MPAA CTO Jumps Ship To Internet Society, An Opponent Of Greater Online Copyright Enforcement
from the changing-his-tune? dept
Back in January, the day before the big anti-SOPA blackout, I was on a panel at the Congressional Internet Caucus' State of the Net event, and one of the other panelists was the MPAA's Chief Technology Policy Officer, Paul Brigner. Brigner had been somewhat vocal in defending the MPAA's position on SOPA/PIPA -- and especially its view that there were no problems with DNS blocking. In a blog post last summer, he wrote:DNSSEC was designed to provide consumers with a secure, trusted connection to services like online banking, commercial transactions, and electronic medical records - not to foreign websites operated by criminals for the purpose of offering counterfeit and infringing works. These evolving protocols should be flexible enough to allow for government, acting pursuant to a court order, to protect intellectual property online.That shows a rather complete misunderstanding of how DNSSEC works, which is odd, because Brigner should know better. However, in the brief time that I did get to talk with Brigner, he struck me as one of the more reasonable folks at the MPAA, and I wondered if he was pressured into writing such nonsense that completely misses the point. In fact, on that panel back in January, it seemed pretty clear that he was conflicted about his views on this particular issue.
I bring all this up, because Brigner has left the MPAA after just about a year, and has joined the Internet Society, an organization who has made it clear that it opposes these efforts to expand online enforcement strategies. There's been some concern that Brigner now becomes the MPAA's voice over at ISOC, and moves them away from this position.
I'm hopeful, however, that the true story is that ISOC's position on things is a lot more aligned with what Brigner's true feelings on these matters are, and that what he said while employed by the MPAA was more about the job than what he really felt.
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Filed Under: copyright, paul brigner, sopa
Companies: isoc, mpaa
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I can understand peoples' suspicions that it is a ploy by the MPAA to undermine the people who present the facts they don't like and don't find it encouraging that he is working with ISOC.
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It screams Trojan Horse, and it might not be... but given the lengths the **AA's are willing to goto... better safe than sorry.
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ISOC
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Re: Reality Strikes
I don't like the idea of him working for ISOC if that means they're moving in his direction though there is no change in their mission statement or they're statements concerning Internet censorship and freedom.
I'd like to think Brigner is more aligned with what the ISOC stands for that he was allowed to say as the CTO of the MPAA. But the situation does bear watching.
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So, a deep packet inspection of his person?
I'm OK with that.
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Re: ISOC vs ICANN
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Re: Re: Reality Strikes
but ... but ... but ... piracy is costing billions of jobs a day!!!!
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There is a "wrecked him, could have killed him" joke in there somewhere.
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Little Johnnie's teacher asked him how his weekend was.
"Horribly, a car hit my dog in the ass," he said.
She said, "Rectum."
"Wrecked him?" Johnnie said. "Damn near killed him!"
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Re: Re: Re: Reality Strikes
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Gabe Newell
-Gabe Newell, regarding piracy
What does the MPAA try to control???? the distribution of when and where their movies are released and what format....
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