President Bush has created a new senior level position to fight global piracy and counterfeiting that cost American companies billions of dollars in lost sales each year, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said on Friday.

This is the other shoe that I have been dreading since the DMCA adoption.

You might that that is dramatic, but it is also true. DMCA is the weapon that the RIAA and MPAA funded to build. So far courts have not wielded it as effectively as they would like. Bush has created an executive level office to track groups/scenes/technology down and stop them, using the DMCA was one of many weapons.

This person is a single injection point into the governmental process for the MPAA and RIAA. No more dealing with 10 or 100s of piddling representatives from different warring states. This is a focus point, a legitimate mouth piece to make industry desires government standards.

Don't be fooled by this "we really just want to stop China" crap. Yes, China is a growing market that Hollywood would love to get a piece of. Piracy is exposing a whole generation of people to Hollywood franchises and culturing a desire for American goods that we will not be able to capitalize on for 10+ years. China is not hurting Hollywood, China is marketing goldmine that *fell* into Hollywood's lap.

This new post's near term goals will be recommendations/modifications of government mandidated standards for things like HDTV, IPTV, and DRM with as dash of next generation digital IP policy making. Its goals will be to protect MPAA/RIAA IP, while not losing control to the hardware vendor's *cough*Microsoft's*cough* wet dreams of set top box required to view the new generation of digital content.

Its all a question of how effective this post can be (drug czar anyone?), and if this new industry mouthpiece has anyone's ear at all.

The Other shoe: The Anti-piracy czar