The Office of the U.S. Intellectual Property
Coordinator's
just-released report on 2011 IP enforcement says the country has made
"great strides" in implementing its strategic plan to combat IP theft.
This includes a July 2011 agreement among major
ISPS -- AT&T, Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, and Time Warner Cable -- studios
and music labels to fight online content piracy.
That
agreement called for a series of alerts to customers when their accounts appear
to be "misused" for infringement by peer-to-peer networks. Comcast
got into trouble at the FCC for its attempts to crack down on peer-to-peer
traffic, resulting ultimately in the FCC's codification of its network
neutrality rules.
Under
the agreement, ISPs, after six warnings, can act "to temporarily affect
the user experience in a manner that is reasonably tailored to educate the
subscriber, discourage infringing activity consistent with the Federal
Communication Commission Open Internet Order and in a manner sensitive to the
legitimate needs of subscribers of an Internet connection."
In
its order, the FCC left operators room to manage their networks to prevent
content piracy.
Among
the other strides cited was the Justice Department's seizure of at least $202
million worth of infringing goods since 2009.
The
post of Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, currently Victoria
Espinel, was created by Congress in the PRO IP Act of 2008.
"Protecting
America's innovation and creativity is a critical part of being competitive in
the global economy Protecting what we invent, create and produce is always
important," said Espniel in a letter to the President and Congress
presenting the report, "but at this time, when every job matters, it is
especially important that we stop theft that harms our businesses and threatens
jobs here at home."
The
report talks about the inclusion of some Administration recommendations as part
of the PROTECT IP Act and Stop Online Piracy Act, though it does not mention
that both those bills suffered very public deaths at the hands of Google and
others.
