U.S. to Get New IP Czar 320
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."
Maybe it's a good idea (Score:0, Interesting)
Not a good feeling about this... (Score:5, Interesting)
And is he going to work toward finding a middle ground between fair use and IP protection? I have my doubts.
Why aren't I comforted by this? (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyone else breaking out their sleds? I see a great slippery slope to head down...
Re:IP Czar or P2P Czar (Score:2, Interesting)
IP law is currently enforced by the Justice Department. About three years ago, we were all forcefully made aware that the top levels of our federal enforcement agencies have more important things to do with their time. Shuffling these responsibilities off into a separate, relatively low-cost, department with it's own management frees up a lot of resources that are better used elsewhere.
For us Regular Joes, it probably only means that the annoying FBI warnings on our DVDs will now be replaced with an annoying IP Czar warning. You can all take off the tin foil hats.
Welcome to the Plantation (Score:3, Interesting)
WIPO? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Just say no to "Czars" (Score:3, Interesting)
The private prison industry is growing and to sustain that growth they need fresh meat. Any guesses who's on the menu?
GPL = IP (Score:2, Interesting)
Or is US made Free Software not considered "American IP"?
Re:Plethora of Czars (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
The US virtual economy (Score:3, Interesting)
Distribution rights for copyrighted media and patent licenses!
So all it will take for the US economy to collapse is basically the rest of the world deciding not to honor US IP. What a great thing it is to base our economy on.
So the US just has to enforce their IP rights... I guess that's why we spend 15% of our budget on the military. At least it's less than what we spend on the Treasury department (presumably mostly on interest payments on the national debt)
Numbers: (from a few years back, I ought to update this)
http://hairball.bumba.net/~rwa2/misc/USbud