The MPAA believes SOPA's censorship mandate will solve its problems, and it has presented research to Congress to support this position. As evidence, it cites the efficacy of similar censorship mandates in China, Iran, the UAE, Armenia, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Burma, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.

  • http://mordicai.livejournal.com Mordicai

    U!$!A!  ©

  • monopole

    I’ll bet you North Korea doesn’t have any piracy problems either!

  • http://twitter.com/ChellyBelle_ RachelleA

    Plus, those guys really know how to keep their women in line!  This is totally the direction the USA should go!

  • jimh

    Beacons of freedom, all! Our heroes!

  • Andy Simmons

    And yet I hear that box office revenues in Turkmenistan haven’t been so hot lately.

  • xunker

    Yeah, but Yemen and Syria are also guilty of abhorrent civil rights abus– oh, I see what you did there.

  • Joe Fitzsimmons

    In China you illegally download movies from street merchants.

  • Graysmith

    How about we move Hollywood to Yemen and see how much they like living in those kind of countries? Maybe then they’ll finally realize what they’re trying to turn the U.S. into.

  • tehsusenoh

    … and we’re supposed to see this as a good thing?

  • elix

    They HAVE to be trolling us, now. Seriously, I think the MPAA just sits in their office dreaming up ridiculous bullshit to see if they can get people to believe it. That’s the only explanation I can see for this insanity.

  • http://thebird-feeder.com/ Ben Carlsen

    Don’t you just love it when the opposition does your job for you and gives you all the evidence you need that this is a terrible idea?  

  • Al Andersen

    The problem is, our representatives are stupid enough to believe that there’s no counterfeiting, copyright infringement, nor pirating of American merchandise in any of those countries.

    • myke

      I seriously doubt that it is a question of our Representatives being stupid (not that they are particularly bright).  The McDonald’s cashier doesn’t care that I want a Big Mac to feed myself, feed my dog, throw in the garbage, use as fertilezer, or whatever.

      It’s just that when you are getting what you paid for, the reason for buying it doesn’t matter very much to the person selling it to you.

  • musesum

    Does anyone have a petition up for the filmmakers and musicians that the MPAA and RIAA are supposed to represent? Does any artist support the suppression of free speech? 

  • Kaibaman

    So The MPAA and RIAA has fully admitted Sopa is going to be used as a Censorship Tool instead of Protecting Intellectual Property…These Bastards are going down

  • blissfulight

    Dear MPAA and RIAA:  I’ll make you a deal.  You quit proposing stupid ideas backed by preposterous evidence, and I’ll quit ridiculing them.  

  • AirPillo

    Why do we even bother to engage these people in debate on the topic of copyright and piracy, when the things they are actually against are the presumption of innocence and civil/consumer rights.

    They don’t want more IP protection, they want a hegemony with them at the helm.

    Let’s stop criticizing them as copyright extremists and start criticizing them honestly as fascists.

    • Andrew Singleton

      I think actual Fascists would disagree with you simply because even by their standards these guys are just too corrupt to stomach.

  • Cowicide

    That fact that corporatists and other buffoons keep saying they want to lower our standards to that of China and other more oppressive places just goes to show how terrifyingly important it is that we remove these craven idiots from power… now.

    Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run…
    There’s still time to change the road you’re on.

    http://occupywallst.org/donate/

  • http://codeflow.org/ Florian Bösch

    … and because it works great there, it’ll also work in USAistan

  • dmontanosanders

    Thank you MPAA. Remind me what we have in common with any of those countries. While you’re at it can you tell me how an apple is like an orange.

    • MrsBug

      :Sesame Street: One of these things is not like the other…

  • Øyvind

    So, I’m guessing that since these regimes now are setting the standard for US legislation, and since the pro-SOPA group seem to be taking pride in their ignorance and short-sightedness, the next logical step will be to introduce the “intellectual reeducation programmes” that worked brilliantly for the Khmer Rouge.

  • http://twitter.com/frederikvdz Frederik

    The verry first thing people do when they go on holliday to those places is bring back counterfeit western goods. Some cloths, watches, knock off gadgets. Especially China, they both produce and counterfeit the entire worlds goods.

  • IronEdithKidd

    Yes, we should emulate *those* esteemed bastions of democratic rule named by the MPAA. 

    *headdesk*

  • jramboz

    I’m not sure which surprises me more: that an educated person could make this claim with a straight face, or that any education person could hear it without laughing.

    • Øyvind

      Are you sure he is educated? Apparently american politicians mostly knows anything happening abroad either in the form of buzz words (the troops, war on terror) or where oil comes from, that is to say, on a primary school level, an MPAA shill only needs to be able to point out Canada on the map to appear a regular intellectual in comparison.

      As for education/educated persons hearing it without laughing – I’m sure they do laugh. I consider myself fairly educated, and I read it with a mix of incredulous amusement and horror.