Chris Dodd Uses Google Doodle to Press for Piracy Crackdown

Citing HBO's Ari Gold, MPAA Chairman Chris Dodd says to Google, "Let's hug it out"

Google is celebrating the opening of the first drive-in movie theater 79 years ago with one of its signature animated home page illustrations, and Motion Picture Association of America Chairman Chris Dodd is using the anniversary to beat a familiar drum.

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In a blog post Wednesday, Dodd said he appreciated the tribute, but argued that  Google's commitment to the entertainment industry needs to extend beyond doodles.

In particular, Hollywood's top lobbyist said that it was time for Silicon Valley companies like the search engine giant to get tough on piracy. 

Also read: Sunk! How Hollywood Lost the PR Battle Over SOPA

"Every day that we aren't working toward a shared solution with the tech industry is another day that the hard work and ingenuity of the people who work in the American film and television community is being ripped off by foreign criminals around the world," Dodd wrote. "It's another day that American ideas aren't being protected."

Dodd's big push to pass stringent new anti-piracy laws, called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), were swept away last winter in a tidal wave of protests from the likes of Google, Facebook and Wikipedia.  

While cloaking themselves in the banner of free speech, those technology giants argued that the new measures would have a chilling effect on free expression. They also maintained that the laws were infeasible and asked them to commit too many resources to cracking down on the distribution of pirated materials. 

Dodd has since publicly acknowledged that SOPA and PIPA are, in his words, "dead" and has instead devoted his energies to improving the major studios often frosty relationship with Silicon Valley. 

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In his blog post, Dodd cited Ari Emanuel's recent challenge to Google at the AllThingsD conference last week to get serious about filtering out stolen content. 

Ever the politician, Dodd took a less aggressive stance than the famously combative super-agent in calling on Google to collaborate on a solution to the piracy problem. 

"As Ari Emanuel's beloved on-screen alter-ego Ari Gold – brought to life in the TV show Entourage by exactly the hard-working Americans we aim to protect – would say in just slightly fewer words: let's hug it out," Dodd said. 

Missing from that call to action, of course, was a certain obscenity that Gold favored. 

 

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