MPAA Strategized On How To 'Tell The Positive Side' Of Internet Censorship

from the incredible dept

Back in December, when the Sony emails first leaked, we wrote a detailed post about the bizarre views of the MPAA on site blocking, in that it was absolutely obsessed with putting site blocking in place while admitting it didn’t understand the technical issues. That was based on the reporting done by some reporters who had seen a few of the emails. Now that Wikileaks has released the entire trove, we can discover some more details, like the fact that part of the MPAA’s plan was to figure out how to create pro-censorship propaganda. It really is incredible, but that’s a bulletpoint in an email from the MPAA’s top lawyer, Steven Fabrizio, about part of the strategy at a “site blocking confab” the major studios held last fall:

Outreach to academics, think tanks and other third parties to foster the publication of research papers, white papers and other articles that tell the positive story of site blocking: e.g., it is commonplace around the world and working smoothly; it has not broken the internet; it is not incompatible with DNSSEC; it is effective; legitimate sites/content have not been blocked; etc.

Think about that for a second. The MPAA, which likes to declare itself one of the foremost defenders of free speech, was literally conspiring on how to create propaganda in favor of censorship, pointing to countries that already censor the web as “good examples” to follow. You’d think they would have learned from the time Bono tried to use China’s censorship as an example of how to deal with copyright infringement what a ridiculous idea this is.

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Companies: mpaa

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Comments on “MPAA Strategized On How To 'Tell The Positive Side' Of Internet Censorship”

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22 Comments
Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

Does Mel Gibson’s history of bigotry and domestic violence make him an unskilled director

Does Bill Cosby being a serial rapist make him an unskilled comedian?

Does Ty Cobb’s “surly temperament, racism, and aggressive playing style” make him an unskilled baseball player?

This is not a difficult concept to grasp unless you’re a tard prone to black-and-white thinking.

Jair says:

I find this rather unsurprising, though still depressing, given that this and so many other bad things and ideas come from an industry whose entire profession is basically about playing the biggest and most elaborate children’s game of pretend in existence in thousands of different ways and styles. Reality just doesn’t seem to even exist there, only make believe. Which may actually explain a lot.

DannyB (profile) says:

Tell the positive side

Tell the positive side of ‘censorship’.
Tell the positive side of ‘totalitarian regimes’.
Tell the positive side of ‘disease’.
Tell the positive side of ‘death’.

For censorship, you don’t have to hear anything the censorer doesn’t want you to year. (Is that actually good?)

For totalitarian regimes, the trains run on time. (If they are running.)

For disease, it increases commerce and profits of those who profit from diagnosing and treating disease.

For death, it reduces use of limited planetary resources for the rest of use.

A twisted Pollyanna can probably find an up side to just about anything. That doesn’t mean the any of the above listed things are desirable.

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