While it is clear that the nation has not reached consensus regarding the legislation to curb digital theft, most people on both sides of the debate agree that something needs to be done to stop the piracy of copyrighted works online.
Toni Cook Bush, partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom emphasized some of the major concerns voiced in the legislative debate, and suggested that a solution is possible given broad support for copyright in the industry.
“… Parties need to sit down and identify areas of agreement and disagreement … and really focus on concrete solution for bridging gaps of disagreements,” said Bush at MMTC’s recent Broadband and Social Justice Policy Summit.
In the past weeks, the battle over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) legislation has intensified, with many organizations expressing opposition to the legislation and several major Web sites participating in a “blackout” to demonstrate against it.
As Bush pointed out, the legislation proposed to give the U.S. Attorney General the power to go after foreign “rogue” Web sites that steal works protected by U.S. copyright laws. Other provisions of the legislation would call for the Domain Name System blocking of certain Web sites that participate in online piracy.
However, as Bush remarked, opposition to the legislation recently led judiciary chairmen in both chambers of Congress to “shelve their versions of the bill for the time being.”
The main problem with the discussion around the SOPA/PIPA legislation appears to be the “debate among giants,” which seems to obscure the real threat digital piracy poses to the financial viability of entrepreneurial efforts undertaken by minorities.
The outcomes of the SOPA/PIPA legislation impact small and minority entrepreneurs who continue to grapple with the issue of access to capital. However, a compromise in Congress could mean some relief for content producers who have long complained of the theft of their works and are disadvantaged more when rogue copiers endanger their ability to capitalize on their work product.
Bush underscored the importance of protecting the works of minority content creators, when she said that the crime of digital piracy cost U.S. businesses an estimated $135 billion a year.
“For minority Internet entrepreneurs and others who post online content, it is the unique content they create that allows users to find their sites, which in turn allows them to draw subscriptions and advertising revenue. In a digital age, where any form of content can be reduced to a stream of bits that are sent across the world in less than a second, we all need to consider unique opportunities and threats associated with the inevitable digitization of content,” Bush said.
Bush ended her presentation with an example of how piracy affects small and minority content owners and indirectly pinches the market for diverse content.
“From the perspective content owners and Internet media owners, more users heading to sites hosting illegitimate copies of those articles of videos means fewer eyeballs going to legitimate servers that host their content. When copies of ‘The Help’ or Tyler Perry’s movies are viewed by a rogue site, the audience for such works from broadcast outlets and [legal] online streaming sites diminishes…Minority oriented content [loses its] luster in the eyes of advertisers searching for a way to target minority consumers,” she said.
From the perspective of the pending legislation and from the perspective of the industries on both sides of the table, piracy is an issue that must be managed differently. The challenge now appears to be deciding how to curb theft in a technologically appropriate way.
Kurt Merriweather is the Director of Emerging Business Development at Discovery Communications. In this role, Merriweather is responsible for identifying and incubating opportunities that leverage new audiences, new products and new business models. Merriweather is currently forming a new organization within Discovery that will be dedicated to reaching the channel’s audiences across video, mobile and social media platforms. Prior to his current role, Merriweather worked as Discovery’s Director of Digital Media Business Development, as well as a business director for America Online and senior project manager for several companies.
Elijah Young is a serial entrepreneur who has had a hand in starting nearly twenty businesses since 2003. His most recent venture, 
Jose Mas (and his family) were our very first Multicultural Entrepreneurs of the Week when BBSJ was launched, and we believe he deserves the distinction again. Mas has been CEO of MasTec, a company that is building broadband and telecommunications infrastructure for the entire nation, since 2007. He is the latest in a line of Mas businessmen and women who have built the company from the ground-up into an employer over 10,000 people across the country. In the time since Mas has headed the company, its revenues have doubled and earnings have more than tripled. Last week, Mas was featured on the CBS reality show “Undercover Boss,” which follows senior executives as they work in disguise with lower levels of staff to learn about the inner workings of their companies and how they can improve upon them.
Apple computers and operating systems are widely considered safer and more secure than most other systems, an important factor for consumers in an age where hackers are running rampant online.
Unfortunately, Apple’s recent update to its latest operating system, the Mac OS X Lion, version 10.7.3,
included a security flaw that exposed passwords by storing them outside the encrypted area of users’ devices. When security researcher David Emery discovered the flaw last week, other experts provided tips for users to protect their data until Apple fixed the problem, including changing FileVault passwords and deleting the debug log file, named “/var/log/secure.log,” from the disk drive. Unfortunately, many consumers are simply not that tech-savvy, and they remained at risk until Apple released another update that addressed the problem.
