Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Some labels, first time ya hear 'em, belated or not, they just sing to you. Such a one for me is "Big Content", as in this mock-heroic headline:

Big Content rips into Google, the "corporate imperialist"

The barons of copyright, like Olympian gods, rise to the attack against the dark side of progress, as embodied by das Googleplex, global cloud monster extraordinaire:

"The knives are out for Google Chairman Eric Schmidt... major US rightsholders... brand Google... an arrogant, out-of-control company bent on ruining American creativity...."

Yes indeed, the brute's a liability hydra, "thinking itself above US law."!

Here's Mike O'Leary, brazen Celtic wormtongue and hireling of the Motion Picture Association of America, striking a full chord's worth of notes of indictment:

"Is Eric Schmidt really suggesting that if Congress passes a law and President Obama signs it, Google wouldn’t follow it? As an American company respected around the world, it’s unfortunate that, at least according to its executive chairman’s comments, Google seems to think it’s above America’s laws. We’ve heard this "but the law doesn’t apply to me" argument before—but usually, it comes from content thieves, not a Fortune 500 company. Google should know better. "

This scrap has erupted over a bill in the Senate, with one of those now-standard tiresome cute acronyms: PROTECT IP. I'll leave the details of this pending toll booth system enforcer to Father Smiff, who takes a banausic interest in these nuts and bolts. Suffice to say that it's wildly over the top and provides the US government and civil courts with the kind of ability to blacklist and block foreign sites that the Chinese currently try to apply through the so-called Great Firewall Of China, with some though not complete success. Search engines would apparently have to de-list blacklisted sites, for example, and there's some craziness with something callled DNS, which makes my eyes glaze over.

Chalk it up to Clio's weirdly entertaining use of unintended agency.

Catch this bold pentimento: Google, as beacon of liberty, hasn't overlooked the Chinese parallel, and waves the ultimate warning flag against PROTECT IP's implications: Chicom totalitarian fiends will exploit it for repression!

To which O'Leary blarneys away, with the insouciant dog-faced shamelessness that only the sons of Erin can pull off:

"Google should know better...the notion that China would use a bi-partisan, narrowly tailored bill as a pretext for censorship is laughable, as Google knows, China does what China does."