making up anything he can... solely to act as protectionist as possible for a bunch of theater owners who don't want to adapt or compete. Perhaps he should take a lesson from the MPAA: being obstructionist against innovation is not a strategy for success.

Filed Under: chris dodd, facts, jobs, john fithian, movies, pipa, protect ip, sopa, theaters
Companies: mpaa, nato

Wil Wheaton Says Chris Dodd Is Lying About Lost Jobs; Says MPAA Accounting Creates More Losses Than Piracy

from the indeed dept

We've discussed a few times in the past about how actor Wil Wheaton seems to understand that piracy isn't an enforcement issue, but a business model/service issue. He's also been somewhat vocal (since before many others caught on) concerning his opinion that SOPA/PIPA are a bad idea. And now he's responded to our story about Chris Dodd threatening politicians that the MPAA has financially backed if they don't pass PIPA/SOPA, by not only calling Dodd completely tone-deaf, but also noting that Dodd is lying about lost jobs:

I have lost more money to creative accounting, and American workers have lost more jobs to runaway production, than anything associated with what the MPAA calls piracy. Chris Dodd is lying about piracy costing us jobs. Hollywood’s refusal to adapt to changing times is what’s costing the studios money. That’s it.

Indeed, we've explained how highly questionable Hollywood accounting is used to keep actors from getting paid, even on some of the most successful movies ever. And, Wheaton is absolutely right. As we've been saying for the better part of a decade, the best way to deal with "piracy" is to properly compete with it. But Dodd and the MPAA still just don't get that. Actually innovating and competing in the market just isn't how things are done in Washington DC, I guess.

Filed Under: chris dodd, compete, entertainment industry, hollywood accounting, piracy, wil wheaton
Companies: mpaa

Major Media Owning SOPA/PIPA Supporters Whine That They Had No Way To Have Their Message Heard

from the oh-come-on dept

We've been pointing out that one of the big reasons why the MPAA/RIAA and others failed in their efforts to rush through SOPA/PIPA was that they have been totally and completely tone deaf to what's happening online. And it appears that's continuing. The LA Times had a bizarre article over the weekend, where people were suggesting that the MPAA needed to "do a lot of test messaging," to see what would work in convincing the public that censoring the internet is a good thing. Test messaging? Seriously?!? They still seem to think that this is about a lobbying or PR campaign, rather than actually engaging and hearing what people have to say.

Even more ridiculous is the new talking point that both the MPAA and the RIAA are apparently "test messaging" currently. And it's that they -- who own all of the major media outlets around -- are somehow at a disadvantage in communicating their views to the public. I'm not kidding. In that article above, Chris Dodd from the MPAA is quoted as saying:

"You've got an opponent who has the capacity to reach millions of people with a click of a mouse and there's no fact-checker. They can say whatever they want."

Yup, that's the new MPAA talking point: "if only you moron internet kids couldn't actually say what you want!" Does anyone actually brief Dodd about how best not to make it totally transparent that he wants to censor the internet?

But the RIAA is passing along the exact same message. Dodd's counterpart at the RIAA, Cary Sherman, is quoted as saying basically the same thing in the NY Times:

“It’s very difficult to counter the misinformation when the disseminators also own the platform.”

First of all, this is ridiculous on all sorts of levels. Was it true that some of those against the bill weren't completely up on the facts? Yes. But, lots of us were clear on our facts, cited specific language in the bill, and were quick to correct those who stated things that were incorrect.

But much more to the point: we're talking about all of the major media companies in the world who were in support of this thing, and they're seriously claiming that they didn't have the means to get their message out? Who the hell do they think they're fooling? They own all the major TV networks, all the cable news networks, the majority of top magazines, a bunch of top radio stations... and most of those media outlets refused to give critics of these bills the time of day. But suddenly they're claiming they couldn't get their message out? Give me a break.

Even worse, let's compare the two platforms: SOPA/PIPA supporters completely own TV. But TV is a broadcast medium. They could put on whatever propaganda they wanted, and there'd be no way to guarantee a right to a response on TV. The internet, however, is a communications medium, where anyone can take part. So unlike the reverse situation, the supporters of the bill had every opportunity to counter the claims of people online if they felt they were being misrepresented. The real problem was that, for the most part, they weren't being misrepresented. The problem was that people were saying what the bill would actually do, and Hollywood wanted people to focus on what they wanted people to believe the bill would really do. Reality, it seems, has a strong anti-Hollywood bias.

Filed Under: cary sherman, chris dodd, copyright, marketing, media, message, pipa, protect ip, sopa, test marketing
Companies: mpaa, riaa

Public Petitions The White House To Investigate Chris Dodd & The MPAA For Possible Bribery

from the quid-pro-quo dept

Late on Friday, we posted a story about how Chris Dodd at the MPAA appeared to be directly threatening politicians who had taken money from Hollywood, but refused to pass SOPA/PIPA. Of course, pretty much everyone expects pay-for-laws type of corruption in politics these days, but it's quite rare for the head of a major lobbying trade group to be so explicit about it. That story went viral in a major way over the weekend -- becoming the most trafficked story on Techdirt... ever. I would doubt that whatever Dodd/the MPAA did reaches to the level of legally actionable... but others aren't so sure. In the comments there's an interesting discussion of the nature of "quid pro quo" in determining if something is considered a bribe. Some point out that Dodd appears to be highlighting the "quo" part, which is where things get dicey.

Pretty soon after the post went up, a We The People petition showed up on the White House's site, asking for a federal investigation of Dodd and the MPAA to see if they were "bribing" public officials. That petition has been gathering an awful lot of signatures all weekend, and it seems quite likely that it will soon reach the required threshold, requiring a comment from the White House. At the very least, I would be interested to see how the White House responds...

Filed Under: chris dodd, influence, investigation, lobbying, politics
Companies: mpaa

The Pirate Bay Press Release On SOPA: We Are The New Hollywood

from the history-repeating-itself dept

Given its general contempt for the repeated attempts to close it down, you wouldn't expect The Pirate Bay to be particularly worried by SOPA. But in its very own press release on the subject, it goes much further: it flings the ultimate insult at Hollywood by claiming that not only are the two of them spiritual kin, but that The Pirate Bay is the New Hollywood.

Here's why The Pirate Bay thinks Hollywood is exactly like itself:

Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent.

There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them – like Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.

So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: "stole") other peoples creative works, without paying for it.

And here's why Pirate Bay thinks it's the New Hollywood:

The reason they are always complainting about "pirates" today is simple. We've done what they did. We circumvented the rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient.

At the end of its release, The Pirate Bay admits rather drolly:

Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can't access this information when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We're sorry for that.

In fact its potted history of Hollywood is not so far off the mark. Here's a rather more rigorously-researched description of the battle between Thomas Edison, along with his Motion Picture Patents Company (MPCC) – basically a group of suppliers that tried to enforce a monopoly over cinema equipment – and Carl Laemmle's Universal Pictures that refused to knuckle under:

what ultimately did the Edison monopoly in was the assumption that its legal/technological dominance over the trade, and its moral stance, would trump the public’s demand for ever more creative motion pictures. Unlike the independents, the MPCC system did not invest in its network. Consumers would simply have to watch Edison Trust fare, the monopoly’s principals figured.

They didn’t. Instead, they flocked to Laemmle and his fellow independents' "illegal" movies, which were longer and of better quality. Even the Trust's inner circle knew this. "We… pass on pictures we know will get us nothing but unfavorable comments and cancellations," one confided. "We haven’t the power to throw out the distinctly bad pictures, nor the courage, because as poor as they are, they represent a certain sum of money invested in negative production."

Edison and his cohorts never understood that they were involved "in much more than an economic battle to determine who would control the profits of the nascent film industry," Neal Gabler writes. This was a conflict between an older generation of Anglo-Saxon Protestant inventors and a new generation of immigrants.

The parallels with today's battle between the MPAA (complete with its "moral stance") and Net-based "independents" like The Pirate Bay (with its DRM-free content), are clear. Once again, this is not just about who gets the money, it's a conflict between the "older generation" of movie companies with their "legal dominance", and the "new generation" of digital immigrants like The Pirate Bay that give the public what they want.

Call it Hollywood 2: The Sequel.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: disruption, history, hollywood, innovation, monopolies
Companies: mpaa, the pirate bay

MPAA Directly & Publicly Threatens Politicians Who Aren't Corrupt Enough To Stay Bought

from the sickening dept

Reinforcing the fact that Chris Dodd really does not get what's happening, and showing just how disgustingly corrupt the MPAA relationship is with politicians, Chris Dodd went on Fox News to explicitly threaten politicians who accept MPAA campaign donations that they'd better pass Hollywood's favorite legislation... or else:

"Those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,"

This certainly follows what many people assumed was happening, and fits with the anonymous comments from studio execs that they will stop contributing to Obama, but to be so blatant about this kind of corruption and money-for-laws politics in the face of an extremely angry public is a really, really, really tone deaf response from Dodd.

It shows, yet again, that he just doesn't get it. People were protesting not just because of the content of these bills, but because of the corrupt process of big industries like Dodd's "buying" politicians and "buying" laws. To then come out and make that threat explicit isn't a way to fix things or win back the public. It's just going to get them more upset, and to recognize just how corrupt this process is. If Dodd, as he said in yesterday's NY Times, really wanted to turn things around and come to a more reasonable result, this is exactly how not to do it. It shows, yet again, a DC-insider's mindset. He used Fox News to try to "send a message" to politicians. But the internet already sent a much louder message... and, even worse for Dodd, he bizarrely sent his message in a way that everyone who's already fed up with this kind of corruption can see it too. It really makes you wonder what he's thinking and how someone so incompetent at this could keep his job.

The MPAA doesn't need a DC insider explicitly demanding the right to buy laws and buy politicians. The MPAA needs a reformer, one who helps guide Hollywood into the opportunities of a new market place. The MPAA needs someone who actually understands the internet, and helps lead the studios forward. That's apparently not Chris Dodd.

Public Knowledge issued a fantastic statement that not only highlights the ridiculousness of Dodd's threats, but also the hypocrisy of the Hollywood studios on this issue:

Public Knowledge welcomes constructive dialog with people from all affected sectors about issues surrounding copyright, the state of the movie industry and related concerns. Cybersecurity experts, Internet engineers, venture capitalists, artists, entrepreneurs, human rights advocates, law professors, consumers and public-interest organizations, among others should be included. They were shut out of the process for these bills.

We suggest that in the meantime, if the MPAA is truly concerned about the jobs of truck drivers and others in the industry, then it can bring its overseas filming back to the U.S. and create more jobs. It could stop holding states hostage for millions of dollars in subsidies that strained state budgets can’t afford while pushing special-interest bills through state legislatures. While that happens, discussions could take place.

Filed Under: campaign finance, chris dodd, corruption, pipa, politics, protect ip, sopa, threats
Companies: mpaa

Why Chris Dodd Failed With His SOPA/PIPA Strategy

from the time-to-engage,-chris dept

The NY Times has a fascinating, if ridiculous, interview with Chris Dodd about everything that happened regarding SOPA/PIPA. It starts off with the suggestion that the real problem here was that, due to Senate ethics rules, Dodd can't personally lobby Congress until 2013. You may recall that, before leaving the Senate, Chris Dodd promised that he would not become a lobbyist -- a promise he broke just a few months later in taking the top job at the MPAA. And make no mistake about it: Dodd's role is as a lobbyist. He is barred from personally lobbying Congress, but can lobby the White House, and is the main "strategist" behind the MPAA's PIPA/SOPA strategy trainwreck.

But the bigger issue in the article is that Dodd still doesn't seem to understand what happened. Sure, he talks about how the internet made a difference, but he thinks this sprang up out of nowhere.

By Mr. Dodd’s account, no Washington player can safely assume that a well-wired, heavily financed legislative program is safe from a sudden burst of Web-driven populism.

“This is altogether a new effect,” Mr. Dodd said, comparing the online movement to the Arab Spring. He could not remember seeing “an effort that was moving with this degree of support change this dramatically” in the last four decades, he added.

The thing is, if he'd actually been paying attention, he would have know that this has been building for a long, long time. For all the talk in the article of what a brilliant "strategist" he is, it appears his strategy was with the old way of doing things. He reacted to the internet with tremendous hubris -- pretending that the complaints weren't an issue, or were "just Google." Some of us have been watching this closely for years. This goes back quite a ways. Before SOPA, before PIPA. Before COICA. Before ProIP. There's been a growing recognition online that copyright is being used as a tool to block, censor and regulate our civil liberties, and there's been a growing sense of outrage over this. We've reported on it. We've told people at the MPAA and RIAA about it directly. And they've ignored it. Like Dodd did. His "strategy" may work in a world where his lobbyists are the only ones at the table, but it's no strategy for dealing with the public.

Even worse, Dodd's own actions fueled the problem. His own statements built up this attack posture from the very beginning. We had hoped that maybe, just maybe, Dodd would come in as a "reformer," intent on helping the MPAA adapt to the internet, embrace its opportunities and build better business models. But, instead, Dodd continued down the well-trodden path of blaming everyone else for his own industry's unwillingness to adapt -- and continued the MPAA's disastrous strategy of focusing on anti-piracy rather than revenue maximization (or, even worse, believing that anti-piracy is revenue maximization when nearly all of the evidence suggests succeeding at anti-piracy does almost nothing to improve the bottom line).

As a "strategist," the MPAA needed someone who understood the world that Hollywood is operating in. Dodd understood the way Washington DC used to work. That's a big disconnect. And it does not appear to be getting any better.

Equally hilarious are his calls for a meeting -- perhaps organized by the White House -- of tech companies and Hollywood:

Mr. Dodd said he would welcome a summit meeting between Internet companies and content companies, perhaps convened by the White House, that could lead to a compromise. Looming next Tuesday is a cloture vote scheduled in the Senate, which appears to promise the death of the legislation in its current form.

“The perfect place to do it is a block away from here,” said Mr. Dodd, who pointed from his office on I Street toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Sure. He'd welcome it now. Where was he three months ago when a group of entrepreneurs in the tech sector offered to sit down and meet with him? Where was he just a few weeks ago, when Senator Feinstein tried to set up a meeting between the tech world and Hollywood -- which Hollywood rejected, claiming that it didn't need to meet with tech companies, because it had this bill sewn up tight?

Now he wants to meet?

But even more to the point -- and showing just how much Dodd still doesn't get it... he wants to "meet with internet companies." Not internet users. He still seems to think that this is about internet companies, and not their users. Part of the protests were about the process and the backroom dealing. There is no "backroom" for making political deals on the internet.

If he wants to meet, why not meet in an open format where anyone can contribute? Why not meet on the internet? Why not do a Reddit AMA? Why not hold a Twitter conversation? Why not set up a forum or do some Google Hangouts? Why not actually use the tools he seeks to regulate?

Obviously, sometimes it helps to meet face to face, but if that's to be done, why not stream it live online? Why not let anyone watching contribute, make comments and ask questions? This can't be another backroom deal, even with "the internet companies." This has to be open and inclusive. This is about the whole process of DC-insiderism. This is about the whole process on which the article premises itself: that Dodd could have won this battle if he'd just been able to glad hand his way around Congress. That is what the internet was rejecting here. And I don't think trying to do the same basic thing again is going to accomplish very much. Dodd isn't going to win the internet over with a handshake and a sparkling smile.

Later in the interview, he discusses "missteps" in a way that shows he's still missing the point:

He acknowledged his side had committed a misstep by allowing Hollywood to become the face of laws that were intended to protect not just movies, but also more mundane products — for instance, home smoke alarms — that are frequently counterfeited abroad, sometimes with disastrous effects.

“In terms of public perception, I’m Exhibit A,” said Mr. Dodd, who spent last weekend hobnobbing with stars at the Golden Globes. “This is seen as a red carpet business.”

It was a further problem, he said, that Hollywood’s writers, directors, producers and blue-collar workers — whose unions squarely backed the new law — never personally campaigned in a way that might have helped to counter the Web assault.

Notice that he's not talking about substance here, but merely positioning. He's talking about the marketing of the backroom deal, not the meaning of the backroom deal. Yes, the fact that Hollywood elites were driving this process was a part of the problem. But he's wrong that it was because of how they positioned it. The MPAA absolutely did try to do exactly what he said. It set up CreativeAmerica as an astroturf group, staffed by former MPAA/studio execs, and pretending to represent the "grassroots." The only problem was that the actual "blue collar" workers didn't support the bills and recognized how bogus the claims of the MPAA were. And that was evident in the fact that the group totally failed to drum up any significant support -- even with a huge war chest that is still running slick, expensive ad campaigns on TV and in Times Square in NY.

Finally, Dodd still shows the kind of hubris that got him into this mess when he starts complaining about the White House, and how disappointed he is, because of how much money the industry donates. This is the same tone deafness that we saw earlier with the studio heads:

“There’s a disconnect between the business interests and the politics of Hollywood,” Mr. Dodd said, meaning that the film industry and its denizens provided money for many campaigns, including those of Mr. Obama, without pushing its issues to the fore.

[....]

While Mr. Dodd is barred from Congressional contact, he has had a free hand in lobbying the White House and federal agencies. On Saturday, however, the Obama administration dealt his efforts a blow by announcing publicly, in response to online petitions, that it had reservations about a provision in the proposed laws that called for blocking user access to offending sites.

Mr. Dodd spoke with barely concealed anger at what he called a “really gratuitous” statement delivered by what he had presumed was a sympathetic administration, which came after the blocking provisions had effectively been killed in Congress.

It's really incredible that Dodd can go from saying that this shouldn't have been seen as Hollywood fat-cats asking for handouts... and then immediately shift into talking about how much money they gave the administration, and how they expected the administration to simply give them what they wanted. That is a big part of the problem. That is what the internet is complaining about. People were upset that Hollywood can "buy" legislation that goes against the public's best interests.

Furthermore, the idea that Hollywood donors did not "push the issue to the fore" is pretty laughable. Hollywood has been pushing incredibly hard to get this bill passed over the past year. We've heard time and time again about how much time and effort have gone into lobbying for this bill, and how there were ever-increasing efforts over the past few months, with some Congressional staffers saying it was an unprecedented push for a particular bill. They pushed. But they failed to recognize the reality outside the beltway.

And that's why Chris Dodd failed.

If he wants to turn things around, it's time for him to stop focusing on the DC inside ballgame. It's time for him to join the internet community and actually engage. That may be tough to do, and he's certainly burnt a lot of bridges, but there are ways to build new relationships. But it can't happen if he's still taking the attitude he takes in this article. It's still about getting what he wants, and not actually listening to the concerns of the wider internet. And until he understands that basic fact, Chris Dodd is going to continue to fail.

Filed Under: chris dodd, copyright, dc, internet, lobbying, pipa, protect ip, sopa, transparency
Companies: mpaa

MPAA Uses Anon Attacks To Make Nonsensical Comments About Free Speech

from the a-protest-isn't-gov't-shut-down dept

I'm really beginning to wonder about the MPAA's PR people and their near total inability to think through how their statements will be perceived. It's put out a response to the DDoS attacks from Anonymous by trying to "take back" the moral high ground on the free speech issue. Yes, they're claiming that the DDoS is a free speech violation and then wrap themselves in the First Amendment:

Unfortunately, some groups believe that speech or ideas that they disagree with should be silenced. This could not be more wrong. No matter the point of view, everyone has a right to be heard.

The motion picture and television industry has always been a strong supporter of free speech. We strongly condemn any attempts to silence any groups or individuals.

The Internet is home to creativity, innovation and free speech. We want to keep it that way. Protecting copyrights and protecting free speech go hand in hand."

Ok. So then you condemn SOPA and PIPA, right? Since those are attempts to silence people. But here's the thing: "free speech" issues are about government censorship. Such as passing a bad law that allows the government to take down websites. Having some people protest you may be annoying, but it's not a free speech issue (other than, perhaps, in arguing the protesters' rights to free speech. Trying to regain the high ground on this issue is pretty transparently ridiculous by the MPAA -- and simply calls much more attention to who's actually trying to stifle free speech by passing bad laws that allow for censorship.

Filed Under: anonymous, ddos, first amendment, free speech, protests, seizures
Companies: mpaa

The Internet Strikes Back: Anonymous Takes Down DOJ.gov, RIAA, MPAA Sites To Protest Megaupload Seizure

from the doj-does-not-understand-what-has-been-unleashed dept

I'll have a more detailed look at the Megaupload indictment tomorrow (there are some really ridiculous claims in there, but also some evidence of bad actions on the part of Mega, which isn't too surprising). However, even if you're 100% positive that Megaupload was a bad player in the space, you have to question both the timing and the process of completely taking down the site/company the day after practically the entire internet rose up to protest the threat of similar takedowns under SOPA/PIPA. For them not to think the reaction would be fast and furious shows (yet again) just how incredibly, ridiculously, out of touch with the internet the DC establishment is.

Within minutes of the site being shut down, and DOJ releasing its statement, Anonymous sprang into action and started taking down a ton of sites -- including websites for the DOJ, the US Copyright Office, Universal Music, the RIAA, the MPAA and a bunch of other sites. They're apparently still targeting more.

Think of this as the flipside of yesterday's protests. Yesterday the internet folks went dark to protest things. Today... following the government's decision to show off its existing censorship powers -- mocking yesterday's protests -- it appears that the industry/government supporters of online censorship are going dark involuntarily... in a different form of protest.

When will the government learn: don't muck with the internet?

Filed Under: anonymous, censorship, copyright office, ddos, doj, internet, pipa, protect ip, retaliation, seizure, sopa, takedowns
Companies: mpaa, riaa, universal music

Denial: MPAA Pretends That No Big Sites Have Joined SOPA/PIPA Protests

from the living-in-denial dept

Living in what can only be described as pure denial, the MPAA announced today that the SOPA/PIPA protests "failed to enlist big sites." Honestly, there's really not much more to say about that. Google. Wikipedia. Facebook. Amazon. Craigslist. All participating. Let's just stare in wonder at the MPAA's hubris and ability to deny reality.

Filed Under: blackouts, denial, pipa, protect ip, protests, sopa
Companies: google, mpaa, wikipedia