Chernin, Parsons appearing in House hearing

By Paige Albiniak
( Broadcasting & Cable )
published

The debate over digital copyright protection goes public in the House of
Representatives Thursday, with News Corp. president Peter Chernin and AOL Time
Warner Inc. co-chief operating officer Richard Parsons planning to testify
before the House Telecommunications and Internet Subcommittee, Chernin via
satellite.

Other witnesses scheduled to appear are Dr. Paul Liao,
chief technology officer for Panasonic/Matsushita Consumer Electronics; Larry
Blanford, CEO of Philips Consumer Electronics Co.; Larry Jacobson, president and
COO of RealNetworks Inc.; Assaf Litai, founder and acting CEO of Vidius Inc.;
and Joe Kraus, cofounder of DigitalConsumer.org

.

Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), chairman of the subcommittee, and other key
committee members have been participating in regular meetings on digital
television with the broadcast, cable and consumer-electronics industries and the
movie studios.

Many of the discussions have focused on the problem of
protecting copyrighted digital material from being redistributed on the
Internet, which is among the issues Thursday's hearing will address.

Paige Albiniak
Paige Albiniak

Contributing editor Paige Albiniak has been covering the business of television for more than 25 years. She is a longtime contributor to Next TV, Broadcasting + Cable and Multichannel News. She concurrently serves as editorial director for The Global Entertainment Marketing Academy of Arts & Sciences (G.E.M.A.). She has written for such publications as TVNewsCheck, The New York Post, Variety, CBS Watch and more. Albiniak was B+C’s Los Angeles bureau chief from September 2002 to 2004, and an associate editor covering Congress and lobbying for the magazine in Washington, D.C., from January 1997 - September 2002.