In a new interview with Variety magazine, US Vice President has shown that he’s down with the kids by flaming illegal downloading of music and films as ‘outright theft’. In the strongest sign of the White House’s position on the issue, he has declared “Look, piracy is outright theft. People are out there blatantly stealing from Americans — stealing their ideas and robbing us of America’s creative energies. There’s no reason why we should treat intellectual property any different than tangible property.”
However, he agrees that the entertainment industry hasn’t done a great job of putting their case to the average American, who see the music and music biz as full of wealthy people living glamorous cocaine fuelled lifestyles. “I think the entertainment industry would agree that they have done a poor job in making their case and need to do better,” Biden said. “I mean, they have some of the brightest and most creative people working for them. They should be able to come up with an intelligent, original and effective public education campaign targeting this issue. To be honest, I am not certain they have dedicated the appropriate resources to this, and I hope they will.”
However, he doesn’t think that it’s simply a case of needing to protect the film and music industries from an outmoded business model. Rather, he says “The fact is, media companies have already taken significant steps to adapt their business models to keep up with changes in how we watch movies and listen to music. Content is being offered to consumers in a variety of different ways that make it easy and cost-effective for people to access legal material. Anyone who does not understand this should simply talk with one of my grandkids.”
