UNIVERSAL CITY, California -- Beginning in a few weeks, the nation's major internet service providers will roll out an initiative -- backed by Obama and pushed by Hollywood and the record labels -- to disrupt and possibly terminate internet access for online copyright scofflaws without the involvement of cops or courts. But that doesn't mean Hollywood is done filing lawsuits or lobbying Congress.
"It doesn't mean you give up on litigation," said Chris Dodd, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, speaking at an industry gathering here Thursday. "It doesn't mean you give up on legislation."
Dodd and other MPAA bigwigs were addressing hundreds of representatives from movie studios, software makers and technology companies at the Hilton at the Content Protection Summit 2012 conference, produced by Variety. Topics included the often-stated sentiment that copyright scofflaws are criminals, and reminders that the software and content industries are constantly monitoring pirate sites -- punctuated by rousing calls to action that the industry must not roll over and play dead.
Chief among the topics was the so-called “Copyright Alert System," an ISP search-and-disrupt operation that was originally set to begin by year’s end, but was delayed by Hurricane Sandy. The rollout is now set for next month, confirmed Marianne Grant, an MPAA vice president.
"We will be up and running in January," Grant said. "This is going to make a difference. It won't solve everything."
Software makers sided with the film industry on the scope of the piracy problem, and, befitting their geekier nature, had actual hard data to back their gloomy conclusions. Richard Atkinson, head of Adobe's piracy unit, said the company charts 6,000 activations a day of 7-year-old pirated versions of Photoshop, and that there were 55 million "illegal activations" in the past year alone of all pirated versions of the photo-editing software.
"This is shocking," he said.
Microsoft is taking a proactive approach to piracy, said Peter Anaman, the company's head piracy officer.
Anaman said internet service providers, and Google, remove about 2 million links to copies of pirated Microsoft products every month. The company gets this done largely through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's so-called "notice-and-takedown" process -- Microsoft notifies companies that they are linking to infringing material, and that it must be removed. He said Microsoft sees about a 99 percent compliance rate.
Because of that, he said, it now takes an average internet user about 10 minutes to locate pirated Microsoft products, compared to just seconds years ago.
"There are means we can use to protect ourselves," Anaman said.
Dodd, a former U.S. senator, is convinced that the stakes couldn't be higher.
"I think this is a critical issue of our time," said Dodd.
