Hollywood Hubris
7th January 2012
Mike Masnick hears the crowd of angry peasants coming.
We’ve talked a lot in the past about how the tech industry frequently ignores what’s happening in Washington DC, and takes the attitude that it doesn’t want to be involved in policy debates, because folks are busy focusing on actually building companies. However, as we repeatedly learn, just because we want to ignore DC, it doesn’t mean that DC ignores us. And that’s a problem. It allows others to use the government as a weapon against innovations they don’t like. For years, Hollywood has been able to do this successfully — but, when they push too far, it seems they may awaken a political beast they’d rather not deal with: the geeks. You don’t want to make the geeks angry. Yet, that’s exactly what Hollywood has done with SOPA/PIPA… and this time, most of the public is on the side of the geeks, because we’re all geeks now. We all use these technologies and services. It’s why there’s widespread public outcry against SOPA, but absolutely no grassroots support for the bill.
January 9th, 2012 at 19:11
I see. We’re against the public trough unless we’re the ones gorging ourselves…
When ‘the geeks’ come up with multi-millions to make a movie, then they’ll have the right to bitch about people not being able to download it for free. Until then, they’re just leeches in a Clever Plastic Disguise.