Industry efforts to fight digital piracy complement government action

[Commentary] Online piracy remains a perennial problem. Just days before Christmas, news broke that a digital piracy group had released pirated copies of "The Hateful Eight" and "The Revenant" before these movies had even made their theatrical debut. While clearly more needs to be done by law enforcement to crack down on the criminal syndicates behind these types of illegal activities, the past few years have shown that the private sector is taking important steps to combat online piracy and complement government efforts, especially though promotion of voluntary agreements between content creators and other players in the online economy.

The US Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC) is in the process of developing a new three-year strategic plan to improve protection of intellectual property. IPEC's next strategic plan should recognize the value of voluntary agreements and aim to improve existing agreements, support ongoing talks in other areas, and encourage collaboration in areas where there has been less progress. Doing so will help the United States continue to be the powerhouse in creating digital content and innovative delivery models that have proven so popular with consumers and so successful for the US economy.

[Castro is the vice president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). Nigel Cory is a trade policy analyst at ITIF]