Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) President and CEO Gary Shapiro has reacted strongly to a Motion Picture Association of America blog on intellectual property legislation under consideration in Congress which suggests that Shapiro is alarmist about the threat to technology companies of the proposed measures.

“On behalf of 2,000 of the nation’s leading technology companies, CEA has raised significant fact-based concerns about the broad scope of the PROTECT IP Act (S.968) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261),” he said in a statement.

“Unfortunately, some parties to this debate think name calling and ‘gotcha’ Google searches are more important than addressing the serious threat to our nation’s economic future posed by this legislation. They would like you to forget that they went all the way to the Supreme Court to block the VCR, part of a pattern that continues to this day of using lobbying heft and legal might to delay or destroy nascent technology that challenges their legacy business. And now voices from liberal Democrats to the Tea Party are joining the chorus of opposition to PROTECT IP and SOPA.

I’ve always said that the balance among IP protection, freedom of speech and online innovation is a delicate one with no easy solutions. If the content community is truly committed to addressing illegal commercial counterfeiting without harming the broadband technologies that are driving our economy forward, we can and should have a dialogue about changes to S.968 and H.R. 3261 that attack the parasite without killing the host.

The technology industry stands at the pinnacle of innovation, improving the lives of all Americans while powering our economy toward recovery.”

Categories: Articles, Content, Piracy, Policy, Regulation, Rights