{"id":20379,"date":"2014-03-21T11:46:23","date_gmt":"2014-03-21T15:46:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=20379"},"modified":"2014-03-21T15:37:02","modified_gmt":"2014-03-21T19:37:02","slug":"house-hearing-provides-progress-in-combating-online-piracy-and-ip-theft-through-voluntary-measures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/20379\/house-hearing-provides-progress-in-combating-online-piracy-and-ip-theft-through-voluntary-measures\/","title":{"rendered":"House Hearing Provides Progress in Combating Online Piracy and IP Theft through Voluntary Measures"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, we highlighted<\/a> an important House Judiciary Intellectual Property Subcommittee hearing on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA’s) critical “notice and takedown” provisions.\u00a0 The hearing provided the opportunity for lawmakers to promote a modernized, voluntary and necessary campaign to achieve the DMCA’s underlying goal of fighting Internet piracy and intellectual property theft while maintaining an open Internet.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, there’s good news to report one week later.<\/p>\n

Almost every member of the Committee, Democrat and Republican alike, concurred that private industry actors must undertake voluntary, market-friendly efforts to correct the massive and improper scourge of online piracy and IP theft.\u00a0 That is, after all, the purpose of the DMCA structure itself.<\/p>\n

Notably, the hearing featured persuasive testimony<\/a> from Grammy-winning musical artist Maria Schneider, who shared her real-life experiences to illustrate the problem to be addressed.\u00a0 Ms. Schneider explained how she actually often spends more time and effort removing pirated copies of her performances than she does in the creative process.\u00a0 In fact, she testified that her battle has cost her over $100,000, and she provided a demonstration of how difficult it is to remove one’s own stolen property from rogue websites.\u00a0 Ms. Schneider also noted that when YouTube actually agrees to remove pirated material, it unhelpfully posts a scowling frustrated-face icon with the banner “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Maria Schneider – sorry about that.”\u00a0 That suggests that Ms. Schneider or others who simply seek to protect their hard work and property rights are somehow culpable for the situation, and it certainly doesn’t suggest respect for the rights of creators.<\/p>\n

It is therefore critical, as Ms. Schneider noted, that websites, service providers and other market actors more effectively educate consumers and anyone uploading content about the dangers and costs of piracy and IP violations, and make greater efforts to confirm that content being uploaded is done legally.\u00a0 The current “whack-a-mole” routine is neither effective nor justified.\u00a0 But through voluntary, market-based, common-sense practices, we can collectively combat online piracy while protecting the rights of creators and consumers alike.<\/p>\n

It was good to see the Subcommittee hearing result in steps toward that beneficial end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, we highlighted an important House Judiciary Intellectual Property Subcommittee hearing on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA’s) critical “notice and takedown” provisions.\u00a0 The hearing provided the opportunity for lawmakers to promote a modernized, voluntary and necessary campaign to achieve the DMCA’s underlying goal of fighting Internet piracy and intellectual property theft while maintaining […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3983,4468,4470,3326],"class_list":["post-20379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-copyright","tag-dmca","tag-maria-schneider","tag-piracy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20379"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20388,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20379\/revisions\/20388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}