Sen Franken: Filter the Internet to Protect Outdated Business Models

[nsane.forums]

Senator Al Franken (D-MN) says he's for Net Neutrality and defending speech from being "controlled by big corporate interests," but also says that the Combating Online Infringement & Counterfeits Act (COICA) is needed to protect corporate interests like movie studios and TV broadcasters.

Senator Al Franken (D-MN) has been one of the oddest proponents of the controversial Combating Online Infringement & Counterfeits Act (COICA) due to his largely liberal political leanings, and his ardent support for Net Neutrality.

"People are getting more and more of their information on the Internet and this will mean that the speech will be controlled by big corporate interests," he told Ars Technica in a recent interview.

"That's why I call it the First Amendment issue of our time," he says of Net Neutrality.

It's odd because he's such a vocal defender of free speech online, and then goes in the very same interview that filtering the net, i.e. speech, is necessary to protect corporate interests like movie and TV broadcasters. Sen Franken says of the COICA that it "this is about, essentially, stealing copyrighted material and selling counterfeit goods. This goes to tens of billions of dollars in theft. Some of the supporters of this were after the American Federation of TV and Radio Artists, the Screen Actors Guild, the Directors Guild. I happen to belong to all three of those unions. "

His membership in all of these unions arguably makes for a case of conflict of interest being that he stands to gain financially if the COICA passes, but I digress. At the very least his membership in these unions is likely clouding his ability see the larger picture of what the COICA would mean for society – both here and abroad – and not just in dollars in cents.

"This doesn't just affect the jobs of writers and directors and producers; when they're free to steal all this intellectual material, it changes the business model of a movie," adds Senator Franken. "So it really costs the jobs of the technicians and the crew and the craft services people. It changes the entire business model for the industry. It's not just movies and TV, it's everything."

That last line is the real clincher. Sen Franken seems to find the COICA to be a useful tool to protect outdated content industry business models. It's a false proposition. It's argument that Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) took to task at the same Senate Judiciary Committee that Sen Franken gave testimony to earlier this month.

"This is also not the first time that, the content industry has raised concerns about a new technology's threat to their business models," said Sen Wyden. "The introduction of recorded music, the photocopier, the VCR, the audio cassette all brought predictions of doom and gloom. Not too long ago, Senator Pete Wilson called his colleagues to join him in fighting the use of Digital Audio Tapes, which he said were 'sapping the very life out of the American music industry'."

Back in January Sen Wyden also pointed out the curious manner in which the content industry has managed to "piggyback" on the concerns of industries that trade in physical or "real merchandise."

By seizing sites you are seizing content, some legal some not, and that raises a whole set of issues that will need to be settled first. There's no two ways about it.

The Center for Democracy and Technology noted last September that the "First Amendment teaches that speech should be pro-actively blocked only in the rarest of circumstances. This is especially true because the type of restraint imposed by S. 3804 – the total suspension or blocking of a siteʼs domain name – would unavoidably block lawful content as well as infringing content."

Are fake Gucci handbags really worth placing restrictions on the First Amendment?

Moreover, Sen Franken seems to suffer from an Al Gore-esque delusion that he was "for free speech on the Internet" before he was against it" – pro-Net Neutrality and pro-COCIA.

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[Ambrocious]

Under the banner of security and protection.....THATS how the free internet as you know it will be transformed eventually into something atrocious. Back in 2009, Senetor Jay Rockefeller said that the internet is the number 1 national hazord, even going as far as saying that the internet shouldn't have even been created.