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U.S.: Major Copyright Holders Team Up to Lobby Congress on Piracy

http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/02/cyber/capital/22capital.html


By JERI CLAUSING

Major Copyright Holders Team Up to Lobby Congress on Piracy

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ASHINGTON -- Amid growing concern over the threat of Internet piracy, a broad coalition of groups representing copyright holders have banded together to create a new, potentially formidable lobbying force.

In a letter last week, 30 groups and associations notified Congress that they have formed the Copyright Assembly "to preserve, protect and defend the sanctity and concept of copyright from all intruders." The group includes major television networks, sports leagues, writing and publishing groups, the software industry, and the movie and music industries.

"We are all excited by the Internet's potential," the group wrote. However, it said, "as legitimate businesses develop on the Internet, it has also become a haven for those who steal copyrighted works, piracy that comes in all sizes, ingenuity and motivations."

"At this moment we confront assaults by those who profess to defend technological advancement but who treat copyright with a brazen disdain for laws and rules which guide the daily labors of Americans," the group wrote.

Jack Valenti, president and chief executive of the Motion Picture Association of America and a key player in the Copyright Assembly's formation, said each of the group's members "will have its own unique issues and challenges."

"But on a larger level," he said, "where copyright is under siege, we will join together to fight as one."

The group did not endorse any specific legislation, but it will work to protect everything from software to Internet broadcasts and online music.

Valenti made his first appearance on behalf of the group at a committee hearing on Internet television broadcasts last week. Some traditional broadcasters, worried about their transmissions being pirated on the Internet, are pushing for laws to require Internet providers to get licenses to carry programming. Valenti, however, urged the panel to move slowly on the issue."What's needed is a watchful waiting to see what's what," he said.

Many of the groups in the new assembly came together in 1998 to push for the passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which makes it illegal to crack encryption technologies, the digital wrappers that protect intellectual property on the Internet and in formats like DVD. It also outlaws the manufacture and sale of devices used to crack those defenses.

Passage of that bill took nearly four years. A key issue in the battle was whether the legislation went too far beyond the traditional fair-use doctrine of copyright law. Under earlier laws, it was not a crime to access or make a copy of a protected work, but it was illegal to misuse the information or to copy and redistribute it. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act changed that, making it illegal merely to access copyrighted material by circumventing copy- protection measures.

In addition to the MPAA, the Copyright Assembly's membership includes the American Association of Advertising Executives, Nascar, the Screen Actors Guild, the National Association of Broadcasters, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the Recording Industry Association of America and the Newspaper Association of America.

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