The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) have submitted their copyright laundry list (.pdf; 221KB) in response to the US Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator’s (IPEC) request for comments on its “joint strategic plan” for enforcement.
Various other “creative community organizations” also joined with the RIAA and MPAA in the response, including the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), the Directors Guild of America (DGA), the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees (IATSE), the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), and the Screen Actor’s Guild (SAG).
The US entertainment cartel’s laundry list is breathtaking and reads, as Cory Doctrow notes, like a “startlingly dystopian work of science fiction.” The cartel wants the IPEC to “encourage” (for now; mandate to come) network administrators and internet service providers to:
- [Use] technologies to detect, monitor (and filter) traffic or specific files based on analysis of information such as protocols, file types, text description, metadata, file size, and other “external” information;
- [Employ] content recognition technologies such as digital hashes, watermark detection, and fingerprinting technologies;
- [Deploy] site blocking, redirection with automated warning systems/quarantine of repeat offending sites;
- [Use] bandwidth shaping and throttling;
- [Deploy] scanning infrastructure (the ability to subscribe to RSS-style data feeds as sites get new postings of content and links (for linking, streaming, and locker sites); and
- [Mandate use of] consumer tools for managing copyright infringement from the home (based on tools used to protect consumers from viruses and malware).
In short, the US entertainment cartel wants to install spyware to detect and delete infringing material on your computer and wants mandatory filters on all internet connections capable of canceling any transfer of infringing material.
As Richard Esguerra, in a commentary piece for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes: “It’s hard to believe the industry thinks savvy, security-conscious consumers would voluntarily do so. But those who remember the Sony BMG rootkit debacle know that the entertainment industry is all too willing to sacrifice consumers at the altar of copyright enforcement.”
The cartel also wants the US government to intimidate other countries into falling in line with the US version of copyright policy. “Special 301” is an annual process by which the United States Trade Representative (USTR) puts on a watch list and threatens those countries that refuse to kowtow to US copyright policy with trade sanctions.
These “creative community organizations” also want the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to work at the cartel’s behest to “interdict these most damaging forms of copyright theft, and to react swiftly with enforcement actions where necessary.”
Esguerra warns that the biggest flaw in this proposal is that “building more surveillance and inspection technologies into the heart of the internet is an obviously bad idea.” Will this wet-dream list of the entertainment cartel impede fair use? Of course. Will it impede infringing activity one iota? Of course not.
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