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MPAA Boss Admits SOPA and PIPA Are Dead, Not Coming Back
concealment points out comments from MPAA CEO Chris Dodd, who has acknowledged that SOPA and PIPA were soundly — and perhaps permanently — defeated. Quoting Ars Technica:
"Dodd sounded chastened, with a tone that was a far cry from the rhetoric the MPAA was putting out in January. 'When SOPA-PIPA blew up, it was a transformative event,' said Dodd. 'There were eight million e-mails [to elected representatives] in two days.' That caused senators to run away from the legislation. 'People were dropping their names as co-sponsors within minutes, not hours,' he said. 'These bills are dead, they're not coming back,' said Dodd. 'And they shouldn't.' He said the MPAA isn't focused on getting similar legislation passed in the future, at the moment. 'I think we're better served by sitting down [with the tech sector and SOPA opponents] and seeing what we agree on.' Still, Dodd did say that some of the reaction to SOPA and PIPA was 'over the top' — specifically, the allegations of censorship, implied by the black bar over Google search logo or the complete shutdown of Wikipedia. 'DNS filtering goes on every day on the Internet,' said Dodd. 'Obviously it needs to be done very carefully. But five million pages were taken off Google last year [for IP violations]. To Google's great credit, it recently changed its algorithm to a point where, when there are enough complaints about a site, it moves that site down on their page — which I applaud.'"
Make you think it's dead, that way when they bring it back under another name, you won't notice.
Joy! Beautiful spark of the gods!
Translation: Dammit, what part of "cartel" have my clients forgotten they once understood?
'There were eight million e-mails [to elected representatives] in two days.' That caused senators to run away from the legislation.
So, now we know what to do to prevent or get rid of Dodd-Frank and other pieces of idiotic legislation.
These people are making money hands-over-fist. Billions of dollars flowing into their pockets.
Why do they feel they "need" to do anything about piracy? The vast majority of people will pay for their content. Even I, who used to pirate things like crazy when I was a teenager (due to complete lack of funds) now pay for my stuff since I can afford it.
They should instead find ways to make it easier for customers to buy their media. Look what they did for music; it's DRM free now and so convenient to buy from numerous places, and it all plays on pretty much every device out there. They should do the same thing for video content. Make it so when I pay $10 to download a movie, that it's truly MINE, and I'll gladly buy more movies online.
It's not hard. Yet they are stubborn jackasses and continue with this war of theirs. Reminds me of the equally pointless "war on drugs".
To paraphrase a politician (who's name I don't know). "If it quakes like a duck, walks like a duck and looks like a duck, it is a duck."
Censorship is censorship, just because it is done by a corporation doesn't some how magically make it better. The fact that they manipulated Google into doing their censoring for them doesn't somehow make it clean just because the government wasn't the one doing it.
I don't buy that they aren't engaging in censorship just because they don't have the government doing it on their behalf. For the average person, they would be hard pressed to find an alternative that isn't censored.
I have a bad feeling that something worse is waiting for us down the line...
Exactly. That something worse will be the persistent steady erosion of rights and the criminalization of activities with extreme penalties. Bit by bit they will get what they want. Their mistake was grabbing at the powers they wanted too fast.
In the U.S. they've won on the constitutionality of statutory damages that bear no relation to actual harm. Essentially that is a private criminalization of a commercial tort.
They're winning on extradition more than they are loosing.
Megaupload is gone. Everyone else is scared.
In Japan, downloading a song is now a criminal act that can get you two years in jail.
And on, and on . . .
So, do they really need SOPA or PIPA?
your gravity fails and negativity don't pull you through
You'd call that paranoia? I'd call that "not being born yesterday."
OF COURSE they're preparing something identical behind the scenes. They haven't STOPPED being greedy, stupid, shortsighted, corrupt assholes. Chris Dodd and everyone else who would rather screw over the public domain for a very small theoretical increase in profits, THEY are not the ones who are dead and never coming back. It's a damn shame too that they don't all slowly and simultaneously die of hemorrhoids.
SOPA and PIPA were stopped because people found out.. What if this is just misinformation while they prepare something behind the scenes?
If? There is no if
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.