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Music executive: Google and Wikipedia duped users on piracy bills
In a Wednesday editorial in The New York Times, Cary Sherman, chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), accused Google, Wikipedia and other websites of abusing their power to kill a pair of anti-piracy bills.
"The hyperbolic mistruths, presented on the home pages of some of the world’s most popular websites, amounted to an abuse of trust and a misuse of power," Sherman wrote. "When Wikipedia and Google purport to be neutral sources of information, but then exploit their stature to present information that is not only not neutral but affirmatively incomplete and misleading, they are duping their users into accepting as truth what are merely self-serving political declarations."
He noted that major television networks supported the anti-piracy legislation but did not use their platform to shape public opinion.
Sherman's RIAA, along with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, were the most vocal advocates of the tough anti-piracy legislation.
The House's Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate's Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) were on the fast track to approval until a massive Web protest last month forced Congress to pull the legislation.
Google, the most visited site in the world, plastered a black censorship bar over its logo, and Wikipedia blacked out its English-version site. Thousands of smaller websites also participated.
The websites warned that SOPA and PIPA would stifle innovation and censor free speech.
More than 7 million people signed Google’s petition opposing the legislation, and thousands called their representatives in Congress.
"Misinformation may be a dirty trick, but it works," Sherman wrote. "Consider, for example, the claim that SOPA and PIPA were 'censorship,' a loaded and inflammatory term designed to evoke images of crackdowns on pro-democracy websites by China or Iran. Since when is it censorship to shut down an operation that an American court, upon a thorough review of evidence, has determined to be illegal?"
SOPA and PIPA were designed to go after foreign websites that offer illegal copies of movies, music and TV shows. The bills would have empowered the Justice Department and copyright holders to demand that Internet providers and search engines cut off access to the sites. Ad networks and payment processors would have been prohibited from doing business with the sites.
Sherman argued that the websites gave people a distorted view of what the legislation really did.
"The conventional wisdom is that the defeat of these bills shows the power of the digital commons," he wrote. "Sure, anybody could click on a link or tweet in outrage — but how many knew what they were supporting or opposing? Would they have cast their clicks if they knew they were supporting foreign criminals selling counterfeit pharmaceuticals to Americans? Was it SOPA they were opposed to, or censorship?"
He dismissed an alternative anti-piracy measure, the OPEN Act, which is friendlier to tech companies.
He called it a "diversionary bill" that "would do little to stop the illegal behavior and would not establish a workable framework, standards or remedies."
He said the people guilty of real censorship are hackers like Anonymous, who attacked the RIAA's website, as well as the sites of the Justice Department and the MPAA, after prosecutors shut down file-sharing site Megaupload.
He said the hackers stifled "the speech of those with whom they disagree."
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