House Follows Senate In Giving The President A Copyright Czar

from the priorities,-people dept

While failing to do much of anything (other than fingerpointing) to deal with the economic crisis we're facing, the folks in the House did spend some time easily passing the ProIP bill that the Senate passed last week. So, now we just have to wait for the President to sign it, and the entertainment industry gets their own person in the White House whose job it is to prop up their business model. Hell, if Wall St. gets one of those, why not the entertainment industry?

Filed Under: copyright czar, intellectual property, white house

Justice Department Says It Doesn't Want To Be Hollywood's Police Force; Senate Removes That Provision

from the good-for-them dept

This doesn't come as a total surprise, because the Bush Administration had said something similar last year about the House's ProIP bill, but the Justice Department has come out very strongly against Senator Leahy's proposed bill that would let the Justice Department take on civil copyright lawsuits, effectively becoming Hollywood's private enforcement agency. What's impressive is how much of the argument seems to mimic the EFF's concerns:

We strongly oppose Title I of the bill, which not only authorizes the Attorney General to pursue civil remedies for copyright infringement, but to secure "restitution" damages and remit them to the private owners of infringed copyrights. First, civil copyright enforcement has always been the responsibility and prerogative of private copyright holders, and U.S. law already provides them with effective legal tools to protect their rights....

Second, Title 1's departure from the settled framework above could result in Department of Justice prosecutors serving as pro bono lawyers for private copyright holders regardless of their resources. In effect, taxpayer-supported Department lawyers would pursue lawsuits for copyright holders, with monetary recovery going to industry.

Third, the Department of Justice has limited resources to dedicate to particular issues, and civil enforcement actions would occur at the expense of criminal actions, which only the Department of Justice may bring. In an era of fiscal responsibility, the resources of the Department of Justice should be used for the public benefit, not on behalf of particular industries that can avail themselves of the existing civil enforcement provisions.

The "good" news is that this statement has apparently convinced the Senate to remove that part of the bill. Senator Ron Wyden introduced an amendment that took out the part where the White House gets to handle civil cases, but the rest of the bill still moves forward (and don't be surprised to see future efforts push to get the Justice Department back in on private enforcement).

Filed Under: copyright cops, justice department, patrick leahy, ron wyden, white house

House Passes Pro IP Overwhelmingly

from the well-that's-no-good dept

Last week we questioned why Congress seemed to think that the White House should be playing the role of copyright cop. Yet, apparently, the House of Representatives didn't think it was a question worth asking, as it has passed the PRO IP bill by an overwhelming vote, 410 to 10. It seems like our Congressional Representatives felt that, once they got rid of one bad portion of the bill, that the rest of it must be perfectly fine. This bill has a ton of problems, expanding copyright law and the executive branch's authority in ways that are pretty clearly unnecessary. It is, in effect, a bill to prop up the obsolete business model of one particular industry, so it's rather disappointing that our Representatives have rushed through to approve it with little discussion or debate over whether it's even necessary. Either way, it seems unlikely to get much further, as the Justice Department has already come out against the bill, one would hope that even if the Senate approves a version of the bill, the President would veto it.

In the meantime, though, given just how much damage arbitrary expansions of copyright law have done, you would think that Congress would at least want to spend some time exploring the issues before rushing through new laws. Tragically, it seems that entertainment industry lobbyists still have politicians convinced that stronger copyright is naturally "good."

Filed Under: congress, copyright, copyright czar, pro ip, white house

Can Someone Explain Why The White House Should Be Playing The Role Of Copyright Cop?

from the thanks-congress dept

This isn't exactly a surprise, but the PRO IP bill, which is actually quite anti-IP, has been approved by the House Judiciary Committee. This is the bill that would create a "piracy czar" with a new department reporting to the White House, whose sole job it is to crack down on piracy. Basically, it's turning the White House into the entertainment industry's private police force, allowing them to prop up an obsolete business model. This is extremely problematic. There's increasing evidence that piracy is not the real problem the industry is facing. The artists who are embracing file sharing and adopting new business models are finding that there are business models that work, that help to better promote and distribute content, while creating new avenues for making money. This is something that the market is working out on its own. Creating a special anti-piracy group within the White House is simply an anti-competitive move by an industry that doesn't want to update its obsolete business model. Yet, through misleading lobbying efforts, politicians have been convinced that this business model needs to be propped up. Why the White House should be forced to involve itself in a commercial dispute that is working itself out is beyond me. Even more to the point, why should the White House be setting up a special group just for this really narrowly focused "issue" when there are so many more pressing problems in this country?

Filed Under: congress, copyright, copyright czar, pro ip, white house

If Top Gov't Officials Need To Leave Blackberries Outside A Meeting, Shouldn't Someone Guard Them?

from the just-a-thought dept

Apparently a Mexican press attache at a meeting with White House officials in New Orleans saw an opportunity and swiped the Blackberries of a bunch of White House staffers. At many such meetings, it's required for attendees to leave their phones and mobile devices outside of the meeting room. You would think that with such high-powered government officials that someone would then be left to guard the devices, but apparently not. This guy grabbed a bunch of the devices and made a run for the airport, where he was caught by Secret Service officials, who promptly showed him the surveillance camera footage of him taking the devices. His response was that he thought the devices had been left behind, and he was merely picking them up to return them to their owners, which might be more believable if the folks weren't still in the meeting room when he grabbed all the devices. Who knows if it's true, but I'm still wondering why no one was guarding the Blackberries.

Filed Under: blackberries, espionage, government officials, mexico, white house

White House Opposes Surveillance... Of Its Own Surveillance Policy

from the nobody's-watching dept

Since it was formed in 2004, on the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission, The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board has been blasted by civil libertarians as a tool of the administration, more interested in whitewashing War on Terror–related privacy violations than serving as a genuine check on government intrusion. One of the board's five members even resigned in protest, citing among other things "the vast array of alphabet soup agencies and bureaucracies in the national security apparatus" that sought "to control and modify the Board's public utterances." So last year, Congress sought to give the board greater autonomy by moving it out from under the aegis of the White House and reconstituting itself as an independent boad within the executive branch. The response of the White House, Wired reports, has been to drag its feet in appointing a new board -- meaning there is no one on the board as of January 30th -- prompting bipartisan criticism from top members of the Senate's Homeland Security Committee.

The board's second annual report (pdf), released late last month, does not exactly inspire confidence in its assiduousness as a privacy watchdog -- even when staffed. After touting its excellent working relationship with the White House, it moves to a "nothing to see here" review of the post-9/11 use of the material witness statute (MWS) as a detention tool. Aside from one "terrible mistake," the report asserts the board "was not made aware of specific problems with the use of the MWS in the anti-terrorism context" and cites a claim by the Justice Department that "on only nine occasions since the attacks of September 11, 2001 has the MWS been used in terrorist-related investigations." That is hard to square with the findings of a joint report by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, which found some 70 instances of 9/11-related detention, though the discrepancy may be explained by the frequent use of immigration violations as a pretext for detentions that were actually related to terror investigations. The board's analysis of the Protect America Act, passed last August, similarly reads like a compilation of White House talking points.

This should not be all that surprising given the composition of the old board, which consisted of such Republican stalwarts as President Bush's former solicitor general, Ted Olson. With debate over reforms to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act raging in the Senate, the White House appears less than eager to have a less-friendly set of eyes reviewing its surveillance policies.

Filed Under: privacy, privacy board, surveillance, white house