b.cognosco

The days when lobbyists like Rosen and Valenti could play their games in relative obscurity have passed. You can no longer be a high profile lobbyist and not take the heat for behaving badly. Rosen and Valenti behave very badly. Ten years ago there was no Google, there were no weblogs, and there weren't millions of angry, connected consumers tracking a despised lobbyist's every move. Today their every word echoes for weeks around the globe.

Rosen's resignation doesn't change anything. It's a PR ploy for an industry that sees itself caught between two equally distasteful ends, and desperately needs the public to stop thinking they are the worst kind of thugs and unmitigated assholes.

[...] Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., a leading advocate of consumer rights to copyright works, said it was too early to tell whether Rosen's departure would fundamentally change the industry's stance toward the Internet.

"I do not think that she has been a spiritual champion of the industry embracing the Internet as a distribution medium," Boucher said. "I think the industry clearly needs to do that. It's the only way that the industry has to compete with peer-to-peer" file-sharing services like Kazaa. [...]

It will be very interesting to see how the search for Rosen's replacement proceeds. I wonder how much competition there will be for her job?

Hilary Rosen resigns. Hilary Rosen has resigned from the RIAA, citing her desire to take care of her kids. I've heard rumors that she's been frustrated with the intransigence of her employers at the RIAA, their unwillingness to adapt to new circumstances -- certainly, that sounds more plausible to me than "I want to take care of my kids." (Thanks, Jeremy!) [Boing Boing Blog]