Report: Anti-Streaming Lobbyists Paid Off Senators Handsomely Excerpt:
Approximately 10 percent of active Senators' total campaign costs were paid by bill's supporters Yesterday we reported on a pending measure in the United States Senate "The Commercial Felony Streaming Act" (S. 978). Approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, the bill now moves to the Senate floor for approval. If approved, the bill promises up to 5 years of hard prison time for anyone who "willfully" infringes content via streaming for the purpose of "personal financial gain". One of the sponsoring organizations, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) claims the measure will only be used to charge operators of sites that stream content illegally -- such as sports shows, movies, or TV shows. But the bill's ambiguous language could eventually be applied to send viewers to jail, as well. After all, the MPAA could easily argue in court that viewers were seeing "personal financial gain" by avoiding cable service fees, movie rental costs, etc. But that's hardly the biggest story here. I. Bought and Paid For The U.S. currently has the world's highest incarceration rate [source; PDF]. Maintaining that dubious distinction is far from cheap -- it cost free U.S. citizens a projected $80B USD in 2010 to support the government imprisoning their peers [source]. So why would the government want to send more U.S. citizens to prison? Well if a report by government watchdog group Maplight is to be believed, perhaps the old adage "you get what you pay for" holds true here. Maplight claims that the groups supporting the bill have paid a total of $86M USD to active senators within the last six years. Let's consider exactly how significant that number is. The U.S. Senate has had 105 seats contested in the last three elections [1][2][3]. The average spent by a senate race winner was $8.5M USD in the 2008 elections [source], according to the government watchdog Center for Responsive Politics (maintainers of the site "Open Secrets"). So in total the winning Senators in the last three elections had to spend an estimated $892.5M USD to win their seats. The $86M USD funneled by the anti-streaming lobbyists thus constitutes 9.7 percent of the total funds needed for U.S. Senators to obtain their jobs. Read more here: http://www.dailytech.com/Report+AntiStreaming+Lobbyists+Paid+Off+Senators+Handsomely/article21938.htm J - Ninety percent of politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation. - Henry Kissinger Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel. - John Quinton ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:339003 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
