In Which Ari Emanuel Reveals His SOPA Argument is “Pay Me and Shut the F*#* Up”

wilwheaton:

shortformblog:

markcoatney:

From a WSJ Mossberg/Swisher talk:

ANOTHER AUDIENCE MEMBER: You’re basically saying somebody robbed my house and they drove a car down a road to get to my house. So you have to do something about the road or something about the car.

MR. EMANUEL: That’s a stupid example, but that’s OK.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Is it? It’s exactly what you’re describing. How is it AT&T, Verizon and Google’s responsibility to keep your stuff safe? They’re not policemen. They don’t police things.

MR. EMANUEL: They decide when they want to police stuff and when they don’t. Child pornography—they can actually filter that. They stop those people.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: But you can still get child pornography on the Internet.

MR. EMANUEL: Stealing is a bad thing and child pornography is a bad thing.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I agree. Where we’re not in agreement is, you can’t tear up the road so people can’t get to your house.

MR. EMANUEL: You know something? You need to sit down. That’s a bad example. Go sit down and think of something else and come back and I’ll scream at you again.

Because Ari shoots first without asking questions, he didn’t realize the guy he talked down here is Joshua Topolsky of The Verge, also known as the most famous tech journalist in the room besides Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg.

Ari Emanuel, ladies and gentlemen: arrogant, condescending jackass and master of the false equivalency.