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WASHINGTON – The White House today announced its “2013 Joint Strategic Plan for Intellectual Property Enforcement.”  Below is a comment from Cary Sherman, Chairman and CEO, Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

“The White House has laid out a sensible and practical approach to protecting the Constitutional rights of America’s creative community.  Our voluntary, marketplace efforts with various partners in the Internet ecosystem – such as ISPs, payment processors and advertisers – have shown such pacts are possible and can make a real difference.  It also attests to the fact that our collective futures are intertwined.

“The White House appropriately recognizes that search engines need to be part of that conversation.  To date, some important, commendable progress has been achieved, including for example, significant improvements to the notice and take down process.  That’s laudable.  But the continuing prominence of rogue websites in the first page of results shows that this continues to be a real problem, and this new White House report is a reminder that policymakers care about this issue and expect meaningful progress.

“Just as we are asking others to redouble their efforts to build a better online marketplace for users and creators alike, we recognize that we have an obligation to be constructive and examine steps we can undertake to help achieve that end.  We take this obligation seriously.  Just last week, we joined the music publishers in announcing an important new initiative to expedite and ease micro-licensing for a variety of ancillary uses of music.  We’re grateful the White House recognizes the value of these kinds of efforts.”