Chamblee54

As you may have heard, SOPA was in the news last week. There was a massive internet protest, and Congress announced they would not push for passage. In a possibly coincidental move, a file distribution service, Megaupload, was busted. It turns out that the government already has the power many were afraid of. As with the forfeiture laws used against drug users, the assets were seized upon indictment, not conviction.
Kim Dotcom , the boss of Megaupload, is not a very sympathetic character. There are indications that he knew, and profited from, illegal use of his site. This is again similar to the way that forfeiture laws were first used against drug dealers, many of whom are not nice people. The government starts to take things from unpopular people, and then moves on to you.
Julian Sanchez has a piece about how companies like Megaupload work. It is what is called “cloud” computing. Instead of having files on a stationary hard drive, you put them on a “cloud”, which is available anywhere. Companies like Megaupload are the servers for this “cloud”. In this case, the files stored on Megaupload were seized by the government. If you had your “cloud” there, your files are lost. It doesn’t matter if you are a legal file user. The good get punished along with the bad, without a day in court. This does not look good for the future of “cloud” computing.
As you may imagine, there is a lot of pixelage devoted to this issue at the moment. Glenn Greenwald has a few thousand words, very few of which are reassuring. Pure Film Creative offers a bit of common sense, before telling you much more than you want to know about Marky Mark. Huffington Post has an article about the failure of the bills, along with a tidbit that has escaped the public.
It is no secret that these internet regulation measures are supported by the entertainment industry. Hollywood, meanwhile, was going all-in on the airwaves. Motion Picture Association of America Chairman Chris Dodd, a former Democratic Senator from Connecticut, even threatened to cutoff campaign donations to Democrats if the bill didn’t get a hearing. “Candidly, those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake,” Dodd said in an interview with Fox News . “Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake.”
This is what happens when people leave Congress. They go across the street to represent the industries they once pretended to regulate. Even if they are “liberal democrats” like Chris Dodd. When it comes to serving their corporate masters, a liberal former Senator will go talk to Fox News. One day people will learn that the words liberal and conservative mean nothing.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. These images are in the public domain, unless the laws have been changed.