Chris Dodd on Blackout Day

Former senator Christopher J. Dodd, now chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, issued a statement in response to the Web Blackout Day protest. Blackout Day is an effort by some of the World Wide Web community to call attention to badly written legislation pending in the U.S. Congress that could, if abused, permit censorship of sites alleged to permit access to pirated content. (Visit fightforthefuture.org for more info on the legislation, which you might have heard about under its acronyms "SOPA" and "PIPA" or "Protect IP".)

Dodd's angry.

Only days after the White House and chief sponsors of the legislation responded to the major concern expressed by opponents and then called for all parties to work cooperatively together, some technology business interests are resorting to stunts that punish their users or turn them into their corporate pawns, rather than coming to the table to find solutions to a problem that all now seem to agree is very real and damaging.

Who are you, Mr. Voice Of The MPAA, to be calling anybody a "corporate pawn"?

Oh, and to which "chief sponsors of the legislation" do you refer? I haven't heard squat from Rep. Lamar Smith, chief sponsor of the House bill. Sen. Patrick Leahy has expressed only condescension for his Senate bill's detractors:

Perhaps if these companies would participate constructively, they could point to what in the actual legislation they contend threatens their websites, and then we could dispel their misunderstandings. That is what debate on legislation is intended to do, to fine-tune the bill to confront the problem of stealing while protecting against unintended consequences.

Of course, he ignores Congress' refusal to hear from the bill's opponents (see below).

But again, Chris, do enlighten us: before Sen. Marco Rubio and a few others only today (today!) expressed their reservations or explicitly reversed their prior support for these bills, who, exactly, "responded" to opponents?

Congress so far has done exactly jack and shit to educate itself on the potential technological and legal fallout of the pending legislation, as Josh Kopelstein reported in December. His account vividly portrays elected representatives as not merely ignorant of the Internet's technological underpinnings (forgiveable), but as totally uninterested in becoming informed about them (not forgiveable). In the face of a resolute refusal to understand just what the hell they were legislating into existence, it was not merely appropriate, but absolutely necessary, to throw cold water into our elected officials' collective face. Thus, Blackout Day. And without Blackout Day, do you think Sen. Rubio or anyone else would have taken a second look? You'd think, for instance, that Sen. Rubio would have taken the time to understand the bill before he decided to co-sponsor it -- and yet, here he is, withdrawing his support. Evidently it took that dash of cold water.

Dodd continues:

It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use their services. It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today. It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests.

As opposed to content providers intentionally skewing the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests?

Please. Sen. Dodd, that was a particularly foolish thing to say. You don't represent some little guy about to be squashed by Big Bad Corporate Interests: you represent Big Bad Corporate Interests who have a well-publicized history of excessive zeal in squashing actual little guys.

The fact that Dodd and the MPAA have stubbornly refused to climb down from their haughty perch and acknowledge the fatal flaws in the legislation they played such a big part in crafting shows how absolutely untrustworthy they are on this subject. Whether they're as ignorant as some of our elected representatives or they're simply evil, they cannot be trusted to find solutions to the problem of unauthorized access to content by themselves.

As Fight for the Future's educational video reminds us, Big Content is the same bunch that fought to make the videocassette recorder and the MP3 player illegal. Yes, creators need to be paid. However, they can't be allowed to run the whole show. To quote from the video:

How far will they take all this? The answer at this point is obvious:

As far as we'll let them.

Until Dodd and the MPAA prove that they give two figs and a damn about anyone else in the fight to protect Big Content (and we're talking about big content providers, not little folk), they have no moral standing to protest or to lecture.

[UPDATE: Changed reference from "Lamar Alexander" to the correct "Lamar Smith"; my apologies to Sen. Alexander.]