Thank you, Tim [Russert], for those kind words. Every Sunday morning, you do as much as any American to promote the values of the First Amendment, so it is certainly fitting for you to be here. I admit, however, I’m very glad you are introducing me, and not interviewing me, which would be a lot tougher.

By the way, I understand Tim’s white board is enshrined behind bulletproof glass over at the Newseum. He’s negotiating with them to get it back for Tuesday night. It looks like he may be needing it - we are expecting a long night.

I also want to thank Patrick Maines and the Media Institute, not just for recognizing me and NBC Universal, which is indeed a great honor, but also for leading the way when it comes to freedom of speech.

Speaking personally, the Institute has been our ally on a number of issues over the years - usually involving the tension between the government’s desire to control the news, and the obligation of NBC News to report the news. We all appreciate these efforts.

Nearly 170 years ago, in Democracy in America, the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville wrote: "The sovereignty of the people and the liberty of the press may be looked on as correlative institutions."

Put more simply: You can’t have a free people without a free press.

And, as Thomas Jefferson pointed out, you can’t have a free people without having an informed people.

Which is why I’m so proud of Tim and the work of all his colleagues in helping keep Americans informed, especially as we head into next week’s election.

This is a critical time for our nation. That is why, as a news organization, we are alarmed at the flood of subpoenas that government at all levels is serving on journalists, including some of our own. These are courageous men and women, who are simply doing their jobs. If the current legal climate has a chilling effect on newsgathering, the consequences are serious - and could not come at a worse time.

NBC Universal will join with other major news organizations to highlight this issue. At no time in our history has the work of a free and unencumbered press been more important. We will be working together to make sure the appropriate shield laws are in place at both the state and federal levels, so that journalists can do their jobs without fear of government intrusion.

We are also concerned about the recent movement in Washington toward content regulation. We are facing an extraordinary set of pressures, easily the most alarming in my twenty-four years in this industry. The vast majority of broadcast licensees do an excellent job of knowing where to draw the line when it comes to content. We as a society certainly have much less to fear from obscene, indecent, or profane content than we do from an overzealous government willing to limit First Amendment protections and censor creative expression.

There is another part of the Constitution that applies to creative expression, along with the First Amendment: It is Article 1, Section 8 - the Copyright Clause - which authorizes Congress to grant to "authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." Congress has consistently enforced this for more than 200 years.

It has survived the high-speed printing press, the telegraph, the video recorder, and even the invention of xerography, which represents the ultimate test of Congress’s will to apply the full measure of copyright laws. Think about it: It’s a machine called ... the copier. And copyright law survived.

This is what enables companies like NBC Universal to invest millions of dollars to transform a creative idea into a movie or television show.

Today, this constitutional protection is under enormous pressure and requires our vigilant attention. I know that the Media Institute will be our ally on this issue, too, which is a threat not only to media but to a broad cross-section of U.S. industries and export businesses.

Those in the media business are well aware that digital technology is poised to unleash an amazing world of possibility, in which the most compelling entertainment video content will be available to consumers around the globe anytime, anyplace, and on any one of numerous platforms or devices.

The potential of the digital age goes far beyond media, however. Virtually every industry stands on the cusp of a digital transformation, with untold benefits for consumers.

At NBC Universal, we are eager to roll out new digital, on-demand services. Working together with software developers and the consumer electronics industry, we would like nothing more than to make accessing video as easy as Apple’s iPod has made accessing music. But the experience of the recording industry - decimated by illegal downloads - teaches an important lesson: If the technology isn’t managed properly, it has the power to do a lot of damage, by facilitating theft, not commerce.

Despite countless man-hours devoted to this problem, we are far from having in place the necessary industry standards, filtering technologies, and legislative protection.

The costs of not getting this right are huge - and not just for media companies. More and more, our nation’s economy is driven by high-value, service-based businesses, with intellectual property becoming an ever-larger part of the total picture. Copyright industries such as television, motion pictures, publishing, and software, whose capital is almost entirely composed of intellectual property, constitute the nation’s largest source of exports, and 6% of our gross national product. If you include economic sectors that support these industries or are dependent on them, the figure doubles to 12% of GDP, or $1.25 trillion, with employment of more than 11 million Americans.

And if you added to this the intellectual property components of other commercial activity - in, say, pharmaceuticals, engineering, semiconductors, microtechnologies, and so on - it’s entirely likely that more than 20% of our national economy could be traced to intellectual property of some sort. This is a very big piece of the national pie to have at risk.

Already, the economic costs of intellectual property theft are staggering. According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, it amounts to $250 billion a year -more than the combined global revenues of the nation’s top 25 media companies. This represents thousands of jobs, and millions in lost taxes.

The best solutions to IP theft will come from technology, not legislation. Given what is at stake, why so little progress?

For one thing, we hear repeatedly that intellectual property violations are a fair price to pay for the advent of a new digital age. And that technological progress demands a downgrading of the exclusive rights of creators, and a weakening of the legal status of copyrights and patents.

It is a mistake to think that entering this exciting world means embracing intellectual property theft. Time and again, we see that the inherent power of a technology drives its success, not the theft of protected content. Whether it be a digital camera, a new medical technology, or a novel piece of software, innovations ultimately succeed or fail depending on the capabilities and advantages they offer, not on whether or not they facilitate theft.

Second, the challenge of protecting intellectual property belongs to the core of U.S. industries and export businesses, not just the media. Today, all data and information is reducible to zeroes and ones, easily replicable, and able to be distributed at the speed of light around the world. Anyone who has information to transmit or an idea to share has a stake in this issue. Virtually anyone at work in the twenty-first century needs to be aligned with the cause of ensuring the safe management of electronic information and data, whether it be a movie, a military secret, or an e-mail.

Our collective challenge is to create new rules of the road for a digital world. Rules that encourage technological progress yet at the same time uphold the values that make commerce possible.

In the near term, there are three specific ways we can move closer to this goal:

• We need support for the House Judiciary Committee’s package of antipiracy bills, which is currently in limbo.
• We need all interested parties to work in good faith with the Senate Judiciary Committee to develop appropriate legal safeguards against illegal peer-to-peer file-sharing.
• And we need to support the Attorney General’s intellectual property enforcement recommendations, just announced two weeks ago, so that its strong rhetoric becomes reality.

But our long-term success depends on a greater degree of international cooperation, and cooperation among industries. In the recent past, a host of industry groups have collaborated to create interoperability standards, which enable a variety of different devices to work together.

Only the same degree of commitment will enable us to reach the point where consumers can enjoy the digital access they want, and rights holders have the protections they need.

Obviously, a great deal of time and effort has been spent on these issues. It is now time for the leadership of the industries involved to come together to find a collaborative solution, so that the long-awaited marriage of technology and content can finally take place. The solutions are there. What’s needed is the will to develop and implement them.

Our founding fathers knew how important intellectual property rights were to the economic development of a new nation. That’s why they granted exclusive rights to creators, to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts," in the words of the Constitution.

Congress has been upholding this commitment to progress for more than 200 years, with the judiciary committees in the House and Senate devoting a good deal of time trying to keep these protections up to date. U.S. business needs to do its part. Because now more than ever, the health of our economy depends on the effective protection of our intellectual property.

When he traveled through America in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville was not only impressed by our tradition of freedom of speech.

"Everything is extraordinary in America," he wrote. Let’s make sure this remains the case. Let’s make sure we vigorously defend our First Amendment freedoms and protect our most important national assets in the digital age.

Thank you.