OPEN Act ‘Not a Serious Offer,’ Says MPAA Chief Dodd
MPAA Chairman Chris Dodd sought to dismiss what he called the “misconceptions” about the anti-piracy bills being considered in Congress. His comments came in a speech at the Center for American Progress on Tuesday. The House Judiciary Committee plans to mark up the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) on Thursday despite the loud chorus of opposition from Internet and technology groups (WID Dec 13 p7) or (CD Dec 13 p13) OR (CED Dec 13 p4). Dodd said he rejected the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) Act, recently offered by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. (WID Dec 9 p1) OR (CD Dec 9 p6) OR (CED Dec 9 p2), as an alternative to SOPA and the Senate’s PROTECT IP Act, and called it a “delaying approach” that is too burdensome for the content industry.
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The OPEN Act does not present a “serious offer,” Dodd told us. The bill would give more authority to the International Trade Commission to prosecute foreign infringement cases. “It’s much more burdensome to do that. With the International Trade Commission sometimes it could take years before you get a decision. And thirdly the International Trade Commission allows for a lot of third party involvement in the decision making process,” he said. “I would vehemently oppose any effort that did not have some sort of judicial due process.”
Dodd dismissed comments by some critics that the domain name system (DNS) shutdown provisions in the anti-piracy bills resembles some of the same Internet filtering behaviors of repressive foreign regimes like China. “Hollywood is pro-Internet,” Dodd said. “We stand with those who strongly oppose foreign governments that would unilaterally block websites, and thus deny the free flow of information and speech. So I want to make it clear right at the outset that our fight against content theft is not a fight against technology. It is a fight against criminals.”
But DNS filtering will only make “a limited contribution to the accomplishment of the acts’ goals while conveying very disconcerting risks to network security, stability, and performance,” said the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group, a technical nonprofit organization, in a letter sent to the authors of SOPA and the PROTECT IP bill. “Tools to fight copyright infringement, DNS filters, IP address filters, and sub-directory filters will likely expose the Internet and its users to greater security risks and a broad range of other negative effects,” the letter said. “Blocking by name or IP address in networks is not effective and does not scale well.”
Despite the objections of Internet and technology companies to SOPA and the PROTECT IP Act, Dodd emphasized the interdependency of the content industry and technology companies: “We are in this together, Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Asking anyone to make a choice, one over the other, is lunacy. We need each other.”
The former senator from Connecticut also sought to frame the debate as a jobs issue and emphasized the effect that online copyright infringement has on middle class and blue-collar workers, not just actors, actresses and film executives. “For many, Hollywood has a red carpet image, but, in reality, is a blue-collar business.” The “vast majority of those 2.2 million jobs in film and television are held by middle-class workers whose names you will never see on a theater marquee,” he said. “These are good middle-income jobs that are available without advanced educational degrees, exactly the kind of jobs our country is clamoring for at this hour."
The MPAA separately acknowledged the bipartisan support for SOPA offered by the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National Governors Association (NGA) in letters sent to lawmakers Tuesday. “Without the ability to protect American intellectual property fully from theft, investments in research and development for innovative new products and jobs will be hampered,” the NGA letters said. “Moreover, because many counterfeit products are of inferior quality or outright harmful design, they pose a serious threat to the reputation, brand integrity, and value of American companies, and too often the health and safety of our citizens.”