Researchers at Michigan State University (MSU) have demonstrated how a new virus evolves, shedding light on how easy it can be for diseases to gain dangerous mutations. The findings appear in the current issue of the journal Science.

The scientists showed for the first time how the virus called “Lambda” evolved to find a new way to attack host cells, an innovation that took four mutations to accomplish. This virus infects bacteria, in particular the common E. coli bacterium. Lambda isn’t dangerous to humans, but this research demonstrated how viruses evolve complex and potentially deadly new traits, noted Justin Meyer, MSU graduate student, who co-authored the paper with Richard Lenski, MSU Hannah Distinguished Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics.

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This is a fascinating study. The lambda virus infects E. coli through a surface protein called LamB – the protein was even named because of this property. So, in the experiment, some E. coli  evolved resistant forms  dealing with  LamB to prevent infection. Then lambda developed a new form that found another way to infect the cell by using another protein, OmpF.

These new viral forms needed at least 4 separate mutations to accomplish this. And all 4 changes were needed to become fully infective.

The key aspect to get from this is not that the 4 mutations needed to occur all at once for them to appear. These changes were co-evolving with the changes in the LamB protein, so the necessary mutations became more prominent in the viral population as the E. coli also changed.

Essentially, as changes in LamB appeared – to reduce infectivity of thevirus – changes in the lambda virus were selected for – changes that brought back some of that infectivity. As LamB made further changes, lambda changed more until the fortuitous step when all 4 mutations created a virus that no longer needed LamB to enter the cell. This new form could use OmpF.

And only the ones with all four changes could use OmpF.

One of the criticisms lofted at natural selection is that intermediary forms are not useful. They say. “Lambda can only use OmpF to get into cells if all 4 mutations are present, right? So how do the 2 or 3 mutation forms even get any purchase in the population? It would seem that only viruses with all 4 mutations present simultaneously – a very rare occurrence – would be selected for.”

But this work shows how the intermediate changes appeared, were selected for and finally resulted in an entirely new activity.

Now, think if we had only two forms of bacteria – one with only LamB and one with only OmpF. The viruses that infected each would have 4 different changes between them but we would see no direct way for the virus to get from one form to the other with any intermediary stages. Each viral form only infects the one population, not the other.

But there were intermediate forms at one time.

This is the sort of scaffolding model used against the above criticism. Nothing evolves in isolation. These sorts of co-evolution events happen all the time. Then if the intermediate forms disappear, there does not appear to be any linkage, even though there once was.

This nice diagram was in the issue of Science. The co-evolving populations of E. coli and phage create a ridge – or scaffold – between changes in the gene frequencies of the two populations. Continuing selection can remove the ridge, resulting in what appears to be two different ‘species’ of E. coli and virus.

The other interesting aspect of this work was that the effect was contingent but repeatable. That is, they started the selective culture of the bacteria and virus in multiple flasks. Not every flask developed the new mutant viruses but those that did had the same sorts of mutations in the viral genome.

This demonstrates the random nature of natural selection – not every population will have the same success dealing with a changing environment – while also showing, however, the repeatability of the process.

In addition, they showed that the selective events of the bacteria also drove the evolution of the viruses. Bacterial populations with slightly different starting genomes produced different results. The chance of the viruss to develop the new ability depended on the bacterial populations in which they found themselves.

And they end their paper stating that the bacterial population in several cases had developed resistance to the OmpF mediated viral infection, thus showing that the co-evolution was not at an end and suggesting that the virus would have to find a new method to infect the cell.

This sort of evolution was accomplished in weeks with the right selective pressures. What would happen with centuries or eons?

Primed by expectations – why a classic psychology experiment isn’t what it seemed
[Via Not Exactly Rocket Science]

In the early 20^th century, the world was captivated by a mathematical horse called Clever Hans. He could apparently perform basic arithmetic, keep track of a calendar and tell the time. When his owner, Wilhelm von Osten, asked him a question, Hans would answer by tapping out the correct number with his hoof.

Eventually, it was the psychologist Oskar Pfungst who debunked Hans’ extraordinary abilities. He showed that the horse was actually responding to the expectations of its human interrogators, reading subtle aspects of their posture and expressions to work out when it had tapped enough. The legend of Hans’ intellect was consigned to history. But history, as we know, has a habit of repeating itself.

For the last few decades, psychologists have been using a technique called priming. With subtle hints of words or concepts, they can trigger impressive changes in behaviour. Words of cleanliness can make people behave more morally. Words related to age can slow their bodies. Words of power sharpen our mental abilities. All of these studies have suggested that our behaviour is influenced by subtle things that lie beneath the watch of our conscious awareness.

This view could well be right, but not always in the way that psychologists believe. Stephane Doyen from the Université Libre de Bruxelles has repeated one of the classic experiments in priming and shown that, in this case at least, it’s not the words that create the effect. It’s the experimenters’ expectations.

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This is a fascinating study. The people who did the original experiment did not actually record what they thought. Instead of the words that primed behavior, it was the researcher’s expectations.

When the subjects took the test from researchers who expected the subject to walk slower afterward, lo and behold, the subjects did walk slower. But when a double-blind was done, with the researcher not knowing who was supposed to walk slower – and the inclusion of independent time keepers – all the priming disappeared.

Really cool. It shows that the test was not very important at all as to the results – it was mostly the researcher’s expectations. The subject would walk faster if the researcher expected that, even if the test should have made them walk slower.

Expectations matter, whether it is a researcher or a teacher. Humans tend to do what others expect them to.

The two apes above might look very similar to the untrained eye, but they belong to two very different species. The one on the right is a bonobo; the one on the left is a chimpanzee. They are very closely related but the bonobo is slimmer, with a smaller skull, shorter canines and tufts of lighter fur. There are psychological differences too. Bonobos spend more time having sex, and playing with one another. They’re less sensitive to stress. They’re more sensitive to social cues. And they are far less aggressive than chimps.

Many years back, a young researcher called Brian Hare was listening to the Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham expound on this bizarre constellation of traits. “He was talking about how bonobos are an evolutionary puzzle,” recalls Hare. “They have all these weird traits relative to chimps and we have no idea how to explain them.”

But Hare had an idea. “I said, ‘Oh that’s like the silver foxes!’ Richard turned around and said, ‘What silver foxes?’”

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It turns out that selecting for “niceness” produces a host of physical changes also. In a social group, perhaps those that were more nice had more offspring.

And we sure have small canines, not much hair and love sex.

I wonder if something similar happened with Homo. Nature just published an article looking at the social networks of hunter-gatherers to see how they compared with modern social networks.

One thing they found was that people who were more cooperative connected strongly to others who were cooperative. And those who did not want to play nice with others tended to socialize with people who felt the same.

Perhaps many of our physical traits stem from a selection for nicer people to socialize with? It would certainly be an interesting rebuttal to the killer ape theory.

In many ways chimps fit the killer ape model – patriarchal hierarchies, violent displays to control behavior, very wary of outsiders, stress-filled lives – and bonobos fit the nice model – much more cooperative behavior, sex to control behavior, lower stress levels. When two chimpanzees are placed in a situation where there is no ability to share food, we see increases in hormones priming them for competition, and increase in stress and a resistance to physical contact.

In contrast, hormone levels in bonobos indicate a lowering of stress and an inclination towards soothing physical contact.

Like a bad Star Trek episode, the opposing natures of these apes split into two different forms, each taking a different path, about a million years ago.

In particular, many of the traits of the bonobos results from continuing juvenile traits to adulthood.

Both chimp and bonobo infants show very similar patterns of cooperation when young. As they age, chimps change their behavior towards more competitive urges while bonobos continue the juvenile approaches. Perhaps, one species might have used self-domoestication to become the bonobo.

The fact that known examples of domestication follow similar pathways as seen between chimps and bonobos certainly suggests as much.

Humans separated from the chimp-bonobo line about 6 million years ago. Chimps and bonobos separated only 1 million years ago. So, it is likely that we started with both tendencies – both killer and cooperative ape. Instead of separating into two species, we maintained both traits and have used both to our advantages, depending on the circumstance. Violence and fear have been just as important aspect of civilization as cooperation.

It is like the dirty hippies versus the Man. Chill-out vs. taste my knuckles.

We see this in so many of our social interactions – groups whose first impulse is violence and those whose first impulse is cooperation. But the former might be at a disadvantage today since our violent impulses now have the power to do large amounts of harm to the entire species. They have to be a little more restrained – a little more repressed –i n their first impulse   or find ways to divert that need into other actions.

I wonder if cooperative individuals would then have a selective advantage for the future?

Of course, this is spinning as “just-so” story from a few articles and facts. But it does make for an interesting point of discussion. Do people who cooperate have smaller canines and less body hair than those who are violent? Do they use cooperative sex more to control behavior? Do humans have less body hair and other physical changes that would match self-domestication?

Are we becoming a world where people stay ;ids; longer, both socially and physically?

Indiana’s Senate Bill 89, which if enacted would allow local school districts to “require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science,” was passed by the Senate Committee on Education and Career Development on January 25, 2012. The vote was 8-2, with the bill’s sponsor and committee chair Dennis Kruse (R-District 14), Carlin Yoder (R-District 12), Jim Banks (R-District 17), Jim Buck (R-District 17), Luke Kenley (R-District 20), Jean Leising (R-District 42), Scott Schneider (R-District 30), and Frank Mrvan Jr. (D-District 1) voting for and Earline S. Rogers (D-District 3) and Tim Skinner (D-District 38) voting against the bill.

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It simply does not matter how many times it has been shown that creation science is actually not science and is a religious philosophy, some people feel it should be required teaching. Who thinks it is okay to require specific religious teachings in school?

I feel sorry for the students in Indiana.

As we noted in our post about people just discovering ACTA this week, some had put together an odd White House petition, asking the White House to “end ACTA.” The oddity was over the fact that the President just signed ACTA a few months ago. What struck us as a more interesting question was the serious constitutional questions of whether or not Obama is even allowed to sign ACTA.

In case you haven’t been following this or don’t spend your life dealing in Constitutional minutiae, the debate is over the nature of the agreement. A treaty between the US and other nations requires Senate approval. However, there’s a “simpler” form of an international agreement, known as an “executive agreement,” which allows the President to sign the agreement without getting approval. In theory, this also limits the ability of the agreement to bind Congress. In practice… however, international agreements are international agreements. Some legal scholars have suggested that the only real difference between a treaty and an executive agreement is the fact that… the president calls any treaty an “executive agreement” if he’s unsure if the Senate would approve it. Another words, the difference is basically in how the President presents it.

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I thought the Senate had to approve these measures. But no, the President has had the ability for over 150 years to enter into agreements with the full force of treaties but without getting approval.

These executive agreements have been used many, many times before – over 10,000. But there has never been a definitive court case defining the difference between an executive agreement and a treaty – and when the Senate really has to give approval –  when it does not directly affect the President’s enumerated powers..

What Obama has done here is well within the purview of what the Imperial President has acquired. But, because it affects something that Congress is given explicit control over there is an interesting Constitutional question – can the President bind the US to international agreements dealing with things under explicit Congressional control, without having Congress give its consent?

We now have a White House petition asking Obama to submit the agreement to the Senate for approval. Sign it and see what Obama does. SInce it is a Democratic Senator raising these points, it will be interesting to watch what happens. My bet – nothing because using executive agreements allow each party to bypass a weak Congress.

Both parties are in a spiral working to enhance the powers of the President while allowing Congress to atrophy. This is just the same way the Roman Republic died. It lasted 450 years or so. We may make it to about 250 unless things change.

Once Again, If You’re Trying To Save The $200 Million Movie, Perhaps You’re Asking The Wrong Questions
[Via Techdirt]

Many years back, when discussing new business models that don’t need to rely on copyright at a Cato event, an NBC Universal executive demanded to know how he could keep making $200 million movies. As we said at the time, that’s asking the wrong question. It’s makes no sense at all to start from a cost, and then derive back how to make that profitable. I could just as easily ask how can we possibly make $1 trillion movies in the future? The only thing that should concern Hollywood is how it can make profitable movies in the future. That could mean figuring out ways to make a profit on a movie that costs $200 million (and, certainly big blockbuster movies like Avatar sure seem to still be able to make plenty of money, despite being widely downloaded via unauthorized means). However, it might also mean making really good movies for a lot less money. Of course, we’ve suggested that in the past, and got mocked by Hollywood folks who seem to insist that any good movie has to cost a lot of money. That seems pretty presumptuous.

I’m a bit behind on this (the SOPA/PIPA stuff took up a lot of time), but filmmaker/actor/director/writer Ed Burns, who came to fame a couple decades ago with the massively successful indie film The Brothers McMullen, likely had every opportunity to follow the path of plenty of successful indie moviemakers: go mainstream. He could have hooked up with a big studio and been filming the latest of those $200 million bubble-gum flicks. And while Burns has appeared in a few big studio films (Saving Private Ryan), over the last few years, he’s really focused on staying close to his indie roots. In fact, he’s stayed so close to them, that you could argue his latest efforts are even more indie than his first film.

He filmed his latest movie, Newlyweds for a grand total of $9,000 ($2K for insurance, $2k for actors, $5k for food, transportation, and other costs) and was done in just 12 days — but spread out over 5 months. He used a three-man crew, natural lighting, found locations that didn’t require paying, and filmed with a Canon 5D camera.

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Two years ago, Joss Whedon produced Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog for about $200,000 and made over twice that back. It could be more today.

And as shown in this example, it is a nice business model. And it is a business model totally disruptive to the sorts of business models used by Hollywood, whose bloated budgets support an ecosystem which permits them to use arcane accounting schemes resulting in movies that never make a ‘profit.’

The same technologies that can produce this disruptive system also happen to be pretty much the same ones that are also used by the ‘pirate’ they claim to hunt. It is very possible that the regulations they get in place to save their own business model will also be used to prevent market entry to the very same disruptors that threaten them.

A win-win for them and a huge loss for us. And for the creative talent that creates the material for the studios to begin with.

This is how money corrupts so much of our system.The only way to stop this is to make it a crime to do what Whedon and Burns are doing. And a first step along this path is to hamper the use of digital technologies and restrict the innovations they drive from bearing fruit.

Industrial Age approaches created business models that need billion dollar movies in order to sustain them. Or billion dollar drugs. Or 10 million albums sold. Or a million books sold.

Information Age approaches create business models needing 1000-fold lower revenues to sustain them. Instead of fighting this disruption, a healthy system would be working with them, coppting their disruption to further their own business lives.

Not likely to happen as we watch Kodak – who collaborating with Apple sold one of the first personal digital cameras – file for bankruptcy, completely missing the digital revolution it was actually first poised to take advantage of.

Now the studios stand at the same spot Kodak did 15 years ago. WIll they make the same mistake?

But as with all disruptive technologies, the studios can just not see how making a movie for $100,000 and getting back say $300,000 is sustainable. I expect there are huge numbers of creative talent who would disagree.

In a bizarre ruling, an English court has ruled that in favor of a commercial poster company that argued that a photo that showed a similar (but different) scene taken by a different person in a different place nevertheless infringed the copyright of a poster. What the judge ruled was that photographing a scene that is “substantially similar” to a scene someone else has already photographed infringes the first shooter’s copyright.

It’s impossible to understand how this will play out in real life. If a Reuters and an AP photographer are standing next to each other shooting the Prime Minister as he walks out of a summit with the US President, their photos will be nearly identical. Will the slightly faster shutter on the AP shooter’s camera give him the exclusive right to publish a photo of the scene from the press-scrum?

The judge here ruled that the idea of the image was the copyright, not the image itself. Ideas have always been exempt from copyright, because courts and lawmakers have recognized the danger of awarding ownership over ideas. Indeed, the “idea/expression split” is pretty much the first thing you learn in any copyright class.

(Images: Left, “Red Bus Image,” Temple Island; Right, packaging label, New English Teas. Taken from this PDF)

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The picture on the right violates the copyright of the picture on the left, according to the English judge. Who actually states that an idea is cpyrightable.

Except there is lots of legal precedent showing that an idea is NOT copyrightable. What a mess!

I hope they get this figured out. I wonder when the first similar case will be brought in the US?

We’ve hit “peak oil”; now comes permanent price volatility
[Via Ars Technica]

Since 2005, the global production of oil has remained relatively flat, peaking in 2008 and declining since, even as demand for petroleum has continued to increase. The result has been wild fluctuations in the price of oil as small changes in demand set off large shocks in the system.

In today’s issue of Nature, two authors (the University of Washington’s James Murray and Oxford’s David King) argue that this sort of volatility will be all we can expect from here on out—and we’re likely to face it with other fossil fuels, as well.

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The thing to understand is not that there is not any oil/gas left. This is a lot but it is not easy to get out of the ground nor to distribute. Peak oil really represents the end of cheap/easy oil distribution.

There is lots of oil. As a commentor stated: We used up all the $1 a gallon oil. Also the $2 and the $3. We are just about done with the $3.50 and are headed towards $4 or $5 oil supplies. There is plenty of oil, just a higher prices.

We are left with expensive, hard to get and hard to distribute sources of fuel. The energy is there but not the methods to cheaply get it out to the world. How long before all that is left is $50 oil? And what effect will that have on our society?

We have removed most of the simple stuff. Now we are left with lots that require us to work in increasingly complex settings, such at the limits of our ability to drill in the deep ocean. The amounts of oil we can retrieve will not be in a steady supply but more and more simply punctuated by fits and starts as we move up the pricing chain.

This means that it will not be easy to keep a steady supply going. New plants needed will not come on line at the most optimum times. We’ve got some gas but the pipeline is not near. Things like that.

Somedays things will be optimal and others will be bad.

But demand keeps sucking up supply. So like a straw working on the last bit of milkshake, there will be increasing periods where really little comes up. And what does will be very expensive.

There will be big price swings as the ready availability of energy from fossil fuels varies. It will not get better because we no longer have large quantities of easily accessible oil in amounts that come close to meeting demand.

It will be a bumpy ride getting off fossil fuels but we have to do it sooner or later. Sooner would be better for us all.

Photo

More Giffords photos

Image: Mandel Ngan / AFP – Getty Images

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This was the best representation I could find of this picture. I cried when I saw Giffords there. And at how solicitous and protective everyone around her was.

I expect this picture will be winning some awards because it reminds us that these people are human beings with feelings that can be touched. Their reactions to Giffords was about a human as you will ever see politicians. The masks they wear seldom are dropped in such a public setting.

They wer all people around Giffords and their political divisions did not matter. I wosh we could be that way more often.

We used to.

Monday morning, as part of the Sundance Film Festival’s daily Cinema Café speaker series at the Filmmaker Lodge, New York Times writer David Carr moderated a wide-ranging discussion with MPAA chairman Christopher Dodd, independent producer Christine Vachon and NATO president John Fithian. While many issues relating to exhibition and independent film made the agenda, Dodd was the first to address “the elephant in the room,” as he put it: the SOPA and PIPA legislation designed to combat online piracy that was recently derailed by an unprecedented public outcry.

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It is obvious to me from reading the article that these guys do not know what hit them. They believe it was simply a problem with messaging. “We’ve gotta find a better way to have that conversation than we have in the last two weeks.” From the industry whose entire reason for existing is to communicate meaningfully and monetarily with people.

The problem with the MPAA is the same seen with many organizations – they do not really understand their customers. IN this case, they appear to believe that almost all of their customers are actually criminals. They have been acting this way for many many years.

Yet they are surprised that those customers do not like the characterization. The MPAA has never had any respect for its customers. It only focuses on what is best for its industry.

But what happens to an industry that fails to focus on its customers? They always die. Always.

The MPAA represents a dying industry whose main focus is on using government regulation to prop up its business model. It relies on a moribund and decaying business model that can not be sustained in the market place.

Look at the death spiral of ticket prices. It costs as much for one person to see a movie as it costs to access ALL of the movies in Netflix for a month. How is that sustainable? Going after pirates are not the answer here. Threatening politicians will not help.

The customer is simply not happy with the way the product is being distributed. The organization that would survive would find ways to delight the customer.

Crying to the government is not a sustainable business model. The MPAA’s only hope, as is the hope for any dying industry, is that the customers will not notice the subterfuge.

This is a faint hope in the era of the Internet. We all know now and ill be watching.

The customer has real power in the world today and will use it. Something these old-fashioned power brokers like Dodd simply have a hard time understanding.

“Someone else can take it from here.”

∞ Permalink

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This is just classic. The only thing that could save them is if they ran out of gas – the last 90 seconds of the video are relevant.

Petition: investigate Chris Dodd for fraud
[Via Boing Boing]

A petition to the White House asks for an official investigation of former senator and now-MPAA CEO Chris Dodd, who strongly implied that he believes his members’ contributions to election campaigns are bribes.

“This is an open admission of bribery and a threat designed to provoke a specific policy goal. This is a brazen flouting of the ‘above the law’ status people of Dodd’s position and wealth enjoy,” the petition reads.

“We demand justice. Investigate this blatant bribery and indict every person, especially government officials and lawmakers, who is involved.”

In just a few hours the petition amassed more than 5,000 [ed: now 6,000] votes and this number is increasing rapidly. As a former Senator, Chris Dodd has many friends in Washington so it’s unclear whether the petition will accomplish anything, but if the numbers grow big enough the White House won’t be able to ignore it either.

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Here is the petition, which already has over 18,000 signatures,needing about 6000 more in order to qualify for a reply.

I certainly do not expect Obama’s White House to agree with the term bribery since they, along with virtually every other politician, is part of this corrupt system – where money is provided by lobbyists to politicians with the expectation that the money will influence the actions or judgements of the politician.

Which is the dictionary definition of bribe.  It is a bribe; Dodd makes this explicit – that the money he provided should have resulted in certain legislation no matter what the politicians constituents wanted.

This is actually a bipartisan issue, with people on both sides disgusted by the bribery that is corrupting our system. I expect that cleaning up that corruption will be the work of a generation. Making all Federal election publicly financed would be a good start.

As for this petition – it is a nice referendum on how people feel but I do not see that most elected officials really care about that, especially during election season. I signed it anyway.

Symbols matter.

This great short film by the Zurich Chamber Orchestra illustrates the intensity behind a lot of classical pieces by turning the first violin part on the fourth movement of Ferdinand Ries’ second symphony into a looping, whirling roller coaster ride.

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That was a lot of fun. Nice way to wake up in the morning.

I’d hate to see the roller coaster created for some of Beethoven’s work.

Yesterday I wrote up a first reaction to the Megaupload case. Having spent some more time going through the indictment in much greater detail, I have some more thoughts and concerns.

First, it’s important to acknowledge that the founder of Megaupload, who goes by Kim Dotcom, has a long history of flaunting flouting the law in a variety of ways. That makes him quite unsympathetic in a court. On top of that, there are certain claims in the indictment that, if true, mean it’s quite likely that he broke the law. Whether or not the violations amount to racketeering & conspiracy is beyond any analysis that we’re going to be able to do here. I would say that I would not be at all surprised if he’s found guilty.

Where my concerns come in is in some of the “evidence” that’s used to add to the overall indictment. To be clear, in a case like this, the issue is the evidence as a whole, combined to show intent and a general pattern to actions. So the allegations in the indictment don’t necessarily mean that any individual action is, by itself, illegal. But, I still worry that some of the specific actions used to paint this picture are (1) potentially taken out of context, (2) are presented in a way that likely misrepresents the actual situation and (3) could come back to haunt other online services who are providing perfectly legitimate services.

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Reading the list of items form the indictment reminded me of earlier attempts by the industry to restrict copying.

As I recall, they felt that even if the vast majority of copying on a VCR machine was legitimate, if even the least little bit was infringing then no one should be allowed to use a VCR at all.

It seems they are playing the same game here – it does not matter how many legitimate uses a service is being put to, if even person uses it for infringing purposes, then the site needs to be shut down.

The logic of much of the indict seems be to along these lines. If there is any sort of illegitimate use, then it does not matter how much of it is legitimate, it must be shut down.

Strange times.

Reinforcing the fact that Chris Dodd really does not get what’s happening, and showing just how disgustingly corrupt the MPAA relationship is with politicians, Chris Dodd went on Fox News to explicitly threaten politicians who accept MPAA campaign donations that they’d better pass Hollywood’s favorite legislation… or else:

“Those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,”

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You know, when people hate your organization, threatening politicians who listen to the people who hate your organization may not be a way to go.

The whole attitude just demonstrates how corrupt the system had gotten, mostly due to huge amounts of corporate money.

The industry is dying, which is why it is taking this approach. It is in a death spiral where ticket prices keep going up, quality keeps going down and the market is simply changing.

For the price of a single movie, I can pay for a month’s worth of access to Netflix and download a ton of movies. Just putting crap into 3D does not make it worthwhile.

Only dying industries try to get regulatory relief to save themselves and to prevent the rise of competitors.

But the Intertnet-based industries are much, much larger than the movie industry. The US revenues of Hollywood are roughly $10 billion a year.

Online retail revenue is roughly $150 billion. Amazon by itself had revenues of $34 billion.

If the MPAA wants to play with the big boys, it will be pretty tough. It is like SOPA awakened a sleeping giant, one which could crush the slowly decaying corpses of the current MPAA membership.