Should Google, Verizon and AT&T be held accountable for media piracy?

At the recent D10 conference, media executive Ari Emanuel took the position that internet ISPs like Verizon (VZ) and AT&T (T) and search giant Google (GOOG) are responsible for piracy of content from his industry. "Where they choose to play is a very crucial issue for our economics," he said. "If they don't stop the stealing of content, then I think it's a problem."

Things got particularly heated when The Verge editor Joshua Topolsky challenged Emanuel on this point with a question from the audience: "You want Verizon and AT&T to filter this? So what you're saying is that if someone robbed my house, they drove a car down a road to get to my house, so you have to do something about the road... or something about the car?!"

View Emanuel's angry response and the whole interaction at the 14 minute mark here:

I'm with Topolsky, but I appreciated Emanuel's frank recognition that the model that currently funds great movies is broken. Larger video available here.

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