Endlösung

It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information use their services. It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today. It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests.

A so-called “blackout” is yet another gimmick, albeit a dangerous one, designed to punish elected and administration officials who are working diligently to protect American jobs from foreign criminals. It is our hope that the White House and the Congress will call on those who intend to stage this “blackout” to stop the hyperbole and PR stunts and engage in meaningful efforts to combat piracy.

This text was not written by a delirious schizophrenic tea-party granddad from Texas. It was written by the Motion Picture Association of America: a huge and almighty lobby group representing the interests of the American film industry. Now you might after all get a clue of why some people keep calling these guys the Movie Mafia...

People usually make such blatant and obviously absurd statements either when they are totally paraniod - seeing things which are not there - or they are actually losing a battle and they have a lot to lose. Of course there is no reason to be overly optimistic! Looks can decieve. I think I would rather support the first narrative. Or a mixture of both. As you may well know, there actually is a war they are waging for more than two decades. Nonetheless, they have yet to show any satisfactory results, with one or more of their cunning new tricks proving worthless everyday. Because of its very essence, this is a war they will never be able to win.

The difference between paranoid and non-paranoid warfare hides in the probability of realizing this fact before it's too late. It seems like the smart and diligent guys at MPAA are not more willing to get through this more and more painful psychological process than the smart and diligent German statesman from those days when Germany was still called an empire. The problem is that this time we can't see any Red Army on the horizon. Well, maybe they will show up one day, but for now we are in that part of the story when the great leaders come up with a final solution...

In the short run, you may turn very optimistic after such big players like Google and Wikipedia joining the righteous side. In the long run, you must not. 

The bad news: this legislation is going to pass after all. Like the beautiful Depeche Mode song says, it's just a question of time. I mean, okay, hope dies last, sure, but let's just admit: it's not very improbable. For now, they are making a tactical retreat. They will wait patiently for this storm to settle down. But in the very moment it settles down, they will come again. In the meantime, they will spend long and labourous nights with their PR strategists, masterminding a brilliant plan to spin the story and make you believe that the new law will be different... And of course it will be! I'm pretty sure the dots and commas will be somewhere else! They might even need to water it down to some degree. But not a tiny little bit more than they absolutely need to in order to push it down the throats of the lawmakers. And I can hereby assure you that it will be far less than enough. 

Okay, maybe you will start hating them. So what? You're still gonna watch movies, after all! Maybe your lawmakers? Give me a break! Unless the political landscape changes radically, they will buy your new lawmakers as well. Or they might just rethink the whole concept of lawmaking, like the German guy I've mentioned above. Judging by the language of their recent statements, it doesn't really feel like a weird conspiracy theory anymore...

So much for the Hollywood left!