Hollywood Kills Republicans' Copyright Reform | Hacker News Reader

Hollywood Kills Republicans' Copyright Reform

techdirt.com

129 pointsmikegirouard16 comments

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Contact information for Representative Jim Jordan, Chairman of the RSC:

WASHINGTON, DC OFFICE 1524 Longworth House Office Bldg Washington, D.C. 20515 T (202) 225-2676 F (202) 226-0577

MANSFIELD OFFICE 24 West Third Street, Room 314 Mansfield, OH 44902 T (419) 522-5757 F (419) 525-2805

LIMA OFFICE 3121 West Elm Plaza Lima, OH 45805 T (419) 999-6455 F (419) 999-4238

FINDLAY OFFICE 100 East Main Cross, Suite 101 Findlay, OH 45840 T (419) 423-3210 F (419) 423-3233

This was a daring move, and daring moves aren't smart in politics unless one knows one has a groundswell of support from underneath.

The memo's author is on Twitter and talking about the subject.

https://twitter.com/dkhanna11

Original article discussed here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4797036

Now redacted paper cached here: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:i9i2ChY...

The author provides nothing whatsoever to back his claim that Hollywood had anything to do with this.

A quick 180 like that seems rather odd to me, whatever the reason, and I can't imagine that Hollywood would have been happy with that document.

The article is right about at least one thing: Even without any evidence about what's going on behind the scenes, most people will assume the RSC came under pressure from copyright holders and caved almost instantly.

We're left with the impression that either they're truly incompetent or they're so embarrassed by their actions that they've tried to spin them as incompetence. Whatever they might have gained with that report is now lost unless they repost it in short-order and Paul Teller falls on his sword and resigns.

Ars Technica has a source who is supposedly close to the RSC who also says that lobbyist pressure helped to kill the report: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/influential-gop-g....

They also make some good points about different groups within the GOP arguing over this.

Note the report has been pulled, supposedly because it didn't get "adequate review", but not specifically opposed/contradicted.

It could be back in some form, maybe watered-down. And the mere fact that some portion of the group was ready to advocate this direction suggests the range of views we'll see from individual legislators will grow. (Some will embrace this agenda even if the study group itself doesn't.)

When did Hollywood become more powerful than a major political party? I wonder how they managed to persuade them to take it down..

I would guess it's not purely Hollywood. There are a lot of copyright-maximalist companies with ties across the political spectrum, some of whom the GOP probably is worried about antagonizing, even if Hollywood itself is mostly irrelevant to them. Republican-aligned examples that come to mind are the Rupert Murdoch empire (Murdoch is so copyright-maximalist he even thinks Google News should be considered copyright infringement) and the country music industry. Disney seems to be donating mainly to Republicans in recent years as well, though some Googling suggests some of that may relate to local resort-business politics (they've been lobbying against casinos in Florida).

Money. Everyone and everything has a price.

Well, let's put it this way: former senator Chris Dodd, speaking as the chief of the MPAA, basically said that Hollywood expects to see certain policies enacted in exchange for all the money they donate to politicians (he was referring to SOPA). If you need to ask how the companies who give Americans their moral lessons and who keep Americans distracted, the companies whose depiction of American life became a symbol of hope for oppressed Soviet citizens, the companies who help enforce the notion that there are only two parties to choose from could possibly be more powerful than any one party...

I would argue that Disney alone is more powerful than either political party. It's pretty well known that the copyright extensions have happened in such a way as to keep the movie Steamboat Willie (and therefore Mikey Mouse) under copyright.

http://www.tomwbell.com/images/(C)Term&MMCurve.gif

The election is over. Just saying.

I'm curious how the feedback mechanism will work. Too bad the EFF and Google lobbyists didn't "go crazy" and counter the Hollywood ones.

Q: Is this what they call a "Hollywood ending"? =) =| =/

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