Decius wrote:
The Center for American Progress doesn't appear to have taken a position, although they did provide the MPAA with a forum to promote the bill. Not the same thing as endorsing it, but...

At least their Campus Progress subdivision has spoken out against SOPA.

Lesson: Only trust Democrats under the age of 30?

You've gotta understand the way that institution rolls... CAP doesn't take positions that it doesn't have policy work to back up; Having a body of policy work is seen as a prerequisite to taking a stance on something. Granted, this leads them to be silent at times they probably shouldn't. CAP hasn't done anything in this area. It doesn't have people it's prepared to send out for commentary to the media or The Hill.

CAP also isn't monolithic. Various craft based out of the CAP mothership have been showing opposition to SOPA. You noted that Campus Progress has come out against it. Organs of CAP's social media apparatus has been supporting anti-SOAP efforts. More could happen in the near future.. We'll see.

I do know that CAP took alot of heat over that Dodd event... In the absence of policy work, CAP sees events as exploratory. It's useful to have people come out and get them talking. Just because CAP had Dodd in for an event doesn't mean they support his positions.

I have hopes CAP as a whole will come out in opposition to SOPA. I am 100% positive that they will not come out in support of it.

Thanks for the explanation...

Rattle wrote:
I do know that CAP took alot of heat over that Dodd event... In the absence of policy work, CAP sees events as exploratory. It's useful to have people come out and get them talking.

All things being equal, its great to have Dodd out and to have him articulate his organization's point of view - thats how we have a political dialog. His statements there got a lot of coverage and analysis. Its helpful to have a forum like that.

The problem is that its not clear that all things are actually equal. If the MPAA is the only organization that CAP is interested in hearing from on this issue, then we're not really having a dialog - we're having an event in which a particular POV is being promoted.

Prior to the Dodd event, Alyssa Rosenberg used the ThinkProgress blog to float the idea that what I'd refer to as copyright maximalism is a valid progressive goal, due to the number of middle class and union workers involved in the content industries. This position was directly reflected in Chairman Dodd's comments.

There are, of course, other valid progressive goals in play here, such as the vitality of the public domain as well as the right to tinker with and criticize commercial products.

Unfortunately, these are goals that aren't backed by multi-million dollar lobbying efforts.