New Front Group Formed To Push Net Users To Legit Content

Five large media, technology and service provider companies -- NBC Universal, Viacom, AT&T, Cisco Systems and Microsoft -- have lent their names to an advocacy organization designed to promote legal sources of content on the Internet and discourage consumers from engaging in piracy. The coalition, called Arts+Labs, is the brainchild of two erstwhile political operatives: Mike McCurry, White House press secretary under Bill Clinton from 1995 to 1998, and Mark McKinnon, a one-time songwriter who has served as chief media advisor to the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and John McCain. Arts+Labs, whose founding members also include the Songwriters Guild of America, will "inform and educate" consumers about the availability of legal entertainment content online as well as the dangers of obtaining media content illegally. Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge, "This latest in a string of big-money front groups is nothing more than the most concentrated attack on the free and open Internet we have seen to date. 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. We are pleased to see that Verizon continues to resist the incessant and misguided pressure from the entertainment industry. Their goal will be nothing less than to give the telephone and cable companies the legal right to act as police inspectors on behalf of Hollywood in searching through what should be the private Internet traffic of consumers across the country and around the world. We certainly do not condone online theft of copyrighted materials. At the same time, we similarly do not favor the unwarranted intrusion into the Internet that this group promises for the future."