SOPA, Security, and the Singularity
The American political process has grown surreal. Elections are still held, which is good. But other than that, it seems, as a culture, we’ve created a puritanical, almost imaginary standard for public office. Rare leaders with courage and vision know for it they will be destroyed, and so are dissuaded from stepping in the arena. We’re deciding on who will become the most powerful man in the world. Yet we focus on inane banalities, trite “narratives,” the pettiest of gaffes, and expert analysis of this or that guy’s body language during an umpteenth debate. Then all this gets thrown into an echo chamber, requiring the candidates to participate in the echo.
The media will force a national candidate to take a stand on a local dispute — on which, if elected, he or she would have no constitutional authority anyway — solely so we, in Romanesque thumbs up-thumbs down fashion, may judge the candidate’s ability to dance the rhetorical shuffle without offending a focus-group of a sub-group, or a sub-group of a focus-group — without saying much of anything real.
So amidst this cynicism, the reaction to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was heartening. In just a few days, the American people were able to compel Congress to shut down SOPA, a terrible piece of legislation. My congressman wrote me saying he was sorry, didn’t know what he was thinking. Of course, on the discouraging side, in order for the people to care or even know what was going on, it took huge Internet companies like Wikipedia, Reddit, and Google to publically protest the would-be law. SOPA and its Senate cousin, the Protect IP Act (PIPA), were at their core Internet censorship bills. Hollywood and the entertainment industry, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) — now run by former Senator Chris Dodd of Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac fame — embarrassed themselves and wasted millions in lobbying for the legislation. In response, we had the largest online protest in history. And it was successful.
There’s some hope in all of this. To the point: it might mark the moment when the Singularity enters American political discourse. How do I figure?
The intent of SOPA/PIPA was to centralize cyber-security under the auspices of the federal government in order to crack down on “piracy” and copyright infringement. In doing so, the American people’s liberty would have been undermined, freedom of information would have been threatened, and existing and adequate copyright laws would have been circumvented and ignored. It would have been a litigator’s dream. Worse, the legitimate issue of cyber-security — more so: the nature of the future itself — would have been entirely overlooked, as it is currently misunderstood.
Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting one of the heads of security for Raytheon — very interesting guy. “When ones and zeroes are involved, offense will find a way to win,” he said. Encryption defenses may work for a time; they may even get better. But that will require decentralization. Impenetrable information security will be sustained in a space off the grid. “When we go from mega-, giga-, and terabytes to peta-, exa-, and zetta-, we’ll be entering a brave new world of the infinitesimally small. And then there’s the quantum world.”
Yes, the quantum world. When one considers the future of this century, there are at least three existential threats. The first is traditional in scope: the possibility of great-power warfare (with China, perhaps). This is least likely, I believe, due to old-established Cold War principles amongst rational actors: deterrence and mutually assured destruction. The second threat: the probability of a terrorist organization smuggling and detonating a nuclear device in an American city (and the incomprehensible aftermath).
And then the third: “GNR.” Genetics (biotechnology), Nanotechnology (quantum science), and Robotics (Artificial Intelligence; A.I). GNR is riding the wave of information technology and its exponential growth. You take 30 steps linearly, you’re at 30. You take 30 steps exponentially, you’re at a billion. This is what’s come to be called the Singularity: the scientifically foreseeable point in the near-to-medium-future in which human beings have created technological intelligences so intelligent — billions of times more intelligent than today’s strongest computers — and so subatomic — as small to an apple as an apple is to Earth — that we will have created nothing less than nano-gods.
These gods will then enter our minds. Probably by way of eye drops.
Do not misunderstand. There is much promise in this—clearly. But there is also great peril. It is a deeply philosophical discussion. A man either comprehends this trajectory, and prepares for it, or puts it out of his mind. The implications are enormous. Will this transcendence expedite our evolution, or will it destroy our individuality, our liberty, our humanness? Could either the users or preventers turn tyrannical? Who will guard the guardians? Will attempts to control and regulate these technologies succeed in accomplishing precisely the dystopia we may fear the technologies themselves will create? Will we merge with these intelligences or will they be distinct entities? Does the future need us at all?
Last month, Charles Krauthammer revived the specter of the Drake Equation and the Fermi Paradox. Life is rare; intelligent life, infinitely rarer. The silence of the universe conveys “the high probability that advanced civilizations destroy themselves… intelligence may be the most cursed faculty in the entire universe — an endowment not just ultimately fatal but, on the scale of cosmic time, nearly instantly so.”
There seems to be a sense amongst humanity that something big is right around the corner, something unequivocal. Collectively, we’ve taken to apocalyptic and supernatural assumptions. Nearly half of Americans think the Rapture will happen by mid-century. Hollywood, ironically, has stoked along these ideas. It won’t be found in the Mayan Calendar, but rather in Sagan’s Cosmic Calendar. It won’t be coming out of the clouds, but rather into our brains. This is it. This is where we are and this is where we’re going.
Information is power. It is, as Ramez Naam says, an infinite resource on a finite planet. As free people, we should encourage the dissemination of information technologies under one condition: our security and liberty are not endangered. In the future, the government may assume undue authority and force information companies into subservience for authoritarian reasons, or these companies, in trying to avoid total subservience, and in trying to destroy their competition without competing, may preemptively give the government what it wants. This is not free-market capitalism, nor is it humanism. This is a form of fascism.
Last year, Twitter helped overthrow several Arab autocracies. Then Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bought a $300 million stake in the company, and now Twitter’s set to appease these nervous dictators with new censorship policies abroad. Also last year, without much media coverage, our own federal government claimed the right to read our e-mails without a warrant. Yahoo and Google, to their credit, defeated the Department of Justice in court. But… Big Brother’s trying. SOPA and PIPA were just two more examples of this troubling trend.
This will be the most consequential century in the history of life on Earth. Technology is man’s greatest invention. It is a fine servant, but a most dangerous master. We should neither concede its control to a central authority nor prove to become dependent on it, for we will have sullied both human integrity and individual liberty. The next president, to his surprise, will likely have to address the potentialities of transhumanism, both good and bad, and so he will not have time for the little things our cheap culture will seek to put him through.
“We have Makers and Breakers in the world,” Vernor Vinge once said. “The Makers have created so many wonderful things, and it’s easy for the Breakers to use them. The Breakers have all sorts of motives, including just the motive of breaking it — because it’s so beautiful and people are so happy with it.”
It might not seem like it today, but I think we may look back at SOPA and PIPA as the Maker’s first big stand.
What “existing and adequate copyright laws” protect photographers from having their work used on a hundred websites? It would take forever to go after them and most simply ignore you and DMCA.
What prevents me from stockpiling 10,000 free MP3 songs from YouTube or any other site a video is presented by using a free downloader/converter? What prevents me from getting original MP3s in their thousands from an endless variety of websites?
What prevents some guy in Russia who works at a movie theater from making a digital copy that is put on a sharing website available globally within 3 days of the movie’s release, including blue-ray versions? Compressed RMVB and AVI files are readily available without registration or software not native to your computer.
What stopped “A Dance With Dragons” by George R.R. Martin from appearing as a free PDF within hours of its release when iTunes was selling the same book for $50? In fact, the entire A Song of Ice and Fire is available. Net income for Martin: zero.
Like illegal immigrants, piracy has brought down the hourly worth of work to a barely sustainable level for many people including writers, musicians and photographers. We can be like Latin America and simply give in to the reality of a tidal wave of shanty towns and say if you can’t beat them join them. But why pillory people who are still trying to fight back as if their main motivation is to be Big Brother to control your life and mind as the real issue rather than simple stolen copyright?
Why bring transcendence, Godspeak and global conspiracies into a simple motivation where people want to be paid for their work and really don’t care that there are a really grand number of thieves as if numbers equals morality? Over the past several years people have become so used to getting something for nothing they now consider it a right and invoke Nathan Hale or men of clay or whatever blithering they can dredge up to invoke a ’60s Ace paperback cover of evil robots suppressing the last free men in rags amidst the stumps of skyscrapers.
Welcome to the mentality of OWS Oakland, where all law enforcement is an instrument of oppression and rapists and cop killers are heroes. From there it’s a slippery slope. And what’s a larger inane banality than Twitter, where people make short meaningless sentences following nobodies doing nothing. Do you really think people are smarter because of Twitter and Facebook and the net? We elected Obama in a situation where infantile people couldn’t and still can’t make the simplest comparison using logic to envision what would’ve happened to a white candidate coming out of a 20 year stay in a KKK church.
Imagine this: read “The Machine Stops” and wonder what happens when dumb toys by a populace with no attention span becomes “don’t take that from me” because it is central to my “life.”
Conflating the net with thievery as if they are inextricably linked is a fool’s game. The argument is that theft is so massive it can’t be tracked and then when someone devises a way to track it the tracking itself is too massive.
Which would be more liberating: defeating SOPA or shutting down the net for a week and having people go outside and look at each other like Eloi? With the exception of essential services, the net should go dark for a week once a year to remind us of our humanity and what is really right and real and important. The idea that a week without the net would be some kind of slavery is ludicrous.
Long, rambling and pointless; well done.
Short, pointless and pointless: well done.
tl;dr
“Like illegal immigrants, piracy has brought down the hourly worth of work to a barely sustainable level…”
Uh huh. It’s a pity that your numbers are completely bogus because SOPA is as useless as Joe Biden. Let’s turn to the CATO Institute for the real problem with SOPA (http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/how-copyright-industries-con-congress/):
“Does that mean online piracy is harmless? Of course not. But the harm is a dynamic loss in allocative efficiency, which is much harder to quantify. That is, in the cases where a consumer would have been willing to buy an illicitly downloaded movie, album, or software program, we want the market to be accurately signalling demand for the products people value, rather than whatever less-valued use that money gets spent on instead. This is, in fact, very important! It’s a good reason to look for appropriately tailored ways to reduce piracy, so that the market devotes resources to production of new creativity and innovation valued by consumers, rather than to other, less efficient purposes. Indeed, it’s a good reason to look for ways of doing this that, unlike SOPA, might actually work.
It is not, however, a good reason to spend $47 million in taxpayer dollars—plus untold millions more in ISP compliance costs—turning the Justice Department into a pro bono litigation service for Hollywood in hopes of generating a jobs and a revenue bonanza for the U.S. economy. Any “research” suggesting we can expect that kind of result from Internet censorship is a fiction more fanciful than singing chipmunks.”
So, just as with cassettes, CDs, and VCRs the entertainment media complex is fighting the advance of technology because it will bring untold misery to their empire. Except, in every single case, the new technology was a boon to Hollywood. You can either find a way to make the new technology work for you or you can get government to protect your monopoly… except government can’t. Your protectionism will ultimately fail and then the misery that you predicted will unfold because you brought it on. Change is hard, particularly when you lack creativity and imagination. It’s a pity really, Hollywood has a legacy of creativity but “legacy” means it’s in the past. Embrace the future or the future will crush you.
“But the harm is a dynamic loss in allocative efficiency, which is much harder to quantify.” Do I really need to go to the Cato Institute for such semantic gibberish as this and terms like “less-valued?”
You can’t use my stuff without my permission – it’s simple. Cato posits this as my need to negotiate with thieves because they are a lot of them and then lays out economic reasons this may be okay anyway and even good for my health.
And this is not JUST AS “cassettes, CDs, and VCRs”; this is a delivery system for files and not an issue of the files themselves.
I especially like the part “change is hard, particularly when you lack creativity and imagination” because this is much of what is at the false heart of this “revolt”; news aggregators and bloggers who do not produce nearly enough original material to survive without the easy and free means to present copyrighted material and so piggyback themselves onto the creative content of others; take away those others and there is little to nothing left.
For all their bluster about how necessary they are, bloggers, like gay marriage and vegans, are as useless as nostrils on a rock and would be the first thing to go in any reality-based house cleaning. The music and movie industry can easily survive without bloggers but the same is not true the other way around once the freebees end.
It is protecting that revenue stream of something for nothing that is what is at the heart of so much of this “revolt” while hypocritically suggesting the “empire” is doing the same. What I can at least say about an empire is that is has the power to get things done compared to camp followers.
What you really mean at the end is embrace thievery or it will crush you but it already is and the push back has begun. SOPA is perhaps not the way to do it but some way is needed and it will be back.
Stop acting like evil empires actually consist of record and film companies who want to control your thoughts. What they want to control is who distributes their product which they have a perfect right to do. Produce something someday that millions of people want and you too will join the dark side.
This revolt should call itself “Wannabees For Freebees.”
“You can’t use my stuff without my permission – it’s simple.”
Copyright is not a form of property, even though its proponents have invented the term “Intellectual Property” to confuse the issue.
It is a state-provided privilege, which was unknown for most of the cultural history of mankind.
The current copyright protection is already beyond absurd. To the author’s death + 70 years? Why should protection of something that was created in the day when Hitler was still an ugly youth and Russia was governed by tsar be still valid in 2012?
IMHO, the only rational way is to scale copyright protection back to the original scope (10-15 years from creation of said work). But it threatens too many special interests, so it will nbever be done.
Well said!
Utter rubbish. Most of the liberties we enjoy under the Constitution were “unknown for most of the cultural history of mankind,” does that make them somehow “absurd”? Your point there is completely irrelevant.
Can you state one RATIONAL objection to the “Life + 70″ standard? Not just emoting about martyred monarchs, and serving Godwin’s Law?
I may, with my tangible property, establish a trust fund by which I retain control of it, after a fashion, in perpetuity, long after my demise.
State one rational objection to my ability to do the same with my “Intellectual Property.”
I have to agree with PsychoDad on this one. If I create something why should my family not continue to benefit monetarily from that creation? If they want to sell that property to others to use, or make it available for free, that is their decision. But basically what you are saying is that after 10-15 years I don’t get to collect on something I created. Why should I suddenly lose the ability to profit from my creation?
“Intellectual Property” is merely a term used to denote a creation that is not physical. A book is technically “Intellectual Property” these days since it can be transmitted in an entirely electronic fashion. Are you saying that an author should no longer profit from his book after 10-15 years? THAT is silly.
I don’t understand your anger. Maybe you don’t realize that the piracy is merely a technological form of wealth redistribution. I’ll make it easy for you:
You have music, I don’t: thus I have a “right” to take your music.
You have movies, I don’t: thus I have a “right” to take your movies.
You have books, I don’t: thus I have a “right” to take your books.
You have games, I don’t: thus I have a “right” to take your games.
You have photos, I don’t: thus I have a “right” to take your photos.
How could you not understand that this is the logical endpoint of the political beliefs funded so lavishly by Hollywood? Why is it that you have a “right” to take my stuff but I don’t have a “right” to take yours? Oh, yeah, it’s because it’s your stuff. Clearly, it’s not stealing when you take my stuff because it’s going to the “greater good”.
Frankly, I am rather dismayed by Hollywood’s fight against Piracy because it’s a sure sign that they’re nothing but poseurs. The “Wannabees For Freebees” that you deride is the Democratic Party Platform. Fortunately for you the world is not occupied solely by leftists. Some of us still believe in the rule of law, some of us still believe in private property rights for everybody.
If you want less Piracy then quit supporting politicians who endorse theft and quit writing movies, songs and plays that glorify theft. If you want less Piracy then quit advocating stealing. If you want less Piracy then embrace MY private property rights. As the saying goes “you reap what you sow”.
Nothing prevents a mob for coming to your home and assault you and kill you. Read carefully: EVEN if there is a law written against it, NOTHING short of sheer force can prevent it.
The biggest error consists of thinking Law is some sort of crime-preventing tool for everybody to be happy and unicorns. Law is not to prevent, is to PUNISH crime, i.e., it acts a posteriori, and that’s the reason for principles like “innocent unless proven otherwise” or “in dubio pro reo”.
Once a society falls in the trap of preventive laws and rips the Presumption of innocence, there will be nothing to stop the Government. They will come out with laws and laws, endless regulations and tax-punishment in the name of preventing every little misfit in the world. You open the doors for the Rule of Force.
There is only one way to save the nation from the legal quagmire: repudiation of the idea of the preventive law, in any shape, expression or formulation. In the same way you shouldn’t apply preventive punishment, you shouldn’t apply preventive “global-cooling” regulations, neither you should be able to apply internet-killing regulations to prevent someone somewhere to download a file.
What’s next? Should we forbid selling knives just because some thug is using them to hurt people? That which is irrational in your private everyday life is also irrational coming from the government.
This is not only a question of law but of the idea of prevention: should banks not be able to lock their doors or I have a wall around my house? People steal and to hamstring ourselves by throwing this entirely into an academic realm while Rome burns is senseless.
I am not advocating prevention myself but a way to make sites pay for using my photos without me using hundreds if not thousands of dollars and days on end to just go after one person – in other words, there is no rational mechanism by which I can protect myself. With newspapers and magazines it was a different thing as they were professionals with certain standards and easily found and pinned down if they stole.
Now you have sites where a page can disappear at the first sign of alarm after they have already benefited from stolen material and the owners, where?. Law must change to reflect this fact by streamlining itself and adapting to this new reality. Trying to enforce copyright with dead tree laws will not work and you can’t hold them off simply because you now get something free you never did before and like it.
Defending this theft is the same thing as saying we all have the “right” to everything someone else has created to make money. Often, having the right or patent on a thing is the sole reason money is made. A writer here on PJM wrote that his auto articles are routinely stolen and re-posted and there’s really nothing he can do about it; that site should be shut down until an explanation or payment plan is forthcoming. We need small claims internet court. Once some examples are made, the net will police itself.
Entirely wrong approach.
Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8:
“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;”
What should be done is to change “for limited Times” to be decades less that what was defined in the period of printing with wood blocks. Make copyrights only last from the time of first publication plus a few months. For example, one could use the time a book is on the NYTimes best seller list. Music based on length of time on the top 50 of it’s genre. You can even slice things up further by granting longer terms for writers so the movie/tv industry must pay them before they can even hire an actor. And for movies? Only until the next Oscar ceremony. And for “residuals” after a year – zero them out – i.e., no residuals. Oh, and have a Dept. of Plagiarism established to go after all those NYTimes writers that steal others works. Give Holder something tangible to do with his time while he’s awaiting sentencing.
The point is: OK to enforce but must reduce the protected time to months instead of decades.
So now the idea of copyright itself is wrong. How is it wrong? Just because an easy copying tech exists? I know people that in the last several years have gone from buying 100% of their books and music to 0% and they aren’t even all that computer literate – you don’t have to be. Is that right? The creator deserves nothing? Really? And people not artists should decide on copyright?
People who have this accompanying idea that people are happier or more informed cuz they don’t rotary dial phones or stack vinyl records are nuts.
I write software. Have for four decades. I don’t get paid for what I did in 1970. Do you?
The copyright protection is for the person to make money – not to stroke an ego. They can make all the money they want in 12 months, or 4 months or 4 minutes. The point is the time frame for making money should be reduced – dramatically. If the period only lasted for a year, all those that wanted to pay $100 for DVD have ample time to buy. Thus, SOPA only applies within the year. It even helps the poor – all they have to do is wait a year.
Cedar, the question is, did you do this as work-for-hire or for yourself? Yes, people like the innovators at Apple are still making money from the 70s and a lot of other people are too. Photos taken in the 70s still routinely make money for the sole holder of the copyright, the photographer.
And if you reduce copyright to a small window of opportunity you will rape art. What will be left is what you have with epub: ego-driven nobodies who will do anything, even for free, in order to have 15 seconds of fame and no money. Meanwhile, professionals, with no way to earn income, will give way to endless copies of American Idol and a nearly mindless stereotype factory.
This is already happening: Getty images, once a great place to find great photos, has given way to a business model where they take advantage of the enthusiasm of people on Flickr who in no way rely on photography to earn a living and never will, given the fact that they have gutted the ability to earn a living.
Go to Getty and type Machu Picchu in the search box. On page 2 near the bottom is a woman with her back to the camera. I’d never have taken that photo – if I did, I would’ve deleted it – if I wouldn’t have done that, I certainly would not have submitted it and if I did, it would never have been accepted years ago. You can’t even tell the women is at Machu Picchu.
Multiply that by a million times and see how artistry has been gutted and dumbed down to a place that would’ve gotten an editor or photographer fired 15 years ago.
Remarkable. You, too, seem to resort a purely irrelevant idea of antiquity. So what if a law originated at a time when books were “printed with blocks of wood”? Laws against burglary and rape and murder are far older than that; should we revisit the penalties for those? Surely in our fast-paced modern world, murder should merit no more than a brief month or two in prison?
Perhaps you would feel differently if =you= spent 3 or 4 years working on a novel or history or biography – do you honestly think that 4 years of work should be taken from you after 3 or 4 months?
Let’s look at this from the perspective of “greatest liberty”: if I write a book or a symphony, why should I not be allowed to contract with my publisher for any period of protection we can agree upon? Why is it a matter of the government at all to decide what sort of protections I want? Aside of course from recognizing that such protection is available?
As with any commercial venture, there would be risk/reward balances. Maybe I would be very confident that my work would be tremendously popular for generations: I might take a lower purchase price up front, in exchange for a hundred years of copyright protection, so as to provide for my children and grandchildren. Or, I might choose to take a larger sum up front, and accept only a few years of copyright.
Can anyone tell me what would be wrong with this?
Oh, lets allow some statutory period, in the event a contract fails to specify one: life of the author plus 20, perhaps.
But understanding that a contractually agreed upon copyright period would be the norm.
Thoughts?
Government by bureaucrats for corporatistas.
First, go and read “Rainbows End”, by Vernor Vinge. Yes, it’s SF and set in the near future – but every piece of technology described in the book is either currently available or is being developed. I also recommend Vinge’s “A Fire Upon the Deep” and “A Deepness in the Sky”. Vinge is one of the best writers around when it comes to describing advanced technology and its effects.
While you’re at it, also read “Steel Beach” by John Varley and just about anything by John Ringo.
What most people don’t realize is that the really advanced technology isn’t very visible to the casual person-on-the-street. Most of it is used by and visible to the industrial and commercial sectors: the engineers and technicians that make the stuff that you use. You probably interact with over a hundred computers between breakfast and dinner – half of which are in your car – and never realize it. The only interaction that most people have with lasers is their DVD player and, perhaps, Lasik. They never see the high-powered industrial cutting lasers or the millions of laser diodes that pump our telecommunications cables. Nanotechnology is something fantastic to most people, but there is actually a rather substantial industry in nano-tech products already. Mostly coatings and particles at this point, with MEMS (Micro-electro-mechanical systems) running a close second. Do you realize that every car with an air-bag, every iPhone, every Wii has a MEMS inertial sensor in it?
Life is interesting, and is only promising to be more so in the near future.
I agree with just about everything the writer has said.
And also commenter x.
There is a problem though, and that is our assumption that what we think is right, is right.
It´s all we have to go one, sure, but a lot of assumptions of the 20th/21st Century that we accept as being more or less self-evidently true may actually contain untruths that are going to trip us up when we obtain such profound technological ability.
One has to somehow make allowances for the possibility that our assumptions are wrong.
Is that even possible?
What?
Don’t worry people, Obama is signing an International treaty to stop Piracy. Sadly only Infowars Alex Jones and huffpo have written articles on this. Obama will sign ACTA without congressional approval as an executive order.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/26/acta-copyright-treaty-protests-anti-piracy_n_1233960.html
These laws are not about Piracy as much as they are about free speech. People like Glenn beck and Micheal Moore would be out of business. Now I could live with out hearing Moore and his BS. But the real problem is these laws would do little to shut down world wide piracy. Newsgroups have unrestrained trading of pirated movies. You can download a movie almost as fast as you can buy it.
The basis of SOPA is correct, that creators of material should be protected. That being said, however, there needs to be protection for those who use the material as commentators, or reviewers.
If I, as a reviewer, post a negative review of a copyrighted work, and make some lengthy quotes of the work in question, I also have a right to quote the material, and to be negative about it if I wish. This is called fair use, and what I read of SOPA, I didn’t see a lot of concern for reviewers.
It could be argued that a negative review could hurt sales, and thus the ability of a creator to make a living could be adversely affected. It is a part of free speech, however, that we may be negative against any copyrighted work we wish, and our right to be negative needs to be protected.
Should SOPA recognize the right of reviewers to use portions of works such as photographs, audio or video clips, in reviewing that work, even negatively, then I might support it. I did not see such a provision, but maybe I missed something?
In the past one could turn on a VCR, or a cassette tape recorder, to record off the air. Just because the technology now makes recording easier and of better quality does that now mean it is wrong?
The role of reviewers and things like radio stations and TV appearances is a well-honored tradition which industries recognize as crucial to promoting their work. I don’t think one has to worry about this. The industry spends billions on promotion, even sending freebees to reviewers not to mention holding dinners and press conferences with free travel and hotels in some instances.
GOVERNOR GARY JOHNSON: REPEAL PATRIOT ACT NOW January 30, 2012
http://www.garyjohnson2012.com/governor-gary-john…
“The VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman alone.”
Jack Valenti, MPAA