Hilary Rosen (born 1958) is the former head of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). She was a columnist for The Washington Post, became the first Washington editor-at-large and political director of The Huffington Post, and has provided political commentary for CNN, CNBC, and MSNBC.
She worked for the RIAA for 16 years, including as CEO from 1998 to 2003. Since 2010, she has been a partner and managing director at the public relations firm SKDKnickerbocker. She has been a registered lobbyist during her career, both at the RIAA and for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). Rosen has been an advocate for LGBT rights since the early 1980s.
Early life
Rosen was born to a Jewish family in West Orange, New Jersey in 1958. Her father worked as an insurance agent and her mother was the city's first councilwoman. In high school, Rosen served as student council president. She earned her bachelor's degree in international business from George Washington University in 1981. Her parents divorced while Rosen was at college.
Career
In 1979, Rosen began working as a legislative assistant in the Washington, D.C. office of Governor Brendan Byrne (D-NJ), who was a friend of Rosen's mother. She also worked for Senator Bill Bradley (D-NJ) early in her career. Rosen worked for the lobbying firm Liz Robbins Associates in the 1980s.
Recording Industry Association of America
In 1987, Rosen joined the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the trade organization representing the American recording industry, as its first government relations director. In 1989, she and her colleague Jay Berman updated the Parental Advisory label and launched its public awareness campaign. In 1992, she took a brief leave from the RIAA to serve as Senator Dianne Feinstein's transition director and set up the California Democratic Party's office in Washington, D.C.
As a registered lobbyist from 1999 to 2003, Rosen influenced the decisions made by Congress on behalf of nearly 350 companies and thousands of artists represented by the RIAA. In 1995, Rosen supported artists' rights when Bob Dole, then Senate Majority Leader, criticized Time Warner and said that rap lyrics promoted violence and were degrading to women. She became the organization's president and chief operating officer in May 1996. Rosen was a strong supporter of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which became law in 1998, to prohibit the creation of technologies used to get around copyright protections. Rosen was promoted to the role of chief executive officer in 1998. In 1999, the RIAA Diamond certification was awarded for the first time, recognizing albums that have shipped more than 10 million copies. Rosen said the award, which was named as such because "diamonds are valuable [and] no two are alike", represented "a quantum leap" for the music industry and an expansion of the national music market.
In 2000, the American musical recording company A&M Records along with several others, through the RIAA, sued Napster on grounds of copyright infringement under the DMCA, which led to the shutting down of the pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing service. As the face of the RIAA, Rosen was vilified by proponents of free file sharing, and even traveled with security at one point because she was receiving death threats. Nonetheless, Rosen encouraged partnerships between the recording industry and online music businesses, and consulted on the launch of digital music services such as Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store. Rosen was recognized for advancing the industry's political efforts and appeared on lists of influential leaders, including Entertainment Weekly "Annual Power List" and National Journal "Washington's Powerful Insiders". She was included in The Hollywood Reporter list of the most powerful women in entertainment in 1998, 2000 (number 10), 2002 (number 17), and 2003 (number 10).
Rosen resigned from the RIAA in June 2003 to spend more time with her family. Following her resignation, she reportedly "questioned the value of lawsuits against individual downloaders" said she had attempted to "push the industry to evolve". In 2007, she said, "I won't be a George Tenet here, but it's pretty well known that I was impatient with the pace of the industry's embrace of online distribution of music. There's no substitute for speed when times are dire. The record companies had valid reasons for their caution, but that caution let the situation get out of hand."