How Creators Can Help Meet Obama’s Trade Goal
Thursday, January 28th, 2010 by Patrick Ross
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While President Obama made many interesting points during his State of the Union address last night, I’d like to focus on his discussion of international trade. Obama made several key points: 1) Small business can be a growing part of trade, including entrepreneurs. 2) Americans can produce exports unrivaled by the rest of the world. 3) We need increased enforcement of trade agreements to benefit U.S. exporters. 4) He is setting a goal to double U.S. exports as a way to boost jobs.
America’s copyright owners can help the President meet that trade goal.
As I wrote last week, copyright owners of all stripes — from major studios to individual creators — find their creative output valued around the world. The Internet has facilitated a connection between creators and overseas customers; it has also facilitated piracy, which erodes those potential markets.
The motion picture industry has a favorable balance of trade around the world. It certainly seems Avatar is finding an audience abroad. All creative industries excel in exports both with physical goods such as DVDs, music CDs, software CDs, etc., as well as with legal downloads and streams. But it is inarguable that piracy replaces at least some potential sales and creates an atmosphere that puts those abroad who actually are willing to purchase licensed copyright goods at a disadvantage.
It’s hard to encourage a culture of playing by the rules when a foreign government refuses to enforce those rules, or as we see sometimes, actually engages in breaking them itself, such as using pirated software.
As to the four points by President Obama. Small business owners in copyright industries, including individual creators — such as photographers, composers and musicians, authors, and software developers — have perhaps the greatest potential for market expansion abroad. This is also true of modest-sized businesses, such as small music labels, software shops or film production companies. Just as we see with the production of major U.S. employers in copyright industries, there is no question their creative output is valued by customers around the world, I would argue more than any U.S. manufactured good.
But we do need more international enforcement of IP trade agreements to ensure those markets are there, something U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and his team recognize. With that enforcement, copyright owners are perhaps best poised of all U.S. industries to help President Obama reach his goal of doubling U.S. exports.
The Copyright Alliance has maintained from the beginning that copyright is an engine for creativity, jobs and growth. All of those points are reflected in international trade.
February 3rd, 2010 at 2:43 pm
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