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Urie calls on US pro-copyrighters to write to Congress reps
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 16 November 2010
Universal US exec Jim Urie has sent out an email in his guise as the main Music Rights Now man urging American artists, songwriters and music business types to email their political representatives in support of a bit of new legislation being proposed by a group of senators which would give the US Justice Department new powers to shut down copyright infringing websites.
As previously reported, the Music Rights Now campaign has been lobbying US legislators for new laws to make it easier to battle piracy online arguing that – while the content industries should work with the ISPs to try and find mutually acceptable ways to stop individuals illegally file-sharing – at the same time new laws are required, partly to put pressure on reluctant net firms to act, and partly to speed up the process for getting websites that actively infringe copyrights, or enable others to infringe, offline.
The new laws being proposed by a bipartisan group of senators would obligate the Justice Department to investigate infringing websites. Where it believed a website was involved in or enabled unreasonable levels of infringement, it could get an injunction from the Supreme Court to seize the infringing site’s domain name. It could also force ISPs, credit card companies and advertisers to stop doing business with said websites.
CNET have dubbed the proposals “one of the most ambitious attempts yet from the US government to fight online piracy” adding “if the bill passes, it could mark the most significant antipiracy victory for the film and music industries in quite a while”.
Calling on his mailing list to email their local representatives in Congress urging them to support the proposals, Urie concludes: “Each and every one of us needs to act NOW if we expect the legislation to gain momentum. Our community has never matched the noise created by those on the ‘copyleft’ – we need to be louder than ever to drown out those who don’t care about our art, our jobs and the difference between right and wrong”.
