US vice-president Joe Biden
p2pnet news view P2P:- Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages, says the headline to Anne E. Kornblut’s Washington Post story on Day One of the shiny new Barack Obama administration.
It’s especially ironic given the accompanying pic (clip on the right) shows Obama grinning up at Technological Dark Ager (and plagiarist) of the First Degree Joe Biden, his vice-president.
Biden, himself a presidential candidate in 1988 and 2008, was accused of plagiarizing a speech by Neil Kinnock, at the time the leader of the British Labour Party.
He was also said to have plagiarized five pages of a law review article, both instances cited by the Wikipedia.
Before being elevated to his present position, Biden was 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,” said 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 was also one of only four US senators invited to a champagne reception in celebration of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act hosted by then MPAA boss Jack Valenti, the RIAA, and the Business Software Alliance, noted CNET News.
In direct 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.”
Fingers crossed, but not holding breath.
JN
January , 2009
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January 22nd, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Glad its Obama as president and Biden as VP, not the other way around…
January 22nd, 2009 at 11:15 pm
Having seen Obama’s government anti corruption message, I do believe that he’s on the side of right ie ours. However, with the rest of the government still the powerful corrupt assholes they’ve always been and especially given that Joe Biden, his *number two* of all people is one of them, I wonder if he’s going to be undermined, perhaps completely?
Only time will tell.