When I first learned that ABC/Disney would run Path to 9/11 and watched as ABC/Disney, under tremendous pressure to do so, dug in its heels and refused to cancel the two-night, prime time broadcast, I smelled a dead animal - in fact, it was an elephant, a very, very large and very, very dead elephant - in the room. By that I mean to say that I was reasonably assured that within a few days' time the reason for ABC/Disney's recalcitrance would become abundantly clear if I kept an eye peeled and watched for insider news reports from around the country.
And true to form the answer was not long in coming. Yesterday - barely two days after the final installment was aired to much public opprobrium and with the specter of lawsuits wafting in air - the deal I surmise was struck some months ago between the White House/Karl Rove/Republican National Committee and ABC/Disney (the quid pro quo, if you will) surfaced in a random article published in the Los Angeles Times: "Proposed Treaty on TV Signals Spurs Criticism."
Follow me after the jump:
WASHINGTON -- The proposal sounds modest enough: Broadcasters want to stop international pirates from hijacking American TV signals and re-transmitting them over the Internet.
But the high-tech industry and digital rights advocates see something more sinister in the fine print of a proposed international treaty being negotiated this week in Geneva. They fear it will end up restricting how people can use legally recorded shows stashed on their TiVos or computer hard drives.
http://www.latimes.com/...
My antennae immediately started to tingle. I had just finished reading Max Blumenthal's follow-up report over at The Huffington Post, "The Swift Boat Connection of ABC's 9/11 Deception." Max reported that:
Under pressure about his institutional ties to the conservative movement (see here), The Path to 9/11 screenwriter Cyrus Nowrasteh now claims, the film he wrote had no political agenda. "This project was generated at ABC at the highest network levels," and brought together people from "broadly different backgrounds," Nowrasteh told the right-wing evangelical publication WorldNetDaily."
Two ABC flacks, meanwhile, told the New York Times that Nowrasteh's politlcal affiliations had nothing to do with The Path to 9/11's content.
But ABC and Nowrasteh have yet to answer for the admission by Lt Col. Robert "Buzz" Patterson that significant portions of his anti-Clinton attack books were incorporated into Nowrasteh's script.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Max's article helped to fill in many details and left little to the imagination. His report reinforces my contention that quid pro quo was, in fact, the impetus behind the smear job, not simply animus toward the Clinton administration. Using the Clinton administration as the scapegoat was merely the icing on the cake (a twofer) for the administration and the bait it set out in order to gain the uncompromising support of the radical right in promoting the mini-series.
The LAT article goes much further in explaining the seeming incongruity between Iger's longstanding financial support of the Democratic party and Democratic candidates (per FEC campaign finance records) and his tortured defense of Path to 9/11 in the face of overwhelming criticism. It should now be indisputable that, in fact, Iger made a calculated business decision, not a political one.
Pushed by U.S. and European TV networks, the treaty being considered by a World Intellectual Property Organization committee would prohibit the theft of their signals, as well as those from cable and satellite broadcasters. TV broadcasters said they were not targeting average viewers recording their favorite shows, just large-scale thieves stealing their business.
"If you send our signal ... to 100,000 people so it ruins our ability to market our signals, we ought to be able to prohibit that," said Ben Ivins, senior associate general counsel for the National Assn. of Broadcasters, which has been pressing for the treaty for several years.
But in what is shaping up as the next major battle in the fight over digital content, a coalition of phone companies, information technology firms and digital rights advocates warn the proposed treaty could do much more and is working to derail it.
Are you with me now? It gets uglier.
The treaty's broad language would create an expansive new copyright on TV signals that could lead to higher prices and more restrictions on home recording. Watching shows on a digital video recorder, transmitting a football game to a laptop via services such as SlingBox or simply moving video from one device to another in a home network would technically be considered a retransmission that requires the broadcaster's OK.
Critics say it's another desperate attempt by the broadcast industry to use legislation to restrict technological innovation and keep a dying business model on life support. The pattern, they say, stretches all the way back to the battle over the first Betamax video recorders when the industry fought new technology with legislation and lawsuits.
The entertainment industry has sought legislative intervention in the face of other technological advances. The advent of the VCR led to a suit over time shifting that it ultimately lost before the Supreme Court in 1984.
I encourage everyone to read the entire LAT article for all the gory details, and perhaps I can tempt you to do so by this additional little snippet:
"The reason why they want this right ... is they can get additional money out of players they haven't been able to charge before," Sarah Deutsch, Verizon's vice president and associate general counsel, said of traditional broadcasters. "The whole concept of giving an intellectual property right to a signal is ridiculous."
Under the proposed treaty, the broadcaster of a TV signal -- over the air or via satellite or cable -- would get a 50-year copyright. The right would be in addition to the copyright already given to a program's creator.
Can anyone deny that ABC/Disney has a stake in this treaty negotiation that we knew nothing about? This treaty is literally worth a veritable fortune to ABC/Disney with its worldwide distribution system, and it is willing to (and did) sell its soul to the devil to win this round because, much to its consternation, it lost its last major battle (see below).
More recently, the creation of digital TV led broadcasters to press Congress to require anti-copying technology, called the broadcast flag, be embedded in the signal. Congress has resisted. It's also failed to take up a push by movie studios for legislation to plug a technological hole that allows people to bypass copy protection on DVDs.
Treaty foes said broadcasters could use the new copyright as leverage to strike more favorable licensing deals with manufacturers or to force them to build in blocking technology, such as preventing a recorded show from being burned to a DVD.
"Many believe that the broadcasters see this exclusive right as a way to protect an industry that is rapidly being eclipsed by technological development," said Matthew Schruers, senior counsel for litigation and legislative affairs at the Computer & Communications Industry Assn., an industry trade group. "There is a fear that right could prevent the use of cool new devices because people can't license them or because the broadcasters don't want to license them."
I believe we can reasonably conclude from that above that Disney, which has in the past invested huge sums in political campaigns to install politicians that passed copyright protection schemes favorable to its interests, conspired with the administration to air the Path to 9/11 in return for government advocacy for ABC/Disney's position on the international treaty. I am asking you to help me expose this corruption. Please send this information to every one of your senators and congress(wo)men