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.

RE: The Heritage Foundation takes a principled stand against SOPA