[Infowarrior] - FUD Alert: MPAA wants ISP help in online piracy fight

[Richard Forno]

September 18, 2007 7:13 AM PDT
MPAA wants ISP help in online piracy fight
Posted by Anne Broache

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9780401-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-
1_3-0-20

WASHINGTON--If the movie industry gets its way, then your Internet service
provider may one day start playing a greater role in keeping pirated content
off its networks.

Motion Picture Association of America Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman said
Tuesday that his industry has been attempting to "deepen our relationship"
with telephone, cable and Internet companies "because we're all in this
together."

"Their revenue bases depend on legitimate operations of their networks and
more and more they're finding their networks crowded with infringed
material, bandwidth space being crowded out," Glickman told an audience
composed mainly of attorneys at a daylong seminar called "Legal Risk
Management in the Web 2.0 World." "Many of them are actually getting into
the content business directly or indirectly. This is not an us-versus-them
issue."

For awhile, somewhat of an "adversarial relationship" existed between his
industry and the ISPs, Glickman said, but "that's changing." He didn't
elaborate much further when asked by a reporter in the audience for more
details.

Perhaps those tensions go back to Web hosts' duties under a 1998 federal law
known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The law says they aren't
generally liable for infringing activity on the part of their users,
provided that they don't condone copyright infringement, that they remove
infringing material when notified and that they aren't deriving financial
benefit from it.

Even before Glickman's speech on Monday, the MPAA has already hinted it
would like Internet service providers to be more active on the antipiracy
front. In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission a few months
ago, the organization cautioned against making Net neutrality regulations
that would forbid network operators from prioritizing content. Its
reasoning? Such rules might needlessly prevent ISPs from filtering pirated
content and inhibit attempts at development of anitpiracy technologies.

The general counsel of NBC Universal, an MPAA member, has also suggested
that federal regulators require ISPs to police their networks more
proactively for pirated wares.

The entertainment industry is now hoping to work with ISPs to "unlock new
services and choices for consumers and see if there aren't new ways to
encourage legal behavior," Glickman said. His mantra in that process:
offering consumers "hassle-free, reasonable, content-protected materials."

But he indicated the movie industry may not be so willing to be flexible
about using technologies to manipulate copyrighted works--for example,
through mashups. "People just don't have the right to take (copyrighted
works) at their pleasure," he said.