Andre Yoskowitz
3 Oct 2007 19:58
According to NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker, copyright holders are "losing the battle" against piracy and that the battle will be completely lost unless governments and industries get proactive in fighting it.
The chief spoke out about the piracy issue at an anti-piracy summit hosted by the US Chamber of Commerce.
Zucker hopes intellectual property violations will take center stage and also hopes that Congress will create "dedicated IP enforcement departments and to offer federal grants for state and local governments to escalate their own policing efforts." Zucker also wants any and all advertisers and credit card companies to stop supporting web sites that are "overwhelmingly devoted" to making unauthorized content available such as Warez forums or torrent trackers.
To an even higher extreme, Zucker wants all ISPs, university networks, search engines and user-generated content sites to install filtering technology to would block all pirated content. Critics have argued an approach like that would be ineffective but Zucker doesn't seem to care.
"Technology has been and continues to be an incredibly powerful tool to combat theft, whether we are talking about hard goods or digital goods," Zucker said. He admits the tools will never be perfect "but committed development of technology has the potential to reduce dramatically the traffic in counterfeit and pirated products."
In an effort to show off the impact of piracy on the US economy, Zucker cited a recent study that found that the U.S. economy loses $58 billion and U.S. workers are deprived of nearly 375,000 jobs annually due to piracy. Of course, the study was released by the Institute for Policy Innovation which has a long history of hosting pro-Hollywood events and therefore cannot be taken at its word.
Source:
CNet