I thought Obama showed good judgment in selecting Joe Biden for VP when names like Dodd's were being floated as a necessary dose of gravitas/experience/whatever to the ticket.I don't mean to be cynical but does it actually mater? Suppose Dodd had become VP and Biden became the MPAA chair. Do you really think the outcome would be any different?
Shorter Dodd: Christ, what an MPAAsshole.
I am getting a bit tired of the Freakonomics folks trotting out "counterintuitive" examples for everything and expecting everyone to just believe them. The comments in that link do a good job of pointing this out, but seriously:The freakonomics guys are idiots. Seriously. They're much more interested in being 'counterintuitive' then they are in being 'correct'. And as a result, they're wrong a lot. The bit in their new book about Global Warming, for example, was completely wrong and criticized by pretty much everyone who knew anything.
noted the movie "Avatar" was stolen by online pirates 21 million times. Such acts, he said, threaten to decimate his industry."Decimate" actually means to kill every 10th member of a group. So if 210 million people see avatar, and only 189 million pay full price then the industry would, in fact, have been 'decimated'. Although I don't think that's what he meant.
Wouldn't it be awesome if the studios had a venue that could stream videos to your house over the internet to offer a convenient, legal alternative to piracy?What the movie industry doesn't want is to "make money" of their IP. What they want to do is make as much money as possible. So, if you have to do something like netflix in order to "compete" with pirates, even though you're making money it's less then you could be. On the other hand, if you stamp out piracy, then you can withhold quality films from netflix and put the latest movies on a "premium" channel for $100 a month, or $50 for movies 6 months old, or whatever.
That's such a silly threat, when the Democratic Party will most certainly vote for a future anti-pedophile or military-funding bill that includes riders that sneak in the same provisions that were in SOPA.Future Bill? From author of SOPA (Lama Smith) the “Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011" Which requires ISP to record everything you do online, and make it available to any law enforcement for being suspected of any crime, not limited to kiddy porn. I actually think this is an implementation of another part of ACTA. So basically SOPA and this new bill seem to be both aimed at implementing ACTA in the U.S.
Saying money buys elections is a very serious claim that is NOT supported by the fact that the winners of elections are the ones who have the money. It is very reasonable claim that the candidates who win elections are the ones who people want to give money to, and therefore the fact that election winners have money is only a correlation and not a causation.Simply pointing out that there is a correlation does not disprove causation. People more likely to win are more able to raise money, and people who raise money are more likely to win. There's actually a positive feedback effect, where two things cause eachother.
All I have to say is: Savage & Hyneman 2012!Free cannonballs in every home! (j/k :)
I'm sure certain (non-MeFite) people will have something to say about the order of names on that ticket. Just like the previous satiric "Stewart/Colbert" bumper stickers; who expects Stephen C. to play 2nd fiddle?Savage posted this FPP, so he gets to be president.
So who would get the fees, then? Only members of ASCAP, RIAA, MPAA or other similar organizations? What about complete independent artists who are outside that system? What about DJs and underground rap artists? What about MeFi Music?Everything you view online is already tracked somewhere. If you watch a video on youtube or Hulu, those sites know someone watched, even if they don't know who. And it's dead easy to get statistics for the number of people who use bittorent to download something - that's not private at all. And guess what: Your ISP also sees every URL you access.
It's an unworkable concept, as nice as it is. No matter how you slice it, you'll be leaving out someone whose work was streamed/viewed/whatevered. Unless you propose instituting full online tracking of all media consumption and divvying up payouts accordingly. And, frankly, I don't want to live in a world where my internet use is tracked to that extent by a government agency
The other thing on life support is the middle class, something that Hollywood's "failing business model" supports far, far better than Silicon Valley libertarians ever will. Why do progressives want to stick another knife into the back of the middle class?Supporting the middle class through economic rents imposed on other middle class people is not a good idea, nor is it even logically feasible. (I suppose you could argue that the rents would be imposed on huge internet companies, but I think it would mostly affect the middle class). And lets not forget: Piracy improves poor people's quality of life by giving them free music and movies, the equivalent of hundreds of dollars a month in free entertainment. Not just the actual pirates, but the fact that people need to 'compete' with pirates by putting all their shows online for free (Hulu, comedy central, etc)
Maybe it is, but I'm hearing that we need to kill Hollywood, presumably replaced by some kind of user-generated content website where creators don't get paid at all, much less get healthcare or pensions.Obamacare means everyone gets healthcare (at least by 2014). It's almost like we're a first world country now!
AlsoMike, nobody is calling for an end to Hollywood or for the end of Made-for-Profit content. What I am calling for is an end to the MPAA, which is an organization with too much power in Hollywood whose purpose at this point is to rigorously defend outdated business models. Others might not be quite so harsh.Eh. At this point I don't really even care any more. If they went away tomorrow it wouldn't affect my life. It would take several lifetimes to consume all the content that's already been produced and recorded.
If you watch carefully all the actual violence is offscreen, It's all implied. But people have said basically the movie should really be R rated but was given a PG-13 basically due to insider corruption at the MPAA (i.e. it was a huge movie, and tens of millions of dollars were on the line with a PG-13 rating)On the other hand, you have the Dark Knight, where one of the main character's faces is burned half off and the Joker surgically implants explosives into his living henchmen.Which is rated PG-13 by the MPAA, and globally is considered OK for teenagers, so fits into the teenybopper category.
All the talk of "bribery" in this thread (and the links) is just silly, by the way. There is absolutely no legal bar to any industry or union or political pressure group whatsoever saying, quite openly, "I'm giving you this money because I think you will pass laws favorable to my industry/union/cause." Similarly, there is no legal impediment to saying "don't come cap in hand to my industry/union/cause if you're not going to pass the legislation we think is important."There is, however a law that bars former congressmen/senators and their staffers from lobbying congress at all for a few years after they leave. I think it's three. And while the NYT article claimed he wasn't lobbying these people in person, how is what he's doing now not just lobbying in public?
It's been my understanding that both are illegal, it's just that the theory is that targeting the uploaders (suppliers) is more effective than targeting the downloaders, as if nobody uploads, then no one can download, and many people can download from one uploader.Downloading is as illegal as buying a bootleg. Which is not illegal, as far as I know.
Society confronts the simple fact that when everyone can possess every intellectual work of beauty and utility--reaping all the human value of every increase of knowledge--at the same cost that any one person can possess them, it is no longer moral to exclude. ... But the bourgeois system of ownership demands that knowledge and culture be rationed by the ability to pay.posted by twirlip at 9:49 PM on January 22, 2012 [3 favorites]
Note that this is statute is an "attempt crime", meaning that you don't even have to succeed in your bribery. All you have to do is give a Congressperson money with the intent to influence their official actions.I don't think it would be too hard to get a conviction. But prosecution will never, ever happen.
Based on the facts I know, I'd convict Dodd.
User-generated content is one way of doing that. An hour of YouTube videos costs about the same to transfer as Hollywood content, but it's cheaper because it has no licensing costs. But so is piracy. Telecom industries make money for transferring those files around, why would they want to license it? They certainly don't want to spend money cracking down on piracy either. On top of that, piracy undermines the content producer's ability to charge for exclusive licensing -- the telecom industry can encourage piracy and then say, "Oh, look at all this piracy! I guess we can't do an exclusive deal then, oh well..."Google and Youtube are not a part of the 'telecom' industry. They're actually pretty antagonistic, with google fighting the telecom on network neutrality (this is changing with android and buying Motorola)
This is about making sure that Hollywood gets a fair cut of telecom profits, not about letting Hollywood extract rent from other middle class people. Our bills continue to rise (over 300% in the last 20 years), but telecom providers placate us by offering us as much free content as we want, plus the "opportunity" to create royalty-free content for them.Why assume that Hollywood actually produces what people actually want to view online? I hardly spend any time watching Hollywood crap while online. The video game industry is bigger then Hollywood, and I would bet people spend more time playing games online. then watching Hollywood crap. Or watching Youtube. Why does Hollywood deserve money for the time people spend watching Youtube? That's what's crazy, the baseline assumption that major Hollywood corporations owed compensation for all entertainment, whether they produced it or not.
Well, that's a nice pipe dream, but it's a pipe dream nonetheless. There is no such law. There's an Obama administration policy -- yoinkMy god are you seriously that uninformed?
That shift was exposed this week partly because Mr. Dodd found himself in a political knife fight while being forced to sheathe his most powerful weapon: 36 years of personal relationships with a Congress in which he had served as a representative and then senator since 1975, before joining the motion picture association last March.Staggaring. I mean I don't even know what to say. I'm honestly amazed both that anyone could be that ignorant and also so certain they're right when actually they're wrong. Obviously it happens all the time but WTF is wrong with people?
Under legislation passed in 2007, Mr. Dodd is barred from personally lobbying Congress for two years after leaving office. Hired as the consummate Washington insider to carry the film industry’s banner on crucial issues like piracy, Mr. Dodd ended up being more coach than player. He helped devise a strategy that called for his coalition to line up a strong array of legislative sponsors and supporters behind two similar laws — the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House, and the Protect I.P. Act in the Senate — and then to move them through the Congress quickly before possible opposition from tech companies could coalesce.
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.(Thomas Jefferson, on copyright)
formless, the fact is that Google and every internet company is a telecom company. They are in the business of transmitting data, whether they get paid by the byte or by the page impression. Comcast, owner of NBC Universal, supported the bill. AT&T basically pulled their support. That seems to line up. Even if Hollywood got some telecom companies on board, that doesn't change the basic economics of digital distribution and content licensing, and where interests align or do not align.First of all, I think you're using the word "Telecom company" in a very different way then most people do: Normally when you say telecom you're talking about Comcast, ATT, Verizon, Time Werner and cell carriers. Out of that list, only Verizon wasn't listed as supporter.
Of the $2400 that the average household spends, a substantial amount goes to paying the telecom industry for access to entertainment content produced by the content creation industry. The telecom industry has all the customers, so they have the upper hand in licensing negotiations, and they have an interest in driving down the cost of the content that people are actually paying to see in the first place.
User-generated content is one way of doing that. An hour of YouTube videos costs about the same to transfer as Hollywood content, but it's cheaper because it has no licensing costs. But so is piracy. Telecom industries make money for transferring those files around, why would they want to license it? They certainly don't want to spend money cracking down on piracy either. On top of that, piracy undermines the content producer's ability to charge for exclusive licensing -- the telecom industry can encourage piracy and then say, "Oh, look at all this piracy! I guess we can't do an exclusive deal then, oh well..."
This is the "dying" business model: telecom industries devaluing content to improve their profits.
You're wrong. If you think you're right, why don't you actually cite to a source of law.If you want an example of how wrong he is, look at the case of Don Siegelman. He was convicted by a jury and sent to jail for accepting campaign donations in exchange for an 'official act'.
Look at the federal pattern jury instructions for the meaning of "corruptly given" under the statute. For example, here; the Third Circuit Court of Appeals defines it as:
Scrushy was accused of arranging $500,000 in donations to Siegelman's campaign for a state lottery fund for universal education in exchange for a seat on a state hospital regulatory board, a non-paying position.Now, please, tell me how this is remotely similar to saying "I won't keep paying money to your campaign if you don't support the policies I'm in favor of?" Look, here's a link to a recent example of the AFL-CIO president issuing a warning to Democrats, including Obama, "not to take them for granted" in the upcoming elections. He provides a laundry list of legislative initiatives that he wants to see the Democrats fighting for in order to win union support in the upcoming elections. Is that "bribery"? Are we going to see a Metafilter thread full of petitions for his prosecution because of this? No, of course not. Because it's not bribery, nobody thinks it's bribery and a prosecution for it as bribery is utterly risible--just as a prosecution of Dodd for what he said is utterly risible.
A bribery charge can be premised on a campaign contribution. But be careful. It is problematical that a gratuity charge under 201(c) can rest on a bona fide campaign contribution, unless the contribution was a ruse that masqueraded for a gift to the personal benefit of the public officer as was the case in Brewster, supra. This is because campaign contributions represent a necessary feature of the American political process, they normally inure to the benefit of a campaign committee rather than directly to the personal benefit of a public officer, and they are almost always given and received with a generalized expectation of currying favor with the candidate benefitting therefrom. For these reasons, recent Federal jurisprudence on the subject suggests substantial judicial reluctance to extend the Federal crime of gratuities under section 201(c) to bona fide campaign donations.If you read his statements, he doesn't say anything at all about donating money or not.
Delmoi, you know perfectly well that the "Honest Leadership and Open Government Act" is a joke. What Dodd is doing is perfectly and explicitly legal under the terms of the act.So now we've gone from "There is no such law" to "ok, there's a law but that law is a joke!" Either way, you were still wrong in saying "There is no such law".
No, of course not. Because it's not bribery, nobody thinks it's bribery and a prosecution for it as bribery is utterly risible--just as a prosecution of Dodd for what he said is utterly risible.I don't know why you think I said otherwise. Given that you apparently didn't even know about this law it's likely that you read my comment wrong to begin with. What I said was that I thought there was a good chance that Dodd had illegally lobbied, and is lying about not having done it. If that's true, it would probably be a violation. (even more hilarious is you arguing with an actual federal lawyer about whether or not statements fall under various laws, and arguing that he doesn't know what he's talking about)
. My problem is that what has replaced it is a corporation, and that creative labor is anonymized and turned into a side effect of technology. The idea that art elevates us and dignifies us is lostOh yeah, paying record company execs and movie studio lawyers is so much more dignified then getting art directly from the people who create it.
And yet somehow the middlemen of Facebook, Twitter, Google and Metafilter become the central, adored figures in this heroic narrative of our supposed liberation. You say that telecom is just a dumb pipe, but internet sites are just as dumb. This page would be empty without our participation, yet each contribution is ephemeral, one of a million keeping the mighty Metafilter afloat. We're like slaves on a galley, each rower as disposable as the next, but through the magic of the algorithm, our efforts are summed together to generate value.Are you fucking kidding? The prior world was one where we simply couldn't even have this discussion. Only a few powerful people could pick and choose among people who wanted to express their ideas publicly, and then be paid lavishly for doing so. It's utterly and completely absurd to say that somehow we are worse off being able to actually express ourselves rather then having a handful of celebrities do so and make massive amounts of money, while everyone else simply not be able to speak or have their creative works seen by anyone else.
Official White House Response to Investigate Chris Dodd and the MPAA for bribery after he publicly admited to bribing politicans to pass legislation.posted by Gordafarin at 6:46 PM on January 31, 2012 [1 favorite]
Why We Can't Comment
Thank you for signing this petition. We appreciate your participation in the We the People platform on Whitehouse.gov. However, consistent with the We the People Terms of Participation and our responses to similar petitions in the past, the White House declines to comment on this petition because it requests a specific law enforcement action.
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posted by curious nu at 1:46 PM on January 22, 2012 [16 favorites]