Ken Hertz’s 2002 ACLU Bill of Rights Award speech: What’s wrong with the war on ‘Net piracy?
Here‘s a copy of the acceptance speech given by entertainment industry attorney Ken Hertz (of the firm Goldring, Hertz, Lichtenstein and Haft, LLP) at last week’s ACLU Bill of Rights Award dinner. ACLU press release about the award is here.

There are a couple good quote from someone who is usually acting out the expected rights’ owners policies. A very recommended read.

[…] Treating the symptoms and ignoring the underlying problem can allow the problem to fester — and worsen.[…]

How do the War on Crime, the War on Drugs, the War on Terrorism and my personal War on Obesity, relate to the entertainment industry’s War on Internet Piracy?
Our point is that treating the symptoms without addressing the problem will only worsen the problem and generate more daunting symptoms.
[…]

He does support blanket compulsory licensing, which as far as I know would give a very similar regulatory framework to the one we have in Canada with the tariff on blank audio media to compensate for private copying. Yet it seems that even here, record companies are just too eager to brush off that fact and label file sharing of musical works as a crime.

[via Boing Boing]