A Note from the Copyright Alliance

This just in, from Patrick Ross of the Copyright Alliance:

Thanks for the mention, Larry! The excerpt you quoted is what we’re trying to do, educate and increase awareness of copyright. I would posit, however, that it is inaccurate to call us Washington’s Copyright Lobby.

Almost all of our members have lobbyists either in-house or outside; they are more than capable of lobbying for their own interests. And more frequently than you might think, my members find themselves pitted against each other on policy issues.

For that reason, I don’t expect our time on the Hill to involve much lobbying for legislation. Rather, our mission will be to remind everyone that while copyright interests can compete in the market and in policy debates, they are united in their belief in copyright. That often gets overlooked, as does the fact that most of those conflicts are not about whether copyright is of value, but rather who gets the value.

This lobbying tag has been applied pretty broadly by journalists, bloggers, etc., and it seems my first order of business as the head of an educational institution is to do a better job of educating people about who we are. It’s a natural assumption to view us as a lobbying group...