MPAA Boss: If The Chinese Censor The Internet Without A Problem, Why Can't The US?

by Mike Masnick
Techdirt
Dec. 12, 2011

The MPAA is getting pretty desperate, it seems. MPAA boss Chris Dodd was out trying to defend censoring the internet this week by using China as an example of why censorship isn't a problem. It's kind of shocking, really.

"When the Chinese told Google that they had to block sites or they couldn't do [business] in their country, they managed to figure out how to block sites."

Is that really what Chris Dodd wants the US government to aspire to? To setting up its own Great Firewall?

His other comments were almost as ridiculous:

"How do you justify a search engine providing for someone to go and steal something?" he asked rhetorically in a recent interview at the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers conference. "A guy that drives the getaway car didn't rob the bank necessarily, but they got you to the bank and they got you out of it, so they are accessories in my view."

But that completely misunderstands and misrepresents the situation. Google isn't the driver. Google is the car manufacturer. Do we sue Ford as an accessory?

It's this sort of ridiculousness that makes it so difficult to take Dodd and the MPAA seriously in these discussions.