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Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Sony gets mega publicity over a film effort that from all appearances will be a mediocre experience for theater goers. Publicity arising from Sony being hacked. By somebody. In parallel, Google is litigating against the Mississippi Attorney General. Happy holidays to all.

This court filing, stating factual background for its filing, in its opening pages, four of which are set out within the following clickable-readable thumbnail images:


Plus one. This bonus thumbnail:


Mississippi? Wow. Hollywood meets and greets friends at what, the Redneck Riviera - or a few miles west along hurricane land? Remember, it is: Haley Barber land. John Stennis land. James Eastland land. Trent Lott land. And while Google has posted this on its googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com Blogger site, it in parallel has not removed this [third-party] entertainment industry content from YouTube. (Where's their head in all this?)

Readers finding hints here of this little American Christmas saga of interest are encouraged to do their own

websearch = Goliath SOPA Google Jenner Block Perrelli leaked Sony emails

and

websearch = Sony twitter emails

For those who like connecting dots, look at that highlighted sidebar thing on the bonus thumbnail. Harvard JD, 1991, Law Review Managing Editor. Wikipedia notes mid-item, here:

Obama entered Harvard Law School in the fall of 1988. He was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year, president of the journal in his second year, and research assistant to the constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe while at Harvard for two years. During his summers, he returned to Chicago, where he worked as an associate at the law firms of Sidley Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990. After graduating with a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991, he returned to Chicago. Obama's election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review gained national media attention and led to a publishing contract and advance for a book about race relations, which evolved into a personal memoir. The manuscript was published in mid-1995 as Dreams from My Father.

[italics added, links omitted] If you imagine your nation headed by a man of the people, it's so but it's just not your people, it's his and Perrelli's people. And Holder's and the Obama-Holder Justice Department's people, where the bureau insiders are still mulling over Darren Wilson - Michael Brown and whether Brown's civil rights were in some imaginable way violated; while, interestingly during the same tenure, no Wall Street criminal has gone to jail (not even ones from AIG or Goldman Sachs). And, add to that, if you saw as an option John McCain [the Admiral's son] or Mitt Romney [the Gremlin's son] as men of the people, more so than Obama, then your head's in Mississippi.

BOTTOM LINE: Enjoy your holidays with family, those who really matter to you, and for whom you want the best in the future.

______________UPDATE____________
Google's YouTube, here, also has posted the "OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO" [whatever that means] of the same song, this bearing the stamp of Warner's studios. Still entertaining and still online. For you and yours. It seems the studio leadership reckoned a video beyond showing musicians playing was merited, to get across a more sophisticated theme apparently. One more in touch with studio views of America than mere musicians standing on a stage playing to an audience, and hence it appears Warner produced its more entertaining version. For you and yours. One puzzling aspect of the video, perhaps to you too, is how did the attractive young guy keep such a clean shirt while on a dusty roadside southern chain gang? His hair was perfect. Like Haley Barber's, or Trent Lott's. Or Chris Dodd's.

__________FURTHER UPDATE__________
Some folks, you can try, try, try, but you can never know exactly why they complain, what they are particularly heated up over, and then what you do to meet them more than halfway never seems enough; see, e.g., this link again, pp 9, et seq.

__________AN UPDATE QUESTION___________
If you find little to nothing entertaining about this entire story of big corporate push-and-shove and give-and-take, then why do they call it "the entertainment industry?"

The Verge reporting, end of item:

Google's counteroffensive isn't limited to Attorney General Hood. The company has also issued a document preservation notice to both the MPAA and the law firm Jenner & Block, asking them to retain documents related to the Goliath campaign and hinting at further legal action in the future. The result is a major campaign against a program that, until a week ago, no one outside of Hollywood studios knew about. It's just the kind of counteroffensive MPAA executives worried about in the initial email leaks, when they raised concerns over "what Goliath could do if it went on the attack." Now that the plans are public, it looks as if we're going to find out.

That's Entertainment?

___________MORE UPDATING___________
May the circle be unbroken.

Given that Google was in the MPAA cross-hairs, why was the Mississippi Hood pulling Google's chain over pharmaceuticals?

It does not normally follow that pharmaceuticals tie in to Hollywood, beyond anecdotal celebrity usage reporting.

That was a troubling loose end. (And, coincidentally, when a few years back a google for its advanced search page often gave an early hit to google.ca content instead of google.com content, why was this happening? Why Canada?)

Well, we don't positively in the public know for certain. We do know, however, that smack-dab in the middle of Perrelli's 2009-2012 service as number three man at Justice, there was this and this chest pounding by different arms of the Department. This online document is the deal Google cut with the government. What the company bought for half a billion. (Coincidentally, the Grateful Dead song "Shakedown Street" is on YouTube; and you can websearch it if you doubt.)

So, circumstantially, the beef MPAA had with Google was over copyrighted content; whereas the weapon the Entertainment Industry choose to use, with Mississippi's AG fully on board, was pharmaceuticals; given background factors. While not having read any emails disclosed after the Sony hacking, (and not being privy to MPAA emailing and activities), I cannot go beyond rational conclusions one might draw from a limited spectrum of circumstantial evidence. (I.e., I might see an unbroken circle where only there are unconnected dots perhaps only appearing to me to be on the circumference of a circle.)

Draw your own conclusions, but according to N.Y. Times Aug. 30, 2011, coverage from the settlement days, Larry Page allegedly was cognizant of certain things which, per the non-prosecution agreement were not admitted to as criminal conduct by Google or its people: with Times' reporting being:

The United States attorney for Rhode Island, Peter F. Neronha, whose office was responsible for the investigation, said Google’s conduct was not the result of a few rogue employees, according to The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Neronha said the company’s chief executive, Larry Page, “knew what was going on.”

The statute prohibits the “introduction or delivery” of the drugs, but Google was not involved in any way in their actual transfer into the United States, which is the usual means of proving a violation of the statute. Instead, the Justice Department viewed Google as an accomplice to the crime by enhancing the ability of the Canadian pharmacies to reach American consumers.

Can a search engine be held responsible for how consumers use the products or services allowed to be advertised on it? That question goes to a core issue in the criminal law regarding the responsibility of suppliers for the use of products they sell.

There were negligence lawsuits in the early 1990s against Soldier of Fortune magazine for advertisements it ran for people willing to engage in criminal acts, including murder. These cases were brought by victims of attacks and involved a question about whether the magazine published ads that were a “clear and present danger” to the public, and therefore unprotected by the First Amendment.

Unlike a private lawsuit alleging negligence, the Justice Department’s nonprosecution agreement with Google involved an assertion that the company aided a criminal violation — i.e., that it was an active participant in a crime.

To prove accomplice liability, the prosecution must show the defendant provided some assistance in the commission of the crime, which can include counseling or encouraging the offense. There is a fine line between supplying goods that are later used for the commission of a crime and actually assisting in its completion.

Even if one does furnish some measure of assistance, the law further requires that the accomplice be aware of the user’s intention to commit a crime and intend to give some assistance or encouragement in its completion.

The Justice Department’s position in the Google case emphasizing the awareness of its chief executive shows it took an aggressive approach about what can constitute aiding a violation of the drug importation laws.

Google was not involved in the actual movement of the prescriptions, but the government viewed its role as sufficiently important to the success of the Canadian pharmacy sales that it was similar to someone who actually supplied or shipped misbranded drugs.

The fact that the Canadian pharmaceuticals case was resolved by a nonprosecution agreement can be seen as an indication that the Justice Department understood its position on accomplice liability could be open to challenge if criminal charges were filed in court.

Unlike a guilty plea, this type of resolution does not require any judicial approval, so a judge will not question whether the conduct rose to the level of aiding and abetting a crime.

[italics added] Theories of criminal accessorial liability can be stretched only so far if tested in a criminal trial court, but Justice [not Hollywood] had Google's signatures on a contract line (on page 15 of the agreement with every page duly initialed) with implications of good behavior - absolutely exemplary future corporate care and behavior - a part of the written deal. Then, strangely, this ex-Justice high muck-a-muck at a prestigious DC lawfirm with branch offices nationwide is emailing around about "Goliath" aspects, with the Mississippi AG and other state AGs privy along with Hollywood high management in the emailing loop. And Sony got hacked and the email chain came to light publicly. And then, yo, we learn a humungo subpoena was served upon Google out of Mississippi about pharmaceuticals and such; ostensibly motivated for some as yet not fully explained reason of compelling Mississippi public policy re consumer protection law in that state. With Google moving to quash.

Go figure.

Who in all of it is without sin, enabled to cast a first stone?

I from time-to-time have conversed with a well-reasoned Liberty Republican having serious reservations about "corporatism" in today's US of A, and that term, like "Fascism," is not easily or compactly defined either in theory or if alleged in practice. Like the several blind men describing an elephant each from handling but a part of the animal, there can be disagreement over what's been encountered.

__________YET MORE, THE GIFT KEEPS GIVING __________
Strange bedfellows? Or not, when it's monitized?

Posted today, here, with one operative paragraph stating:

So starting at 10 a.m. PST in the U.S., you can rent or buy "The Interview" on Google Play and YouTube Movies. It will also be available to Xbox Video customers and via www.seetheinterview.com.

[bolding added, links omitted]. Kiss and make up, for Christmas?

And what a ton of web publicity ...

Was I hoodwinked, by Mississippi court filings?

Reason prevails, along with monetization? All's right with the world?

_____________ ... KEEPS GIVING ... _________________

Clown - Do you even know the meaning of "hoodwinked?"
You did not see Dennis in Cuba, did you?
How's that for a hint?
You have been ENTERTAINED.

Yeah, one of them has trouble getting onto YouTube today, and would he have to borrow foreign exchange from the other now with content monitization? But - the other scary side of that, who's got the bomb? Either of the Koreas, Iran, Pakistan, Ireland, the Vatican? Which if holding would be first to use, and under what possible scenario?

Have a nice HOLIDAY. Stay sober. Drive sober.