Hollywood received powerful congressional support in its fight against digital piracy Wednesday, with one U.S. senator describing the losses due to intellectual property theft in perhaps the most staggering of terms possible.
“It would not surprise me if it is the biggest transfer of wealth in history,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I. “You could take Willie Sutton, Bonnie and Clyde and the James Gang and all together they add up to nothing, compared to this.”
The remarks came during a Senate Judiciary Committee, convened to hear a report released by White House’s Intellectual Property Enforcement coordinator Victoria Espinel, outlining the Obama Administration’s piracy-fighting plans.
The meeting offered Hollywood leaders like Warner Bros. chairman-CEO Barry Meyer to hammer home key agendas – notably, that piracy is not the result of the movie and television businesses not adapting to change.
“The image of the entertainment industry as circling the wagons over old technology is not true,” Meyer told the committee. “The rampant threat of theft of intellectual property, strikes at the heart of our nation’s economy. It puts at risk one of America’s great industries.”
But the most emphatic anti-piracy messages came from Congress itself Wednesday.
“Generations ago, it was bootleg liquor,” said committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. Now, he said he was worried not only about piracy and counterfeiting, but that the money it raised was being used to fund other criminal activity.
“We have some of the most innovative geniuses in the United States,” he said. “We just want to protect them.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., noted that his background as a writer and entertainer meant he had seen some of the impacts of piracy personally.
“I don’t want what happened to the record industry to happen to the motion picture industry,” he said.
