Hollywood to Silicon Valley: Let's Talk Piracy
The Motion Picture Association of America chief wants a White House parlay with the SOPA and PIPA opponents.
Hollywood is extending an olive branch to Silicon Valley in the Web piracy debate.
As support dwindles in Congress for the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act—House and Senate bills designed to prevent illegal movie downloaded but criticized as potential vehicles for Web censorship—the head of the Motion Picture Association of America told The New York Times that he’d like a meeting between the film studios and the legislation’s opponents.
Some of the bills’ staunchest challengers are Silicon Valley start-ups like Reddit and Minecraft.net, but opponents also include Internet giants like Google and Wikipedia. A Web “blackout” protest Wednesday drew even more attention to the two bills, prompting several prominent lawmakers to withdraw their support for the bills.
- Read more: Best of the SOPA Blackout
The MPAA chief, Christopher J. Dodd, says he’s surprised about the outcry. At one point, SOPA seemed like a “slam dunk,” he told the Times. Now, after the blackout, it’s “a whole new different game all of a sudden.”
Hollywood and Silicon Valley have an “estranged relationship,” the New York Times notes, and Dodd suggests that now might be the time for Hollywood to start “rethinking everything” about how it works with the technology industry. —Abram Brown
