MPAA's Chris Dodd Calls Piracy Defeat a 'Watershed Event'

As part of the Sundance Film Festival's daily Cinema Café speaker series at the Filmmaker Lodge, New York Times writer David Carr moderated a wide-ranging discussion with MPAA chairman Christopher Dodd, independent producer Christine Vachon and NATO president John Fithian. While many issues relating to exhibition and independent film made the agenda, Dodd was the first to address "the elephant in the room," as he put it: the SOPA and PIPA legislation designed to combat online piracy that was recently derailed by an unprecedented public outcry.

"It's a watershed event, what happened," Dodd admitted, noting that opponents' "ability to organize and communicate directly with consumers" was a game-changing phenomenon that he hadn't seen in more than three decades in public office. Fithian agreed, saying that the turnaround in November was "the greatest backlash I've ever seen. This was historic." Dodd seemed genuinely distressed that while the underlying issue of combating piracy is one everyone can agree on, a hyperbolic "hysteria" was stirred up that convinced people they would lose freedom of speech or the internet would be broken if the legislation passed. Dodd claimed that a discussion about "unintended consequences" was valid, as well as other concerns, but that those issues will not be addressed positively in the current climate. To illustrate the point, Fithian noted that his son angrily asked him why he was trying to take away his Internet.