[Ecommerce] Techdaily story on best approach to fighting piracy

[Manon Ress]

October 14, 2004

Intellectual Property
Lobbyists Spar Over Best Approach To Fighting Piracy
by Sarah Lai Stirland

The advocacy group Public Knowledge supports copy-protection
technologies and legal efforts designed to curtail piracy, as long as
those efforts do not stifle competition, the organization's president
said Thursday at an event hosted by the intellectual property community.

Some organizations have portrayed groups such as Public Knowledge and
the Electronic Frontier Foundation as opponents of any intellectual
property protection, but Public Knowledge's Gigi Sohn tried to counter
that impression.

She spoke as part of a panel at the annual meeting of the American
Intellectual Property Law Association. Others on the panel included:
Fritz Attaway, executive vice president of the Motion Picture
Association of America; Jonathan Band, a partner at the law firm of
Morrison & Foerster; and Michael Klipper, a partner at Meyer & Klipper.

Attaway charged that organizations such as Public Knowledge are keen to
pounce on industry-proposed solutions to piracy but have offered few
solutions of their own. He said it does not make sense to argue that the
entertainment industry should solve the problem only by adopting new
business models.
"That's like saying we'll deal with starvation by not eating," he said.

But Sohn tried to recast the debate over intellectual property
protection in the digital world as one of ensuring that the nation has
the most balanced rules to foster marketplace competition. She said, for
instance, that her group supports lawsuits by the Recording Industry
Association of America against individuals who allegedly have downloaded
illegal music off the Internet.
      "We do think enforcement is a good idea," Sohn said.

She also said Public Knowledge supports the Justice Department's efforts
against counterfeit goods and backs the substance of a bill, S. 1932,
that would make it a federal crime to use video recorders in movie
theaters. Several states already have such laws in place. Public
Knowledge, however, objects to other provisions that have been attached
to the legislation.

Sohn noted that the movie industry wrongly feared the impact of
videocassette recorders. "The VCR was a new business model," she said.
"You're not starving [as a result of it]. ... You're feasting. ... You
can't just shut your eyes to new business models."

Attaway said the entertainment industry had responded to the technology
industry and public-interest groups' objections to technology mandates
by proposing legislation that focused on bad behavior. But he said those
groups rejected the behavior-based plan as well.

Both Band and Sohn said the industry's behavior-based approach would be
too broad and that the suggestions they offered during recent
negotiations with congressional officials would have provided both copy
protection and legal certainty.

"But the folks on the Hill went a different direction, and we said,
'That is going to start you off on a road to nowhere,' and that is
indeed what happened," Band said.

Attaway said that copy-protection legislation is essential and that
there will be another push for it if the Supreme Court does not reverse
a decision in favor of file-sharing networks such as Grokster.


--
Manon Anne Ress
Consumer Project on Technology
www.cptech.org
PO Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
manon.ress@cptech.org, voice: 1.202.387.8030, fax: 1.202.234.5176