Hollywood Praises GOP Over Internet Platform

A powerful Hollywood advocacy group has given the thumbs up to  Republicans after the party approved positions aimed at promoting and strengthening Internet freedom.

The Motion Picture Association of America cheered the platform position from the Republican National Convention.

Former Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd, now president of the MPAA, said, “The Republican Party platform language strikes a very smart balance.

"It emphasizes the importance of us doing more as a nation to protect our intellectual property from online theft while underscoring the critical importance of protecting internet freedom,” Dodd added.

“As the party points out, the Internet has been for its entire existence a source of innovation, and it is intellectual property that helps drive that innovation. Copyright is the cornerstone of innovation; it allows creators to benefit from what they create.”

Criticizing the current administration as “frozen in the past," the GOP platform focused on the importance of the Internet's role in job creation, economic growth and the need to reduce barriers to innovation and encourage the benefits of free-market competition.

Identifying the web as a medium for technological advancement and the engine of future transformative business opportunity, the GOP stressed the need to reduce regulations and bureaucratic hurdles.

“I agree wholeheartedly with my friends in the Republican Party that we must protect the free flow of information on the Internet while also protecting American innovators,” said Dodd, who represented Connecticut in the Senate for 30 years.

“It is imperative to our national economy and our national identity that we protect an internet that works for everyone.”

In addition to the copyright and intellectual property protections rights spelled out in the GOP platform, Republicans also stressed the need to “resist any effort to shift control away from the successful multi-stakeholder approach of Internet governance and toward governance by international or other intergovernmental organization.”

The GOP plank also included strong language regarding safeguarding personal information, emphasizing the need to “ensure that personal data receives full constitutional protection from government overreach and that individuals retain the right to control the use of their data by third parties.”