I'm just as disgusted as this as most people are, but how is this illegal? In the United States, so long as the MPAA isn't directly giving money to politicians, this kind of bribery is legal. Per Citizens United vs the FEC, the MPAA can spend as much as they want on re-election campaigns.
There are always strings attached. Let's say you give money to support a politician who opposes SOPA. When you give the money you are perfectly free to say "I'm contributing to your campaign because you are against SOPA".
Would it be extortion for you to tell a politician "If you reverse your stance and later support SOPA, I can no longer in good conscience continue to contribute to your political campaign"?
I think the issue is getting them to look under the rug to see what has been swept under there. That's the reason why an investigation is needed.
You don't lobby that much money over that length of time without breaking a zillion laws. As it is, nobody has wanted to look because it's obvious what will be found. Hollywood has probably broken a lot of laws; far more than Megaupload ever did I'd wager.
MPAA should be allowed to spend as much money as they want to convince the American people. But they like giving money to politicians precisely because they get leverage to pull the money back when the politician does something they don't like.
This system is extremely broken.
I signed the petition because giving money to politicians with strings attached, and then threatening to pull the funding if they don't vote your way is clearly bribery.
If there any traction in non-internet USA? Are "normal" people (the politicians think any one on the internet or who merely understand the internet are nerds and not worth listening to) seeing what is happening here? Not just the likes of the terrible SOPA bill, but the seedy corrupt way US politics seems to be for sale? If this really what any one in the US wants?
What I hope for is that what the MPAA actually does is blow the lid off the stinking corrupt system where money buys law. If America is lucky, the MPAA won't just fail in its aims, it will fail and expose the depth of the blatant corruption.
Did anyone else have trouble "signing" here? I repeatedly signed in in Firefox 10b, it never let me click the "sign petition" button. Disabled ghostery & adblock, still no dice. Console showed the error "NREUMQ is not defined" but chrome shows the same and it worked there.
Is it just me, or is the petition broken in Chrome? It wouldn't enable the "Sign this Petition" button even when the footer said I was logged in. Safari worked, but they bound the "enter" key so that it reloads the page without actually logging you in. Thus one must click on the button. blergh.
