Commerce Seeks Input on Spurring Digital Marketplace

The Commerce Department's Internet Policy Task Force will hold a public meeting Dec. 9 on "Developing the Digital Marketplace for Copyrighted Works." The meeting will be at the Patent and Trademark Office's Alexandria, Va., headquarters.

The task force was created to review "the nexus between privacy policy, copyright, global free flow of information, cybersecurity, and innovation in the Internet economy."

The meeting, co-hosted by Commerce's National Telecommunications & Information Administration, is billed as an effort to "facilitate constructive, cross-industry dialogue among stakeholders about ways to promote a more robust and collaborative digital marketplace for copyrighted works."

NTIA has been a facilitator for various efforts to promote new digital technologies while protecting privacy.

Fair use fans have long been concerned about overprotecting copyrighted works to the detriment of fair uses for criticism and new works. Content owners will likely argue that one way to create a more robust marketplace is to better protect their high-value, expensive content, from unfair use, like piracy.

Finding the collaborative "nexus" between those will likely be the key.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.