You Know It's an Election Year, Because ………

The Obama administration has come out against the most draconian measures in the rent seeking anti-piracy bills in the House and Senate:

The Obama administration won’t back legislation to combat online piracy if it encourages censorship, undermines cybersecurity or disrupts the structure of the Internet, three White House technology officials said.

Their statement, posted yesterday on the White House website, was a response to online petitions on legislative proposals to combat online piracy. The movie and music industries support such measures as a means of cracking down on theft.

“While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet,” Aneesh Chopra, Victoria Espinel and Howard Schmidt wrote in a blog post.

The statement marks the administration’s most significant foray into a fight between content creators and Internet companies that has been playing out in Congress. The Senate is scheduled to hold a procedural vote Jan. 24 on starting debate on an anti-piracy bill.

The first thing to note is that this is a very tepid condemnation.

They didn't make a Friday night release of this blog post, it was around noon on a Saturday when it was competing with the NFL playoffs, and Obama himself has not made a comment here.

That being said, I think that this is the first time that the Obama administration has come out against rent seekers as versus the general public.

I think that the Obama administration has made a tactical decision that they will get plenty of money for the campaign, and so they it isn't necessary at this time to sh%$ on a motivated and tech savvy part of the electorate.