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MPAA president Chris Dodd today lashed out at critics of SOPA and PIPA antipiracy bills who equate the proposed legislation with corporate censorship and the repressive Internet policies of foreign governments. “It’s an outrageous and false comparison,” Dodd said in a speech at the Center for American Progress, according to reports on The Hill and Broadcasting & Cable websites. “Hollywood is pro-Internet. We stand with those who strongly oppose foreign governments that would unilaterally block websites and thus deny the free flow of information and speech. So I want to make it clear right at the outset that our fight against content theft is not a fight against technology. It is a fight against criminals.” Critics of the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act and the Senate’s Protect IP ACT contend the legislation threatens Internet speech and lacks sufficient due process. These opponents include Google, other websites, Wikipedia and a significant chunk of Silicon Valley and consumer electronics companies. “Contrary to piracy apologists, the operators of these fraudulent sites aren’t overzealous film buffs or political activists making a statement about freedom of information,” Dodd said. “They are criminals, plain and simple: they don’t innovate, they don’t adhere to manufacturing standards, and they certainly don’t pay taxes on the proceeds from their scams.”
Dodd described the entertainment industry’s position as a fight to preserve good jobs. The studios aren’t the only ones affected, he stressed. Some 95,000 businesses and the people they employ are hurt by digital theft. It’s not about star salaries, he said, but the $55,000 average pay for a generally unionized movie and TV worker, as well as the “local lumber yard supplying the material, catering company feeding the cast and crew and car dealership providing the vehicles.” The House Judiciary Committee plans to mark up SOPA on Thursday. Its sponsor Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), has just circulated a revised version he says addresses some of its critics concerns. Opponents plan to introduce their own bill tomorrow. The Senate has already moved PIPA forward toward floor debate.
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Those puppet strings look good on a former Senator.
Chris Dodd is 100% right on this. This legislation has taken years – many damaging years – to build due to the slow process and the hysteria propaganda campaign against it will fail.
Dodd has the support of Jeff Bewkes, one of the smartest businessmen in the world and the man who brought HBO to the heights it achieved over the last 25 years. I think he can do without the support of Lytton Strachey.
Dodd also had the support of the corporate fat-cats who wrecked the economy. Who do you want to believe in this fight?
It’s not propaganda. It’s a very, very bad bill.
The MPAA should stop trying to put the genie back into the bottle and figure out how to get filmmakers paid in a file sharing world.
All Internet users and their service providers benefit from having interesting content on the Web. The logical solution here is to have the service providers pay into a central fund and have the fund figure out how to pay the money to the content providers. Example: maybe the fund could pay content providers amounts based on traffic volume, or a combination of volume and user quality ratings.
Don’t bars and restaurants already pay into a fund like that for music? If so: talk to the lawyers who set up that up and have them come up with a similar but better system for Web content.
Chris Dodd is a vile corrupt man. No wonder the MPAA chose him as their leader.
Chris Dodd=Tool. Couldn’t be more embarrassed for my industry.
Is this a bill purely about piracy? At a glance, it seems like it’s a black-and-white issue – piracy is wrong and should be regulated.
I think I’m missing something here.
In a nutshell, can someone explain the argument the other side is making, or if there are any deeper issues?
It essentially gives the content industry a fast track to getting websites shutdown that they feel are guilty of piracy. Here’s a decent article from cnet:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57341916-281/new-version-of-sopa-copyright-bill-old-complaints/
Alex Macgillivray, Twitter’s general counsel, posted an analysis on his personal Web site about how SOPA could affect average Internet users. If someone stores photos, documents, or blog posts on a Web site that’s accused under SOPA of copyright infringement, those files “can be obliterated from his view without him having any remedy,” Macgillivray writes.
During a speech in Washington, D.C. today, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt slammed SOPA, according to a report at TheHill.com. “They should not criminalize the intermediaries,” Schmidt reportedly said. “They should go after the people that are violating the law.”
Google’s Eric Schmidt, who oversaw the release of private email address books without consent? Google’s Eric Schmidt, who has profited the most from piracy (most of which takes place through search)?
Google’s Eric Schmidt, who is the front man for the nonsense PR campaign that has every internet troll pasting junk online about “censorship”?
Yeah, believe that guy over Bewkes and the other entertainment company CEO’s…
It’s surprising how gullible the internet troll community has become. This bill is going to pass in some form. And it’s necessary… For 10 years, Google has reaped billions in profit at the expense of those who make the things that people search for Most.
Google has spent close to $100m and a ton of energy spewing lies. I’m glad Dodd finally just said it out loud. All the hysteria is just bullsh*t. You think the federal government is going to police comment boards? What a crock of sh*t. Delusional paranoid fantasies. This isn’t China. Google refused to stop enabling pirates. Now they want to pretend that the eradication of pirate host sites is a free speech issue. What. A. Crock.
Note: while all of the whining and the lying and the phony baloney hysteria has been stoked online, Big Tech ginned up a parallel bill in the hopes that they can elide responsibility by controlling the process.
Music, which should have appreciated in value since 1999, declined by 50% b/c the RIAA was too soft. I’m glad the MPAA hired someone to replace Jack Valenti who has the rolodex and the balls for the job. (Let’s pretend the last head of the MPAA never happened, since he got nothing done).
It’s hilarious that the trolls came out to bash Dodd for finally saying what needed to be said: Enough Bullsh*t. The bill isn’t going to do Anything to You. It is going to speed up enforcement vs. the Pirate Bays of the world. That’s it. All the rest is just hyperbolic hysteria which is being stoked by Big Tech. I’ve read the bill. It’s easy to read for yourself. I recommend you do so.
In its original writing, any website could be shut down by a corporation, without due process.
Let’s say that Paramount/Dreamworks/Disney/whoever put out a movie- a bad movie- and someone gave a review that called it out on its shortfallings. The movie company, not wanting people to be turned away by the review, could claim that the review used copyrighted material and was therefore breaking copyright law. The website would be shut down then and there- no due process, no day in court, “guilty until proven innocent.”
There is a new version of the bill requiring a court order to go through with it, but now there is part that says advertisers- the real money behind websites- would have legal immunity if they jumped ship on a site with a pending court case. So a corporation could still stifle the website’s revenue for as long as the case lasted- and for many websites, going six months without ad revenue would put them out of business.
The MPAA could go on a site, post an “illegal” video, then claim copyright infringement and have the site shut down. We already know they practice this because Viacomm did it with YouTube and were caught in court.
What these new acts would do effectively takes the sniper rifle of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act — “Somebody on your forums posted my photo without permission; remove it” — and turns it into a shotgun: “Somebody on your forums posted my photo without permission; your entire website is blocked for everyone until you remove it.”
You only have to think for a few moments to realize how many websites would effectively disappear if this were the law of the land — no more YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Tumblr, WordPress, or any other site where people can post content of any kind.
It also creates a regime where any new web service needs to enter into some kind of ongoing legal relationship with every copyright holder ever in order to really be safe. This is the definition of strangling innovation: startups can’t afford to do the level of content filtering that, say, Google can. So there just won’t be any more startups that let people share things.
So, yeah, it’s a horrendous bill that will “break the internet.”
Bingo. Excellent explanation.
I’d also like to stress that “…or any other site where people can post content” includes comment sections. Pretty much every site out there these days allows interactivity somehow. We’re talking the majority of the internet.
The other argument is one worried about collateral damage. The bill is vague as to what qualifies as an infringing site, and would theoretically allow presently-law-abiding sites (eg review sites, parody sites, news sites etc.) to be grouped with the piracy sites and subsequently shut down without trial or appeal. Many people make money through legal means such as those who will lose their jobs due to this bill if it passes, which will hinder the economic state far worse than the potential damage of the pirates that will be stopped (read: few, if any. Loopholes already have been discovered to scoot around this bill.)
I copied and pasted this from another forum. It does a pretty good job explaining why people are against this bill.
“Essentially, the new legislation basically removes due process and good-will enforcement of piracy, making enforcement draconian and ultimately restricting the creative freedom allowed on webpages.
With these laws, providers can and will block the DNS of certain websites from access entirely if it has any “infringing links”, “content”, and the website didn’t act fast enough, including search engines. Highly aggressive self-censorship would be necessary in order for websites to not be “erased” from search engines, any sort of ad revenue, and web-traffic altogether. Meanwhile, it doesn’t actually stop sites with from being ultimately accessible, it just hides them behind an additional layer of obfuscation.”
Dodd has also made references to China’s successful blocking of many web sites, something pretty much everybody agrees falls under the realm of censorship.
Whoops, just realized I posted a bunch of jargon without explaining the real-world implications.
Basically:
- Sites can be blocked for having any sort of copyright material at all (unless the publisher/owner allows it, but we all know that’s unlikely), which will lead to people self-censoring their own sites to avoid being blocked. Meanwhile, blocked websites can still be accessed by savvy pirates.
- It’s impossible for sites like YouTube to monitor every individual video uploaded, and since the legislation puts the responsibility on the website to manage itself, these sites will most likely stop accepting uploads of things like fan-made music videos in fear of copyright infringement.
- A funny fact I heard: under the proposed legislation, a person can get more jail time for uploading a Michael Jackson music video than if he played a role in killing him. If you don’t get the last part, look it up.
“I copied and pasted this from another forum.” Whoa there! Not even a citation! Now that forum could try and get advertisers / payment processors to stop paying deadline.com under SOPA / PIPA.
I think that example points out why this bill is a bad idea. Even if a judge ultimately says the site is not dedicated to infringement, this bill gives power to existing players with lots of money to spend on litigation. They can essentially bury less well funded projects in legal fees while also temporarily stifling their revenue sources. Corporations already use tactics where they start a lawsuit they know they can’t win to stifle smaller competitors. This just gives them another tool for similar tactics.
I’d like to think that this is just an unintended consequence which the corporate sponsors of SOPA / PIPA failed to think through… but…
REMINDER—- this is the same guy who as Senator told America just before the economic meltdown in September of 2008 that all was well and that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were solid, as he was getting sweetheart mortgage deals.
This is the jerk, run out of politics, responsible for Dodd-Frank running the MPAA. GREAT choice—Good luck!
Dodd Frank was a Financial markets reform act.. has nothing to do with the MPAA.
Dodd-Frank is meant to prevent another crisis you dolt. Do you even know what it is?
Shill.
“Contrary to piracy apologists, the operators of these fraudulent sites aren’t overzealous film buffs or political activists making a statement about freedom of information,”
Is he implying that it’s okay to pirate movies if you’re doing it for a cause? Kinda sounds like it.
I don’t know much about the bill, but I’m for anything to stop the rampant piracy that is going on. Make the cheap bums stop complaining and start paying for their entertainment.
You’re for anything??? So does that include public executions?
Seriously, people like you shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
It would be one thing if the bill gave the MPAA the ability to stop piracy. But it actually gives them the ability to stop anything. Say something a studio doesn’t like? They can turn off your site. It doesn’t matter if they’re lying or not about whether you’ve infringed on copyright, because there is no due process. The site just goes off.
No one is defending pirates here. We’re defending everyone else who deserves the right to due process before their livelihood is destroyed.
Think the studios don’t routinely make false copyright claims? They’ve already laid claim to thousands of hours of public domain footage on YouTube. There’s absolutely no reason to trust the studios to do right on their own and every reason to demand due process – which is only fair.
Outrageous and False…that pretty much sums up Chris Dodd right there. This legislation like all of its ilk is ill advised and useless. And just to chase imaginary lost millions…that’s right I said imaginary…I mean does anyone ever believe these numbers they come up with? Avatar is allegedly the most pirated film of the past year. Guess what the highest grossing film ever is? That’s right…Avatar.
And to save the “generally unionized movie and TV worker” in Hollywood. Ha! What a joke. If someone told the studios they could save 10% of their film budget by sodomizing all union members and slitting their throats when they came up their asses, they’d probably give the idea some thought.
How about this? Senate will pass this law if MPAA agrees to let copyright length go back to 50 years or less. See how they react to that one. Corporate Hollywood won’t be satisfied until you have to pay a fee to quote movies to your friends. Would you really trust anything these guys come up with to solve a problem such as complicated as piracy?
First we want a 100% verifiable guarantee this bill won’t and can never be used as a pretext to chill or silence free speech or dissent.
What’s outrageous is him systematically taking the teeth out of Wall Street reform before he left office after the massive fraud they committed. This man has been a tool his entire career. Screw him.
From what I’ve seen about this bill, someone/anyone can make a copyright infringement claim against any website and possibly get the domain of the infringer “appropriated” by the powers that be.
Note that there’s little to no penalties for filing a false complaint.
What they’re going after is sites that link to Rapidshare/Fileserve files and sites that stream NFL games and movies/tv shows.
What the bill says is incredibly ambiguous and certainly not written in good faith.
Hollywood is a $10 Billion dollar a year industry despite instant “one click” download linking sites. Maybe if they made better movies they’d have more business.
Instead they’d like to install draconian legislation that would make any infringement of a copyright a federal crime.
What’s sad is that this will kill the remix scene.
Do Not fall for this load of bologna. The Bill still clearly denies the owner of a website the right to due process, For example an individual who may be evicted from a residency needs to have notification that they will be evicted from the property. In the case of the bill if a site has violated its text than the site will immediately have its funding pulled after the site is subpoenaed.
I wouldn’t believe Chris Dodd if he said water was wet. He’s a bought and paid for hack of the highest order. There’s a special pit in Hell for low life scum like Dodd
If he wants to talk about false claims, perhaps he could explain how downloading a movie for free (i.e., no money exchanges hands) will somehow fund terrorists, the way all the MPAA ads promoting SOPA are claiming.
Real simple
internet = end of hollywood as we know it
no internet = hollywoods bottom line increasing by 3000% which will equal another few million or so jobs,
LOL, that’s funny. Is that some dialogue from another lame Adam Sandler “comedy” set in Hollywood?
Thanks for the laugh.
I never listen to anyone with a double chin
This is bad legislation plain and simple. It silences free speech and basically make fair use an uphill & expensive war to wage.
They might as well rename this piece of crap legislation, “Kneel Before Your Corporate Masters”.
This act is to piracy what the Patriot Act was for stopping terrorist violence; it’s a smoke screen to further erode due process.
Typical misdirection by a slippery politician. The issue is not whether piracy is OK (it isn’t), the issue is how the powers granted by this bill could be abused. Prior restraint, no due process, no penalty for false claims equal untrammeled corporate censorship, pure and simple.
Dodd is right about one thing, this bill has already created two jobs: Allison Halataei, and Lauren Pastarnack,, both of whom were involved in writing the bill, have gone to work as lobbyists for NMPA and MPAA respectively as lobbyists. Make up your own mind what this says about the ethics of all concerned.
As far as the ethics of the media giants go, read:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/dec/12/pirates-of-youtube-cory-doctorow
which describes how major corporations game YouTube’s current enforcement mechanism by falsely claiming copyright on public domain works in order to insert ads in them.
And Dodd says, in effect, “trust us to use this power fairly.” Hell, no.
Dodd is despicable, but he’s only doing what the MPAA wants him to – destroy freedom in the name of profits.
You know its wrong because you don’t need a bill to stop privacy its already illegal. We just need to stop giving aid to countries who aren’t stopping it in their own countries.
We cannot even stop the Chinese and other actors from stealing 100 years of propietary defense research that is the fundamental backbone of the United States military advantage.
What is more important to your own freedom…stopping the theft of military secrets or stopping the theft of movies and music?
Hollywood. What you are doing…it isn’t working. This is not 25 years ago. You are losing money because your product is worth less…plain and simple. You can attempt to bend the laws to do your bidding but in the end it is not going to change what people are willing to pay for. People will do without or find another means. SOPA & PIPA will retard innovation for the rest of the net but will only bolster creativeness and innovation when it involves the very thing they are trying to combat. It will evolve beyond the scope of these two bills and file sharing WILL continue in a more advanced form. If you put as much effort into figuring out how to get people to pay rather than attempting to stop them from downloading, I’ sure you could figure out this problem. Maybe it won’t be easy. Maybe you will have to stop producing thousands of crap movies a year. Maybe you will have to stop throwing extravagant awards shows or paying actors insane amounts of money. Maybe if the CONSUMERS DIDN’T FEEL LIKE THEY WERE BEING ROBBED, THEY WOULDN’T ROB YOU. Just a thought.