from Hacker News

MPAA's Chris Dodd Calls SOPA Defeat a 'Watershed Event'

by danberger on 1/24/12, 1:09 PM with 47 comments

• by hxa7241 on 1/24/12, 1:51 PM

  Their interest is not 'having a conversation'. They have degenerated into monopolists. Let us clarify the game they play:

  One year they lobby government to strengthen enforcement. They say: piracy means they are not getting what the law says is their due. (it sounds almost reasonable!)

  The next year they lobby government to expand copyright. That is: they are deciding for themselves what is their due.

  Far from the general public interest, and, indeed, plainly very far from the free market.

• by jrockway on 1/24/12, 2:24 PM

  I like how he thinks that Netflix and Redbox are also ripping him off. It's like he expects each person who sees the movie to pay for the entire production. Anything less is ruining the industry.

  I disagree with this, though. I think it should be legally required for everyone to pay for the movie, regardless of whether or not they see it. That way, nobody can steal his hard work!!

• by Newgy on 1/24/12, 2:12 PM

  Classic Chris Dodd. Obvious outcomes -- like the 2008 financial crisis, which occurred on his watch as Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee-- are "watershed" and heretofore "never seen before." This way, he can escape responsibility for the role his own actions played in creating the mess.

• by emehrkay on 1/24/12, 2:06 PM

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Dodd

  In office for 36 years, the first thing he does when he goes private is to lobby for a law nobody wants on behalf of his new employer. What happened to Obama's promise to stop this?

• by esmevane on 1/24/12, 5:24 PM

  I want to share my results of a tertiary topic on this thread: Adam Lipsius claiming that hundreds of thousands of pirated copies of "16-LOVE" had destroyed his chances of profiting from the film.

  A Google of Adam Lipsius returned his IMDB page, his Facebook page, a few videos about 16-LOVE, and no Wikipedia article. I followed his IMDB page and discovered he has participated on the producer + director level of several films. He is said to be 'known for' The People vs. Larry Flynt and Men in Black, but was involved only in the sound of those films.

  16-LOVE produces similar results: virtually nothing on Wikipedia or IMDB. Its IMDB article says it is similar to films such as "Zookeeper", and is rated at around 5 stars. Completely distinct from the IMDB results, RT claims it is 100% fresh with 39 reviews. It was directed by and produced by Mr. Lipsius.

  Conspicuously absent in my searches were any torrent offerings.

  ---

  Here's what I think:

  I think 16-LOVE was not a popular film, and just plain didn't do well. I don't think piracy had anything to do with it.

  My opinion is that generally you will find the noisiest, most entitled, belligerent users amongst the ranks of the free. They didn't pay for it, and so there is literally no skin in the game to persuade them to like it.

  I contend that if, indeed, hundreds of thousands of people had illegally downloaded this film, there would be much, much more evidence of its existence available through Google - the same exact route I would have found torrents, by the way.

  I think it was just an unknown film, with no publicity, and maybe - hell, probably - it would have done far better if it had been offered through a more direct, easily-accessible avenue.

• by spodek on 1/24/12, 3:00 PM

  The MPAA knows watershed events, alright.

  I'm still waiting for the VCR to destroy movies, as his predecessor, Jack Valenti, predicted: "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."

• by RyanMcGreal on 1/24/12, 2:20 PM

  Another 'watershed moment' in American politics is Dodd's shameless and unapologetic shakedown of the US Congress for not staying bought.

  http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/01/19/exclusive-hollywo...

• by jinushaun on 1/24/12, 1:57 PM

  "There was some back and forth about how best to combat piracy, with some in the audience advocating a strategy that supplies more content in new, affordable avenues to undercut the temptation to steal, and Fithian arguing that cheap-prices-up-front approaches such as Netflix streaming and $1 Redbox kiosks are "bad business models.""

  Clueless

• by waterlesscloud on 1/24/12, 2:19 PM

  There's a business opportunity in this article.

  At the end they talk about digital-to-the-theater distribution and indie filmmakers hooking up with indie theaters.

  A marketplace portal that facilitated that connection on a global basis could do well for itself.

  A lot of schlepping, but a very viable market.

• by waterlesscloud on 1/24/12, 1:13 PM

  I very, very seriously doubt the film 16-Love was robbed of "hundreds of thousands" of viewers through piracy.

  You can't complain about misinformation on the other side and then trot out something like that.

• by gregd on 1/24/12, 2:52 PM

  I love how Dodd seems to extricate himself from his own statements, "the white noise has made it impossible to have a conversation about this," he said. "We've gotta find a better way to have that conversation than we have in the last two weeks."

  It's as if his head isn't attached to his mouth, which I think goes for a lot of current politicians. Bringing them all down a staff of notches is entirely in order, lest they forget they represent the "people".

• by math_is_life on 1/24/12, 1:42 PM

  I hate when they just pull these numbers out of their ass. I can agree that they lose money (even though I feel it is necessary to force them to innovate), but they are just creating random figures of things that would have never happened. It would be like Michael Bay coming out claiming Transformers lost 250 million dollars because of piracy.

• by djhworld on 1/24/12, 2:11 PM

  Has it actually been defeated though? I'm not that well versed in what's been going on, but the last time I read about it they just said the bill had been shelved after public outcry

  Shelved surely means they'll pick it up later and push it through discreetly?

• by ChristianMarks on 1/24/12, 2:37 PM

  It's more like a river basin event. My fervent hope is that Dodd draws upon his years of experience weakening the economy to weaken Hollywood to the point of collapse. Hollywood should figure out how to protect its products if this is important to them, instead of demanding that Internet service providers figure it out for them and pay for the privilege.

• by squarecat on 1/24/12, 5:07 PM

  MY EYES! Thank you, Clearly... http://www.evernote.com/clearly/

• by orenmazor on 1/24/12, 4:27 PM

  why does he make "…communicate and organize directly with the public…" sound like such a bad thing?

• by funkah on 1/24/12, 2:11 PM

  There is no conversation to be had. They're just gonna keep pulling this shit until they pass what they want to pass.