Encouraging words yesterday from Victoria Espinel at her Senate hearing to be the first IP Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC) in the White House, a position created last year by the PRO-IP Act. (See my general take on the hearing here.)

She was questioned by the newest member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Al Franken, the only non-lawyer on the committee. (As a non-lawyer in a sea of lawyers here in D.C., I can empathize.) Senator Franken is a major advocate of net neutrality regulations, as he made clear recently when speaking at the Future of Music Summit. But in that same speech he also said it’s essential that copyright be enforced, and noted his background in TV and as an author.

Mentioning the recent notice of proposed rulemaking put out by the FCC on net neutrality, Mr. Franken asked Ms. Espinel how we ensure an open Internet while at the same time “we also want to prevent piracy.” “Openness does not apply to lawful content,” Ms. Espinel replied, echoing FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski when he also appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee as an Obama Administration nominee. Her role as IPEC will be to work across the government coordinating IP enforcement, and she said she would certainly be working with the FCC “to develop strategies to stop intellectual property theft… consistent with” Obama Administration positions on transparency and an open Internet. This is hardly surprising, since President Obama selected Ms. Espinel to be the first Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator.

Mr. Franken asked how “tensions” could be resolved between an open Internet and copyright enforcement, but Ms. Espinel said “I don’t know that there necessarily have to be those tensions.” An open Internet is not benefited when filled with infringing material, she added. “It’s one of the issues I would grapple with” if confirmed, she said.

That approach is entirely consistent with the testimony the Copyright Alliance gave at a September 17th FCC Workshop. However policymakers approach regulating the Internet to ensure openness, they (1) must make a meaningful distinction between legal and illegal traffic, and (2) must regulate behavior, not technology, to allow new tools to reduce infringement while respecting legal traffic and user privacy.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 2:40 pm by Patrick Ross and is filed under Obama, capitol hill, network neutrality, piracy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.