Just How Disingenuous are Big Media’s Complaints about Piracy? Here’s some perspective…

[Chris] Dodd, who became CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America after leaving the Senate in 2011, noted the movie “Avatar” was stolen by online pirates 21 million times. Such acts, he said, threaten to decimate his industry.

“You can complain and say, well, actors make a lot of money and they don’t have to worry about this,” said Dodd. “You tell that to that camera guy, you tell that to that makeup artist, you tell that to that truck driver out there who made, makes a living because they work in this industry.”

“Avatar” was made by 20th Century Fox which, like Fox News Channel, is owned by NewsCorp. Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of NewsCorp, has also been outspoken in promoting two pieces of anti-piracy legislation, the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act, known respectively as “SOPA” and “PIPA,” to protect copyrighted material.

via EXCLUSIVE: Chris Dodd Warns Of Hollywood Backlash Against Obama Over Anti-piracy Bill | Fox News.

And the economic devastation brought about by piracy can be shown in the global receipts for “Avatar”….

Total Lifetime Grosses
Domestic: $760,507,625 27.3%
Foreign:  $2,021,767,547    72.7%

Worldwide: $2,782,275,172
[source]

I really don’t know how a movie that *makes over $2,000,000,000 in a year* is somehow indicative of an industry being crushed. That none of this money makes it makes it back the make-up artists, truck drivers, and cameramen…really isn’t anyone’s fault but the studios themselves.

News Corp Whistle Blower found “murdered”?

News of the World Whisteblower Found Dead | Reuters http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/18/idUS221991703220110718

Notice how I used scare quotes, an associative relationship, and a question mark in the title (and URL) to insinuate something that might be, but probably isn’t, true?

I learned it from watching you, Rupert. I learned if from watching you.

_________

In ironic news, this small piece of this story is just juicy enough to give it a few more legs…which makes Fox’s continued non-coverage even more egregious.

It is now accurate to refer to News Corp as an international criminal ring that focuses on propaganda (and the fact that the evidence of that last bit is on public display in Presidential libraries makes it even more hilarironic).   It also occasionally dabbles in “shock journalism”.

Need I remind everyone it was founded by an Aussie?  K, nuf said.

Link Dump….

Working…can’t write…dumping link…

This is why they should. (I got sick of this nontroversy a couple days ago)

When Pat Buchanan calls your Nazi analogy over the edge, it is.

Read the comments to see why I call them nutjobs.  (note the comment and reactions to the comment that explains this away rationally.  Rationality is like the rage virus to these people, turns them crazy).’

Thanks, Rupert, for making this so obvious.  Fox News is *directly* funding the Republicans now, and not just donating 20 hours a day to free advocacy and attack ads.

Top 10 Right Wing Conspiracy theories. With the news that 40% of Republicans and 20% of Americans think Obama is a muslim, these fit right in.

Media companies stealing customer data. More definitive proof of their hypocrisy.

The Making of a Nontroversy.

Roger Ebert continues to do good stuff.

Franklin Graham makes up stuff about the President’s Dad to explain American’s ignorance re: Obama’s religion.   For some reason I think he’s doing it wrong.

We recently gave Israel $3,000,000,000 to buy $2,7500,000,000 worth of F-35s. This would be more of an actual issue if this story (and those like it) got more play.  That’s how the Military Industrial Complex works, BTW.  We borrow from China to give to Israel to buy from Us.   And a few people make out like bandits selling stuff to kill, well, bandits.  It does keep us at #1, I guess.

RIAA wants to force electronic manufacturers to include FM radios in all phones, ipods, etc.  Yes, it is that stupid, and yes, they actually are saying this is good for you.  I side with the concept of the free market on this one.

Glenn Beck’s war on the FCC (and Satan worshippers)

Glenn Beck’s War on the FCC  (and Satan Worshippers)

By handling these issues the way he does, Beck unfortunately makes real debate more difficult—though at least millions of Americans now knowsomething about diversity, localism, and net neutrality. Unfortunately, they also “know” that Obama worships Satan, that the Internet is about to become a “public utility,” and that the FCC will shut down conservatives with network neutrality.

Nicely done piece re: the useful idiots I mentioned a couple days ago. Bonus: it even includes some of their comments to the FCC.

UPDATE: It’s quite sad to see Fox start to make this an “us vs the marxists/communists/terrorists/socialists/nazis” thing.   Especially when the way they are going about it is to just play word association with their geriatric audience.  Those folks don’t understand the Internets as it is, much less a discussion about the technical underpinnings.  Beck using this ignorance to tell them the opposite of the truth (in the name of God, no less).

Beck also seems to think that the Republican led FCC was also actually run by marxists/communists/terrorists/socialists/nazis as they are the ones that started to notice that despite “Liberals” being voted into nearly two thirds of both houses of Congress (and then later the Presidency), 91% of political-talk radio was “Conservative”.  And it was also controlled by a small group of huge corporations that used economies of scale to crush any competition.  This is the result of the 1996 Telecom Act, not the result of the end of the fairness doctrine.   I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, deregulation leads to consolidation, not competition.

One of the most consistent ways to get a monopoly out of a market is to remove the rules that govern it.  Eventually someone “wins”.  Which means everyone else loses (in the context of the “market”).   We’ve watched the banks do the same thing (deregulate, consolidate, “win”) in much the same time frame.

Now the pendulum is swinging back to rational land, and Beck is there to try and rewind the clock back to crazy-time.   I wonder here if he knows he’s lying or has just kept himself ignorant of what the words he uses actually mean.

Actually, to be honest, I don’t really wonder all that much about what actors *really* thinks of politicis, and Beck is an actor extraordinairre.  One of the highest paid enteratainers on the planets, thank to media consolidation, Rupert Murdoch, and the FCC rolling back media ownership rules under Bush (they also got a special exemption for News Corp to buy (and destroy) the WSJ).

In other words, when you are chowing down at the trough, you certainly don’t mind lying to your viewers to keep the gravy rolling. *chomp* *chomp* Net Neutrality *chomp* is *gulp* *chow* *chew* *chomp* marxists/communists/terrorists/socialists/nazis *!BUUUURRRRPP!!

Wall Street Journal Joins News Censorship Game

At a rally today, Sen. McCain again asserted that Sen. Obama has requested nearly a billion in earmarks. In fact, the Illinois senator requested $311 million last year, according to the Associated Press, and none this year. In comparison, Gov. Palin has requested $750 million in her two years as governor — which the AP says is the largest per-capita request in the nation.

[vs]

“The only people ‘lying’ about spending are the Obama campaign. The only explanation for their hysterical attacks is that they’re afraid that when John McCain and Sarah Palin are in the White House, Barack Obama’s nearly $1 billion in earmark spending will stop dead in its tracks,” Mr. Rogers said.

Daily Kos: Wall Street Journal scrubs their article on Palin.

These are two different endings to the same article. The first one was published in the Wall Street Journal, a press institution with near impeccable news reporting credentials. The second one was published by the Wall Street Journal, the print arm of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. You might have heard of News Corp. They manufacture news damn near continuously on the Fox News Channel.

Most of News Corp’s manufactured news comes from designs created by the Republican Party in the United States. Despite Murdoch’s Aussie roots, his income and citizenship are now American (which he did to buy TV stations).

This relationship is evident in their replacing a factual, historical analysis of the topic at hand with a talking point from a McCain spokesman….which includes an accusation of lying…

That’s pretty cut and dried folks.

[BTW, here’s me catching CNN doing something similar.]