A top Justice Department official on Monday took a swipe at one of the recording industry’s favorite ideas: a law encouraging federal prosecutors to sue copyright infringers.
R. Hewitt Pate, assistant attorney general for antitrust, expressed skepticism toward a bill called the Pirate Act that the Senate overwhelmingly approved in June. It’s designed to curb peer-to-peer piracy by threatening individual infringers with civil lawsuits brought by the government.
That idea is “something that people should take with a grain of salt,” Pate said at a conference held by the Progress and Freedom Foundation. While “the Justice Department is there to enforce the law, there’s something to be said for those who help themselves.”
Pate said the Justice Department’s formal position on the Pirate Act and other copyright legislation would appear in a task force’s report that will be presented to Attorney General John Ashcroft this fall. Ashcroft created the intellectual property task force, headed by David Israelite, in March.
The Recording Industry Association of America has lobbied for the Pirate Act as a way to give federal prosecutors the option of filing civil suits in addition to their current ability to seek criminal sanctions. Mitch Glazier, senior vice president of government relations at the RIAA, said on Monday that Pate’s comments weren’t that negative. If the Pirate Act becomes law, Glazier said, prosecutors would “now have a choice of how badly they want to hurt the violator.”
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