Media Expert Witnesses

Media expert witnesses may opine on the motion picture and music industry, radio broadcasting, royalties, and more. Here, the Digital Media Association addresses the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeiters Act (S. 3804).

Senate Anti-piracy Bill Provokes Battle Between Hollywood and Web Giants Authored by Cecilia Kang on November 18, 2010 – Washington Post
The controversial legislation has attracted powerful supporters and detractors who have ramped up lobbying campaigns around the bill this week.

On one side, the music, movie and television industries have supported the bill, saying that counterfeiting of their products won’t cease unless there are stronger sanctions in place. They say that existing rules have done little to curb counterfeiting and piracy.

On the other side, Internet networking engineers and privacy advocates such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation argue that the takedown of domain names could destabilize the structure of the Web.

They are joined in opposing the measure by companies such as eBay, Amazon.com, Bloomberg, Google and Wikipedia, who wrote Leahy on Monday, cautioning against provisions in the bill that they say would give federal law enforcement too much power to police infringing activity.

Read more: digmedia.org.