Wired is running a damned scary story right now. California state attorney Bill Lockyer has a draft of a letter proposing strict legislative crackdowns against peer to peer software (p2p). The scary part? The document was written by the MPAA: “Sources tell Wired News that the draft letter’s authorship is attributed to Vans Stevenson, the MPAA’s senior vice president for state legislative affairs. MPAA representatives have issued similar criticisms of P2P technology in the past.”
Why is the California attorney general willing to even entertain enforcing a document written by the MPAA? Why in the world is the California state government siding with a collection of corporations instead of its citizens? This whole thing sounds like a buyout. It would appear that the Lockyer is now working for the MPAA, trying to enforce the MPAA’s policies as official state policy. To quote the last line of the article: “Others might be concerned about the propriety of a commercial organization effectively placing words in the mouth of an elected official.”