Campaign Contributions Gone Wild

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

Wikipedia Blacks Out

In a world where information is freely distributed and accessible, it is difficult for a majority of Americans to imagine life with a censored Internet. Wikipedia is but one of many sites to demonstrate such an inconvenience. For 24 hours from now, it intends to black out along with Reddit and more in protest of two Congressional bills, SOPA and PIPA.

The Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act were intended to combat the piracy of movies, music, and other intellectual property, a continuing problem that has cost the entertainment industry billions of dollars. Unfortunately, critics claim, the bills may not do as much good as harm. Not only would websites that shared digital content, including Youtube, Tumblr, and other social media sites, be subject to lawsuits, but search engines could be required to remove links to offending sites, effectively wiping them from the face of cyberspace.

Internet giants from Wikipedia to Google have voiced their concerns. Even White House representatives, including the U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, have responded to petitions: “While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”

Despite the attacks, authors of the bill made statements against the protest. As Rep. Lamar Smith claims, “It is ironic that a website dedicated to providing information is spreading misinformation about the Stop Online Piracy Act.” He criticized Wikipedia for “promoting fear instead of facts.”

Are Wikipedia and information sites truly doing a disservice to the world, or is their message worth spreading?