And the gauntlet's been thrown.

[psybelle]

MPAA threatens politicians:

"Those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake..."

This is a "Dear Hollywood, it is not ok to not know how the internet works" moment. Hollywood can "buy" legislators, spend for influence. But money cannot hold back technology, and there will always be too many people willing to ignore stupid laws, and too many smart people willing to actively undermine unreasonable laws - the powers you thought you bought cannot find them all, much less arrest all of them.



Also, Does anybody doubt that we need campaign-financing reform? I love this, think I'm going to print it out and send it, along with a paper letter, to DiFi's office.

Comments

[elf]

Did Hollywood... just say "we've been bribing you for years and since that's no longer buying votes, we're going to stop?"

Through linky-stuff, I ran across something about the definition of "bribery" in DC, and it was pretty clearly money-for-influence. (Article was about the potential legality of buying individual votes, like paying someone $50 to vote for your candidate of choice. Conclusion was that the law's a bit blurry about that; the bribery laws were written aimed at public servants, not individual voters.)

And I wondered if Hollywood's just gone public with an announcement that they EXPECT their financing to buy votes or at least influence. Which seems like they're admitting to bribery.

[psybelle]

Yup - that's exactly what the MPAA is doing - making a public statement that they expect their boughten politicians to stay bought.