Pants Down

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Jason Kincaid, reporting for TechCrunch:

Which is why my jaw dropped when I saw that VEVO, a property jointly owned by some of the biggest record labels in the world, was showing a pirated stream of an ESPN football game at its Sundance PowerStation venue last month — on no fewer than two televisions, and a pair of laptops.

VEVO is a Hulu-like consortium for music videos. It is owned by three of America’s Big Four music labels: Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and EMI. The Big Four are a huge component of the RIAA. That’s the same RIAA that staunchly supported SOPA and PIPA, and whose CEO whined about the legislation’s death.

It will be very telling in how this situation is handled. As Michael Arrington notes:

The only way for the legislators and copyright holders who are fighting for tougher copyright laws to maintain any credibility whatsoever is for them to pursue any and all violators, even their own, as aggressively as they pursue everyone else.

Paint me cynical, but I don’t see that happening.