{"id":146,"date":"2004-03-29T13:27:58","date_gmt":"2004-03-29T13:27:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=146"},"modified":"2004-03-29T13:27:58","modified_gmt":"2004-03-29T13:27:58","slug":"leahy_shills_for_copyright_cartel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=146","title":{"rendered":"Leahy Shills for Copyright Cartel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dan Gillmor is right on the money with his criticism<\/a> of Vermont’s Patrick Leahy regarding his co-sponsorship of the “Pirate Act<\/a>“. One would think our politicians have more important things to do (education, health care, terrorism, the economy) than carrying water for the Hollywood cartel.<\/p>\n

s stunning, and disheartening, to see U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who has been one of the champions of civil liberties on Capitol Hill, become a water-carrier for Hollywood and the music industry. But there’s no other interpretation for his co-sponsorship of what’s being called the PIRATE Act, a chillingly bad bill that would give the copyright cartel a gift for the ages.
\nThe basics of this legislation are fairly simple: In a time when there are truly serious things on the minds of law enforcement, such as terrorism, Leahy and his colleague Orrin Hatch would send the FBI and Justice Department<\/a> (Copyfight) after file-sharers. If this passes, look for a crackdown that makes today’s music-industry lawsuit frenzy look tame. And look for the end of most experiments in new media, because file-sharing networks are the only financially feasible way to distribute content for people who aren’t trying to corner a market.
\nIf I still lived in Vermont, I would call Leahy’s office and ask anyone who’d listen how someone I’ve respected for years could do something so awful.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve sent a note to Russ Feingold<\/a> and Herb Kohl<\/a> encouraging them to vote against this and any other similar nonsensical initiatives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dan Gillmor is right on the money with his criticism of Vermont’s Patrick Leahy regarding his co-sponsorship of the “Pirate Act“. One would think our politicians have more important things to do (education, health care, terrorism, the economy) than carrying water for the Hollywood cartel. s stunning, and disheartening, to see U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}