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U.S. to Get New IP Czar
tetraminoe writes "Reuters is reporting that Congress's latest spending bill provides for the creation of a federal copyright enforcement czar. According to the article, 'Under the program, the president can appoint a copyright law enforcement officer whose job is to coordinate law enforcement efforts aimed at stopping international copyright infringement and to oversee a federal umbrella agency responsible for administering intellectual property law.' It also gives $2 million to the National Intellectual Property Law Enforcement Coordination Council (NIPLAC), created in the '90s and never funded. NIPLAC will work to protect American IP overseas and oversee enforcement."
...is version 6. But knowing the government, I doubt it.
I am just glad they found a cause better than education to give money to. I was affraid my kids might get an educaion. Everyone knows we cant have that.
And then they armed me with moderator points and the world mourned.
I feel so much better knowing my tax money is going to help fund the enforcement efforts of the RIAA and MPAA. Obviously that is much more important than the fact our borders are wide open, that security screeners at the airport are more concerned about searching 78 year old black men and 18 year old young ladies than some more obvious candidates. Sorry for the rant.
Im sure the war on CopyrightAbuse will be as affective as the War on Drugs and the The War on Terra.
Why do I get the idea that this new IP czar isn't going to be concerning himself much with corporations abusing copyright law to silence their critics and prevent parody and satire being made about their property?
And is he going to work toward finding a middle ground between fair use and IP protection? I have my doubts.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Its comforting to know that a government agency will be responsible for ensuring the MPAA and RIAA are profitable.
And we get to pay for it both on the enforcement and higher prices caused by inefficient distribution systems.
What a warm way to start this holiday.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Now we'll finally stop screwing around like a bunch of liberals, and invade Russia to stop their theft of honest American labor. Once we've got them whipped, it's on to China! The Czar rides again!
--
make install -not war
welcome our new Gov. enforcing, brutally regulating, fiercely punishing, justice mutilating, freedom curtailing, property upholding, paradigm shattering, useless blathering IP overlords.
... the copyright industry lacks sufficient funds to sue infringers on their own. Poor Disney. Poor Sony. Poor Universal. These guys really need a break!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
As for being the enforcement arm of the *AA, this country's core creed is "the protection of capital" even to the point of propping up failed business models (hey, it works for Amtrak and the Big Three Airlines). Ignore that at your peril.
Yeah, right.
'Czar'? Weren't czar's, like, emperors who had ultimate rule in a non-free society?
Is that what it's come down to in 21st century America? 'Czar's?
At least the US gubment is going out in the open about it. No more of this pussy footing about the real intent here: screw freedom. Drug Czars, IP Czars, what next?
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
The bad news is that the other posters are right - this czar will probably focus more on coordinating the RIAA/MPAA legal fights and forcing computer makers to build in DRM so that I can't even legally backup copies of my own CDs/DVDs/etc.
It frustrates me to see people who *share* content getting more persecuted/prosecuted than those who try to profit from stolen content - the real pirates.
How about "Drug Fuhrer"?
"Education Pharoah"?
"Emperor of Homeland Security"?
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
"This isn't the Pirate Act, but I think the taxpayers would be surprised that there's money being spent for copyright enforcement when terrorists and criminals still roam the streets," said Gigi Sohn, president of the nonprofit fair-use advocacy group Public Knowledge. "When every dollar is being counted for education, health care and homeland security, it seems like a strange priority."
Indeed, it's funny how certain industries always seem to get government help when they need it. Must be nice. "Lesse, my business is suffering because of competitors who won't play by my rules. I could try to out market them, or out produce them, or enforce my own rules, or, wait a minute! I know! I'll just cut a check to my congresscritter and get them to do my job for me! Whee! Ain't America grand!"
Maybe that's why the article began this way:
"Buried inside the massive $388 billion spending bill Congress approved last weekend is a program that creates a federal copyright enforcement czar. "
Yeah, better not let this one see too much of the light of day. Just bury it in the spending bill that has to pass.
For those of you who don't know, there REALLY IS an international conspiracy to limit people's freedoms. Globalization according to the WTO/IMF/WorldBank is not about giving cellphones to Eskimos, it's about preventing sick people from getting patented drugs at a penny less than the Corporations allows. Things get really scary when you look at GATS VI.4, which creates a non-democratic Panel that will have veto power of parliaments, the US Congress, everything. It's real and it's very, very bad -- unless you hate freedom.
Exactly. They've scared congress with enough tales of financial ruin that there will be even more heavy handed legislation and most importantly for them, federal enforcement. The civil copyright infringement remedies, which have traditionally relied on the owner for enforcement, have now been transferred to the taxpayers. But somehow I doubt the government would be nearly as responsive if some smalltime software developer asked for federal help to stop illegal distribution of his applications.
I guess this is a national version of WIPO? Would NIPLAC deal directly with WIPO?
I work for a company that has been attempting to "clean up" some fraudulent sites who use our copyrighted name to spam and sell "vi\[ag)(ra" and "c[]el3br1x" via email, www popups, etc. We, as a company, have delt with WIPO on many occasions since it seems a lot of the domain owners are in Asian nations (like China). Our efforts have been mediocre at best (it's been 6 months of chasing registrars and new registered owners to just live up to the WIPO ruling).
Anyway, I wonder if we could use the gov't power of NIPLAC to assist us in obtaining these domain names. That would definately assist us in dealing with ICANN and their "approved" registrars, at the very least.
"who here thinks that its a good thing that you can buy "Oceans 12" or "Half Life 2" on the streets of Hong Kong today for 50 cents?"
Piracy is the only check we have on the price of games, movies, and CD's.
CD prices have dropped recently. Why? Because the competition (i.e. "free") forced it down.
There is a myth that if there was perfect copy protection, prices would decrease because of "less losses from piracy".
In fact, prices go up in this situation, because there is no competition.
I view a small amount of piracy as a healthy thing for the consumer, because it forces the producer to compete with *something*.
As mentioned repeatedly on slashdot, IP law is now critical to nerds. No one can write software and put it out there for the public to use without having to consider IP law (even deciding to put it in the public domain is a decision in IP law). Back in the day, when nerds were all in the basements and few people had a computer no one cared about IP. But with more than half of the US licensing software IP law is more and more a part of everyday lives. And if you're a nerd who programs or even just tinkers it's an important part of your hobby.
You can personally choose to ignore it, but it's at your own expense. If you don't fight to keep IP laws fair you'll one day find it's illegal or too expensive to be a nerd.
Developers: We can use your help.
Read some Machiavelli. Wars have historically almost always been seen in economical and political terms. At the moment, the US is powerful enough and self-confident enough not to worry about the political, hence the economic factors will tend to take precedence.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
There is more truth to this than you know.
I've come to the conclusion that the primary function of these types of "Czars" is to do one thing -- generate B-roll. Actually solving energy/drug/homeland security/IP/etc. problems is beside the point.
For those of you lucky enough to not have to deal with media on a regular basis, here's what I mean. When the TV types do a story on a subject, they typically build it by combining a tiny amount of actual news footage -- i.e. footage of something important happening -- with a larger amount of stock footage of people, places, and things that are related to the event in question.
Example -- if you're watching a story about a bill passing Congress, there will usually be a part where you hear the reporter talking while you see a visual of the Capitol Building looking pretty in the springtime.
That visual is "B-roll" -- stock footage that they can use over and over again, any time they need to do a story on a particular subject.
So what does this have to do with Czars? Well, think about it. If a problem rises to a high enough level of prominence that the Executive Branch is supposed to start paying attention to it, the TV people are going to need some B-roll -- some visual shorthand -- to indicate that. And many times they're going to use footage of the President getting off a helicopter, walking across the White House lawn, etc. as that B-roll, while the reporter's voice-over explains that "the Department of Justice announced today that heroin claimed the lives of 500 more ghetto children last year..."
No President wants his image associated with stuff like that -- it's bad media. So he appoints a "Czar". Now the TV types have new instant visual shorthand they can use, instead of the President. So now when they're looking for B-roll to put under narration like "Maps of secret U.S. nuclear facilities were found today in an Afghan cave", they can just reach for the footage of Tom Ridge looking constipated at the podium. And now people associate Tom Ridge with bad news about bearded killers, and not the President.
Read my blog.
If so, then everything we try to do to get consumer-friendly laws pass will be thwarted, and all we will be able to do is to watch as current trends move towards their logical conclusion, where there's a small number of ultra-rich corps/people, and the rest of the world lives like Bangladeshi farmers do today.
Have a pleasant holiday!
More like the entire political system. Corporations have gotten so close to politicians that the interest conflict is worse than the Cold War. We need to separate corporation and state, and church and state, because religion is weeding its way back in.
You hit the nail on the head. "Of the people, by the people, for the people" became "of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations" bit by bit as corporate personhood became the norm in the US. Since corporations are immortal and made of the labor of many people, however, they have a distinct advantage over the rest of us poor slobs.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
I'll imply it. In fact, I'll come right out and say it: The RIAA is not justified in its claims that downloaders on p2p services are hurting them. Primarily this is because their claims are overblown and are used by RIAA as the SOLE culprit in their revenue loss, when in fact it is only a small portion of the blame.
Let me explain the simple math for you: if you have a choice between "paying" and "not paying" for music, which will you do? Speak for yourself. Since you seem to have no regard for the law, I suppose you will do anything you can get away with. Personally, I don't care for the crap the RIAA label put out these days, and I don't buy it, and I don't listen to it (other than occasionally on radio and tv, or at a bar - I do have friends and family).
Artists (even bad ones) should have some way of being compensated, if that's what they care about. But the RIAA model of stealing from artists, controlling the broadcasters, and ripping off the public is old and dying and deserves no respect. And using the government to protect their dying business model is plain evil.
So yess[sic], the RIAA has 100% legit claims of financial ruin.
So, along with the airline industry, the auto industry, etc., etc., I suppose you think it's ok for MY tax dollars to be stolen from me (at gunpoint) to bail out the music industry? Well, then, fuck you.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia