On Monday, November 7, the DGA hosted a small meeting with Victoria Espinel, the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, for an in-depth discussion of copyright issues.
Topics included legislation currently being considered in Congress to help fight digital content theft; several voluntary "best practices" initiatives addressing fake online pharmacies, the role online payment processors can play, and the Copyright Alerts System which will help Internet users learn and understand when their Internet accounts are potentially being misused for digital content theft; and free trade agreements, which offer the opportunity to incorporate very strong intellectual property enforcement provisions as part of the agreements.
The meeting included representatives from other guilds and unions including American Federation of Musicians (AFM), American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States, Its Territories and Canada (IATSE), International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), and Screen Actors Guild (SAG).
Espinel, who was nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate as the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator at the end of 2009, is in charge of developing and implementing the Obama Administration’s overall strategy for the enforcement of intellectual property.
One of the first major actions by Espinel was the release in June 2010 of the Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement, which served as an initial roadmap for how the U.S. government would protect intellectual property, including the works created by DGA members.
Since then, several important pieces of legislation have been introduced to try to address these issues. The first, the PROTECT IP Act, was introduced in the Senate earlier this year and aims to give law enforcement agencies the tools they need to effectively shut down offshore rogue websites that profit from the illegal distribution of copyrighted content. The Commercial Felony Streaming Act was introduced a few weeks later and seeks to increase the penalty for criminal profit-seeking infringement via streaming from a misdemeanor to a felony, to equate it with the penalty for criminal infringement via downloading. Just last month, the Stop Online Piracy Act was introduced in the House of Representatives as a companion bill to the PROTECT IP Act and the Commercial Felony Streaming Act. The DGA believes these bills are critical to the fight to protect our members’ work from Internet theft and is actively supporting passage of all three bills.
