Copyright Industries Release New Ad Supporting Anti-Piracy Legislation
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE / December 13, 2011
WASHINGTON—The National Music Publishers’ Association has joined with other industries united against content theft to release an ad highlighting the urgent need for Congressional passage of the PROTECT IP Act (S. 968) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (“SOPA”, H.R. 3261). These bills will support U.S. jobs by protecting American intellectual property rights online from criminal offshore websites trafficking pirated and counterfeit products to U.S. consumers.
Without sufficient intellectual property rights enforcement online, U.S. industries and millions of talented people in essential sectors are threatened by these sites, which operate out of reach of U.S. laws and U.S. law enforcement.
“The U.S. copyright industries, including the music publishing and songwriting community, continue to generate jobs and economic growth, accounting for nearly 10 percent of all private sector jobs in 2010*,” said NMPA President and CEO David Israelite. “But that productivity is threatened more and more by digital theft. Making sure copyrights are enforced in the digital world as they are in the physical world will mean the difference between sustaining these jobs and seeing them disappear. These bipartisan bills offer a targeted, reasonable approach to this problem and they should be passed.”
A broad coalition including Democrats and Republicans, 43 State Attorneys General, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO, law enforcement, firefighters, consumer protection groups, unions and hundreds of corporations and small businesses support legislation to combat rogue websites.
About SOPA and PROTECT IP:
SOPA and PROTECT IP, supported by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, aim to protect American consumers and U.S. businesses from “rogue” websites operating in foreign countries in violation of current U.S. law. Currently, U.S. law enforcement has the ability to shut down sites and prosecute their owners, but only if they operate in the United States. Unfortunately, the vast majority of illegal sites operate outside of our borders, and current laws offer no protection to American consumers or U.S. businesses. SOPA and PROTECT IP address that enormous gap, giving the Attorney General the badly needed authority to apply our laws to sites that operate outside our country but still manage to cause harm within our borders.
*Copyright Industries in the U.S. Economy, The International Intellectual Property Alliance
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About the NMPA
Founded in 1917, the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) is the trade association representing American music publishers and their songwriting partners. The NMPA’s mandate is to protect and advance the interests of music publishers and songwriters in matters relating to the domestic and global protection of music copyrights.