Motion Picture Assn. of America chief Chris Dodd has named a tech and telecom veteran as his No. 2.
The former U.S. senator from Connecticut on Friday announced that Diane Strahan would be chief operating officer of the film industry trade group.
She replaces Bob Pisano, who resigned last year after Dodd joined the MPAA. Prior to Dodd, Pisano had been acting chief executive for more than a year.
Strahan was most recently vice president of mobile and Internet registry services at Neustar, a consulting company that works on projects including Web domain registration and managing telephone area codes.
One of its largest projects of late has been developing the Ultraviolet movie cloud service for a coalition of studios and consumer electronics companies.
Prior to Neustar, Strahan worked at companies including AOL and MCI.
She will oversee staff and operations at the MPAA and help guide its strategic direction along with Dodd.
Also this week, the Department of Justice announced that Jeramiah Perkins, leader of an online piracy group dubbed "IMAGiNE," was sentenced to 60 months in prison after pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement.
IMAGiNE secretly recorded movies in theaters and then distributed them on the Internet, according to court documents.
Four co-defendants of Perkins have also pleaded guilty, with three having already received shorter sentences. Perkins' five year sentence, along with three years of supervised release and an order to pay $15,000 in restitution, is the longest ever for an online piracy case, according to the website TorrentFreak.
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