US Film Industry Praises Republicans On IP And Internet Freedom

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) today (29 August) issued a statement praising the platform language of the Republican Party, which is opposing President Obama in this year’s presidential election.

The Republican Party presidential convention is taking place this week in Florida.

“The Republican Party platform language strikes a very smart balance: it emphasizes the importance of us doing more as a nation to protect our intellectual property from online theft while underscoring the critical importance of protecting internet freedom,” MPAA Chairman and CEO Chris Dodd said in a statement. “As the party points out, the internet has been for its entire existence a source of innovation, and it is intellectual property that helps drive that innovation. Copyright is the cornerstone of innovation; it allows creators to benefit from what they create.”

Dodd continued: “As Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor – herself once a Republican elected official – wrote, ‘[I]t should not be forgotten that the Framers intended copyright itself to be the engine of free expression. By establishing a marketable right to the use of one’s expression, copyright supplies the economic incentive to create and disseminate ideas.’

The Framers refers to those who drafted the US Constitution.

“I agree wholeheartedly with my friends in the Republican Party that we must protect the free flow of information on the internet while also protecting American innovators,” he concluded. “It is imperative to our national economy and our national identity that we protect an internet that works for everyone.”

The Obama administration also typically has been seen as strongly supporting the copyright industry in its positions, and has tried to straddle the line between intellectual property protection and internet freedom.