OPINION: Piracy billing

By Paul Sweeting -- Video Business, 12/14/2007

Backed by a bipartisan roster of co-sponsors, the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act (PRO IP) would dramatically reorganize U.S. law enforcement efforts aimed at combating counterfeiting and piracy, while creating senior positions with the Department of Justice and the White House to coordinate those efforts both domestically and abroad.

The bill is the brain child of the Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy (CACP), a broad alliance of industry groups organized by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Assn. of Manufacturers and representing everyone from the media companies, to auto parts makers to the pharmaceuticals industry.

It also came with support from organized labor, including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, whose president, James Hoffa, testified on behalf of the bill.

What objections were raised at the hearing were likely within the scope of what can be handled through negotiation without slowing down the bill’s overall progress.

“I’m committed to working further on those issues,” Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) said, referring to the outstanding areas of disagreement.

After the hearing, CACP chairman Rick Cotton, who also serves as general counsel at NBC Universal, said he remained confident of steering the bill at least through the House in the next session of Congress, which will begin in January.

Unlike many, more controversial IP bills, the PRO IP Act is targeted as much at commercial hard goods piracy—the kind that most plagues video retailers—as at online copyright infringement.

“Counterfeiting and piracy is the new face of organized crime,” Cotton told the committee. “Over the past 20 years, advances in technology, manufacturing capabilities and transportation have allowed organized crime gangs, counterfeiters and pirates to escalate the scale and scope of their operations to tidal wave proportions.”

ONE REASON the bill has not encountered dug-in opposition is that both sides in the digital copyright wars seem to have agreed, at least informally, to keep the most contentious issues out of the current bill. But that doesn’t mean the battle isn’t coming.

At Thursday’s hearing, in fact, IP Subcommittee chairman Howard Berman (D-Calif.), made it clear it intends to revisit some of the most controversial provisions of the DMCA, once the House is finished with the PRO IP Act.

“As we approach the 10th anniversary of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, I think it’s appropriate for us to reexamine some of the protections we gave to intermediaries, like ISPs and educational institutions,” Berman said.

With a district that straddles the Hollywood Hills, home to many movie and music industry figures, Berman is concerned that the DMCA’s “safe harbors” that protect ISPs from liability might be too capacious, allowing rampant copyright infringement to thrive online.

But whatever his motivations, opening up the DMCA for revision is no small step.

Almost everyone in Washington with an interest in copyright law has a beef with the DMCA, and some have been waiting for years for a crack at amending it.

One of those, Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), is a member of Berman’s subcommittee who has been waiting since 2005 for his Freedom and Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship (FAIR USE) Act to get a fair hearing.

Boucher’s bill, carefully introduced each year so as to be designated H.R. 1201, after one of the more contentious sections of the law, would, among other things, permit the circumvention of encryption for purposes of making fair use of a work. Currently, any circumvention is prohibited, regardless of the purpose.

Although Boucher raised some concerns about the PRO IP Act at Thursday’s hearing, he appeared content not to make too much of a fuss about it, having clearly extracted a promise from Berman to take up FAIR USE at some later date.

Once the DMCA’s on the table, however, everyone is going to want a seat.

Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda. Get more of Sweeting's analysis here.