Competing Contests To Create Pro- and Anti-Piracy PSAs

An anonymous reader writes "New York City recently announced a PSA contest, in which it asked schoolkids to create a video about how evil piracy is. Techdirt found the whole marketing campaign questionable, and via some Freedom of Information Act requests, discovered the whole thing was really a propaganda front for NBC Universal. They also looked at the fine print on this 'pro-copyright' contest, and discovered that in entering, you agreed to give up your copyright. And, you were only allowed to repeat NBC Universal's talking points. Don't try suggesting that perhaps the industry should have adapted. In response, Techdirt has launched a competing video contest, where they ask people to create videos on the impact of technology on creativity. The Techdirt contest doesn't give you specific talking points, lets you present your own opinion, lets you retain the copyright on your work ... and is paying twice as much as the NYC/NBC contest."

Comments

Re:This isn't anything new.

[Baloroth]

Slashdot commentators would complain if safety-rail makers funded a PSA about not leaning over safety rails. Milk is good for you (well, unless you're lactose intolerant) and so are flu shots (although the latter are far less important for individuals, herd immunity against the flu is very valuable). Corporations sponsoring PSAs about things that are good for you does not show that government is an arm of the corporations... nor in fact is that even true. If it really was, you would know it.

What is true, and has been for about 200 years now, is that many politicians are in the pockets of corporations / the mafia / private interests. Actually, you can make that 2000 years. Ancient Rome (the Republic) was run largely by the rich (partially by design, I should point out). In point of fact, so was the early US, to some degree (again, partly by design: the rich tend to be better educated and are far more likely to know what the hell is actually going on. For proof of this: just browse Internet comments for a few seconds. The average person is politically uneducated, and I actually include myself in that.)

So many decisions of governments are based on what corporation want, and this is not entirely a bad thing. Corporations are, after all, what employs just about everyone, and produces just about every single thing you own (even very large parts of Linux were designed by corporations). Obviously, it goes over the line quite a lot, and corruption is pretty rampant, but again, nothing new there, it has been that way in every government in history and will be for the rest of time. Calling government an arm of the corporations? Also goes over the line.