ACT filed comments in response to a request by the Department of Commerce for input by stakeholders on the issue of online copyright infringement. Representing small and medium sized enterprises, ACT expressed concerns shared by many of its members. Principally, that 1) Chinese copyright infringement leads most to avoid even entering that marketplace; 2) that, in many ways, the DMCA is responsible for the digital content revolution and should not be amended; and 3) that cross-jurisdictional legal issues relating to the cloud must be clarified.
Underlying the discussion of how our government can fight infringement, is the question, “How can the United States best promote continued innovation in Internet technologies and services while performing, in the Internet, its traditional governmental function of keeping foreign pirates and counterfeiters out of our domestic market?”
ACT encourages the Department of Commerce to address these issues to best help protect the intellectual property of small independent software vendors.
The full text of the filing is here.