Device lobbyist taking fight to consumers

Gary Shapiro is riled up and thinks you should be, too.

What’s got the head of the Consumer Electronics Association so upset? The state of copyright law, the set of rules that, among other things, governs what consumers can do with the books, music and movies they purchase and the radio and television shows they listen to.

Shapiro charges that copyright holders such as the film and recording studios have been and continue to push for increasingly restrictive rules. That push threatens to stymie technological innovation among the CEA’s 2,100 members and criminalize the normal behavior of everyday Americans, he argues.

As might be expected, the motion picture and recording industries disagree with Shapiro and the CEA. As they see it, the key threat for policy-makers to worry about is content piracy, which they argue costs them billions of dollars in lost sales.

Because of recent changes in copyright law, ‘the content industry feels more comfortable putting its content out in more places,’ said John Feehery, executive vice president of government affairs for the Motion Picture Association of America. And, he argued, those stricter rules actually encourage demand for electronics products, as consumers look for more ways to view or listen to their favorite shows, books or music. ‘There’s all kinds of innovation in the device industry.’