The US government has for the first time announced a strategic plan on intellectual property enforcement, in an attempt to better coordinate efforts to tackle piracy.
Vice-president Joe Biden, along with Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinol, released their report and recommendations for a new approach to ensuring the protection of intellectual property, including cooperating with foreign governments to go after foreign-based pirate sites.
"To state it very bluntly, piracy hurts," Vice President Biden said at the press conference on Tuesday. "It hurts our economy, our health and our safety." Meanwhile, Espinel, who was appointed by President Obama last year, sent out a warning to pirates, stating: "We have committed to putting you out of business”.
The announcement came in the same week Google won its court battle with media conglomerate Viacom, which claimed the Internet giant was guilty of copyright infringement through its video-sharing website YouTube.
Google argued successfully that YouTube was protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Viacom called the ruling “fundamentally flawed” in a statement, whilst Directors Guild of America president Taylor Hackford expressed his concern too. “We fear that the precedent established in this ruling, if not overturned by the appeals court, could result in a drastic rising tide of Internet theft that could decimate our members’ livelihoods”, Hackford stated yesterday.
For more on the US Administration's piracy crackdown, click here. To read the full statement from Taylor Hackford, click here.
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