Pro IP Act 0f 2007, Oh Please!

The House of Representatives just passed H.R. 4279, a bill whose stated purpose is to "enhance remedies for violations of intellectual property laws, and for other purposes."  This bill was actually borne out of an earlier Senate effort with the same stated cause.  This House bill now goes to the Senate for passage there, and its likely to pass.

The unfortunate thing about this law is that its too little too late.  Of course the RIAA and the Motion Picture Association will applaud loudly because it strengthens the penalties for anyone deemed to have infringed on the intellectual property rights of another.  And I am not one for violating anyone's IP.  I believe that content creators should eat from their labor.  But do you remember those cases, where college students (or their unsuspecting parents) were sued by the RIAA, these IP laws (and the RIAA's lawyer's unscrupulous use of the legal system) only served to severely punish the unsuspecting (and often innocent).  These enhanced penalties will only serve to drive people to be more surreptitious about how they illegally get content, not more fearful of the penalties.

Let's face it, for all of the suits brought by the RIAA, did it actually stem the tide of file-swapping?  Did people uninstall P2P applications from their computers?  Even after the Napster lawsuit, there was still Kaaza, Morpheus, Limewire, BitTorrent, etc.  There was not even a perceptible ripple in the rate at which 'illegal' downloads occurred.  Is this law, if enacted, going to stop all the unscrupulous cats who review Hollywood movies (and get digital copies in advance of theatrical releases) from making a quick buck or stop them from selling copies to bootleggers?  I think not.

I read over 4279, and its  a beast.  I'd be scared if I was bootlegging copyrighted works or other forms of IP, but thats just me.  The people this law is designed to deter and punish could care less.  They're not worried about getting caught in the first place, and they're certainly not concerned about 'enhanced' penalties.  Is it really going to make a difference to the dude in the Wendy's parking lot peddling "There Will Be Blood," or "300" that the penalties have all doubled?  Probably not.  Are mix tapes featuring copyrighted songs going to stop appearing on mixtapes?  Doubtful.

I'm not suggesting that copyright or trademark owners should simply throw up their hands in frustration or give up fighting to protect their work.  I do think that there should be more effort made to create disincentives for consumers to patronize bootleggers and less than legal means of obtaining content.  Everyone knows that the law cannot keep up with the rate at which technology is advancing.  4279 is already ten years late in my opinion, and its not even law yet!  I remember when they passed the "cybersquatting" law.  That thing had no teeth, and did it really stop the practice of people 'squatting' on domain names to which they had no valid claim (aside from the owner's misfortune of failing to renew?)?  No, not really.

I suspect that, if it becomes law, 4279 will be relegated to "too-little-too-late" status, like so much IP legislation.  Cats on Capitol Hill need to sit down with kids that are file-swapping on high school and college campuses to find out what's driving them, and then base their activities on addressing the causes, rather than wasting time 'enhancing' the penalties.