As befits a man who has spent years in DC, the MPAA's Dan Glickman has polished his share of folksy analogies to a shine. "I used to grow popcorn, and now I sell it," he told a crowd of bankers and analysts yesterday at the UBS Global Media & Communications Conference in New York, a reference to his tenure as Secretary of Agriculture. Now, though, Glickman is the self-described "chief hired gun or mercenary for the [motion picture] industry," and his comments give us a window into what the movie studios are thinking. His words yesterday revealed that movie execs are thinking about one thing in particular: the technology that can be used to halt film piracy. And they expect ISPs to implement it.

Calling "protection of content from theft" the MPAA's number one issue, Glickman reiterated claims that piracy costs the studios $6 billion worldwide every year. Half the MPAA budget goes toward reducing this number, and the trade group believes that the single best way to do so is through technology. "Technology will be the key to determine how successful we will become," Glickman said.

But "technology" in isolation won't do much to help the movie business. The MPAA needs the support of those companies best in a position to implement filtering technology: ISPs. Acknowledging that the studios have often been "in tension with" the ISP community, Glickman claimed that the two groups have a much better relationship these days.



Dan Glickman

Case in point: AT&T and its publicly-stated plan to implement some sort of filtering system on its network. No technical details of such a system have yet been revealed, but the announcement has warmed the cold cockles of the MPAA's heart and has garnered support from companies like NBC Universal.

Glickman also held out the hope that filtering technology would quickly be adopted by many more ISPs. "The ISP community is going to be at the forefront of this in the future because they have everything to lose and nothing to gain by not seeing that the content is being properly protected," he said, "and I think that's a great opportunity." It's not the first time he's asked ISPs to do more.

ISPs: what's in it for us?

ISPs that are concerned with being, well, ISPs aren't likely to see many benefits from installing some sort of industrial-strength packet-sniffing and filtering solution at the core of their network. It costs money, customers won't like the idea, and the potential for backlash remains high. Should such a system work, it could lower overall bandwidth usage, but whether that would make up for the cost and PR headaches of a filtering regime is unclear. It won't do much for liability issues, since ISPs are already protected under "safe harbor" provisions.

ISPs concerned with getting into the content distribution game, though, could have much to gain from pleasing the content owners. AT&T is in such a situation as it ramps up the national rollout of its U-verse IPTV system.

Glickman understands that "you will never stop piracy" because "traditional organized criminals would drool" over the margins made by pirates. But you do your best, he said, and you try to offer customers a better-quality legal product at a reasonable price (and you filter everything you can).

Will more ISPs follow the pied piping of the MPAA? Though he sounded hopeful, Glickman had nothing specific to announce.