We learned about the court case Citizens United v. FEC, which allowed for SuperPACs to donate unlimited amounts of money in undisclosed fashions, potentially allowing for all sorts of corruption and crony capitalism shenanigans to take place.
Given the option for anonymity, it seems strange that Chris Dodd, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, has decided to openly threaten cutting funding for congressmen should they fail to pass the MPAA's favorite laws, SOPA and PIPA.
This seems to be pretty strong evidence that something shady is going on in our congress. But it also makes me wonder: if he felt this sort of thing was acceptable to talk about on national TV, does that mean that crony capitalism goes on enough to delude him into thinking it is well accepted as the norm?
What do you enlightened scholars think?
Here's a related article about more nonsense in the MPAA: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120124/04344817524/wil-wheaton-says-chris-dodd-is-lying-about-lost-jobs-says-mpaa-accounting-creates-more-losses-than-piracy.shtml
4 comments:
I never thought for one second that the reason behind SOPA and PIPA wasn't shady business going on with entertainment companies. What does a congressman have invested in SOPA? Maybe for a few it stands with their philosophical beliefs, but for most, they could care less whether or not the record companies get royalties. That is of course, unless the congressmen are also getting their cut.
It's quite disgusting that the money and power of Hollywood is lobbying Washington to destroy some of the freedoms that Americans hold sacred, all in the name of money. Is is worth taking away the rights of citizens to ensure that some companies get the money they worked so hard for? What do you friendly scholars think?
It has become clearer that it is the big corporations that are being heard more than the regular citizens because of the huge capital that big corporations provide. It’s funny how when Dodd retired from being senator he had said “no lobbying”, but that is exactly what he is doing right now. Of course that was pure BS from his part back then and it was obvious he was going to become one. I think the protest of SOPA is not as bad as Dodd seems to point out. It definitely looks not corrupt at all because they are not buying politicians like Dodd, but instead they are not providing service for a day to show the value that this websites provide for many people.
Its looks really corrupt how back in 2008 Dodd talked about the constitution and civil rights abuses and now that Dodd is getting paid $1.2 million he seems to have forgotten what he stood for. Dodd and other lobbyist organizations have overestimated the power that internet has and now they are beat.
Now, about the SOPA/PIPA bill I do believe it does violate our freedom of expression and a constitutional violation. The fact that it takes away all these websites without any due process just violates the first and the Fifth Amendment.
I have to agree with Katherine. It seems pretty shady that Dodd used to preach about "no lobbying" and civil rights and now that he receives funds from special interest companies, it seems he's completely forgotten the ideals he once stood for. This relates back to Federalist 10 where Madison attempted to warn us of the effect factions can have on our political system. I think that this is just another example of factions instilling dominance on policies.
I don't think that it is strange at all for Dodd to be open in his support of SOPA and PIPA. As a member of the film industry, it makes complete sense for him to want to protect his ownership of the work that he produces. I love the un-censored accessibility of the internet as much as any other teen my age who cant finish a night's homework without Wikipedia, but I by no means think that the main goal of the supporters of SOPA and PIPA is "to destroy some of the freedoms that Americans hold sacred," as Jacobs put it. Yes, the motivation behind protecting ownership of material is money, and yes the internet is a major aspect of the freedoms we are privilege to as Americans, but our rights also protect us from theft, and a lot of material available on the internet is stolen.
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