today on our t.v. the website mega upload has proven to be a mega pain in the you know what official or not are now trying to extradite founder kim dotcom to the u.s. to face the american justice system we'll bring you the latest in this cyber scandal. as the republican establishment circles the wagons around mitt romney the race isn't over yet ron paul is still racking up delegates and that has the r. and c. worried we'll tell you how this texas congressman is working the system in his favor and teaching the g.o.p. a few lessons along the way. plus you know the saying ignorance is bliss for parents about the new policy for sex education for the department of health and human services coming up one cover the truth about abstinence only education in the u.s. . it's

thursday may third five pm in washington d.c. i'm abby martin you're watching our t.v. the mega seizure of mega upload what is the government takedown of the popular hosting site mean for internet freedom and copyright law apparently the government doesn't need a lot of stand in their way of going after people for copyright infringement days after soap and people were voted down the government bypassed criminal courts to such a shutdown and seize the assets of the website over what they see as copyright infringement so is this an overstepping of federal authority and what does it reveal about the revolving door relationship between government and commercial interests eric goldman is an associate law professor at santa clara university and director of high tech law institute and he joins me now. erik what does this say about the federal overstepping of law. the government has brought

a very broad and potentially unsupportable prosecution against a user generated content site we are all trying to figure out if the new wave the government trying to establish control over the content community or if this is a one off we fear of the former what does a revolt reveal revolving door relationship between industry and government and if so explain a little about that. the there are very tight linkages between the government and the content industry so for example many of the people who are in the government worked in the content industry and many of the people in the government will get jobs in the content industry after they're done a result they understand each other's issues very well they've been there firsthand in addition the content industry contributes a significant amount of money to the administration and to other politicians who are decision makers as a result they get

a great deal of influence over what the government does and that's part of the reason why. we're wondering if the mega upload prosecution is really the beginning of that content industry being able to tell the government to do its dirty work for work let's go a little bit more into the make up and seizure because you know i guess i'm a little bit confused on how the government can shut down a web site that hosts hundreds if not thousands of people's content which isn't copyrighted i mean there's people just buying bandwidth and hosting their material on a web site paying monthly that are totally within the parameters of legality can you explain a little bit to our viewers why you know what is the government's case against this . so there are at least three different categories of content. one was illegitimate content every user during every user generated content site had that there were also files were publicly distributed where they were under copyright protection the

person distributing it had permission for whatever reason that is whether it was their own files or they had been authorized by the copyright owner to distribute the file and then the third category was its data that was living in the cloud that was being stored on behalf of individuals for. their own. usage and the government in taking down mega upload took down all three types of content it took down the illegitimate illegitimate and the private data all in one fell swoop the fact it wasn't very sensitive to the implications for the private content and even for the legitimate content is i think one of the reasons why the government owes overstepped its bounds erick what do you think about the timing of the make up and seizure it was very interesting that you know days after so open people were voted down and you see megaupload being seized. with an almost

like the government saying we don't care what passed on the hill we're just going to do what we want. prosecution like this takes years to develop so the wasn't like administration turned around to the content owners and said sorry you lost the battle in congress we'll go take care you tomorrow it's been in the works for a while having said that the bailing out the prosecution on that specific day did strike me as good just a strike and maybe the administration wanted to tell the content owners don't worry we've got your back. but even if it wasn't if the timing was even if the timing was pure coincidence it still shows that there's a tight revolving door between government and content owners whether or not congress will act the content owners have the ability to steer the actions of the administration so it almost reinforces how irrelevant congress is on that topic

what about t.v. shacked i mean not just a website we're talking on a website that just links to other websites that host copyrighted material and that there's a slippery slope i mean so it was voted down yet they're taking on a website that isn't posting copyrighted material itself. so. the linking sides are one of the main things that sticks in the craw some content owners because the sites can generate a lot of traffic to an illegitimate file but the site owner can say i didn't actually blow the file i don't download the file not my problem so we're seeing increasing enforcement actions by content owners against linking sites they're definitely aware of it the problem is that many content owners are going to linking sites and trying to beg the linking site operators to promote the files of the content owners they understand that the linking sites are very effective at generating traffic and the tension for the works that are linked and so on the one

hand they're saying content or saying let me have the ability to shut down their sites whenever i want on the other hand they're saying please please please promote my files that's going to make me more money and the fact that content owners and the government are trying to have it both ways is untenable in the end i think that we need to be much more sensitive to the role of the link in sites that we're seeing today well you said yourself i mean the industry and the government go hand in hand there's so much career going going on as you say so what's next for the battle of internet freedom are we going to see more legislation do you think being pushed through is this fight never ending. well the fight is never ending but it's not going to end in a good way for us as consumers or us as users of the internet in order for us to defeat so we all not only have to beat it in congress we have to beat it everywhere else. the battle is being fought and it's being fought in multiple venues it's

being fought in the international treaties and trade agreements it's being fought in the courts today where content owners are bringing in lawsuit and getting judges to agree to romney's very data call to what congress rejected and so but they're being brought today in private agreements where companies are green voluntarily to do the work of the content owners and so the battle be never ending content owners will always want more control but the battle of the turn out well for us because we as consumers will lose in at least one if many of those other fora it does seem like the battle is never ending it seems like they won't stop until they get some sort of legislation passed that will limit our internet freedom out of their goldman associate law professor at santa clara university and director of high tech law institute. here are two we love to shed light on some of the stories that usually don't make their way to primetime well it seems that we have a story that's been gaining steam run polls quest for the white house using an

unorthodox delegate strategy is getting noticed finally and the r. and c. is getting nervous quoting very important a las vegas sun a letter was delivered to nevada's g.o.p. chair they are in seize chief counsel said that if ron paul's delegates get too many seats the entire state may not be represented at the convention this summer and tampa paul supporters are racking up victories left and right and i could complicate romney's an anticipated inauguration he's already won a majority of the delegates in iowa minnesota and washington and now is campaign is also organizing victories in louisiana and alaska where one of paul's supporters was just elected as alaska's republican party chair so ron paul caused enough of a stir that could upset the entire convention here to join me now is mary wilson volunteer organizer and ron paul supporter hey mary i heard that you just met ron paul last night tell us a little bit about it. i did yeah there was a rally at cal state fullerton in. southern california i guess it's

near anaheim and orange county and it was a beautiful turnout we helped volunteer and registered thousands of new republicans into the party to vote for ron paul in the june fifth primary because we have a close primary here in california so you have to be registered by may twenty first deadline in order to vote in that primary and ron paul's support is growing the momentum is incredible and he's having these town halls all over the country and day after day tens of thousands of people thousands of people are showing up all over to support him and hear what he has to say and the media is still not covering it most of it because what he tells you in his town hall events is the truth and that's stuff you're not going to get on television and what do you think about this fear mongering coming from the r. and c. saying you know if ron paul win these delegates than don't show up i mean that's pretty interesting oh the they've been making bold statements all along and in

a lot of different states the g.o.p. officials have been up in arms against the ron paul supporters who are just abiding by the rules and following through and just you know there's the rules have been set up not by paul supporters but we're getting elected to the positions that do make the rules so that's pretty exciting almost playing a game of chess here and romney is kind of you could tell he's getting scared to talk about what happened in massachusetts where romney was governor. well in massachusetts a portion of the delegates will go proportionate to the popular vote but another portion of the delegates do not and also i mean as far as i know the people who showed up who acts to actively participate and want to make a positive change are in general mostly ron paul supporters i think romney the

people who support romney support romney because he's there they're told to whereas the people who support ron paul do it because the man is a patriot and he's really standing up for the american people and fighting for us and has a track record of thirty forty years doing that and you can look back and you can see that so the support is really authentic and it's also very organic and i don't i don't even know if you know the ron paul campaign even knows how much support they actually have at the grassroots ground level it's amazing as it stands right now mary romney has eight hundred forty seven delegates and ron paul has. what is what do you think how many delegates you think he expects to gain out of the states that are left and do you think that he really has a chance at the convention to pull through. i think he does have a chance there's still a long way to go a lot of the primaries and things that happen straw polls and stuff or nonbinding

so it is the delegate process which has been ron paul's strategy all along was to promote the delegate process and get the grassroots get the ron paul supporters out there and becoming active getting elected and things like that. i think that hundred forty four whatever delegate tally that they're giving you is completely false as specially since so many of those states haven't had their conventions yet so the associated press which is the media pyramid scheme you know they report and expected to trickle down everybody else reports the same thing they're not accurate and we've been lied to by them before and unfortunately there's a monopoly on the majority of our media here and you know you can just trace it back and find out that the same people manipulate other industries and monopolize a lot of our industries here especially banking which is one of the ring main reasons why so many people support ron paul is because he's exposing the whole system this whole banking system that's bankrupting so many millions of americans

it is interesting mary that the you know the press that you're talking about likes to call this a coup and that ron paul supporters are playing these games that are upset in the election when you as you said he's just playing by the rules that are laid out. could you talk a little bit about what one of the role of superdelegates here. stars i can tell superdelegates are usually spots filled by people who've been in the party for a long time maybe their chairperson a central committee member or a local g.o.p. official elected republican or something so those spots are usually it's like a ron paul supporter may not be able to get that position because it's an establishment g.o.p.'s seat that's going to get it i don't know if they have any strength in their vote i don't think their voting power has any more strength than the others and i think that ron paul's people are getting elected to those positions so soon they'll be the superdelegates it is interesting that ron paul's

guy just got to be head of the alaska chair. and it is going to you are in the all across the board talk about you know gingrich gingrich just dropped out officially where do you think that his delegates will go have you heard anything about that. well i think i mentioned it before that the thing about these delegates are that they are people so and one thing i can tell you about most of these people these delegates is that they're pretty tired of being taken for granted so we don't even know where they're going to go or who these people are but i think that the people who get involved in this whole delegate process are patriotic people who care about making a positive change for our nation and like i said we're going to fight it out on the floor of that aren't see and people will be. you know that when they see the strength and the numbers of ron paul supporters and that he really does have a chance and if people would just you know turn off tune out of some of the

television and tune in a little bit to the internet and understand why it's under attack right now why we've got so many laws and legislations trying to be written to limit us and to to limit our internet freedom people would say there's a whole lot of information out there and like i said ron paul's strength this growing and they're completely trying to black that out but he can he really can win and he's i think that romney is absolutely no threat to obama like i said they they have there is no contrast between the two of them romney is you can call him a moderate but i would say he's a liberal as it was he has the same views he supported all of the same things that obama has done while he's been in office and including he you know i'm the national defense authorization act he said he would have signed it as it is he supports the federal reserve banking system and he supported the bailouts everything he's. let me name is not part of the solution i just want to ask you one question about last

time you were on here i asked you you know would you support ron paul who chose to run libertarian if by chance he didn't get the nomination at the convention and you know in the ron paul group a lot of people that i've talked to denounce the two party or some group call it a two party dictatorship or this corporate controlled party system that we see so why why would anybody anyone be opposed to branching out of that and running third party as a last kind of herat and the game. well it's funny you say that because i think that the whole two party paradigm the left right paradigm has been fractured there's a crack and people are seeing right through it and for a lot of people it's been shattered and i don't think ron paul needs a party i don't think any party has to make him their official nominee or whatever i think the support for ron paul is exponential and whatever it takes if he wants to run third party i don't think that that's in his agenda and i think that we have a very strong chance of winning the republican party and i believe that yeah the

whole concept has changed for a lot of people and they're willing to get in there and become a republican just because ron paul is a liberty republican and like is told you before there's a lot of people running in support of dr paul policies and that are going to you know liberate so many americans that it's going to make us financially free individual personal liberty things like that matter he definitely has made america great he definitely has put an interesting twist in the election will definitely be following that thanks for coming on mary that was mary wilson volunteer organizer and ron paul supporter. all right folks wall here are to america we do our best to bring you a range of stories and put as many stories as we can into our shows but there's a whole lot more as well that you don't see here we've got a great web team as well and we want to make sure that you're aware of what's hot on the web so i've got archie web producer andrew blake in the newsroom taking a quick break from his hard work tell us more andrew what are you working on today

whole bunch just wrapping up things shortly but we got a couple good stories already up there at our tea dot com slash usa one i was a partition particularly fond of. kind of startling statistic out of the i.r.s. in twenty eleven more americans renounce their u.s. citizenship than in the last four years combined a lot of people are saying that there is just too much taxation going out while living abroad and even if they're holding on to u.s. citizenship they're kind of sick of paying for for nothing so we had close to two thousand people dropping their citizenship last year and experts are saying that if the banks keep on keepin on things are only going to get worse. we got a couple other things up on our to dot com right now we have another story about the f. twenty two stealth fighters that are kind of a controversial plane in the u.s. air force there was a handful of instance over the last couple years the november twenty ten we lost

the life of one u.s. pilot after oxygen system malfunction on this plane now the family of the seas pilot is demanding answers from the air force they're keeping these planes in the air and putting millions and millions and millions of dollars into them but unfortunately they still can't quite figure out what's causing all these problems so you can go check out all that and more at our t dot com slash usa and also we've been updating stories on our you tube and you can follow us on twitter at r.t. dot com that's not the twitter twitter is r t underscore america you can check it out there for all of our stories thanks thanks andrew those are two web producer and your blake with a preview of what's trending today on our web site abstinence only education oh that's something only peddled by the religious right in the g.o.p. in this country right well not exactly an abstinence only program has just been added to the obama administration's list of evidence based programs for pregnancy prevention prevention it's called the heritage keepers abstinence education and it promotes heterosexual marriage as the only healthy and happy with life plan but why

do all nearly half of all marriages end in divorce is this effect of can you help or comedian blogger and filmmaker joins me now from new york and she mentioned you can find her kitty helper dot com. he what do you think about this program. i think it's very creative it's very takes a lot of liberties with the truth what's scariest about it is that it's the suggestion that it's evidence based there's no evidence that it actually works and you know it's just not based in reality because forty percent of high schoolers have had sex and the fact that people think that abstinence only education is appropriate when it's really actually endangering people is really disturbing i think that they think if they just don't mention sex then people will stop having it i'm not i'm not quite sure how they're right but even a court and i do biology and according to congressional reports the actually has no effect on. again i mean to me the best

metaphor best symbol for abstinence only education is. bristol palin and she is actually she goes around talks about she is literally a spokeswoman for doesn't realize that she makes a much better cautionary tale and spokesperson for something like planned parenthood but i think all the hypocrisy and inconsistency of having this woman who had an unplanned pregnancy which i don't care about but the groups that she's trying to connect to as a sin she had an unplanned premarital pregnancy which means she actually had premarital sex and yet she somehow the voice for abstinence only won it just proves that what a failure it is like her entire biography. it was about it was a conception is only maybe it was god and i wouldn't be surprised in her because i feel like god would choose a pail and if he had to choose to do another medical conception it would be a palin based on kitty kitty talking about hypocrisy

a little bit what do you what do you figure about you know we have the religious right of fronting this whole movement i am surprised that obama has actually inserted this in the education program in the health department but what do you think about the people who are pro-life as one of the you know the front political agenda but then they support war. oh i mean moving away from abstinence only just more speaking generally yeah i mean the war on sex or. just war in general i mean people who are in life but support you know war red people who are yes so i think that when you're when you're pro-life which i call anti choice but when you're pro-life and you're against the death penalty then there's at least i disagree with you but there's at least some consistency there but you have people who are so-called pro-life people who are for war who are for the death penalty and it really is much more about controlling people's bodies and sexuality than it is

anything else and also it's always you know the expression it's always the quiet ones are it's always the ones who are like the most homophobic or the most sex phobic who are the ones who get caught in the bathroom right like toe tapping like senator larry craig or david vitter right to louisiana senator who goes to prostitutes and apparently incidentally has a diapers fetish but it's always coming from those people i feel like it's just dealt with their own issues and went to see a therapist we'd have a lot better of a country why do you think people are so scared of sexual freedom i mean here we are twenty first century i mean how many years since roe v wade and this is still an issue being brought up at every election. i mean i think people are some people are resentful and jealous i think they're they have on happy and satisfying sex lives our love lives so they don't want anyone else to enjoy them and i do think that there's a sad case like there was an article in the times the other day about you it was called homophobic you might be gay right i mean there is i think some self loathing

i think there are people out there again larry craig is a perfect example he's very homophobic legislative history but turns out he's gay it's a really sad case he hears that you have a senator who asked to have sex in the airport bathrooms right it makes sense in some ways that he is so uncomfortable and then kind of conflicted about being a sinner according to him according to me that he would try to legislate other people's sexuality right i mean those are the people who maybe have the deepest issues are the ones who probably care the most. it is interesting when those cases come out time and time again. but do you think that handing out abstinence committment cards will prevent kids from having sex if they just pledge to not. i think that the combination of a purity bear on enough you've seen these but. i think that's their best shot i think if you're a bear combined with maybe a purity ball where you pledge your absence to your father which is really weird

freud again i mean we could get into that whole other discussion but you know they have these four year old girl standing on chairs so they can look into their father's eyes and pledge their virginity to them until the next male takes them. like they're a little doll getting transferred from their father to their husband but it's becoming harder and we see with the jonas brothers i mean taking their absence seems like it's being pushed society right now yeah i mean again it's just it's interesting how things that are so. based in santa see are accepted as truth right i mean again you're going to go against all of human history and it's think that finally we're going to get people to stop having sex it's like reinventing the wheel what do you what do you think about you know we expect this from the religious right we expected from the g.o.p. time and time again it doesn't surprise you at all that the obama administration has adopted this kind of allusive where they didn't release a press release about it of just was discovered i mean i'm assuming that the there

was some political gain from it like i don't know which is more disturbing the fact that i know obama doesn't believe in this. i don't know which would be more disturbing because i know he's a smart guy who believes in science he believes in that controversial theory called evolution. which is reassuring but i don't know why he would kind of tacitly endorse something like this. and to give him credit he's been good on the war on women i mean he's been calling out the war on women. you know he's much better obviously on women rights women's rights and reproductive freedoms then the republicans i mean there's they're like from a different century they when you watch those debates i feel like it's time travel it's science fiction more than a political presidential debate when you put it on to spectrums yeah it seems you know it does seem like a progressive is true that there have been a lot of limitations since he got into office course. you know contraception and

a lot of things that would be surprising to a lot of progressives who support him. i wanted to mention one thing in this pamphlet from this organization that day and day i have some quotes but. and then it tells it is very enlightening i learned a lot from it reading it i learned to not wear anything because i would expect to be raped or be sexually assaulted. yes so they have some great advice like you have to not invite lost so you have to be careful of what you wear like you mentioned because the girls will be thinking fast and the boy will be thinking sex i like that i like that's i mean that they set up then they have this really fun game where you roll a you roll dye and you roll the dice and the options are like if you land on one that herpes if you land on two that's hiv if you land on three that's infertility so that's a really great way to get people to feel comfortable with their own sex game of

china the game of chance could in taking it. out as caveat however we should not. a log or in a filmmaker you can find her kitty helper dot com well the letter shows coming up in just a half hour so let's check in with along and see what's on today's agenda halonen. well today is the national day of prayer also the national day of reason created to counter the national day of prayer so we're going to see what it is the atheists out there want a wall so take a look at the libertarian national convention that's going on in las vegas right now thanks so much will definitely stay tuned to that that does it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america or check out our website. u.s.a. you can also follow me on twitter. you martin.