The Motion Picture Association of America opposed Net-neutrality legislation pending in Congress this week. Speaking at the Hollywood trade show ShoWest, MPAA chief Dan Glickman called a bill sponsored by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) nothing more than “government regulation of the Internet.”
Neutrality legislation “would impede our ability to respond to consumers in innovative ways, and it would impair the ability of broadband providers to address the serious and rampant piracy problems occurring over their networks today,” Glickman said.
Glickman emphasized that Hollywood’s current business model depends on post-release revenue streams: DVD sales and rentals and, to a modest extent, legal online downloads. “The future of the theater, unimpeded theatrical production and a vibrant aftermarket all depend on an Internet that remains free from government regulation. So we are all in this together,” he said.
In an interesting appropriation of terminology, Glickman said Hollywood is the real “information economy that will create new jobs and new opportunities for the future.”
“Technology increasingly is making new worlds of consumer-centric innovation possible, and it is handing us the opportunity to deal the first real body blow to online piracy, to begin to reach toward the day when we might be able to take it off the table and debug the system. It simply cannot be the policy of this country to say no to that,” Glickman said.
“Today MPAA and all of our studios are standing up in opposition to broad-based government regulation of the Internet. We are opposing so-called Net neutrality government action,” he said. “And in the process, we are standing up for our customers, for our economy and for the ability of content producers to continue to create great movies for the future.”
While he didn’t mention them by name, Glickman was clearly referring to Comcast’s blocking of Internet traffic…