AT&T, Microsoft, NBC Form Anti-Piracy Supergroup Lump illegal P2P in with viruses to push filter ideology...
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATT-Microsoft-NBC-Form-AntiPiracy-Supergroup-97974 AT&T, Microsoft, Cisco, Viacom, and NBC Universal have joined forces to create a new lobbying coalition named "Arts & Labs," tasked with taking aim at piracy. The group is co-chaired by Mark McKinnon, former media advisor to the Bush and McCain campaigns, and Mike McCurry, who until last week was Chairman for the telecom-industry funded anti-net-neutrality group "Hands Off The Internet." McCurry outlines the group's purpose in today's press release: "We want consumers to have exponentially greater opportunities to access creative content in a variety of formats, and with confidence that they are safe from viruses, hackers, malware, illegal file trafficking and other net pollution that puts them at risk," McCurry said. There's no doubt the kids need to be protected from all the free TV shows they could possibly eat, but Consumer group Public Knowledge has a different take. "Combining the power and influence of AT&T and the entertainment industry means only that both are going to wage an all-out war for the right to filter every bit of data anyone sends across the Internet," says Public Knowledge's Gigi Sohn. Public Knowledge did have one nice thing to say about the new coalition. "We are pleased to see that Verizon continues to resist the incessant and misguided pressure from the entertainment industry," says the group. Verizon has consistently been one of the only major incumbent ISPs who've been very wary about the inherent dangers in becoming Internet content babysitters. Not coincidentally, most of the new group's members strongly favor ISP filtering of pirated content and apparently, lumping this content in with spam and viruses is the opening salvo of a new PR campaign on this front. AT&T has already stated they're testing piracy filters, while NBC Universal has gone so far as to suggest that piracy filters should be embedded in home networking hardware, something Viacom also agrees with. ******************************* * POST TO [EMAIL PROTECTED] * ******************************* Medianews mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
