MPAA lobby group plagiarizes anti-PIPA group's email

Public Knowledge, a public interest group fighting SOPA and PIPA, believes that its email to supporters has been plagiarized by its rivals, Creative America, an MPAA-funded astroturf group that lobbies in favor of PIPA. The copyright lobby sent a note to supporters that had a number of similarities (including word-for-word lifts) to a Public Knowledge email sent four days earlier. It's all fair use, of course, but then again, the MPAA claims that fair use isn't a right, and that no one should rely on it, and that anyone who wants to quote someone else should always get permission.

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MORE: Copyfight • corruption • dirty tricks • law • petard • pipa • plagiarism • sopa

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Taking a page from Congress’ “It’s not a crime if I do it” book, I see.
http://codeflow.org/ Florian Bösch

I’ve recently had a good idea. The youtube content filter, the one that’s annoying everybody. The one that’s so good. Why can’t I (or anybody) register something with that content filter? Seeing as the hollywood pirates trample over copyright left and right, artists could put a stop that for good.

Ohyeah, I guess their own medicine would taste bitter to them right? Content filtering is just for them, not for us. rrrrrriiiiiight.
- Stooge
  
  Why can’t I (or anybody) register something with that content filter?
  
  Any YouTube Partner can sign up for it. I’ve done it lots of times.
  
  Try confirming your bias some other way.
  - http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
    
    There are prerequisites to becoming a YouTube Partner, the point is that ‘some guy’ that’s been ripped off on YouTube can’t simply tell youtube, they first need to meet their demands (which are unrelated to proving any ownership over content).
    
    I don’t know for sure that the partner program is the only way to go about this, but if that’s your defense on the part of YouTube, it’s a bad one.
    
    And he’s right anyway, they do get to play by different rules, no need to be snarky. Try pulling that anti-MegaUpload shit if you’re not a multi-million [currency] company and see if you don’t get dragged through court and banned by YouTube.
Andrew Singleton

*sigh*

Why do they constantly have to show us how idiotic they are?
- http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
  
  Realistically this was an email probably written by some marketing exec, it doesn’t really embody the belief system of the organisation – I’d consider this a foolish mistake likely committed by an individual that would have been verified by stakeholders that are unlikely to check for plagiarism. You could argue they should be especially careful of such things, but humans are humans.
  
  But I think that this is just as good an example regardless. It still shows that iron-fist copyright approaches will end up punishing everyone, irelivant of intent.
http://twitter.com/terrencehart Terry Hart

“but then again, the MPAA claims that fair use isn’t a right, and that no one should rely on it, and that anyone who wants to quote someone else should always get permission.” Citation needed.
Guest

But then again, maybe they did get permission to use it.
http://twitter.com/DlSCORD Discord

Now that’s what I call the MPAA “ironically stupid and useless in many terms!”