Wired News’ Ryan Singel has this juicy piece that spells out how a tough California bill barring the use of deceptive pretexting ruses was hauled off to the dead legislation graveyard with a little help from the Motion Picture Association of America. The bill, SB1666, introduced by state Senator Debra Bowen, sailed through the Senate with a 30-0 vote but capsized when it hit the assembly, which voted it down 33-27 days before the HP pretexting scandal hit last August.
An aide to Bowen (Bowen is now Secretary of State) confirms what everybody in Sacramento probably already knows but doesn’t tell the press — the MPAA, a huge political power in the state, made it clear that it opposed the legislation. It seems that the studios use pretexting all the time in trying to trap to online swappers of unauthorized content.
Actually, the MPAA wasn’t alone in its opposition to the bill (which sounds like it might have been overly broad). Singel quotes the past president of the California Association of Licensed Investigators as saying his association didn’t like the vague legislative language and that sometimes pretexting helps capture bad guys such as deadbeat dads and scam artists..
But the bill was killed and, as Good Morning Silicon Valley John Murrell notes, “the entertainment consortium retained its ability to use fraud and deceit in its moral and legal crusade.”
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 3:42 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke to a gathering of Republican governors on Wednesday and offered them excellent advice on how Republicans can turn things around by the 2008 presidential race: take advantage of the Internet’s electioneering power.
“The ones that take advantage of this most effectively will be the ones that will be the winners of the next election,” Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt told Republican governors gathered in Miami.
Of course, Google’s newly acquired YouTube was Schmidt’s shining example. Schmidt cited the damage done to Rep. John Murtha (R-PA) and Senator George Allen (R-VA) by embarassing YouTube videos, as well as election losses for ruling Sunni Islamists inflicted by Shiite opposition candidates in Bahrain due to Google Earth videos showing the lavish homes of the country’s ruling families. (Bet few of our readers were aware of that last example of the power of the Internet to damage political leaders.)
The real question is: why was Eric Schmidt giving advice to Republicans? Google is a famously Democratic-leaning company, a political liability that the search giant only recently tried to rectify when the Republicans had a hammerlock on Washington. Now that the Dems are on the rise, is Schmidt still playing by the company’s revised political strategy to woo more Republicans? Or does Google just like underdogs?
Moreover, according to this tally, of the $245,716 donated by Schmidt to political candidates since 1994. The vast majority of the amount, $219,216, or 89%, went to Democrats.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 2:13 PM | Print | Comments (0)
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