
MPAA Boss: If The Chinese Censor The Internet, Why Can't The US? - grecy
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111208/14521817014/mpaa-boss-if-chinese-censor-internet-without-problem-why-cant-us.shtml
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gkoberger
Not to harp on a horrible metaphor, however I would say Google is more like a
metro or subway than a getaway car driver (or car manufacturer).

Yes, you took it to the bank robbery -- however it also took lots of people to
other places, and didn't know nor care where you were going or why. Nobody
would accuse a bus or train of being an accessory.

~~~
gojomo
Just wait until one of Google's self-driving cars is used for a heist.

~~~
Zirro
You just made me realize how self-driving cars can be (ab)used by police or
higher organisations to track citizens, and stop a crime.

Knowing what they are currently trying to do with the Internet, them wanting
to have some control over the self-driving cars wouldn't surprise me.

To some people it may seem clear how much of a benefit this would be. "Wow,
the police are actually able to lock down a getaway car and arrest people who
have just committed a bank robbery?".

But, there's a reason I wrote "(ab)used" up there, you probably understand the
implications already.

~~~
gojomo
I believe OnStar vehicles already have a remote kill-switch the owner or law-
enforcement can throw. (Plus, of course, GPS tracking.)

~~~
Natsu
While we're at it, OnStar can also be used to record the conversations of
people inside the vehicle.

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BillSaysThis
The MPAA goons have long passed the line of "we give a frak what anyone says
about us" and will happily stay there as long as politicians take their money
and vote as desired. And look who said this: Chris Dodd, a former senator.

~~~
2mur
I was driving and listening to NPR the other day. Some story was on about the
MPAA and the new SOPA bill. I hadn't yet heard that Dodd was the new MPAA
chairman (chief lobbyist).

I was almost physically sick when that came across the air. I'm a long-time
Democrat but I'll be damned if that didn't make me want to never vote for
anyone ever again. Our two political parties are really two sides of the same
coin and they are all working for corporations.

~~~
thyrsus
“In America, you have a choice! The capitalist party, or the other capitalist
party!” – Dmitri Orlov, Russian emigre

~~~
einhverfr
I often say the Middle Class is still around right now because the two main
parties can't agree on how to wipe it out.

------
zitterbewegung
Just because the Chinese limit people to one child per couple why can't the
US?

I don't think justification to do something that someone else does no matter
that it is an oppressive regime.

EDIT: fixed person to child

~~~
lazugod
One person per child?

~~~
politician
Teen pregnancy is rampant over there.

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nextparadigms
How nice. Instead of USA spreading American values to the Chinese people,
China is spreading its "values" to USA. Also MPAA's "analogies" to theft are
becoming increasingly more ridiculous.

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medius
I generally don't like the use of a metaphor as an argument since it often
misses the point. Watching a movie without paying is not the same as stealing.
I cannot give it to someone else what I have watched, I can't sell it, etc.
But even if we accept that comparison, adding a second level of comparison by
saying that a search engine is an accessory to stealing/robbery is just plain
ridiculous.

For some reason, I don't really worry too much about all of these regulations.
They will create speedbumps along the way, but the world will move on and come
up with more innovative ways to get what they want. If they don't change with
times, they will be uprooted eventually.

What Steve Jobs did was bring great technology and experience to masses faster
than most other people. All of this would have been created/invented anyway,
but it just would have taken a bit longer. All of these people only slow down
the progress (which is still pretty bad), but they won't be able to stop it.

~~~
dextorious
"""I generally don't like the use of a metaphor as an argument since it often
misses the point. Watching a movie without paying is not the same as stealing.
I cannot give it to someone else what I have watched, I can't sell it, etc."""

That same holds for stealing a pie and eating it. You cannot give it to
someone else or sell it.

You just decided on a specific, narrow, interpretation of "stealing".

~~~
Fargren
You are right in that example, but saying that downloading a file illegaly is
stealing is still wrong. It is an broad and overreaching definition of
"stealing".

Stealing is the substraction of an object. If I steal something from you, you
don't have it anymore. You lose it. If I pirate Avatar, you can still sell it
to someone else. If steal your car, its gone unless you get it back from me.

~~~
dextorious
I hear that argument a lot, but it's not consistent with how we actually use
"stealing". I think it's just a feel-good argument to justify that "no harm
was done" with downloading a file illegally.

For example, we say that "he stole the answers to the exam" --in this case,
too, the answers are still there, nobody lost them.

Here's what dictionary.com gives for steal:

1\. to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right,
especially secretly or by force: A pickpocket stole his watch. 2\. to
appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment. 3\.
to take, get, or win insidiously, surreptitiously, subtly, or by chance: He
stole my girlfriend.

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kermitthehermit
Let me check if I got this, just because they're ripping money off the film
industry and they must come up with results to justify the money they get into
their pockets, the country is supposed to give up on all freedoms and throw
the constitution to the trash?

I generally don't like violence or encourage it, but people who back things
like SOPA and PIPA really deserve a good beating.

We all saw how good the "great wall of China" proved to be. Protesters vanish
without a trace, people who dare to say anything online sometimes go to jail
or just vanish.

~~~
wanorris
> Protesters vanish without a trace

Didn't that just pass the Senate?

~~~
william42
Nope, that's an urban myth. The law explicitly contains language saying that
it doesn't override any previous laws on detention.

Don't trust things you see reblogged on tumblr, especially if they don't cite
sources.

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Natsu
"When the Chinese told Google that they had to block sites or they couldn't do
[business] in their country, they managed to figure out how to block sites."

And then they decided it was such a bad idea that they were going to _leave
the country_. Carrying this to the logical extension, if implemented, Google
would pack up and leave us for Canada.

Canada is already on the MPAA's naughty list, so....

~~~
vilya
I thought the Google leaving China thing was about government sponsored
attempts to hack them, not about blocking?

~~~
Natsu
There was that, too, but who knows which straw broke the camel's back?

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devs1010
The US seems to be taking the expressway already to becoming more like China
in terms of how the government relates to and deals with its citizens. This is
just the tip of the iceberg considering a lot of whats gone on in the last
decade in this country.

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iamandrus
I really hate how companies like the MPAA and RIAA exist. They care about
nothing but precious profit. Yeah, let's forget constitutional rights and free
speech, and censor the Internet to protect our product that can survive
without us. China's doing it! We have the technology!

~~~
politician
They exist so that their member companies can say unpopular things that aren't
directly attributed to them. It's like money laundering, but for speech.

~~~
mathrawka
Exactly, I think the media should recognize that the MPAA/RIAA consists of
companies, and actually attribute things said to the companies that
participate in the MPAA/RIAA. That way the people can see what these companies
really think about the world.

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HistoryInAction
MPAA, led by former Senator Chris Dodd

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reinhardt
_Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all
doubt._

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secretwhistle
Looks like Chris Dodd finally took Bono's advice:

"We’re the post office, they tell us; who knows what’s in the brown-paper
packages? But we know from America’s noble effort to stop child pornography,
not to mention China’s ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it’s
perfectly possible to track content. Perhaps movie moguls will succeed where
musicians and their moguls have failed so far, and rally America to defend the
most creative economy in the world, where music, film, TV and video games help
to account for nearly 4 percent of gross domestic product."

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/opinion/03bono.html?hp=...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/opinion/03bono.html?hp=&pagewanted=all)

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buff-a
_It's this sort of ridiculousness that makes it so difficult to take Dodd and
the MPAA seriously in these discussions._

Only if you are educated and rational. We, here, are _not_ the audience for
his remarks.

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AdamFernandez
I think it's great that he is making comments like this. It is such bad P.R.
that it only makes it easier to do away with SOPA. I hope he continues to make
these statements.

~~~
billpatrianakos
Carefully what you wish for. Get the right rep with the right amount of pull
in congress and they'll get a ton of support from the rest of our reps no
matter how asinine their statements are.

~~~
einhverfr
The GP is right though. Get the right rep with the right amount of pull in
Congress, and it will happen regardless of what is said. However I think the
statements being asinine make it easier to fight back and more costly for reps
to go along with it.

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glimcat
This is so far into WTF that I can't help being deeply suspicious that it's a
deliberate ploy of some sort. I just can't figure out what it would be
expected to accomplish.

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Havoc
If lemmings can jump off cliffs, why can't the MPAA Boss?

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2muchcoffeeman
Does anyone have a good explanation of the mentality of these media
organisations? There are good examples of how relaxing DRM and making it easy
to purchase content makes you shed loads of money. E.g iTunes Music Store.

Why aren't they just concentrating on how to make more money? Are these
actions really more productive than acquiring more customers?

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nextparadigms
This kind of flies in the face of what Hillary Clinton was saying today.

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billpatrianakos
The problem is that we have ten thousand year old representatives. They
probably still do accounting using an abacus (or demand that their account use
one).

All joking aside, we're talking about people who can barely use a computer
debating laws governing the use of the very technology they haven't slightest
clue about. As long as our representatives continue thinking that the Internet
is a series of tubes we'll continue to hear this sort of thing from them.

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rsanchez1
"If the Chinese censor the Internet, why can't the US?"

Because we have constitutionally guaranteed liberties, which are ingrained
into our culture. Ever heard of the first amendment, moron?

~~~
white_devil
Your government is a government just like the one in China. There are cultural
differences, of course, but both governments are run by human beings.

It's not that the US government _couldn't_ behave like China's - so far
they've just chosen not to go quite that far. They seem to be on their way
though.

~~~
billpatrianakos
This whole discussion of the US in general has got me thinking but your
comment specifically really stood out to me. I know that these measures suck
and all but is the US government _really_ becoming as evil as people say?

If you at things historically you'll find people worrying that the US
government is/was becoming tyrannical since the year our constitution was
adopted. While I agree that the current Internet censorship debate should be
taken seriously and I don't want any of these proposed laws to pass, if you
take the long view you'll find that the history of the US is all about a
series of battles for freedom. Some we win, some we lose but overall we've
been heading in the right direction for a long time. It sounds silly but this
can be likened to the posts that pop up on HN from time to time about how it's
getting diluted and becoming lame. Some days trolls and idiots rule the day,
others the smart folks take control and in general the community and their
contributions have remained high quality since its inception.

So let's fight the good fight but maybe not go down the whole "this country is
becoming the next [insert unpopular regime here]" road. Yesterday always seems
like it was better than today, hindsight is 20/20, the grass is always
greener, and all that.

~~~
nextparadigms
I don't know - the nullification of the 4th Amendment thanks to the Patriot
Act, and the recently voted 93-7 NDAA law that allows US military to arrest
American citizens indefinitely without due process, is a pretty good start for
totalitarianism don't you think?

And please don't use the argument "but if you didn't do anything wrong, then
you have nothing to fear" because that completely misses the point.

~~~
billpatrianakos
No, I would never use the "if you didn't do anything wrong" argument. I'm not
defending these messed up laws at all. I think they're awful like everyone
else. All I'm saying is that if you take the long view you kind of see a
pattern. People always feel like the past was better despite evidence to the
contrary if you look at it. What I'm against is hyperbole. The country
_always_ seems to be going to hell but is it really? Things have gotten better
overall. Women's rights, abolishment of slavery, civil rights movement. There
are always these restrictive laws that come about and awful circumstances but
in the end things get better. We had a terrible financial collapse and out of
that was born Occupy Wall St. Maybe that movement will be the one that helps
us move forward on the economic front just as those of us who are against
internet censorship may, in the end, save freedom online. I just don't believe
things are as bad as many would have us believe.

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hastur
If the MPAA boss is a retard, why don't we isolate him in a mental
institution?

~~~
dextorious
You really think your comment is above retard level?

