Revolving Door: Administration's ACTA Defender Jumps Ship To US Chamber Of Commerce (original) (raw)

from the lobbyists-in-and-out dept

You may remember Steven Tepp, from the US Copyright Office, who just recently defended the administration’s position on ACTA by mocking the very legitimate concerns of many people about ACTA’s exporting of stronger copyright laws, without any corresponding exceptions, combined with the fact that it would lock in currently in-flux US caselaw with no chance for Congress to fix mistakes by the courts. James Love alerts us to the news that Tepp has left the employment of the government to become the “Senior Director of Internet Piracy and Counterfeiting” for the US Chamber of Commerce.

The Chamber of Commerce of course (a private organization, not to be confused — as some people do — with the government’s Commerce Department) is famous for its anti-fact position on IP laws, where it always believes greater protectionism is better, despite the evidence. Of course, when all of the evidence is against the Chamber of Commerce, it came out with its own laughable study that confuses correlation with a causal relationship, and bases its conclusions on lumping together various companies and assigning their success or failure entirely to intellectual property laws. It sounds like Tepp should fit right in, though it again highlights the revolving door between the folks who make the policies and those who lobby for the policies.

Filed Under: anti-piracy, copyright, steve tepp
Companies: us chamber of commerce