Speaking Of Arrogant

Thursday, I wrote about Sen. Orrin Hatch's arrogant attitude toward us peons who oppose SOPA/PIPA, we now have Utah AG Mark Shurtleff showing his arrogant support for this horrid legislation.

He argued in a Salt Lake Tribune opinion piece last weekendhttp://bit.ly/ynecnK that a tough enforcement bill is needed to protect consumers, entertainers and businesses.

"It will take a strong, sustained effort to stop Internet thieves and profiteers," Shurtleff wrote.

Actually, Shurtleff didn’t write that. And other lines in his op-ed didn’t come from him either. They were plagiarized from a news release and columns written by supporters of the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA.

Opponents of the legislation first identified the lifted passages and noted the irony of a law enforcement officer fighting the misappropriation of others’ work by misappropriating others’ words.

But Shurtleff denies he plagiarized anyone, arguing it is common practice for public officials to get help writing speeches and opinion pieces, though he doesn’t deny that some sentences were lifted word for word from other sources.

"Could some quotes be put around those certain issues? Yeah. Is it plagiarism? No," Shurtleff said. "People are reciting words all the time."

And he said the accusations of plagiarism are a "disingenuous" attempt to undercut his political point by "people interested in piracy."

Emphasis mine.  No Mr. Shurtleff, these people are not "interested in piracy" - they are interested in this little thing called FREEDOM - maybe you have heard of it? It is something the political party you are attached to is supposed to espouse.

The attorney general said he was approached by a SOPA supporter who asked him to write an editorial and later offered some text as a starting point. Shurtleff then topped that material with his experiences in Utah...

...But Shurtleff refused to say who provided him with the text, calling it "irrelevant."

No Mr. AG who supplied the text is very relevant....especially if the person who supplied the text is from a group that has funnelled money into your campaigns in the past or who you are looking to get money from in FUTURE campaigns.

Then there is the actual plagiarism charge - the editors of the SL Trib were not swayed by the AG's weak defense.

"I believe it’s clear that, knowingly or unknowingly, the attorney general included sentences in his op-ed that not only weren’t written by him, but were lifted verbatim and without attribution from other published material," Editorial Page Editor Vern Anderson said. "In my book that’s plagiarism and represents either negligence or misrepresentation on the part of the attorney general. I regret that readers of the Opinion section were misled."

But the article closes with the most damning of Shurtleff's comments...the comments that show his true colors.....

He (Shurtleff - ed) doesn’t buy concerns that enforcement of the bill could infringe on free speech.

"Your free speech ends when you are ripping somebody off," he said.

And that is where the AG as both a lawyer and a supposed Constitutionalist (remember his Constitutionalist comments about ObamaCare?) is dead wrong.  The Supreme Court has long held that unless there is provable harm, free speech is sacrosanct.  And many of the things that are "fixed" by SOPA/PIPA are things that have already been shown in court to be "fair use" via free speech.  It has been ruled legal (for example) for bloggers like myself to quote newspaper articles (like I have done here) as long as the author is cited.  In most cases - a link back to the original is all that is needed in the courts eyes to constitute a citing.  However, that is not enough to Big Hollywood (who is pushing this bill).  They don't want independent people referring back to their works because they can not control what these independent people say about their work.  Much of this push back has stemmed from movie and music bloggers who have had less than glowing reviews of Big Hollywood/Big Music's work.  This is not about ripping people off as much as it is about controlling the message and traditional media has long understood the threat that the internet poses to their control of the message about their product.

So now we have two high profile Utah politicians showing their utter contempt of freedom.  Which means that for all people of good conscience it is time for these two to be retired from politics.  Time for the UTGOP to put freedom loving Utahns on the ticket in both the AG's and the US Senate slots.