PR wars : New media destroys old media

[Islandman]

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The controversial anti-piracy bills that attracted tens of millions of dollars of lobbying for and against the proposed laws ironically were killed by free publicity.

"Old" media companies spent huge sums of money in support of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA). Those opposed -- Internet and "new media" companies -- lobbied hard and spent gobs too, though far less than their more organized rivals.

But Silicon Valley had a trick up its sleeve that trumped the millions of dollars more in lobbying muscle and the more established Washington presence of the old media guard: They reached out directly to their users for free.

Google, Wikipedia and others altered their homepages and websites in opposition of the bills last week, making the issue a topic of popular discussion across the country.

The Internet really flexed their muscles during this fight, and their infrastructure helped them advocate their positions that others don't have at their disposal," said Michael Beckel, money-in-politics analyst at the Center for Responsive Politics.

http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/27/tech...obby/index.htm

[Don1]

New Broom sweep clean..an back Old Broom inna Corna

[Willi]

Nuh celebrate too fast. Mi hear seh the Fed arrest Belgians in New Zealand. Dem wuk fi MegaUpload. Ah true?

[Willi]

Whiskey & Gunpowder
by Jeffrey Tucker
January 27, 2012
Auburn, Alabama, U.S.A.
The Death of File Sharing
Last week's violent government attack on the hugely popular site Megaupload -- the U.S. government arresting Belgian citizens in New Zealand, of all places, and stealing at gunpoint servers bank accounts and property -- has sent shock waves through the entire digital world.
The first shock was the realization that the gigantic protest against legislative moves (SOPA and PIPA) that would smash the Internet turned out to be superfluous. The thing everyone wanted to prevent is already here. SOPA turns out not to be the unwelcome snake in the garden of free information. The snakes have already taken over the garden and are hanging from every tree.
The second shock took a few days to sink in. It could mean that the whole way in which the digital age has functioned is in danger, or even doomed. This is not a forecast. This doom is all around us right now.
The problem is this: Megaupload was accused of violating copyright through its file-sharing technology. This permits users to upload their own content and permit other users into their space. If anything that one person uploads is of uncertain copyright status -- it could be anything, really -- sharing it would then seem to amount to a crime.
For some years, the feds have unnecessarily harassed people for nonviolently streaming or sharing content. This has had something of a chilling effect and increased the use of IP-scrambling proxies to keep online habits from being traced. College kids know this all too well. Masking IPs is just the way they live and work.

The attack on Megaupload takes all of this to a different level. This was not some wholly surreptitious, sketchy institution that was trying to get around the law. It was already becoming a legitimate service for launching careers in music and art generally. It seemed to be doing exactly what we expect in the digital age. It was reinventing an old model for new times through innovation in production, delivery and profit sharing.
As I wrote before, this was most likely why the old-line industry came after them. It was not the illegal activities, but their legal ones that made them a target. The moguls do not want change. They crushed the competition.
At the same time, the actual legal rationale that the feds used to blast these people away was their supposed violation of intellectual property through file sharing.