FC: "I'm Alright Jack" -- a look at MPAA's fitness to sell morality

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[As always, I will provide the MPAA with a chance to reply. Also I'm still 
going through the backlog of Politech messages from the last five days, 
including some more on Noah Shachtman's Los Alamos trip. I've been delayed 
a bit since I was out of town for a few days... did a road trip to a 
concert in Greensboro, NC on Saturday. --Declan]

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Subject: i'm alright jack - a look at mpaa's fitness to sell morality
Date: tue, 4 mar 2003 20:38:45 -0800
From: "clinton d. fein" <clinton.fein () apollomedia com>
To: <declan () well com>

Hey Declan:

Below is an excerpt from the latest Annoy.com editorial about Jack
Valenti and the MPAA's audacity in appealing to moral values to protect
its right to sneak government protections into terrorism legislation.

Politech readers may be interested, although there's nothing much about
Valenti that hasn't been said by Politech members before. Perhaps just
the imagery!

I'm Alright Jack
Annoy.com
March 5, 2003
http://www.annoy.com/editorials/doc.html?DocumentID=100465

[excerpt]

Lobbying organizations, such as the MPAA and RIAA, which used the fear
and uncertainty from terrorist attacks to sneak in legislation tying the
profits of the movie and recording industries to an egregious
abridgement of civil liberties deserve nothing but derision. For an aged
representative of that contingent to stand up and talk about moral
compacts, and disdainfully dismiss technologies that, like it or not,
have revolutionized communications globally and, like it or not,
represent real, functional file swapping technologies - not "so-called"
ones -- is beyond contempt.

Jack Valenti's very presence and theologically tinged, highfalutin
approach seems to resonate as successfully with the majority of those
using this technology as a nude Hilary Rosen pin-up in a RIAA Swimsuit
Edition might.

"They know they can find themselves in big-ass trouble if they're
caught," exclaims Valenti, expounding why would-be-leaders don't steal
movies from Blockbuster, but have no problem downloading media. After
all, what self respecting "thief" or "pirate" -- as Valenti terms every
evil file-swapper regardless of whether they're infringing copyrights --
hasn't downloaded mega hits like songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike
Stoller's "On Broadway" or bootlegs of "Walk Like an Egyptian"?

[/excerpt]
_____________________________________

Clinton Fein
Editor & Publisher
Annoy.com
555 Florida Street, Suite 407
San Francisco, CA 94110
Phone: 415-552-7655
Fax: 415-552-7656
http://annoy.com
_____________________________________ 




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