Success Quote by Hilary Rosen

Faith in “the marketplace” is doing a lot of quiet political work here. Hilary Rosen’s line reads like calm reassurance, but it’s really a strategic frame: don’t regulate, don’t panic, don’t redesign the rules for a new technological moment. Let the existing machinery absorb the shock.

The first sentence is a soft power move. “The marketplace” isn’t just buyers and sellers; it’s a proxy for industry self-governance, private deals, and the idea that innovation and consumer demand will sort out piracy, licensing, and new distribution models without government heavy-handedness. It’s also a subtle appeal to inevitability: if markets “can handle” something, anyone proposing aggressive intervention looks reactionary or anti-growth.

Then come the institutional backstops: “The laws are there. The courts…” This is meant to sound like neutral civics, but the subtext is risk management. Courts “finding a balance” suggests a steady, trustworthy middle path, even though copyright litigation often functions less like a balanced scale and more like a tool shaped by who can afford the fight. Calling the courts “consistent” is a bid to normalize precedent as legitimacy, especially in periods when digital copying, peer-to-peer networks, or platform economies expose how dated certain statutes can be.

Contextually, this kind of statement fits an era when media industries were trying to protect revenue while also appearing reasonable to policymakers and the public. It’s a pitch for incrementalism: let case law and private licensing deals evolve the system, rather than admitting the system might need a rewrite.