Our Elected Officials Never Learn: Ask Biden To Get Russia To Increase Censorship Via Copyright

from the not-understanding dept

Vice President Biden went to Russia this week, and though I'm sure he needs no urging whatsoever to present Hollywood's misguided message on intellectual property, a group of our elected officials in Congress -- including Senators Orrin Hatch and Sheldon Whitehouse, along with Congressional Reps. Bob Goodlatte and Adam Schiff (from the LA area, of course) -- have sent him a letter asking him to push Russia to pick up the pace on its "anti-piracy" efforts . It's really quite stunning how shortsighted this request is. After all, we've seen over and over again that when the US pushes other countries to increase their anti-piracy activities, it inevitably results in them using greater "enforcement" against US interests . And Russia is a particularly interesting case. After all, the Kremlin has just indicated it wants to increase internet censorship , and the government also has a long history of using "anti-piracy" claims to censor political critics I'm sure Russian politicians are having a good chuckle over this. Basically, these US politicians are giving them all the tools they need to censor anyone they don't like. They just get to call it "anti-piracy" and they can even brag about it and have the US government cheer them on.In the meantime, is anyone a constituent of any of those four elected officials, who apparently make up the "Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus" (don't laugh -- perhaps they're just uninformed)? If so, can you please send them a copy of the new research report on piracy in emerging economies from the Social Science Research Council? We can hope that maybe (just maybe) they'll realize they're not helping.

Filed Under: copyright, joe biden, russia