Daily Archive for November 25th, 2005

The cause of the French riots? Rap music!

Apparently rap music is the root of all evil, at least in France.

200 French politicians have backed a petition from one of the country’s MPs calling for legal action against seven rappers and bands which he claims have fueled the recent riots that have taken place around the country.

Straight from the Deflect Blame 101 playbook.

-TPP

Couldn’t have said it better myself

Rosa Merilainen, a Finnish Member of Parliament, maintains a blog she updates every week.

She was recently involved with voting for a new copyright law in Finland, one which was opposed by 98% of Finnish citizens, but promoted heavily by the entertainment industry lobbyists. The bill caused an unprecedented uproar in Finland before it was passed, and the controversy has not lessened since. Ms. Merilainen was one of the many MPs who voted for the law, and has been critized severely by her constituents ever since.

The entry for week 45 on her blog has an interesting confessional from Ms. Merilainen. While having a rather unsuccessful attempt of doing any work during Thursday of that week, she was nevertheless in a happy mood, because she was heading to the Christmas season opening event of Gramex. Gramex is an organization protecting the interests of performing artists and publishers and also collects copyright related renumerations in behalf of them.

Turns out Ms. Merilainen was looking forward to the event, because she had had such a rough time with the new copyright law, she was trolling for praise from the “wonderful men” (her words) of Gramex.

It’s good to know Ms. Merilainen is working hard to please her constituents, or at least 2% of them.

-TPP