Neutrality legislation "would impede our ability to respond to consumers in innovative ways, and it would impair the ability of broadband providers to address the serious and rampant piracy problems occurring over their networks today," Glickman said.

Glickman emphasized that Hollywood's current business model depends on post-release revenue streams: DVD sales and rentals and, to a modest extent, legal online downloads. "The future of the theater, unimpeded theatrical production and a vibrant aftermarket all depend on an Internet that remains free from government regulation. So we are all in this together," he said.

The Real 'Information Economy'

In an interesting appropriation of terminology, Glickman said Hollywood is the real "information economy that will create new jobs and new opportunities for the future."

"Technology increasingly is making new worlds of consumer-centric innovation possible, and it is handing us the opportunity to deal the first real body blow to online piracy, to begin to reach toward the day when we might be able to take it off the table and debug the system . It simply cannot be the policy of this country to say no to that," Glickman said.

"Today MPAA and all of our studios are standing up in opposition to broad-based government regulation of the Internet. We are opposing so-called Net neutrality government action," he said. "And in the process, we are standing up for our customers, for our economy and for the ability of content producers to continue to create great movies for the future."

Misrepresenting Markey

While he didn't mention them by name, Glickman was clearly referring to Comcast's blocking of Internet traffic using the BitTorrent peer-to-peer system, which spurred Markey's bill, and a public hearing by the Federal Trade Commission.

But Glickman's characterization of the Markey bill is seriously off-base, Los Angeles Times editorial writer Jon Healey wrote on the newspaper's Bit Player blog. Rather than enshrining piracy as an accepted use of the Internet, the Markey bill would "make it U.S. policy to preserve the public's access to 'lawful' content, applications and services online, carving out wide latitude for ISPs to interfere with infringing works," Healey wrote.

Under the Markey bill, ISPs wouldn't be able to block all BitTorrent traffic simply because it might be used for piracy, but they could use "video fingerprinting" technology to block delivery of bootlegged movies, Healey wrote.

"Sure, it would be easier just to do what Comcast has done -- clamp down on BitTorrent when traffic gets too heavy, regardless of what it was being used for," Healey added. But as the legal market for online entertainment grows, Hollywood may want to use BitTorrent and similar technologies to deliver content. At that point they might not be so pleased to have ISPs decide what technologies will be allowed on the network .