Obama Transition Will Keep RIAA, MPAA At a Distance by George Ziemann -- November 12, 2008 As most of us are aware, the RIAA and MPAA are lobbying groups representing the recording and motion picture industries, respectively. Obama's Presidential Transition Team has announced its ethics rules, which say that lobbyists "are prohibited from working in the fields of policy on which they lobbied." Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institute describes this as "the strictest, and most far reaching ethics rules of any transition team in history." There are five rules, which are profound in scope. The two most important ones in this context are in bold. Federal Lobbyists cannot contribute financially to the transition. Federal lobbyists are prohibited from any lobbying during their work with the transition. If someone has lobbied in the last 12 months, they are prohibited from working in the fields of policy on which they lobbied. If someone becomes a lobbyist after working on the Transition, they are prohibited from lobbying the Administration for 12 months on matters on which they worked. A gift ban that is aggressive in reducing the influence of special interests. What this means is that the RIAA and MPAA are locked out of any discussions about the copyright czar, intellectual property and any of the other things they are famous for misinforming the government about. They can't lobby during the transition, and are prohibited from working on any of those policies. Another interesting aspect of this scenario is that both the RIAA and MPAA deliberately selected Republican lobbyists after Bush was elected. I expect a "changing of the guard" to happen there, too. Being locked out of the policy development process has got to be making the RIAA's heads spin. If I'm reading the rules right, the door is going to be closed to them for an entire year. No editing copyright law in the middle of the night; no new industry-written bills. Personally, I hope that someone in government finally figures out that helping "copyright owners" is not the same as helping the artists. I'm skeptical of course, but it could happen. Who'd have thought Obama would throw out all the lobbyists? This seems like a major shake-up of the status quo, especially the RIAA status quo. Their puppet string has been cut.

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