Authors Guild demands ISPs monitor, filter Internet of pirated goods

The Authors Guild, one of the nation's top writer's groups, wants the US Congress to overhaul copyright law and require Internet service providers (ISPs) to monitor and filter the Internet of pirated materials, including e-books. The guild, in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee as it mulls changes to copyright law, says the notice-and-takedown provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act favor large corporations like Google over individual writers. The group said that ISPs purge the Internet of infringing content on their own. As the law now stands, ISPs are not legally liable for pirated content, and they get "safe harbor" immunity from infringement allegations as long as they remove infringing content at the owners' request. The guild's executive director, Mary
Rasenberger, believes that ISPs have the technology and resources to remove pirated works without being notified that pirated content is on their networks.

In the letter to the committee, Rasenberger wrote, "Technology that can identify and filter pirated material is now commonplace. It only makes sense, then, that ISPs should bear the burden of limiting piracy on their sites, especially when they are profiting from the piracy and have the technology to conduct automates searches and takedowns. Placing the burden of identifying pirated content on the individual author, who has no ability to have any real impact on piracy, as the current regime does, makes no sense at all. It is technology that has enabled the pirate marketplace to flourish, and it is technology alone that has the capacity to keep it in check."