Many of the old hands in Hollywood were backing the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). However, the heavyweights of the internet branded the law as a form of censorship and now people are up in arms about the legislation.
“It seems that Hollywood still does not realize that it is in the information age. Knowledge moves in real time, and events move accordingly. The medium is the message in a fight like this.” writes Sharon Waxman. “Five days ago, almost nobody knew or cared about SOPA. But with lightning speed, the leviathans of the Internet, including Google and Facebook and Wikipedia, managed to brand this battle as Bad and mobilize millions of followers.”
“By Wednesday morning as Wikipedia went dark, the SOPA is Censorship message was on the cover and home page of every news outlet around the country. By midday, four senators and one member of Congress had backed off the legislation,” she notes. “What was Hollywood doing By midday the MPAA sent a press release – a press release! – with background information that offered the following: ”The PROTECT IP Act: Combating Online Infringement; Creating American Jobs, Promoting America’s Economy, Protecting American Consumers.’ Are you kidding me I’m not saying Chris Dodd did a great job speaking out on the subject (he didn’t), but honestly – that’s not how you reach people today.”
The MPAA didn’t leverage any of its various talented actors to try and make a point on the law. Their side of the debate never got off the ground, even if there were some valid points.
“Look, it’s never ideal when the government steps in to regulate speech of any kind,” says Waxman. “In fact, it’s exactly what Jack Valenti and the MPAA successfully fought decades ago, in adopting a voluntary movie ratings system and beating back attempts to have the government regulate. But some heads have got to roll here. Hollywood showed today that it is completely clueless in leveraging the tools of the 21st Century. The content creators who drive the business of the MPAA companies were failed by those companies today.”
Source: reuters.com
