GOP Folds On Copyright Report

No sooner were November election results tabulated and reported last month when the somewhat chastened Republican Party apparently received another, less-public, browbeating from Hollywood.

The Republican Study Committee – the conservative caucus of House Republicans – publicly posted a reform-focused position paper on digital copyrights on its website. But within 24 hours, it was gone. 

Paul Teller, the committee’s executive director, explained the report had “been published without adequate review with the RSC and failed to meet that standard.”

But according to tech blog Techdirt.com, the sudden disappearance of the report from the RSC’s website more likely resulted when the RIAA and MPAA lobbies “went ballistic and [hit] the phones hard, demanding that the RSC take down the report,” according to Techdirt. “They succeeded.” 

The report as posted apparently won over some in the digital community who normally sneer at the GOP. 

“If you just look through the comments on our post on the original, or through the Twitter response to this report, there were tons of people – many of whom were lifelong Democrats – claiming that they would switch parties if the GOP stuck with this,” Techdirt remarked.  “Instead, they folded like a cheap card table in less than 24 hours.”