Hollywood's Latest 'Conciliatory' Effort Towards Silicon Valley? Forcing Lobbyists To Drop Tech Companies As Clients

from the they-may-regret-that dept

"They are doing everything they can to ensure that the tech industry and Facebook in particular doesn't have any talent to go up to the Hill," one tech lobbyist said of the content providers.



Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock, the Glover Park Group and TeleMedia Policy Group have all terminated their lobbying contracts with Facebook, according to sources familiar with the lobbying terminations.

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Remember how Hollywood keeps saying that they now want to have this "conversation" with Silicon Valley and not be so antagonistic? It seems that feeling does not extend to lobbyists. According to Politico, the folks in Hollywood have been putting pressure on lobbying shops not to work with the tech industry -- and Facebook in particular:This is interesting timing. And by "interesting" I mean "bad," for those lobby shops at least. Remember, Facebook, which is growing at an insane rate, just filed for a massive IPO and is going to be flush with cash. Meanwhile, the entertainment industry has actually been scaling back some of their lobbying efforts. Betting on the losing team isn't exactly a winning strategy. Of course, as the article correctly points out, this is Hollywood still thinking that the SOPA/PIPA fight was about lobbying, when it had little to do with that (not to say that lobbying wasn't done over the issue, but no amount of lobbying was going to win that fight -- it was the public activism that did it).Either way, it's an odd choice to go after Facebook's lobbyists anyway, considering how little Facebook had to do with this fight at all. Of all the big internet companies, it actually seemed the least willing to even bother to do anything about SOPA/PIPA. Of course, Facebook has been ramping up its DC policy efforts on other fronts, so the lobbyists lose out, and this does nothing to benefit Hollywood. Kind of a weird move. Hollywood gets a few more lobbyists on its side... and it's unlikely to have a significant impact on how the public views these attempts by Hollywood to attack the internet, rather than adapt to market realities.

Filed Under: dc, hollywood, lobbyists, pipa, sopa

Companies: facebook