RIAA CEO Hopes SOPA Protests Were a "One-Time Thing" 441
hapworth writes "After posting a controversial op-ed in The New York Times saying Wikipedia and Google 'misinformed' the public about SOPA and PIPA, Cary Sherman, CEO of the RIAA said in an interview yesterday that he hopes the SOPA protests were a 'one-time experience.' He also said that Wikipedia and Google users were duped into thinking SOPA was a bad bill because they assume "if it comes from these sources, it must be true." In another hilarious comment, Sherman blames the Internet for making it impossible for Congress to get out its side of the story, and for not spreading information with the same 'clarity and integrity' of broadcast journalists."
Re:Nope.avi (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember the Blue Ribbon campaign in the early years of the web? The SOPA protest was essentially the latest version of that strategy, where content providers across the web banded together against Hollywood's lobbies.
So yeah, I'd say there's a pretty good chance we'll be protesting again next time. (And there will always be a next time.)
The RIAA/MPAA have no room to talk. (Score:5, Interesting)
They've been spreading disinformation for years on the news. Wikipedia on the otherhand does a much better job living up to standards like NPOV, and all its sub-rules, like no weasal words than any mainstream news source ever did.
Before anyone questions this what did Wikipedia do that comes close to "hackers on steroids"? This was a modern mainstream news segment. Did anyone loose their job over that? Thats not even touching RFC 1392, for what a hacker even was, something that seemed to be ignored by just about every mainstream media outlet(represented by the RIAA/MPAA that is).
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1392
But hey, what do trade organizations know? I mean they just
What was the big media's coverage of SOPA/PIPA to begin with??? Thats right, a total blackout. There was no discussion of this on mainstream news. The tactic was obviously sneak it by without anyone in the general public thinking about it until it was way to late.
As for piracy rules, they are already far too strong. They are basicly forcing start ups and small businesses who don't have the money to hire lawyers out of their own IP by letting well funding legal harrassment campaigns deprive them out of the very IP that is said to be protected?
Anyone who's ever used a free music track on youtube knows this. This is not content creators going after their work, its trolls and bullys stealing from people using the law via intimidation.
We need intellectual property law reform, and we need to place limits and what can and cannot be owned, and big time restrictions on acusations of unauthorized use.
I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Cary Sherman did have at least one good point. On the RIAA's Music Notes blog, [riaa.com] he discussed how he went through and read every one of the 280 some comments on his very poorly received New York Times op-ed.
I was one of the ones who posted a substantive, up-voted comment on his op-ed, and his blog post addressed something I (and several other commenters) pointed out. Just Googling for the text of the bill leaves one with a misleading impression, because important amendments were not included in that text. I took Sherman to task for what I viewed as purposefully misleading people in his op-ed, doing exactly what he was complaining Wikipedia and Google were doing.
On that particular detail, I was wrong, and Sherman was right. So the point is taken that there is a lot of misunderstanding about what precisely this bill will do and not do. That said, what I think he continually fails to understand is that his association (and really, the entire industry) has virtually no credibility in the minds of the tech-savvy, Internet-using public. We know the record companies rip off actual artists with raw contracts. We know the RIAA supported the ridiculous tactic of suing individual file-sharers for astronomical damages in order to bully them into settlement. We know they inflate their losses, that they massage data, and that they lobby hard for what they want. In fact, that last part is to be expected by any industry trade group.
We're Americans. We know that practically everyone in politics is lying to us whenever they open their mouth. That's not news. I'm not sure why Cary Sherman expects a free pass on this issue... you've got the lobbying money, get in there and play hardball like everyone else.
Re:One time things make a difference. (Score:3, Interesting)
So by your logic, beheading a lot of people to end a monarchy/empire just to give rise to Napoleon was a good thing.... so was a war AGAINST state's rights which ended in the slaughter and pillaging of the southern half of the then-existent country? Last I checked, we are now having state's rights issues that we wouldn't have if the south had been allowed to assert that the states could secede and form a new confederacy.
Re:One time experience? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sadly, you may be right... but fighting for the freedom to speak by forcefully shutting down someone else's ability to speak (a la Anon.)..? Is that the right answer? I think that it happened to work out well last time without having to run around in a nerd-skills pissing contest.
I agree with the message, just not the methods.
Re:One time experience? (Score:5, Interesting)
Or they will do like they did with the US Armed forces now being able to detain without trial or cause any American citizen. It was hidden in a "Defense Spending" Bill, and Obama signed it on 12/31/11 when the rest of the US was out getting drunk.
Re:One time experience? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Black March (Score:3, Interesting)
http://images.paralegal.net.s3.amazonaws.com/hypocrisy-hollywood.png [amazonaws.com]
Wall of text in an image but worth a read. Maybe even a printout with flyers.
Re:SOPA protests were just a start (Score:4, Interesting)
... the next time RIAA tries to bribe a heaping pile through Congress.
What I don't get is why anyone thinks lobby groups buying legislation is the right way!
Re:One time experience? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It wasn't misinformation... (Score:5, Interesting)
And, in the RIAA's eyes, that's the problem. How dare the Internet (meaning Wikipedia, Google, and the others that spread the word), make people aware of the awful law they were trying to push through? Don't these people know how it goes? The RIAA brib.... I mean lobbies a few members of Congress. They then get those Congressfolk to submit bills that they (the RIAA) have written. Congress passes the bills and everyone is happy. (Where "everyone" equals "The RIAA.") Subverting that process is just unAmerican! (Where "American" equals "what the RIAA wants done.")
Re:One time experience? (Score:3, Interesting)
"He [Obama] did the absolute best he could do to diminish the effect of the law..."
Obama didn't object to the indefinite detention clauses at all, given how the reason it was in the bill in the first place was because the White House asked for it to be included. The only objections Obama had were about limiting the discretion of the White House in choosing when and how to detain someone indefinitely. The revised language, passed and signed into law, EXPANDS the president's power by giving him that discretion...it does NOTHING to "diminish" the clause at all.
When it comes to matters of spying on and arresting US citizens without oversight, trial, or recourse, the Obama Administration has started from where Bush left off and hit the ground running hard.
The reality is Obama is a hard-right neo-con who's done a fantastic job of fooling the dirty hippie masses that he's a liberal. He's done a 180 on everything he promised (except his promise to greatly expand the war in Afghanistan...that promise, sadly, he has kept).
Re:One time experience? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is why a defensive strategy is insufficient. We have to strike back and get our legislation protecting the internet in before they get theirs to kill it. We need legistlation which will put America's Copyright Crusade to a stop.
If the RIAA gets to the government before people do, it'll be over. If we our vote across before they do, then they are gonna be the ones fighting back. The way to win the fight isn't to stay standing when you're pushed - it's by pushing the other guy down and keeping him there.
Re:One time experience? (Score:3, Interesting)
Militias are composed of.....?
Frontiersmen and Minutemen (well, minutemen get selected out of unrecognized militias.)
Um, that was my point. I was using "militia" as shorthand for your "frontiersmen and minutemen." Who, routinely, constantly, got their asses handed to them by the British regulars.
Oh, and no, we were getting our asses kicked until we had the EQUIPMENT from the French plus more men. We never built any real sort of professional standing army, most men had their training right in the heat of battle in their home towns.
Washington would disagree with you. Seriously, read what he had to say sometime about the militias as opposed to his Continental Army sometime; it's not pretty. He built and trained an army of real soldiers, and the Revolution was won by those soldiers, not by a bunch of whoopin' and hollerin' irregulars running around in the woods.
Re:One time experience? (Score:5, Interesting)
In a corrupt world where money is speech, and the RIAA is tantamount to that point, you're nudging the idea that Anon did something wrong?
If someone is, by corrupt basis, speaking so loudly that nobody else can be heard, it is heroic to take their megaphone away ( the megaphone they only got through corruption).
Re:One time experience? (Score:4, Interesting)
I hardly doubt that.
You cannot silence a person or movement by just DDoSing his official site. Everybody has alternative
distribution routes. If Anon would really want to play dirty they wouldn't `deface` websites they hacked,
they would introduce subtle, hard to identify changes that would work in a destructive manner to the
hacked site once consumed by visitors.
That RIAA guy is deploying classical diplomat tactics here: "deny that the voting was correctly educated
on the topic until you can spin facts in your favor"
Journalists and bloggers alike need to keep the consuming public alert of the fact that diplomats always
speak on personal agenda, otherwise the future of free speech is bleak at best.
Re:saving children and 1-time events (Score:5, Interesting)
Hate to break it to you, but anything you can dream up with satire, they're already dreaming up for real.
SOPA-II is ... wait for it ... PC-FIPA, HR1981 = Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act.
I submitted it a week ago for a Slashdot story. It got voted up Red Hot in the Firehose. Slashdot didn't run it. They ran the Idle piece of "Eternal Copyright" instead.
So yes, RIAA-Guy is partially right. We're already bored with Blackouts.
"If you don't get your bill passed, make it WORSE, change the backstory to the ultimate counter line, and submit it again!"