As Xeni wrote on Tuesday, the MPAA isn’t pleased about sites like this one going dark to protest SOPA and PIPA. Former Senator Chris Dodd, Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America called it “an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today.”
Well, he should know.
After all, he is the CEO of the organization responsible for inserting those unskippable FBI warnings (which are highly prejudiced and factually incorrect, advising, for example, that DVDs can’t be rented, even though the law says they can) before every commercial DVD. He’s the CEO of the organization that inserts those insulting PSAs in front of every movie chiding those of us who buy our DVDs because someone else decided to download the same movie for free.
And he’s the CEO of the organization responsible for the section of the DMCA that makes it illegal to build a DVD player that can skip these mandatory, partisan, commercially advantageous messages.
So he knows a thing or two about “abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today.”
(Image: Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick)