So we were just discussing how a bunch of companies who were listed by the US Chamber of Commerce as SOPA/PIPA supporters are demanding to be taken off the list, noting that, while they had agreed to a generic statement about fighting the sale of counterfeit goods, they don't support crazy broad legislation like SOPA/PIPA. It seems that others listed as "supporting" SOPA are scrambling to get off the list as well. The Judiciary Committee's official list had included a bunch of big name law firms as being in support of the law as well -- which is a little strange, since law firms usually don't take official positions on things like this. They may express opinions on such matters on behalf of clients, but outright supporting legislation is a different ballgame altogether.
A group of lawyers (most of whom have a long history of working with the entertainment industry) did send a letter to the Judiciary Committee to say that they agreed with Floyd Abrams' analysis of SOPA. That's it. They didn't say their firms supported SOPA -- and, in fact, there's an asterisk with the signatures noting that the names of their firms are solely for identification purposes. Yet the Judiciary Committee took those names anyway and put them on the supporters list. Expressing a legal opinion on a bill is extraordinarily different from supporting the bill. But the Judiciary Committee ignored that and listed them as supporters anyway.
From what we've heard, many of those law firms are not happy, and have been demanding removal from the Judiciary Committee's official list. Among those who have already complained/been taken off the official list are Morrison & Foerster, Davis Wright Tremaine, Irell & Manella, Covington & Burling. I would hope that the Judiciary Committee removes all the names and issues a rather public apology for blatantly including the names of firms who clearly made no statement in support of the proposed legislation. This is a pretty egregious move on the part of House Judiciary Committee staff. They're so eager to list supporters that they've been naming firms who do not support the bills. And then they've been using those claims to pretend there's widespread support...
So, between the US Chamber of Commerce stretching what many companies thought they were supporting and pretending it meant support for SOPA/PIPA, and the Judiciary Committee's over-eagerness to assume that a legal analysis of one part of the bill by a few lawyers meant their huge law firms supported the bill... it's looking like the facade of widespread corporate support for SOPA is crumbling pretty quickly...
I mentioned that we'd been hearing reports that some of the companies named on "the list" companies that are in favor of SOPA were surprised about this and wanted off the list. Gibson Guitar -- which has been dealing with its own ridiculous situation concerning the feds seizing property without a clear legal basis -- is now saying that it does not support SOPA, and has been asked to be removed from the list of supporters. It sounds as if the company doesn't know how it got on the list:
Hey guys - Gibson does NOT support this legislation. Gibson's CEO has demanded that Gibson be removed from the list of company's supporting SOPA. Don't believe everything you read on the Internet!
For what it's worth, it looks like Gibson's "support" came from a letter sent by the US Chamber of Commerce in support of the general concept of PROTECT IP and SOPA, not directly about SOPA itself. It seems like this is a risk of just agreeing to sign on to something that the US Chamber of Commerce passes around without fully understanding the details or how it is to be used.
Gibson is not alone. Jim D'Addario from D’Addario & Company responded to a tweet by also saying that the company has not supported SOPA (though, he claims it might support a similar bill if it didn't have free speech implications).
So how did this happen? Well, Petzl provides some of the details. It's another company found on the US CoC's letter in support of SOPA/PIPA, but it has put out a detailed blog post of how the US Chamber of Commerce is being misleading here. The company says that it did agree to sign a US CoC letter in support of "government action against intellectual property theft via rogue websites," but that the letter they saw did not bring up any specific legislation. Thus, it says it's supportive of legislation to deal with counterfeiting, but not the approach taken in SOPA/PIPA:
To reiterate, Petzl America has not and does not support SOPA or the Protect IP Act. Nor do we support any legislation that would harm the freedom of the Internet. We are strongly against counterfeiting, especially, as in the case of counterfeited Petzl products, where the safety of the end user is concerned. By extension, we are for legislation that would help reduce the theft of intellectual property, production of counterfeit goods, and knowing sale of counterfeit goods. However, we believe that SOPA and Protect IP do not address these concerns in a constructive manner.
The issue here, yet again, appears to be one where the US Chamber of Commerce plays fast and loose with the truth, in order to exaggerate the real situation. These companies expressed interest in the general concept of dealing with counterfeit goods sold online. The US CoC then used that support to pretend that all of these companies supported a sweepingly broad set of bills that went way, way, way beyond just dealing with the narrow issue of counterfeit physical goods.
We've talked repeatedly about how ridiculous it is that supporters of SOPA/PIPA conflate physical counterfeiting with digital copyright infringement. The two are quite different in many, many ways. And here's a case where it's coming back to bite the supporters, as plenty of companies who would support a narrow action against a specific problem, are being used by the US CoC, who pretends they support broad, overreaching laws that touch on issues totally unrelated to the specific issue these companies wanted to discuss.
A few weeks ago, we did a step-by-step detailed debunking of the claims by the US Chamber of Commerce's Steve Tepp. He had gone on PBS News Hour to defend the illegal domain name seizures, as well as the plans for SOPA and PROTECT IP. He made claims about how "huge" a problem "rogue sites" are, and quoted some big sounding numbers in a very serious voice. We went through the details for where those numbers came from and discovered (spoilers!) that he was being extremely disingenuous in presenting the numbers. The details actually showed that he was conflating a few different issues, using ridiculously shoddy methodology, and mixing in a few dodgy assumptions on top of that. In fact, the actual numbers suggested the real problem -- that of dangerous counterfeit goods being sold, was a fairly tiny problem.
Techdirt reader Nick Dynice thought that the post would work well as a short documentary, and took it upon himself to use the post as a script to create the following video about how Steve Tepp and the US Chamber of Commerce mislead with statistics in a dishonest way to garner support for the illegal domain seizures, as well as the unconstitutional proposals for SOPA and PROTECT IP.
The issues of SOPA/PROTECT IP and censoring the internet are slowly creeping into more mainstream news sources. PBS Newshour hosted a brief debate, mostly focused on the recent domain seizures. The debate was between Steven Tepp, the former Copyright Office official, who jumped ship to the world's largest lobbying organization, the US Chamber of Commerce (who, along with the MPAA has been leading the charge in getting SOPA and PROTECT IP approved) and Larry Downes, author and consultant, whose excellent work on both the domain seizures and SOPA/PIPA we've mentioned repeatedly. Unfortunately, as you might expect in 10 minutes, it's hard for anyone to get into much depth. I think Downes made a key point early on in noting that these domain seizures are almost entirely "symbolic," since the sites themselves aren't seized.
But what I really wanted to focus on was how Tepp misleads with statistics. This is a specialty of the US Chamber of Commerce, and Tepp plays exactly to expectations here. First, you can watch the full 9 minute video, if you'd like:
And let's call out the specific examples of how Tepp misleads with stats:
"The scope of the problem is unbelievably huge. Rogue websites -- those dedicated to the theft of American intellectual property, our creative and innovative products -- get over 53 billion visits every year. That's 9 visits for every human being on the face of the earth. And they've been estimated to do at least $135 billion in harm to legitimate businesses. The products they sell are made in completely unregulated facilities, and can often be, not only shoddy, but harmful to consumers' health."
So much misleading in one little paragraph. Lets start with the 53 billion claim. Guess what? It's from a US Chamber of Commerce-funded study by an anti-piracy monitoring company called MarkMonitor. And the details suggest serious problems with the study. First, the study itself was based on Alexa, widely considered the least accurate web traffic measuring tool out there. Second, the number of "visits" to any site is an especially meaningless number -- especially when trying to discuss the actual economic impact of such visits. Who cares how many visits there are if we don't know anything about what people do on those sites?
Third, a large percentage of those visits all come from three sites: RapidShare, Megavideo and Megaupload. These are three cyberlockers that the industry has declared as "rogue," but which have significant legitimate purposes. Rapidshare, in particular, has been repeatedly ruled to be perfectly legal, both in Europe and in the US. The company follows DMCA takedown rules and has plenty of legitimate uses. Including Rapidshare in these calculations makes the whole thing a joke. And none of those sites are involved in "selling" counterfeit goods that put US citizens in harm's way.
Fourth, that "estimated to do at least $135 billion in harm," is a totally made up number. The US Chamber of Commerce cites a different MarkMonitor report to support that. But it's not actually a report or a study or anything like that at all. Instead, it's promotional "white paper" (read: sales pitch) from MarkMonitor entitled "Seven Best Practices for Fighting Counterfeit Sales Online." That report does say that "criminals" setting up ecommerce storefronts "will likely cost legitimate businesses $135 billion in lost revenue this year." But it doesn't source that number. Notably, other statistics in the report are sourced. Which makes you realize that the $135 billion is basically made up. But Tepp doesn't mention that.
Fifth, he focuses on "the products they sell." This is the really slimy part, for which Tepp should be ashamed (if the man had any shame at all). The obvious implication of all of this is that when you tie together these disparate numbers -- you've got 53 billion visits to sites selling counterfeit goods that may be harmful to consumers. We've already pointed out that the 53 billion is bogus -- but it's even more bogus when combined with this final sentence. That's because that same MarkMonitor report that gave us the 53 billion, also notes that the traffic to sites selling counterfeit goods is a minuscule percentage of the 53 billion. Specifically, the same report says that the sites selling counterfeit goods receive merely 87 million per year... or 0.1642%. That's not 16.42%. Or even 1.642%. It's 0.1642% of the total. In other words, the sites actually selling counterfeits... seem pretty small.
Sixth: even that exaggerates the problem -- because even then you'd have to assume that every one of those sites involves selling counterfeits that are shoddy or harmful. But that's crazy. Most counterfeits are merely replica versions, that are passable. They're not harmful in any way. So now we're talking about significantly less than 0.1642% of the big scary 53 billion he's talking about. Basically, the 53 billion, besides being meaningless in general, has no connection to the rest of the claims about losses and harm to consumers. It's complete and utter bunk.
What you have here is that Tepp and others are taking a real, but tiny problem: mainly an exceptionally small number of counterfeit drugs, and then pretending that the "harm" is broad and applying it to sites already judged to be perfectly legal, because some people use them for copyright infringement. The reports he relies on actually show what a tiny problem this is, but tries to mask that by lumping a bunch of totally disparate things together, from the tiny percentage of fake drugs out there... to the already judged to be legal cyberlockers like Rapidshare.
Tepp's misleading bogosity doesn't stop there. He then goes on to claim that these sites "steal jobs." Um, how? But beyond the rhetoric, lets get back to the misleading numbers. Later on he states:
"Another study, earlier this year, showed that 19 million Americans have jobs that rely on 'IP-intensive industries.' This is a huge part of the American economy. 60% of US exports are from 'IP-intensive industries' and $7.7 trillion dollars are output from 'IP-intensive industries.'"
This one we've attacked head on before. The intellectually dishonest bit here is easy to spot. It's the reliance on "IP-intensive industries." Not IP. The "study," if you can call it that, involves the biggest maximalists teaming up to fund a report that defines "IP-intensive industries" extremely broadly and then pretends that everything that comes from such industries... is because of strong IP laws. That's ridiculous, because you know who's included in the "IP intensive industries"? Basically every tech company -- including all of those which are fighting against these crazy new laws.
Tepp is being intellectually dishonest in the extreme here, suggesting that the only reason that the broadly defined "IP-intensive industries" are so successful is because of IP law. But that's showed to be bogus quite simply. As CCIA has done for years, it uses the very same methodology to show that exceptions to IP contribute more to the economy than IP laws themselves. You can't except one report without accepting the other since the methodologies are identical. There are only two logical conclusions from this: (1) the suggestion that those jobs, exports and output numbers are due to IP are complete bunk or (2) Tepp and the US Chamber of Commerce really believe we should do away with IP completely, since his own favored methodology shows that the less IP laws we have, the greater the output. So which is it, Steve?
Either way, Tepp is being painfully intellectually dishonest throughout the entire interview, citing facts and figures that are misleading in the extreme, if not completely bogus. What's unfortunate is that none of the press that lets Tepp speak his mind ever calls him on these ridiculous claims.
We've been pointing out for a while just how incredibly out of touch the US Chamber of Commerce is these days. The giant lobbying firm (not to be confused with the US Department of Commerce -- a government agency), has consistently been taking a position that is anti-innovation, anti-growth and anti-jobs. It does this by supporting protectionist policies for just a few large companies who pay it a ton. It never supports innovative upstarts. Over the past few years, that's meant that it's been losing the true innovators, the companies who actually create jobs and contribute to economic growth today. Apple dumped the US CoC two years ago over its anti-science position on climate change. Yahoo recently refused to renew its membership out of disgust over the Chamber's position on PROTECT IP/SOPA. And now there are reports saying that both Google and the Consumer Electronics Association are considering dropping out of the Chamber over its support of PROTECT IP/SOPA. Kind of silly to call yourself the "US Chamber of Commerce" when all of the companies in industries that actually involve innovation are dropping your for your anti-innovation position, isn't it?
The US Chamber of Commerce's point man on destroying the internet, Steve Tepp, has been doing a silly "rogue site of the week" feature on his blog, trying to promote PROTECT IP/E-PARASITE/SOPA. But he seems to have an odd interpretation of "rogue sites" at times. Take, for example, his recent post about a site called "lifetimereplicas.com" -- a site that no longer exists, because it was among those seized by the US government with no due process or adversarial review (the US doesn't censor, right?). But here's the thing: how is this a "rogue" site? No one is being fooled into thinking that the Rolex's on the site are somehow real. The damn site admits right up front that it's about making fakes. The problem with counterfeit goods is when they are tricking people into believing they're the real thing. Remember that whole "likelihood of confusion" bit in trademark law? Who's confused when they go to a site that advertises you're buying fakes?
Furthermore, seeing as multiple studies have shown that when people are knowingly buying counterfeits, it's an aspirational buy, and they quite frequently later buy the real thing... it's hard to see how such products harm the economy in anyway. If anything, it suggests the opposite: such products help build up loyalty and sell more of the "real" product. So why would the US Chamber of Commerce, and Steve Tepp, go around claiming that such a site is "rogue," when it doesn't try to fool anyone? Perhaps it's because the Chamber can't find any examples of any real problems, and the check from certain monied interests doesn't come in unless they can fabricate a big problem that doesn't exist.
Steve Tepp is the US Chamber of Commerce's (the world's largest lobbying group) point man on PROTECT IP/E-PARASITE/SOPA. His latest move is to try attacking anyone who points out the problems of E-PARASITE/SOPA. First up? Demand Progress, who dared to call it a "blacklist bill." According to Tepp, it's not a blacklist bill, because the lobbyists who wrote the bill (potentially including Tepp himself) were smart enough not to write "list" in the text of the bill.
Of course the bill doesn't actually say that there's a list. Just as the Chinese Great Firewall doesn't actually involve the government "listing" sites, but merely threatens ISPs with liability if they let bad sites through, E-PARASITE massively broadens the definitions of what's "dedicated to the theft of U.S. property" such that it now includes, more or less, the entire internet, and threatens sites with the equivalent of internet death: blocking from search engines, blocking from DNS (and more!), cutting off any funding sources. No, there's no "blacklist," there's just the threat of cutting off just about any internet site. On top of that, there's an awkwardly worded attempt to force every site to proactively monitor any infringement. Is that why the US Chamber of Commerce doesn't allow comments on its site? Or is it because it knows that no one actually believes the crap it shovels?
But Tepp's intellectual dishonesty is worse than just pretending that without the word "list" there's no actual blacklist. No, the really cheap move is to imply that only the "anti-IP crowd" is against this bill. This is the latest strategy of those who wish to massively regulate the internet so that it looks more like TV -- a broadcast medium, rather than a communications medium. They refer to anyone who points out the massive negative consequences of their legislative nastiness as being "anti-IP." You've seen it in Techdirt's comments for the past few weeks, with certain anonymous commenters throwing hissy fits about how I'm actually "pro-piracy," when I'm anything but. If you don't think this is part of the coordinated marketing campaign by the largest lobbying organization in the world, you're not paying attention.
So, Steve, let's be clear: being against this bill is not about being "anti-IP." It's about being pro-innovation, pro-internet. It's about recognizing the massive benefits of an open internet. It's about recognizing the massive benefits to the American (and world) economy that were created from an open internet that didn't involve misplaced third party liability.
The concerns of those about this bill have nothing to do with intellectual property and whether it's good or bad. It's about the collateral damage that such a vast change to the legal and technical framework that the internet has been based on for years will cause.
To brush those concerns away as being "the anti-IP crowd," is to show ignorance of what's at stake.
What we don't understand, Steve, is why you would seek to shut down the open internet, killing off more jobs than ever existed in the entertainment industry. We thought the US Chamber of Commerce was supposed to support small businesses. Instead, you're seeking to make any internet business nearly impossible, unless they've already hired a dozen lawyers. I guess if your goal is for full employment for trial lawyers, you're making headway. But, seriously, if you can't debate this subject honestly, don't be surprised when the next generation of businesses dumps the US CoC. Pro tip: pissing off every company of the next generation that might support your bloated organization is no way to build for the future. And don't think jobs "in the industry" will be waiting for you. Without the next generation of great startups that you're trying to kill off, the big content companies who pay your salary these days, won't have the new platforms they need to succeed.
We've been covering the intellectually dishonest extremist position of the US Chamber of Commerce (once again, a lobbying group, not to be confused with the federal US Department of Commerce) when it comes to the PROTECT IP Act. The US CoC has been creating a variety of astroturf groups, and putting out ridiculous statements and videos trying to shove through PROTECT IP before Congress realizes what a dreadful, job-destroying, innovation-hindering bill it is. There was the video that conflated counterfeit drugs with copyright. Then, my favorite, was the video of four content creators who were "hurt" by infringement -- but when we dug into the stories of all four, none of them checked out.
We honestly couldn't understand the US CoC's extremist position on this particular topic. Sure, the entertainment industry legacy players are members of the US CoC, but so are plenty of big tech companies that would be hurt by PROTECT IP. Of course, that may be changing. The news came out this morning that Yahoo has quietly left the US Chamber of Commerce over its extremist position on PROTECT IP, and it appears that others are thinking of following suit. At the same time, the US CoC's other major extremist position, concerning fighting against anything that results in reduced greenhouse emissions, has already made Apple leave the US CoC, along with a few other companies as well. At the same time, many various local Chambers of Commerce -- who often do help small businesses -- are disassociating themselves from the US Chamber of Commerce.
As this kind of thing continues, our elected officials are going to finally begin recognizing that the US CoC is an extremist organization that clearly does not represent the business interests of today's innovators and job creators -- but instead represents a few increasingly obsolete legacy organization whose unwillingness to adapt leads them to demand dangerous protectionist policies.
Ah, the US Chamber of Commerce. The private lobbying giant, which thrives on people confusing it with the US Department of Commerce, is really, really angry about "counterfeits." Of course, one might argue that the only reason its been so successful itself is the likelihood of confusion between it and the US Department of Commerce. But we'll leave that aside for now. The CoC has been a big time supporter of PROTECT IP lately, but apparently is simply unable to make a credible argument in favor of the law.
The group has put out two incredibly misleading videos. The first one focused on a woman in Canada who got bogus drugs that allegedly led to her death. Of course, Protect IP only applies to the US, so the woman in Canada still would have had a problem. And, a larger point is that there are tons of legitimate pharmacies, and it's pretty easy to tell what's legit and what's not. Why this woman was ordering from a questionable pharmacy is never explained. Furthermore, the scare stories about fake drugs killing people tend to be overblown as well. It doesn't do fake pharmacies much good either to kill customers. Finally, the fake drugs issue could be dealt with by legislation that focuses on fake drugs. Not ridiculously broad legislation that encourages censorship and puts the compliance burden and liability on tons of US companies.
The second video was even more ridiculous. Finally moving away from the "fake drugs kill people, and therefore we need to censor the internet to stop people from sharing music" line of argument, it presented some content creators whining about a changing world. Except... as our own research showed, none of the "victims" in the video had their stories fully check out. Two of them had relied on the works of others to build their own careers, while complaining that others might do the same to them. The actress had a bit role in one film nearly a decade ago that got unanimously dreadful reviews ("so bad that it makes you feel like tearing your eyebrows off one by one just to numb the pain") and was complaining that her royalty checks a decade later were too low. The author complained that her industry was suffering because of file sharing -- directly contradicted by other authors and the publishing industry's own statistics.
So... now, the CoC is back to screaming "fake drugs! dead people!" In a piece penned by the CoC's "executive VP" of its "Global Intellectual Property Center," Mark Elliot, the claim is made that if we don't censor the internet, the US won't be able to innovate any more. Complete and utter hogwash.
We need to create an environment that rewards that innovation.
We have one. It's called the marketplace. And you know what doesn't reward innovation? When the legacy companies run to the government to have every new innovative platform -- the player piano, radio, cable TV, the photocopier, the VCR, the mp3 player, the DVR, online video, etc. -- declared infringing and locked up and shut down. But that's what PROTECT IP is designed to do.
For example, imagine spending hundreds of millions of dollars on research for a new lifesaving drug, only to have a counterfeiter make an unregulated, substandard version, with little or no medical value. Imagine that counterfeiter selling this product — with your name on it — online with impunity.
Well, they can't sell it online with impunity. We already have trademark law, which doesn't allow that kind of thing. Why doesn't Elliot mention that? Ah, well, because it undermines his whole argument. Also, the idea that people are confused into buying the fake drugs has little support in reality. Legitimate pharmacies sell the real thing and most people know how to find a legitimate pharmacy. The people seeking alternatives are those priced out of the market -- due in large part to the ridiculously high prices set on drugs due to draconian and excessive IP laws... the same laws Elliot now seeks to make even more draconian.
Imagine, for another example, opening up your own small business, a photography studio. You work by yourself, maybe with one assistant, and take wonderful, high-quality photographs that you sell to advertising agencies or the hometown newspaper. Imagine that you are able to expand — and hire two or three of your neighbors to meet the growing demand.
Then imagine your customers downloading your photos from a website that stole your best images, posted them online and profited from either sales of your photos or advertising revenue from the attraction of your photos.
Imagine being smart about that, and using it to your advantage. Imagine highlighting those who copied your image, and destroying their reputations while building your own. Furthermore, existing copyright law already handles the situation described above. PROTECT IP does nothing to deal with the situation described here.
These rogue websites dedicated to counterfeiting and piracy put U.S. jobs, consumers and innovation at risk. Last year, these rogue sites stole an estimated $135 billion in sales from legitimate retailers around the globe. They clearly violate the intellectual property rights of U.S. citizens by ignoring our trademark and copyright laws.
Funny. The "rogue sites" that have been described in the past were not posting photos. Furthermore, no rogue site "stole" sales from anyone. Why can't the USCoC use the proper language? And that $135 billion number has been debunked so many times -- even by the US government -- that it's sad that its still trotting that out.
The Senate is waiting to vote on the legislation, and the House is due to introduce its version of rogue site legislation in the coming days. We look forward to the enactment of rogue-site legislation this year to protect American jobs and consumers by cutting off the worst online intellectual property thieves from the U.S. marketplace.
Translation: the old dying legacy business, who pay the US Chamber of Commerce to lie in public for them, want a new protectionist, anti-innovation law to shut down any technology that interferes with their business model -- and they believe the best way to do so is to put the entire compliance and legal burden on the upcoming startups who are building the platforms that will disrupt their existing business.
It's a really disgusting and cynical approach from an organization that has a history of such bogus efforts.
For all the stories of doom and gloom in various entertainment industry segments due to "piracy," the deeper you look, the more you realize that each of these areas seems to be growing quite nicely, contrary to what's being claimed. Remember last week, when we showed the US Chamber of Commerce's propaganda video in favor of the PROTECT IP Act, in which various artists claimed that their industries were being "hurt" by internet piracy? It included clips of the author Tracy Deebs (who also goes by the name Tracy Wolff), claiming that "piracy" had hurt the publishing industry badly and suggesting that she might lose her deal because book publishers don't believe she can sell enough books.
Well, tragically for Deebs/Wolff, the actual data suggests she and the US Chamber of Commerce are totally full of it. FormerAC points us to some new reports showing that the publishing industry is growing thanks to the rise of digital:
BookStats, a comprehensive survey conducted by two major trade groups that was released early Tuesday, revealed that in 2010 publishers generated net revenue of $27.9 billion, a 5.6 percent increase over 2008. Publishers sold 2.57 billion books in all formats in 2010, a 4.1 percent increase since 2008.
Deebs, who it should be noted, writes young adult fiction, and who markets her own young adult fiction book as "a paranormal romance," might be most interested in this particular line:
Juvenile books, which include the current young-adult craze for paranormal and dystopian fiction, grew 6.6 percent over three years.
Deebs uses the name Tracy Wolff when publishing "adult fiction." And thus, I'm sure she's also interested in the following line:
One of the strongest growth areas was adult fiction, which had a revenue increase of 8.8 percent over three years.
So, once again, we have to ask both Deebs and the US Chamber of Commerce who is exploiting her apparently false claims, exactly how was she a "victim"? It certainly looks like the market is thriving. If Deebs isn't capitalizing on that, it's probably because either her book is no good or she's not doing a very good job selling it. Perhaps the Chamber of Commerce can help her with that, rather than having her appear in ridiculous videos in support of a bad law that promotes internet censorship.
