p2pnet news view | RIAA| MPAA | Politics:- “Public figures commonly use anonymous speech writers,” says the Wikipedia, “If a speech uses plagiarized material, however, it is the public figure who may be cast in a bad light.

“For instance, Delaware Senator Joe Biden was forced out of the 1988 U.S. Presidential race (but remained in the U.S. Senate) when it was discovered that parts of his campaign speeches were plagiarized from speeches by British Labour party leader Neil Kinnock and Robert Kennedy.”

That’s the same Joe Biden carefully chosen by presidential hopeful Bark Obama as his Vice Presidential candidate in the current US elections.

Is plagiarism akin to copyright infringement?

Biden is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee who, after taking it over, “became a staunch ally of Hollywood and the recording industry in their efforts to expand copyright law,” states Declan McCullagh in CNET News, going on »»»

He sponsored a bill in 2002 that would have make it a federal felony to trick certain types of devices into playing unauthorized music or executing unapproved computer programs. Biden’s bill was backed by content companies including News Corp. but eventually died after Verizon, Microsoft, Apple, eBay, and Yahoo lobbied against it.

A few months later, Biden signed a letter that urged the Justice Department “to prosecute individuals who intentionally allow mass copying from their computer over peer-to-peer networks.” Critics of this approach said that the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, and not taxpayers, should pay for their own lawsuits.

He’s a proud founding member of the Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus who’s, “helped the lead the fight against countries such as China, Russia, Mexico and India that need stronger copyright protections,” says the Hollywood Reporter.

“When somebody holds you up on the street and takes your wallet, we call it robbery,” the story quotes him is as declaring. “And when somebody steals your idea and creation, we call it theft, plain and simple.”

The MPAA, “has lauded the work of the anti-piracy caucus as being essential to motivating the government to action,” it goes on.

And it gets worse.

“Biden was one of only four U.S. senators invited to a champagne reception in celebration of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act hosted by the MPAA’s Jack Valenti, the RIAA, and the Business Software Alliance,” says CNET News.

In contrast, “Barack Obama believes we need to update and reform our copyright and patent systems to promote civic discourse, innovation and investment while ensuring that intellectual property owners are fairly treated,” says his web promo site  in which he also states:

“Let us be the generation that reshapes our economy to compete in the digital age.”

But it’s a view diametrically opposed to the approaches of the music, movie and software cartels.

The last thing they want is honest competition of any kind.

However, “The choice by Mr. Obama in some ways mirrors the choice by Mr. Bush of Dick Cheney as his running mate in 2000,” the New York Times reassures us, going on, “at his age, it appears unlikely that Mr. Biden would be in a position to run for president should Mr. Obama win and serve two terms. Shorn of any remaining ambition to run for president on his own, he could find himself in a less complex political relationship with Mr. Obama than most vice presidents have with their presidents.”

This year Biden proposed a $1 billion program, “to monitor P2P networks for ‘illegal activity’ and a version made it through Judiciary,” says paidContent.

“He sponsored an RIAA bill last year to restrict recording and playback of individual songs from satellite and internet radio stations.”

Privacy, the FBI, and PGP

In a long and detailed examination of Biden, “We asked him 10 tech-related questions, including whether he’d support rewriting the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as part of our 2008 Technology Voters’ guide, says McCullagh in CNET.

But Biden wouldn’t answer, he says, continuing »»»

In our 2006 Technology Voters’ Guide, which ranked Senate votes from July 1998 through May 2005,

Biden received a mere 37.5 percent score because of his support for Internet filters in schools and libraries and occasional support for Internet taxes.

On privacy, Biden’s record is hardly stellar. In the 1990s, Biden was chairman of the Judiciary Committee and introduced a bill called the Comprehensive Counter-Terrorism Act, which the EFF says he was “persuaded” to do by the FBI.

A second Biden bill was called the Violent Crime Control Act. Both were staunchly anti-encryption.

This bill, “and the threat of encryption being outlawed,” prompted Phil Zimmermann to write PGP (pretty good privacy), notes CNET.

Stay tuned.

CNET News -Joe Biden’s pro-RIAA, pro-FBI tech voting record, August 23, 2008
Hollywood Reporter -Joe Biden has strong anti-piracy record, August 23, 2008
New York Times -Obama Chooses Biden as Running Mate, August 23, 2008
paidContent - Dem VP Pick Biden’s Tech Policy: Pro-Copyright Friend Of RIAA, MPAA; Net Neutrality Skeptic?, August 23, 2008

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 5:57 am and is filed under MPAA News, RIAA News, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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