Neil Fried’s Response to Wyden-Cox Filing in FCC Section 230 Reform Proceeding
“Measures that focus on consensus goals such as reducing harm to children or suppressing illegal content may have the best chance of success. ‘That seems to be where the real momentum is,’ says Neil Fried, former counsel on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. ‘There’s a lot of people that are concerned about hate speech and bias and fake news, but those I think are going to take longer to sort out.’”
“Congress should restore a duty of care online, requiring platforms to take good faith steps as a condition of receiving Section 230 protections, testified DigitalFrontiers Advocacy Principal Neil Fried. This would better protect users and address competition concerns, he said. Increased transparency would help, he agreed with Republicans. It’s a losing battle if platforms can facilitate illicit activity with impunity, he said.”
“Neil Fried, former chief Republican communications and technology counsel to the committee, testified that additional regulation wasn’t necessary if Congress updated Section 230 to hold online platforms to the ‘duty of care’ standard that other businesses are held to.”
“To mitigate the tension between content moderation and free speech, Neil Fried, an advocate with Digital Frontiers, suggested that Congress could condition Section 230 protection on websites demonstrating that they take ‘reasonable, good-faith steps to curb illicit activity.’”
“‘Although the U.S. government does not take many such actions, those they do can have a greater deterrent effect than civil suits because criminal cases bring more attention, along with the possibility of jail time for convicted culprits,’ Fried notes.
“‘Indeed, a 2012 U.S. action against Megaupload—then the largest piracy ‘cyberlocker,’ accounting for 4 percent of all internet traffic—increased lawful digital sales by 6.5 to 8.5 percent for three major studios in 12 countries,’ he adds, citing an academic study from an MPAA funded research group.”
“To begin, Neil Fried, senior vice president of federal advocacy and regulatory affairs at the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), emphasized that the creative community has embraced the Internet because it provides so much access to content. However, those who work in the film industry are hurt by these easily accessible illegal streaming sites. To illustrate their accessibility, Fried pulled out a “pirate box” and played several live cable channels and films, including The Devil Wears Prada and Forrest Gump, two movies produced by co-panelist Wendy Finerman, an independent film and television producer.”
“Fried, a former House Energy and Commerce Committee lawyer, brings nearly a decade of Capitol Hill experience to an industry that is being transformed by the proliferation of digital streaming services.”
“‘Under the First Amendment, it is the speaker and the audience acting in the free market — not the government — that determines what is said and heard, as well as how it is communicated,’ wrote Neil Fried, MPAA senior vp government and regulatory affairs.”
“WASHINGTON- The Motion Picture Association of America, Inc.(MPAA) today announced that Neil Fried has joined the organization as a Senior Vice President, Government and Regulatory Affairs. In this capacity, Fried will oversee all of the Association’s Federal and Regulatory Affairs efforts in Washington.”
“The movie industry’s top trade group is looking to add two veteran Capitol Hill aides, including Republican Neil Fried, as head of the association’s Washington government relations operation, POLITICO has learned.”
“Neil Fried came to Washington without a shred of telecom experience. Now, he’s counted as one of the top tech-policy experts in government—so much so that he was considered for chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, according to industry analysts.”
“One of the few must-do pieces of legislation this year is the yearlong extension of the payroll tax cut, probably while also extending jobless benefits and the current Medicare payment rate for doctors.
“None of those is a technology issue, but Fried will be a player in the deal-making nonetheless because the negotiators are eager to find ways to offset the package’s cost and are eyeing $6 billion to $16 billion from auctioning slices of the broadcast spectrum to wireless Internet service providers.”
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