This past Friday, Public Knowledge's Gigi Sohn sent an email urging people to tell the FCC not to consider intellectual property/copyright (content and creative rights) issues in its broadband strategy.
Instead, this is about exactly what Gigi Sohn and Public Knowledge have said is the solution to piracy: new business models. But simply saying "new business models" does not solve the problem. In order to get beyond vague generalities and discover the specific new business models that actually work, we're going to have to experiment with a variety of approaches.
That's where the FCC comes in.
Content companies and network providers simply want the FCC to allow the market to experiment with a variety of solutions. We don't want scare tactics to foreclose the possible solutions - the new business models - that may emerge.
The FCC should take creative rights into account - not through blunt mandates, but by not interfering with the creativity and entrepreneurial nature of the internet.
Creators should not have to ask Public Knowledge's permission to innovate on the internet; the FCC should protect that right.
[T]the FCC held a Broadband workshop last week, at which I and representatives from the MPAA and a major Hollywood studio spoke. Hollywood would like the FCC to make copyright filtering a part of the National Broadband Plan. Filtering technology is a blunt instrument that will needlessly censor lawful web traffic while compromising the privacy of all Internet users. For more on copyright filtering, just read our whitepaper or watch the latest episode of In the Know.Gigi Sohn and Public Knowledge want to prevent the FCC from considering creative rights and the digital economy by pretending that this is all about "filtering". It's not.
Hollywood already has plenty of copyright enforcement tools at its disposal. The FCC doesn't need to ask your Internet Access Provider to filter web traffic for the studios. Tell the FCC that copyright should not be a part of our National Broadband Plan by visiting Broadband.gov and submitting your feedback.
Instead, this is about exactly what Gigi Sohn and Public Knowledge have said is the solution to piracy: new business models. But simply saying "new business models" does not solve the problem. In order to get beyond vague generalities and discover the specific new business models that actually work, we're going to have to experiment with a variety of approaches.
That's where the FCC comes in.
Content companies and network providers simply want the FCC to allow the market to experiment with a variety of solutions. We don't want scare tactics to foreclose the possible solutions - the new business models - that may emerge.
The FCC should take creative rights into account - not through blunt mandates, but by not interfering with the creativity and entrepreneurial nature of the internet.
Creators should not have to ask Public Knowledge's permission to innovate on the internet; the FCC should protect that right.
