IF REPUBLICANS WERE SMART, THEY’D RUN AGAINST THE MPAA AND THE RIAA: MPAA Abusing DMCA Takedowns To Attempt A Poor Man’s SOPA.

The old guard in Hollywood, so frightened of an internet they don’t understand, tends to be rather transparently buffoonish in its strategies to try to break the internet. For a few years, the MPAA was totally focused on a “three strikes” strategy — believing that if people were getting kicked off the internet, that it would lead them to stop file sharing and go back to paying large sums of money for bad movies. That plan failed miserably. The followup idea was even worse: known as full site blocking, the idea was to convince countries to pass laws that would force ISPs, search engines, domain registrars and others to completely block access not just to infringing content, but to entire sites that the legacy copyright industries deemed “bad.”

I say, repeal the Hollywood Tax Cuts, crack down on Hollywood Accounting, and force record companies to pay musicians what they owe them. Play your cards right and you can even split the talent from the money men on these issues. Is the GOP that smart? I’d have to say . . . clearly not.