Yesterday, the U.S. Chamber's Global IP Center submitted comments in response to the Federal Communications Commission's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM). The purpose of these comments was to express our strong belief that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) must retain the ability to manage illicit content (including pirated content such as illegally downloaded movies and music) in a reasonable and effective manner.

Why? The reason for this is simple. Through 2006-2007 alone, copyright industries provided more than 22% of the nation's total real growth, and in 2007 provided nearly 6 million jobs. Yet the distribution of illegal content over the Internet is not only clogging up the web and slowing it down—a problem ISPs wrestle with daily—it has also led to tens of thousands of lost jobs in some of America's most creative industries. And the problem is only getting worse.

The theft of this intellectual property—those creations of the mind, such as music, TV shows, blockbuster movies, and books—not only threatens the jobs of the millions of Americans who work "behind the scenes" (e.g. writers, sound technicians, and cameramen) in these fields, but it also affects our country's economic growth and competitiveness.

Nationally, IP theft costs the U.S. economy hundreds of billions of dollars each year and has led to the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs in many sectors. Clearly this is an issue that must be addressed, and preserving ISPs' ability to manage illicit content is a step towards remedying this problem. Ensuring that ISPs retain this capability will not only save jobs and protect the rights of artists, it will also help them protect Americans from other illicit activities, from harmful malware that infects people's computers, and from the scourge of child pornography that's found a new venue online, for example.

Expanding broadband as far and wide as possible is important for a number of social, economic, and other reasons, and we stand fully behind that goal. Preserving ISPs this flexibility to manage their networks and stop illicit content simply makes sense, and any policy prohibiting reasonable measures to address these activities would not only stifle such innovative efforts going forward, but would also send the wrong signal to taxpayers, law enforcement, industry and others about the administration's commitment to enforcing the law, protecting consumers, and saving jobs.