Some members of the media are spinning Chris Dodd's comments at the Atlanta Press Club regarding piracy as an "olive branch" extended to the tech industry. This headlining is clearly manipulative. Dodd joins the chorus of copyright interests who are accusing SOPA opponents of malfeasance:

Now, a few tried to disrupt this important debate with misinformation. They claimed that we sought to “kill the Internet” – as if the Internet were not crucial to our own business model. They claimed that we sought to “censor free speech” – as if artists the world over had not been on the vanguard of free speech for generations.

Despite their claims, these few critics are simply not interested in solving the problem of intellectual property theft – a position that may be explained by the fact that many of them profit from piracy themselves, through online advertising and search engine placement.

If you call that an olive branch you are either crazy or you are lying. Which one is Reuters?

The purpose of Dodd's speaking event is to encourage members of the press in Georgia to call their Congress persons and tell them to pass SOPA like legislation:

So if you believe that freedom of speech does not imply, and the ability to innovate does not require, a license to steal...if you believe that the men and women who work hard to make films and TV shows deserve to be fairly compensated for their labor...if you believe that these jobs are worth protecting...if you believe, as I do, that the content industry and the technology industry have more to gain from working together than from fighting each other – then I invite you to join this coalition and help us move towards a solution to this problem.

Get in touch with your representatives. Let them know that Georgia has a lot to gain from a thriving film and TV industry – and much to lose if we allow international thieves to steal our content and our jobs.

In other words, the Copyright Power is quietly lining up its chess pieces again so that it can go back to Congress and shove more censorship legislation down our throats.

Encouraging members of the press to call Congress is a particularly interesting strategy because the press is a special class of animal that is more equal than others - they are "opinion makers."

MPAA's Chris Dodd Extends SOPA Olive Branch to Silicon Valley | Reuters