Democrats Appoint RIAA Shill For Convention

An anonymous reader sends us to Boing Boing for a report that "the Director of Communications for the RIAA, Jenni Engebretsen, has been appointed Deputy CEO for Public Affairs for the upcoming Democratic National Convention in Denver." The DNC site has the official press release. Cory Doctorow notes that the RIAA is the most hated "corporation" in America, having beaten out Halliburton and Wal-Mart for the honor, and writes for the DNC's attention, "This represents a potential shear with the left-wing blogosphere."

Comments

Re:They suck, yeah.

[morgan_greywolf]

This sucks, but what are we going to do? Vote Republican?
No thanks.

It might interest you to know that there are more than 70 political parties in the United States.

And this is a surprise?

[smellsofbikes]

First off: a person who does communications for group 1 is probably going to do a reasonable job of doing communications for group 2. If you're hiring based on merit, how much does it matter if the person is one of satan's catchers?

Secondly: the RIAA is everyone in power's best friend. Republicans love the big companies, Democrats love the film and rock stars, and both parties just absolutely adore lobbyists. They're like groupies only they give money.

Re:When will people learn

[Captain Splendid]

Democrats!=liberal. The sooner everybody realizes this, the sooner we can actually have a liberal party in the US.

Follow the money

[rlp]

It'll make the trial lawyer and Hollywood/Music Industry contingents of the Democrats very happy. And those groups may be small, but they represent a lot of campaign donation dollars.

Re:So does this mean

[dreddnott]

My first impression as a good non-article-reading Slashdotter was that Jenni Engebretsen was nothing but a career RIAA thug, but after reading the articles and her Wikipedia entry it seems that this is merely a return to the status quo - people should have been more alarmed when Jenni went from the Democrats over to the RIAA in the first place! I blame Boing Boing's inflammatory and sensationalist headline and Slashdot's repetition of it for most of the posts below.

Democrats and RIAA are natural bedfellows

[stratjakt]

You think democrats have ever respected the notion of truly free speech?

Fuck Tipper Gore and fuck the PMRC

Re:They suck, yeah.

[smellsofbikes]

For President, only two of those parties have a chance in hell of being elected. But there have been -- and are, to the best of my knowledge -- people neither D nor R elected to the House, the Senate, and as Governers. In other words, the only office that's pretty much unquestionably going to a D or R is the White House. So, for President, vote D or R if you don't want to "throw your vote away" (although that's a somewhat questionable assertion in and of itself) but below that there *are* viable options, and the more people that think about this, the more viable those options become.

Big Democrats are VERY Pro-Big Media

[algae]

A while back, I complained to my Senator, Diane Feinstein about how the Broadcast flag would cut into time-shifting and other fair use rights, and that it was basically corporate welfare to preserve a flagging industry in the face of a changing environment. Here's the response I got:

Thank you for writing to me about the digital broadcast flag. I appreciate hearing from you.

I feel strongly that we must prevent the theft of copyrighted works, and that includes digital television (DTV) programming. As we move forward in the digital age, it is increasingly easy for unauthorized copies of copyrighted works to be made and illegally distributed. Over-the-air digital content is the easiest to pirate.

As we contemplate the use of new technologies to protect copyrighted works, we must pay careful attention to ensure that a balance is struck between competitive protections and individual consumer interests. It is important to allow for the continued fair use of copyrighted material, even while we seek to stop unauthorized reproductions from being illegally distributed outside the home and over the Internet.

Again, thank you for writing. Please know that as the Senate considers legislation of the broadcast flag, I will be sure to keep your views in mind.

Diane Feinstein is what I call a DINO - Democrat in Name Only. She's pro-drug war, pro big media, anti-consumer rights, and is a socially conservative fiscal liberal. Her and Joe Lieberman give progressives a bad name.

Re:Shill?

[InsaneGeek]

Actually it wasn't an issue back when they had bo bid contracts before:

Halliburton had won the LOGCAP contract with the government in 92, later on in the 90's they lost that contract; but Clinton in 97 went ahead and gave them no bid contracts for the Balkans even though they had lost their LOGCAP contract, nobody made a peep (in fact Clinton had even given Halliburton under Chenney an award). In 2001 the US LOGCAP contract is backup for renewal and Halliburton wins the contract again and everybody is fine with it. After regaining the LOGCAP contract the US makes a no bid deal to extinguish oil-fires in Iraq and then people have a problem with them, and it's a big conspiracy.

I think it's just that people like seeing conspiracies where they can, rather than rational thought.

Not quite the same

[PCM2]

Using that line of reasoning, one could then say the same about Cheney and Haliburton's past relationship when he became a part of the administration: "He's not a Haliburton guy. He just used to work for them. Big Deal."

Ummm, it's a little different. The director of communications for the RIAA is the chief marketroid, nothing more. If she wielded real power I'd imagine her title would at least be vice president. Dick Cheney, on the other hand, was the freakin' CEO of Halliburton. He was the proverbial guy at the head of the table, handing out the cigars. God I hope you realize this.

Re:What did you expect?

[Jarn_Firebrand]

How did this get +5 Insightful? I could understand +1 or 2, but anyone with a keyboard could have found out what he said on Wikipedia.

And what he doesn't tell you is the reason for the tax on blank CD media. That's what allows Canada to have more liberal laws about copyrights on music. They use the taxes from that to compensate those who would claim loss by copying CDs.

And let's not forget that the last half (more than half, actually) of his post was simply trolling. Idiot trolling, too, since he neglected to mention what the tax on blank CD media is for. Probably he was spewing the obvious neo-con duckspeak (Hah! I've always wanted a 1984 reference!) that all democrats are evil. Who's the sheep now? And while Kerry had a C+, Bush had a C-. Congratulations. You might as well go have sex with a sheep, you're a sheep anyway.