It's old news by now, but the latest repetition of a discouraging trend: huge majorities of Democratic and Republican Representatives voted last month to pass HR 4279, titled "Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008". The effect of this expansion of the existing federal code on protection of "intellectual property" will be to create a federal Intellectual Property Enforcement office in the White House to help prioritize the prosecution of alleged IP "crimes" and explicitly include Internet file sharing violations in the list of "crimes" for which federal grants can be made to state and local law enforcement agencies. A quick scan of the text of the bill reveals that the concept of "fair use" is nowhere mentioned.
Industry magazine Billboard summarizes the legislation passed by the House as follows:
Introduced by House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers Jr. last December, the Act (H.R. 4279) would create the office of a U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative in the White House to represent and advise the president on IP issues. The representative would produce a national joint strategic plan to protect and enforce IP rights, and would be responsible for seeing its implementation by various government agencies.
Conyers says that the Act will: (1) prioritize intellectual property protection to the highest level of our government; (2) make changes to IP law to enhance the ability of IP owners to effectively enforce their rights; (3) make it easier to criminally prosecute repeat offenders; and (4) increase penalties for IP violations that endanger public health and safety.
You might wonder why with the Iraq disaster, $4/gallon gasoline, a collapsing economy, out of control bank lending and derivatives gambling activities, global warming, and multiple impeachment-worthy violations of the Constitution by the White House, Conyers would be concerned about the fake and odious concept of "intellectual property" as needing to be prioritized to the "highest" level of government.
The Constitution recognizes that any extension of privileged use or exclusive rights to works of art or scientific and industrial methods can only be justified by the general benefit to society and advancement of "the state of the art" that results from doing so, not from any inherent right (of the "life, liberty and property" type) belonging to those who seek the privileges. But the corporate lobbyists and propagandists who fund our elections have done their best to blur the definitions underlying this topic, until many people have accepted that there is some kind of "right" being protected here. The broadest interpretation of this current law would let law enforcement officials seize your personal computer (which really is property belonging to you) as a forfeiture if you had even one file downloaded from the Internet that was considered a violation of some corporation's alleged "intellectual property rights".
The EFF says of this bill:
The most outrageous provisions would create new and unnecessary federal bureaucracies devoted to intellectual property enforcement. None seems more ridiculous than language creating a Cabinet-level "IP enforcement czar" that would report to the President and coordinate enforcement efforts across government, a proposal that has been loudly opposed by the Department of Justice.
Two Democratic Representatives who know the issues in this area very well, Rick Boucher and Zoe Lofgren, voted against the bill, as did Dennis Kucinich and Gwen Moore for the Democrats, along with Ron Paul and a handful of Republicans. Not only is it demoralizing that Democrats voted overwhelmingly to pass this bill, it's almost incredible that they (and Conyers in particular) would even consider this worthy of discussion given the multiple crises afflicting the country and the dire straits that many working people (remember them, Democrats? your natural constituency?) are in nowadays. But bills like this and Jane Harman's Internet terrorist thoughtcrime bill, the numerous "let's condemn Venezuela (or China or Iran)" bills, or the sham "stimulating" tax rebates seems to sail along, while single-payer healthcare, restoration of progressive tax policies, and other real solutions remain undiscussable. We need new leadership in Congress—our current leaders have failed us many times over. But apparently we need to replace the Blue Dogs and New Democrats with Real Democrats before we can get that new leadership. It's a tall order.