U.S. Chamber IP Protection Goals Achievable, Backers Say
Action on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s top IP protection priorities in Congress can happen this session, despite the partisan gridlock that has stalled action on marquee legislation, the chamber’s Global Intellectual Property Center leaders said. The goals include passing the Customs Facilitation and Enforcement Reauthorization Act, introduced in July, sustaining funding for IP protection measures and enacting legislation to improve the U.S. Trade Representative’s ability to deal with foreign countries that fail to guard against counterfeiting and digital theft.
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“This is one of those issues, and it may in today’s environment be rare, that there is great cooperation across the aisle,” Rick Cotton, NBC Universal general counsel and GIPC chairman, told reporters Thursday. He hopes the Customs reauthorization bill will pass this session with IP protections intact, he said. “I think that objective is very achievable as is continued funding through the Congress” for the PRO-IP law passed in 2008.
The GIPC expects the administration to send its first strategic plan for intellectual property to Congress this year, Cotton said. “We need a surge in IP enforcement activity to really drive down what is a tidal wave of activity of counterfeiting and IP theft.”
Cotton raised the hackles of Public Knowledge in answering questions about whether ISPs should be allowed to filter illegal content on their networks. “What we're fundamentally talking about is whether ISPs can take measures to reduce the tidal wave of stolen digital content that clogs up their pipes,” Cotton said, calling filtering a loaded term. “The goals we're talking can be accomplished without invading anyone’s privacy. Period. End of story.”
There already are laws governing how ISPs deal with illegal content, Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said in a written statement. “The current law provides that if illegal content is found, the ISP can take it down,” she said. “We don’t need to violate the privacy and free speech rights of every Internet user to satisfy the demands of Big Media.”
Just as rules have developed for physical marketplaces, so too will there be rules for digital content, said GIPC President David Hirschmann. For now, the easy target for IP enforcement online is “purely rogue sites” that offer nothing more than illegal content, he said. “That is the low-hanging fruit.”