Hilary Rosen

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Hilary B. Rosen was the chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America from 1998 to 2003.

Under Rosen, the RIAA advanced a legal and PR campaign to limit the swapping of copyrighted music, a practice whose popularity increased dramatically with improved personal computer multimedia capabilities and expanded broadband Internet access. During her tenure, the RIAA achieved a number of legal victories in the United States, including:

The dismantling of the Napster and Audiogalaxy Internet file-trading services.
Passage of the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
initiating the Grokster lawsuit on which the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the record industry
passage of the Performance Rights Act creating a public performance right for the first time for sound recordings
passage of the Record Rental Act providing additional rental protection for sound recordings
passage of numerous trade treaties providing increased protection for US intellectual property abroad

Rosen also launched initiatives to encourage industry-wide standards of new digital copyright protection technologies, including copy protected CDs and a number of digital rights management-enabled media formats for personal computers. Copy-protected CDs have not been popular with consumers because they cannot be played in most car CD players or on PCs, and only a few pilot titles were ever distributed with the technology. DRM enabled media formats, which include cryptographic mechanisms to prevent unauthorized copying and distribution, proved similarly unpopular with consumers, who evidently prefer the competing unprotected formats.

Despite the RIAA's aggressive tactics, online file-swapping has continued to grow. Industry critics, including those within the Association, have begun to question the effectiveness of the campaign. Indeed, many believe that the RIAA's activities under Rosen's leadership alienated consumers and some popular artists from the very music industry the RIAA is supposed to protect. Nonetheless, while RIAA was the enforcement arm of the industry, the member companies were responsible for moving their businesses on-line. Many say that despite Rosen's public loyalty to the industry, much of her last few years were spent privately encouraging the member companies to embrace internet distribution. The slow pace resulted in her ultimate frustration and in the industry being unable to catch up with the phenomenon of free file sharing.

On January 22, 2003, Rosen announced that she would resign as head of the RIAA at the end of 2003, officially in order to spend more time with her partner, Elizabeth Birch, and the couple's adopted twins (a boy and a girl). Rosen and Birch separated in 2006.

On November 30, 2004, Rosen became the interim director for the Human Rights Campaign, a leading GLBT lobbyist organization, following the ouster of Cheryl Jacques. Hilary's partner, Elizabeth, was the executive director of HRC for eight years prior to Jacques' assumption of the post. Since May 2005 she's been a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post and a consultant to companies in the media industry such as XM Radio, Viacom and Snocap.

Rosen recently founded a consulting firm specializing in digital media and the entertainment industry with Jason Berman, former Chairman of the International Recording Industry Association (IFPI) called Berman Rosen Global Strategies.