Content providers are taking an unfair beating in the press over their
fight for digital copy protection, News Corp. President Peter Chernin told the
Media Institute Wednesday.
Chernin complained that recent articles in Newsweek and The Wall
Street Journal criticizing industry attempts to curtail unauthorized copying
are 'shortsighted and disappointing.'
Chernin dismissed notions that movie studios and TV producers are trying to
limit consumers traditional home recording rights by insisting on protections
that stop copies from being transmitted over the Internet.
'Fair use is not a license for consumers to loot online,' he said.
To illustrate the scope of the copying problem, Chernin
said his teenage son was able to find 30 illegal copies of News Corp. movie
Ice Age
only three days after its release in
theaters.
'The right to hold and defend copyright is being wholly disregarded by
pirates,' Chernin said. If digital platforms cannot ensure compensation for
copyright holders, 'the quality and volume of content will diminish.'
Columnists' suggestions that media companies are aren't capable of keeping up
with technology display 'bizarre ignorance of our achievements' in developing
technology.
News Corp. alone, he said, has developed key technology for pay-per-view
movies, personal video recorders, interactive TV guides, and electronic
publishing.
'We don't fear technology, we're actually inventing
it.'
