MPAA supports GOP platform's opposition to piracy

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - The Motion Picture Association of America is supporting the Republican party's platform to protect intellectual property from online piracy, MPAA CEO Chris Dodd said in a statement Wednesday.

"Copyright is the cornerstone of innovation: it allows creators to benefit from what they create," Dodd, a former Democratic senator from Connecticut, said.

The GOP the platform was set Tuesday at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla. yesterday.

"Victimized private firms will be encouraged to raise claims in both U.S. courts and at the World Trade Organization," the platform reads. "Punitive measures will be imposed on foreign firms that misappropriate American technology and intellectual property."

The language of the platform "strikes a very smart balance" between "protecting content and internet freedom," Dodd said in his statement.

"As Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor - herself once a Republican elected officials '' wrote, 't should not be forgotten that the Framers intended copyright itself to be the engine of free expression. By establishing a marketable right to use the one's expression, copyright supplies the economic incentive to create and disseminate ideas.'"

The GOP platform also argued against federal action on net neutrality.

"The internet has unleashed innovation, enabled growth, and inspired freedom more rapidly and extensively than any other technological advance in human history," the platform reads. "Its independence is its power. The internet offers a communications system uniquely free from government intervention."

But rather than government control, or international or United Nations control, as has been suggested, the platform says "the only way to safeguard or improve these systems is through the private sector."

Dodd and the MPAA pushed to pass the Stop Online Privacy Act, better known as SOPA, which was derailed by a campaign led by Google, Wikipedia and other Silicon Valley heavyweights.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mpaa-supports-gop-platforms-opposition-piracy-183302169.html

space shuttle enterprise ryan leaf ryan leaf luke kuechly brad miller chandler jones peyton hillis