White House Declines To Comment On Petition Calling To Investigate MPAA CEO For Bribing Politicians

The Obama administration has done a good job in offering fellow Americans the opportunity to submit online petitions. The process is simple: if any petition reaches more than 25,000 signatures in a month, then the White House will issue an official response regarding the matter. Sadly, so far few of these petitions were truly “welcomed” by the Obama administration as most petitions we’re met with a dull response: “We decline to comment.”

The same thing happened with the latest popular petition which managed to get more than 31,000 signatures in record time. The petition asked the White House to investigate the MPAA CEO who hinted that he bribed lawmakers after hearing that SOPA and PIPA have been put on hold.

The Motion Picture Association of America is at war against pirates and it’s looking to shut down all websites “suspected” to hold copyright infringing material using the Stop Online Piracy Act, and the Protect IP Act laws. After none of these laws passed following the online protests of Reddit, Wikipedia, Google, and many others, MPAA’s Chris Dodd said that the entertainment industry needs someone to stand up for it, and he said that he will not “write a check” if the lawmakers’ jobs are at risk because they didn’t listen to him when his job was at risk.

Upon making these statements, an online petition was started in order to ask the White House to investigate the MPAA CEO for bribery. A lot of comments were made on several online forums and though a widespread online campaign, the petition managed to grab 25,000 signatures in just a few days. The numbers immediately went up to 31,000 even though it wasn’t necessary, however, the White House declined to comment and to begin an investigation.

The response of the White House said that the Obama administration cannot comment on the petition because it’s against the law. If it were to investigate the MPAA CEO for bribing politicians in order to pass a law, then this would require a law enforcement action which is not permitted.

This means that even though Chris Dodd said that he wrote checks for politicians in order to get SOPA and PIPA passed, he will not be investigated for his comments. It’s very unlikely that something bad will happen in the US because the laws simply don’t allow it. This is a sad situation considering the fact that regular people are arrested for doing nothing, while nothing bad can happen to rich people even though they publicly admitted doing something wrong.

The White House reserves its right not to comment on a petition that requires legal action meaning that for the moment Chris Dodd’s position is safe. Probably this would be a good time to form a petition to ask the White House to respond to all petitions, but we doubt that a response will be issued for such petition.



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