Mike McCurry Once Yelled 'Hands Off The Internet,' And Now Embraces Massive Internet Regulations In SOPA?

Politics

from the ah,-lobbyists dept

Do you remember Mike McCurry? He’s the former White House press secretary who was hired by the telcos to run a pure astroturfing group called “Hands Off the Internet,” which was focused on attacking net neutrality. I’ve never been a fan of regulating net neutrality (though I believe that net neutrality itself is important), but McCurry and HOTI seemed ridiculously intellectually dishonest. My favorite trope was McCurry’s repeated claims that Google didn’t pay a dime for its bandwidth. I asked him to pay Google’s bandwidth bills… and never heard back on that issue… though, HOTI did continue to misrepresent my position soon after that on their blog. I hadn’t heard from HOTI in a while… and when I go to their website… it’s now all in German?!?

McCurry, though, jumped ship a while back to Arts+Labs, an “anti-piracy” astroturf group put together by NBC Universal, Viacom, ASCAP, BMI and others. It pretended it represented the “tech” industry because Microsoft and Cisco were a part of the companies behind it. But, given all that, you’d assume that McCurry and Arts+Labs would be 100% against SOPA, which would create a massive regulatory structure for the internet. After all, HOTI’s key video, argued:

These corporations are asking Congress to create volumes of new regulations to control how content is delivered over the internet. Should politicians and bureaucrats replace network administrators?

So, clearly, you would think that McCurry and Arts+Labs would be against SOPA, right? After all, SOPA is about Hollywood asking Congress to create volumes of new regulations to control how content is delivered over the internet. And it argues that politicians and bureaucrats should replace network administrators — especially on issues like DNS blocking. So, Arts+Labs, is against SOPA, right? Nope:

The introduction in the House of Representatives of legislation to combat the theft of U.S. intellectual property represents an important step in the fight to sustain American creativity and support individual innovators. The newly-introduced Stop Online Piracy Act, along with the PROTECT IP legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate earlier this year provide a way to push back against rogue websites that seek to profit from digital counterfeiting and piracy.

McCurry himself has written op-ed pieces in favor of this kind of massive regulation of the internet.

So, Mike, which is it? Are you for regulation of the internet, or against it? Or does it just depend on who’s paying?

Filed Under: copyright, hands off the internet, mike mccurry, protect ip, sopa
Companies: arts+labs