Criticizes new bill that would essentially allow the White House to decide what cases it would or would not pursue.
Late last week the Department of Justice weighed in on the proposed new “Prioritizing Resources and Organization of Intellectual Property Act of 2007” that seeks to strengthen civil and criminal intellectual property laws while ensuring that it gets ample attention from federal govt by creating an office of intellectual property within the White House. It is none too happy.
Calling it unnecessary and counterproductive to the work it has already accomplished, it criticized the reorganization of its intellectual property enforcement structure. “We have a current structure … that works quite effectively,” Sigal Mandelker, deputy assistant attorney general, told the House Judiciary subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property.
Those plans would be “ill-advised,” Mandelker told the committee. Removing the department’s IP division from the criminal division, as the bill proposes, “will disrupt important relationships within the criminal division and will make intradepartmental IP coordination more difficult,” she said. The IP division works closely with the DOJ’s cyber crime laboratory, so separating a copyright unit could fracture investigation, Mandelker said. “This close collaboration … could be jeopardized if the IP enforcement component were split off from computer crime and placed into a separate division,” she said. “Moreover, it may lead to duplicative administration and training programs.”
DOJ was also not pleased with an IP office inside the White House. “We are always going to be concerned when you have somebody at the White House who may be in the position of directing our enforcement or what cases we do or don’t do,” she said. “That would be contrary to the long-standing tradition of the department making independent decisions regarding law enforcement.”
Rick Cotton, executive vice president and general counsel for NBC Universal and chairman of the Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy, suggested that IP issues tend to “fall down the ‘to-do’ list”. Until there are senior policy executives specifically tasked with IP enforcement, he said, “we will not make progress in addressing the issues that are on the table.”
Panel members also expressed concern over Section 104 of the bill, which would allow a copyright owner to collect statutory damages for each copyrighted work that is stolen. Detractors fear that this provision could result in protracted lawsuits, expensive settlements, and unintended consequences, especially when it comes to music.
Under current law, for example, someone who pirates a single album will be charged with one crime. Section 104, however, would penalize criminals on a per-song basis, so if someone pirated a motion picture soundtrack that had songs from 12 different artists, the pirate would be charged with 12 separate offenses and be subject to exorbitant fees.
Panelists said that while slapping music pirates with hefty fines may not seem overly problematic, these fines often wind up affecting the parents of kids sharing copyrighted material on their home computers or third-party hardware and software providers more than the operators of sophisticated piracy rings.
Increasing fines “would do little or nothing to deter willful infringers,” said Rep. Rick Boucher(D-Va). “There are already ample statutory damages directed at them.”
If anything, an increase in fines could deter innovation, Boucher suggested. Researchers might waver on “whether or not to introduce a product and involve themselves in that level of innovation” if the risk of being sued is too high, he said.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren(D-Calif) was “deeply troubled” by Section 104. “These statutory damages would provide for $1.5 million damages for a single CD. I think that’s unreasonable.”
At least some Congressman seem to understand what’s at stake here. A $1.5 million fine for sharing a CD is beyond unreasonable, it’s ironically downright criminal.
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$1.5 million damages for a single CD?
So to the RIAA etc. money is just flying around everywhere? They obviously have far too much money to come up with a rediculous figure like this.
$1.5 Million for a CD….lol
Who the hell has that kind of money??? You can’t get blood from a stone. If they impose that kind of judgment against someone they’ll never be able to collect.
Not to mention that since the price of a CD (~15-20) and digital downloads (~$0.99) have been established by the market the penalty is a clear violation of the VIII Amendment (Protection from excessive penalties and fines; punishment must fit the crime). There is no way this kind of judgment would stand up on appeal especially since it was most likely a non-monetary transaction and thus no compensatory damages can be awarded (unless a judge buys a really fucked up argument).
All judgments would therefore be punitive and I think that there are caps for punitive damages (at least in some states).
$1.5 Million for a CD….lol
Who the hell has that kind of money??? You can’t get blood from a stone. If they impose that kind of judgment against someone they’ll never be able to collect.
Not to mention that since the price of a CD (~15-20) and digital downloads (~$0.99) have been established by the market the penalty is a clear violation of the VIII Amendment (Protection from excessive penalties and fines; punishment must fit the crime). There is no way this kind of judgment would stand up on appeal especially since it was most likely a non-monetary transaction and thus no compensatory damages can be awarded (unless a judge buys a really fucked up argument).
All judgments would therefore be punitive and I think that there are caps for punitive damages (at least in some states).