Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales: MPAA chairman Christopher Dodd should be fired | Hacker News Reader

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales: MPAA chairman Christopher Dodd should be fired

venturebeat.com

167 pointsukdm35 comments

It could be wise to fire Dodd just to allow the MPAA to continue making contributions without risking interpretation as a quid pro quo.

From the Hobbs Act: "It is important to note, however, that it is irrelevant whether the public official in fact intended to hold up his or her end of the bargain--it is enough that the official had knowledge of the payor's intent to buy official acts."

Supreme Count statement in McCormick v United States (1991): "The receipt of such contributions is also vulnerable under the Act as having been taken under color of official right, but only if the payments are made in return for an explicit promise or undertaking by the official to perform or not to perform an official act."

For example, consider Case 4 (http://books.google.com/books?id=gJY-i4QHHC8C&lpg=PR7...) which is very similar to Dodd's, and which Lowenstein argues might be considered bribery under the Hobbs Act, in light of McCormick v United States.

An (opinionated) editorial on the topic: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0606.birnbaum...

The White House petition to investigate him and MPAA for bribery has also been completed (25,000 signatures in 3 days), so at the very least maybe this will hasten his resignation:

https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/investigate...

“I hope to see … a window of opportunity for Hollywood to come to the table and talk to Silicon Valley with a little more humility.”

I couldn't help smile at this comment from Jimmy Wales - it really does show there's been a power shift. It's the kind of tone that will have some Hollywood stakeholders foaming at the mouth.

Humility not a exactly any wikipedians strong suit is it.

Not as crazy as it sounds - he's saying Dodd essentially told the members of Congress not to expect any more campaign funding from Hollywood if they didn't play ball.

I'm pretty sure it's bad form for a former senator to tell members of congress to vote one way, or lose funding from his lobby group. Especially if he says it on the public record.

The way I understand it, the Citizens United decision made that type of bribery completely legal.

That's not what the Citizens United decision says at all. It allows Super PACs to collect unlimited donations to run campaign ads supporting or opposing specific candidates. That may open the door to corruption in a certain sense, but it doesn't allow quid pro quo on active legislation.

That's not quite correct, actually. Citizens United overturned a part of a law that prohibited corporations and unions from spending their money on "electioneering communications" (generally defined as communications advocating for or against a specific candidate) within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. The decision is not about PACs or limitations on their ability to raise funds, though PACs certainly benefited from the ruling.

> It allows Super PACs to collect unlimited donations to run campaign ads supporting or opposing specific candidates. That may open the door to corruption in a certain sense, but it doesn't allow quid pro quo on active legislation.

If the Citizens United decision did not allow Super PACs to talk about supporting or opposing candidates based on their actions with regard to particular legislation, then I was wrong. But that would mean Dodd committed a particularly egregious violation of the law in public. I don't think he would do that, and I think you were wrong to say I was wrong.

Bad form nevertheless. We should be outraged still.

This quote from Christopher Dodd, heard on NPR the day after the blackout, really irked me: "It sort of reminds me of kids who can't get their way hold their breath and start screaming, instead of engaging with the debate and providing information, encouraging a discussion on how this can be improved. It just seems petulant to me."

I wonder what he thinks of strikes, boycotts and public demonstrations, I guess they are all childish too.

Actually a lot of people in the USA think strikes, boycotts and demonstrations are stupid. They look at the huge number of strikes in e.g. France and don't understand how the French get anything done. And then they whine that the government doesn't listen to them.

Don't mind him. When we initially tried to engage with the debate, his side figuratively stuck their fingers in their ears and said "na-na-na I can't hear you!" He's not interested in having a debate, he just wants to treat us like children (and have the government spy on our every move to make sure we're not doing anything the MPAA disapproves of.)

Fire him? Heck no! He does the country a service by being open and up front about the legal bribery that runs Congress.

I think more CEOs, lobbyists and other influencers should be this upfront, it would go a long way towards teaching Civics 102.

Speak up!

Check out this "We The People," petition.

https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/investigate...

The nation agrees with Wales!

It's great that this petition reached threshold in two days, but it would have been nice if it had less than two spelling errors in the title.

When MPAA bribes members of the congress, the foremost concern should be that congress is corrupt, not MPAA. It's a whole different level.

Agreed. As an engineer when a vendor wants me to pick their product over another they try to "sweeten" the deal to make it seem like they're the right choice. It is my ethical duty to refuse the cherry on top and accept what's best for my employer at face value. Why can we not expect those working "for the public" cannot share such practices?

I didn't like their mischaracterization of the issues: SOPA and PIPA, two almost-dead pieces of legislation that would give the U.S. government and copyright holders the authority to seek court orders against foreign websites associated with infringing intellectual property.

It's not the court orders that were the issue here - it was the entirely extrajudicial ability to shut a site down merely on a copyright holder's say-so. And not just foreign sites!

"10 million people contacted Congress, Wales said. “That’s not an abuse of power, that’s democracy,” he said. “[Dodd] had best get used to it.”

Quoted for truth!

fired? No, he is doing everything he's been hired to do.

Getting him and MPAA prosecuted/fined by the DoJ for his remarks that amounted to admission of bribery? You betcha

I don't think the MPAA would fire Dodd for these comments that make them out to be a corrupt Congress-buying organization, because that is what the MPAA is, and it's how they want to be perceived.

I think we're still far, far from an endgame, and the MPAA and the like will be trying probably ever more under-the-table moves, as they are now quite aware of the number of eyes (and the capital behind some of those eyes) that are glaring at them.

Frankly, firing Dodd would do nothing. Dismantling the MPAA, the RIAA, BREIN, et al would be a good first step. Next is helping along the "Megabox" idea to come to fruition (maybe Last.fm or some new player will take up that baton) and see if we can't just pummel the Big COntent dinosaurs into a gristled, historical footnote.

It would have been nice if the article had provided the actual quote where Wales said Dodd should be fired.

Dodd's no longer a politician and lobbying isn't illegal. If the MPAA thinks Dodd isn't effective, maybe they should fire him. But they won't let him go because he put his foot in his mouth and highlighted how the political process usually works.

They should fire Dodd because his lobbying wasn't effective. He threw money around and thought his old buddy-buddy tactics were going to be enough to beat the Internet Rage Machine.

It's a sea-change, and Chris Dodd just got left behind in the 20th Century.

I'd be more than happy if they kept an ineffective lobbyist on the payroll. Why would we want them to fire a guy who's lousy and get someone better?

> "Dodd's no longer a politician and lobbying isn't illegal."

But it is if Dodd does it. At least for another year.

Though I concur that Dodd's not going anywhere. Worst case, they take him off the public stage and let him do his lobbying in private.

Fired? Who really cares? But investigated for congressional bribery? Definitely.

About 5 years ago I predicted that one day watching videos on the internet would become so difficult that youtube and other video hosting sites would be useless as a reliable storage medium. I bought a TB drive and kept all videos that have touched me over the last 5 years. Many of those videos are nowhere to be found anywhere with a simple Google query, no matter how much searching you do.

In a sense, Hollywood has already won, the greatest tool on the planet has been greatly damaged, it is not reliable enough for me to use as a place to store things which I find very useful and want to keep for reference 5 and 10 years later. When I stop breathing one day, the vast wealth of knowledge I have accumulated with video evidence as backup will vanish into the night with me on my X TB drive. Because I won't be able to say: "Here, this video solves all of your problems, but it's been copyrighted, I'll stick it on a thumb drive for you."

Internet video is becoming a treasure trove of information, and people want to take out all the good bits, put a giant wall around the good bits and charge cash money for it. Destroying the original intent of the internet. We need tools to bring back what the internet was... A symphony of thought, energy and freedom where you can post music, video, audio, lectures, comics, ANYTHING. Those days are gone. Now you will only be able to post these things if they are irrelevant and childish, filling the internet with banalities. Passing power right back to the content providers. The internet is under attack, and they have half won.

Well I agree with you. It's a tragedy that the overwhelming majority of good video ever recorded can't be found on video streaming sites because of copyright and can't be found through torrents because torrents are only really good at keeping popular content alive.

What we need to do is popularise something like I2P or GNUnet and make it accessible to regular users. Then it can form the platform for the next generation of culture-sharing websites.

Videos not available? Really? I stopped storing videos, because they are so readily available. What kind of videos are you storing?

Same here. I now delete videos after watching them because I know that if I want to watch them again in future they're just a quick download away.

'Sex, Lies and Aliens' - a documentary.

(http://www.drg.tv/ProgramDetails.aspx?ProgramDetail=10596)

(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0265734/)

There was a wonderful mashup on Youtube of three different 40-year old Francoise Hardy videos each singing her hit "Voila."

Each of them had their own merits, but together, with modern editing and syncing to the best available recording, it was one of the most beautiful music videos I've ever seen.

It's sadly not available anymore in the U.S. I regret not keeping a copy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com