White House Petitioned to Investigate MPAA Bribery

the public has started a petition asking the white house to investigate comments made by mpaa ceo
chris dodd a few days ago on fox news. closing a tumultuous week of wide protest against pipa and
sopa - two mpaa backed anti-piracy bills

hi from australia. i am one of the probably thousands of users here and we are very thankful for
your site and all the work you guys do..
with regards to the sopa and pipa petition i would love to sign but believe that as a non us citizen
i would be ineligible.
any way of opening up a world wide type of petition for people in other countries who also fear
these bills. i keep a good watch on us politics and these bills are really scary for all of us who
value freedom.

once again best wishes for the new year, keep up the great and very valued work that you do in
keeping us all
informed and aware...freedom of speech and the ability for people everywhere to access information
is the cornerstone of
democracy.

from melbourne australia

i am from new zealand and totally agree with mayhemdiva with the online partition only being for
americans. i also think that the internet community need to speak louder to this breach of personal
rights for all democratic peoples in the world.

thanks for giving us the option to at least get a comment out to the wider community to have our voice
heard.

i'm not sure if such a global one exists. your best option for now is to inform any american you
know to sign the petition and update them with what is happenings.

i put australia and the sopa petition into my search engine and apparently it will let us sign the
petition...the petition has been answered by the white house anywho....

clearly he's not talking about bribes right? are there any legal financial transactions that are
getting blown out of proportion, because no one could be stupid enough to say this on tv. i don't
know much about this issue just asking

i tried to sign the petition, but although i was logged into the website, the sign button is greyed out
preventing me to click it. anyone else have this problem?

bs'd
my little birdies in washington told me that this bill is doa. that is very good news.

i had someone tell me this happened to them, apparently don't hit "enter" but click the button
instead and then it would work correctly.

i noticed in the "end acta..." petition, there was a persone from france. could have been a us
citizen living there. but could be that it's open to anyone.

i suppose not, as this concerns us citizens only.

the acta petition was open to any country, it was not bound to americans only.

hey eztv folk,

i want to point out that although this bill is an american bill, i think that signing this petition
is a good thing for all. as you may consider, this is part of a worldwide push to make regular
people pay, but hollywood is making more money than they have ever made, and still, they want to
stop us from "so called stealing", but the real issue is that these same people have created
copyright laws.

there is a great documentary on copyright laws, and how they have been hijacked by disney
corporation, and others, who are all doing very well out of copyright, thank you very much. the
movie is called rip, remix, a manifesto, and is available on torrents somewhere.
http://ripremix.com/ for more info.

and another article that really explains the us governments power being used in this way that shows
that the bills did not matter anyway, here is glenn greenwald @ salon.com discussing the usurpation
of power, with a brief excedrpt, but i really recommend that you go read the entire article to
understand the full power of what is happening to us citizens, no matter where in the world you live
now.

two events this week produced some serious cognitive dissonance. first, congressional leaders
sheepishly announced that they were withdrawing (at least for the time being) two bills heavily
backed by the entertainment industry

where as the arrogance of it all is shocking, i don't think he admitted to any unlawful activity. just about all
lobbies will contribute the max they can to political campaigns. the truth of the matter is its an empty
threat. they will typically give move to members of both parties. doing so gives them access. cutting off
donations would remove funds from both sides of a campaign thus having no real effect. don't get me
wrong i am upset that he would be so arrogant as to make that statement. i just don't think the statement
constitutes an admission of unlawful activity. what they do is perfectly legal under current campaign
finance law. so we're back to being upset about the system and how difficult it is to change it.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/right-click/bill-c11-could-bring-sopa-online-piracy-laws-212657243.html

i hope our proposed bill gets the same outcry as our us neighbors.

my problem is not with ending downloading of certain types of content...i know that is bound to
happen eventually. my problem is that these bills hide behind the mask of copyright law, when in
fact they are censorship legislation that require no judiciary process. that, my friends, is nothing
short of orwellian.

i absolutely agree with you folks about the legislation in question. having said that, however, i disagree
that there's anything wrong (legally or even ethically) with the mpaa executive's threat. individuals,
corporations, unions and charities all donate money to political campaigns both for access and to help
increase the likelihood of the election of the candidate whose policies they support.

it's not a bribe because it doesn't enrich the politician. the money cannot legally be used for personal
expenses. making it known that supporting or opposing particular legislation will result in your
supporting a campaign financially or in withdrawing that support is not less ethical than saying that you
will or won't support a campaign with your vote.

i agree with lsmithiii that groups with deep enough pockets will give to both parties in order to have
access (and to have a credible threat to make- if you never give to one party, then a candidate won't
fear that you'll help his opponent). still, they won't give equally to both parties and will not contribute to
candidates/officeholders who support policies that would have an adverse effect on their interests or
who oppose policies that would be helpful. that's why it actually is *not* an empty threat.

at any rate, now that sopa and pipa are dead, the open act seems poised to take their place. i'm not
clear about what the implications would be if it were to pass, but the mpaa objects to it, and so far it
looks pretty good.

"the mpaa rejects any law that fails to block americans' access to the pirate bay, a bittorrent tracker
which survived prosecution in its home country of sweden and steadfastly refuses to remove
information about infringing downloads from its search index. darrell issa maintains that the open act
could be effective against the site by targeting even overseas ad networks placing ads on the site,
though it is possible that the site could survive without advertisements."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/online_protection_and_enforcement_of_digital_trade_act#reception