Thug Life Army

The National Music Publishers' Association has joined with other industries united against content theft to release an ad highlighting the urgent need for Congressional passage of the PROTECT IP Act (S. 968) and the Stop Online Piracy Act ("SOPA", H.R. 3261). These bills will support U.S. jobs by protecting American intellectual property rights online from criminal offshore websites trafficking pirated and counterfeit products to U.S. consumers.

Without sufficient intellectual property rights enforcement online, U.S. industries and millions of talented people in essential sectors are threatened by these sites, which operate out of reach of U.S. laws and U.S. law enforcement.

"The U.S. copyright industries, including the music publishing and songwriting community, continue to generate jobs and economic growth, accounting for nearly 10 percent of all private sector jobs in 2010*," said NMPA President and CEO David Israelite. "But that productivity is threatened more and more by digital theft. Making sure copyrights are enforced in the digital world as they are in the physical world will mean the difference between sustaining these jobs and seeing them disappear. These bipartisan bills offer a targeted, reasonable approach to this problem and they should be passed."

A broad coalition including Democrats and Republicans, 43 State Attorneys General, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO, law enforcement, firefighters, consumer protection groups, unions and hundreds of corporations and small businessessupport legislation to combat rogue websites.