The EU hired a company that had been lobbying for the Copyright Directive to make a (completely batshit) video to sell the Copyright Directive

At the end of February, the EU Commission released a bizarre video "explaining" the Copyright Directive, a controversial and sweeping internet regulation that has inspired more opposition than anything else in EU history.

The video was bananas: almost a parody of pro-Directive talking points that had long been debunked, blended with conspiracy theories about the role of "outsiders" (including me!) in the debate. These conspiracy theories keep getting repeated, and debunked.

You can learn a lot about what your opponents are up to based on what they accuse you of: the Commission and its corporate allies claim that the anti-Copyright Directive movement is driven by corporate lobbyists, working in the shadows and laundering their influence through front groups: it turns out that there are massive corporate expenditures behind the debate over the Directive, and it's almost all coming from the pro-Directive side.

That also turns out to be the case with the Commission's conspiracy video: MEP Julia Reda used Parliamentary privilege to force the Commission to explain how this video came to be, and the answer won't surprise you: it was made by AFP, the giant French media company, who have been lobbying heavily for the Directive.

In other words, the Commission gave public money to a corporation that stands to make millions from a piece of legislation, and then asked that corporation to make a video that used false statements and hysterical language to discredit the opposition to the law. It's not even lobbying, where a corporation uses the promise of campaign cash and other incentives to get officials on-side: this is public officials paying lobbyists to sway public opinion to win a law that will vastly enrich the corporation the lobbyists represent. Read the rest