The MPAA Smear Campaign Against Google Link

If this story from Techdirt is true (and it looks compelling) then I hope lots of people are going to jail.

In other words, Jim Hood and the MPAA were out and out planning a coordinated media attack on Google using the editorial properties that supposedly claim to have editorial independence from the business side. Notice that with the WSJ piece, they flat out admit that the editorial will be based on the ideas that “we” have developed. If you work for the WSJ, your editorial independence just got shot down. Remember when CBS stepped in and interfered editorially with CNET for giving an award to Dish at the same time that CBS was in a legal fight over that same device? That resulted in reporters quitting.

The most agregious parts aren’t what the MPAA does but what the Mississippi Attorney General does.1 This is a coordinated attack through an office that should be upholding the law of the land instead of selling its clout to the highest bidder.

Read through this and then consider that this is just one target of the MPAA. The entire group seems like a criminal operation at this point. I’m no fan of the Google business model, but I sure think that’s up to informed consumers to figure out on their own. It’s equally disturbing that the “news” outlets play such a prominent and easily access role as a propaganda machine. Something tells me this is everyday business for outlets like The Wall Street Journal.

  1. I use the present tense, because I have to assume it’s still an active practice. ↩︎