BP Hires Former RIAA Boss For PR Work

from the why-don't-you-just-sue-all-the-oil? dept

It’s been a little while since we last wrote about Hilary Rosen, who ran the RIAA for many years, and presided over its initial disastrous decision to fight the internet and go after users. However, we have to say that it’s somewhat amusing to find out that BP has now hired Rosen for PR help in dealing with the oil spill in the Gulf. Hopefully “suing all the people who live along the coast” isn’t one of her suggestions. But, perhaps she can figure out a way to blame the spill on “pirates” of some kind, right?

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Companies: bp, riaa

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Comments on “BP Hires Former RIAA Boss For PR Work”

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31 Comments
Dark Helmet (profile) says:

No...

“Hopefully “suing all the people who live along the coast” isn’t one of her suggestions.”

Mike, that’s an absolutely silly thing to suggest she’d do. Why would she sue the people affected by this disaster? The more proper courses of action are listed below:

1. Sue Mother Nature on behalf of those afflicted coast members. After all, the ocean was the delivery vehicle of the harmful oil, not unlike torrent sites are to infringing material.

2. Sue the Gulf of Mexico. They had this oil. HAD it. And then the stupid, thieving ocean swept it away on their watery water water. And they didn’t ask BP’s permission first! The Gulf of Mexico is a piratey raporist!

3. Release conflagoriffic studies suggesting that animals aren’t harmed by oil. Didn’t you know that everglade storks actually consume oil as a requirement for breeding?

4. Sue Jammie Thomas. My sources tell me that Hilary isn’t sure why, but somehow this is all Jammie’s fault. Probably for having a ridiculously spelled first name….

SpacePirate (profile) says:

Thieves

She just released her first statement:

“Those rotten scoundrel thieving pirate Gulf Coast residents are stealing BP’s oil! It’s BP’s oil and they are storing it in the World Wide Ocean but just because its in the World Wide Ocean doesn’t mean anyone with access to the World Wide Ocean can just have it.

BP created that content and they have every right to be paid by everyone who’s gone to the World Wide Ocean and taken some of that oil content.”

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

And they don’t care if you’ve got a desalter, vacuum distillation unit, naphtha hydrotreater, catalytic reformer, distillate hydrotreater unit, fluid catalytic cracker, hydrocracker, visbreaking unit, merox unit, coking unit, alkylation unit, dimerization unit, isomerization unit, steam reforming unit, amine gas treater, and claus unit to refine all that crude or not!

Griff (profile) says:

Wait for the seabird pictures

When the awful pictures of oil soaked seabirds start to arrive, HR will say that the oil (which belongs to BP) owns the copyright to it’s photographic likeness, and sue to prevent publication in the papers.

But does BP actually own “escaped” oil ? Or only oil it captures straight from the well ?
This is a serious question – if someone else mounted a salvage operation that captured 5000 barrels a day before it hit the beach, who would own the oil ?

NAMELESS ONE says:

CAN you see tomorrows headline

BP – THE OIL DISASTER ( NOW IN 3D)
and everyone runs and pays a GILLION dollars and BP GETS
PROFIT

RIAA / MPAA business is infecting everything
CANT wait to see the next law that comes out will be
COPYRIGHT OIL OR
YOUR CAR DOORS ARE TPMS and are copyrighted
THUS THE MPAA/RIAA can fine you if you have non approved people in the car and dont drive where they tell you

OH the joy as the ISPS er gas stations/mechanics are then forced into throttling your speed to 5 miles an hour anytime you want to drive the car.

NO WONDER THE USA ECONOMY IS IN A TURD
SAME WITH EUROPE

wallow-T says:

unfair to PR flacks

I believe this is somewhat unfair to Ms. Rosen. As far as I can tell, she advised privately against the RIAA strategy of suing individual file sharers, and she left the RIAA job as the lawsuit campaign began. The RIAA’s strategy is directed by the four major labels, not by the person at the top of the organization chart.

Somewhere there is a post-RIAA interview with Ms. Rosen, but I do not have time to search for it tonight.

The Pirate says:

Not so crazy talk.

If you consider the target audience.

It is not the public they are targeting, it is their representatives with which the RIAA have very good relations and knows the inside outs of the system and actually have hundreds of fronts to lobby in its favour so BP feeling threatened run up to them to contain the situation.

Society doesn’t matter they are not the target of the PR campaign the government is.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Not so crazy talk.

I was kinda thinking the same thing but am not sure. What I was thinking is that the RIAA PR person would have more relations with federal agencies like the USPTO, FCC, and perhaps the FTC along with those IP Czars. Not sure how that relates to this oil spill though.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Not so crazy talk.

Images from birds dying will get a lot of people upset, this in turn will lead to government officials to say things in public like “we will make them accountable” which scares BP a lot and because it could mean legislation on the way, so to counter that they will use who?

People who has good relations inside the government and know where to push.

Jay (profile) says:

I was glad she was gone out of the picture and now she’s back?

Her comments, when read, seemed quite belligerent when I saw them on Dmusic.com.

Pardon my french but:
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU————

*ahem* Yeah, I never liked her or the MPAA’s equivalent, Jack Valenti. Yes, I know he retired but his speeches are what roused the giant that is Hollywood to the “piracy” threat in the first place. Sad that his lobbying efforts were quite successful.

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