He's taking this lame duck thing a little far
A few weeks ago, I wrote that President George W. Bush’s administration, particularly the Justice Department, had expressed opposition to anti-piracy legislation that would create a new cabinet-level “intellectual property czar.” In addition to that, it would also give the Justice Department the power to bring civil lawsuits against pirates, which to this point has been handled in civil courts by the copyright-holders themselves. At the time, I praised Bush as finally doing something right, even though the only reason his administration would be against something like this was for purely ideological reasons (i.e. not creating more government bureaucracy and having taxpayer-funded legal cases).
Well, looks like I spoke too soon. Yesterday, Bush signed the bill into law with one important distinction – the provision giving the DOJ the power to bring civil cases against pirates has been excised. The bill will still, however, create the “intellectual property czar,” which the department feels undermines its authority.
Rick Cotton, general counsel for NBC Universal, said the bill would give movie and music makers more tools to fight what he called a “tidal wave” of counterfeiting and piracy of everything from medical devices to automobile parts to media by organized crime.
“That is at the core of what this discussion is about,” he said. “It is not about teenagers.”
Counterfeiting of medical devices and auto parts in addition to digital media? I don’t believe that for one damned minute. If that were the case, how come the bodies pushing for this bill to pass were the RIAA and MPAA? Where was the American Medical Association? Automakers? Anybody not involved in the entertainment industry? The claim that this “is not about teenagers” is completely false. Teenagers, particularly college students, are among the heaviest pirates of music, movies and television. This is squarely aimed at them – for every Jammie Thomas being sued by the RIAA, there are dozens of college students getting cease and desist letters every month.
Most of all, though, this is exactly the kind of bureaucracy we don’t need right now. This country is already strapped for cash, borrowing billions upon trillions (God, it sounds so ridiculous to say that), and the government wants to throw more money at enforcing something essentially impossible to police? If we even had the money to begin with, this would be an irresponsible waste of federal money. But that’s just the problem – we don’t have the money. If we’re going to spend even more money, throw the deficit further out of whack, and perhaps borrow even more from overseas, the last thing all this damned money needs to be going toward is fighting digital piracy. The fact that the government wants to create a new cabinet position and throw money down the toilet in an un-winnable war against piracy shows just how misplaced the government’s priorities are at the moment.
It’s really staggering if you think about it. Could you imagine if that $700 billion bailout money had gone toward education? Infrastructure? Social Security? Health care? Anything but Wall Street? It never ceases to amaze me that, if their friends are in trouble, the government will quickly pony up untold amounts of money to help them out while kids languish in failing schools learning how to take a standardized test. And this is just the latest example – Democrats count the entertainment industry among their largest donors, so they need to keep them happy. All I know is the next time I hear people claim that a universal health care system or an overhauled education system would be too expensive, I’m going to point right at that bailout bill. It sure was easy to find $700 billion to help AIG throw some parties. Why can’t we do the same for components of our country that are in disrepair? I guess the record industry being in disrepair matters a whole lot more to our so-called representative government.
And lastly, consider this: Barack Obama could win the youth vote in this election by as much as 35%. Young voters are one of the big reasons that Obama could win this election in a landslide, as millions upon millions have registered to vote Democrat this year. McCain is all for trying wild stunts to get ahead in the polls, so why not try this one: come out against file-sharing legislation. It’s that simple. Say that you think all these measures to fight piracy are overblown, expensive, and only serve to intimidate consumers and drive them further into piracy. Sure, it wouldn’t please Hollywood, but are they actually going to support McCain anyway? Yeah, I know it’s a wild proposal. But hell, so is trying to slam Obama with ties to Bill Ayers, whose criminal acts occurred when Obama was six. You have to wonder how many young and/or apathetic voters McCain could sway with a platform like that.
And before you call it an irrational single issue to vote on, remember that millions of people in this country vote solely on issues like abortion, gay marriage, gun control, a candidate’s religion, and so on and so forth. File-sharing is no more or less a pointless “hot-button issue” than any of those.
Bush signs controversial anti-piracy law [Reuters]
man, i’m shocked.
By: will on October 14, 2008
at 7:21 pm