PRO IP Act 1: Rise of USIPER (civil forfeiture for pirates)

peterdevore

A bipartisan group drafted a bill recently to curb copyright infringement, called the 'PRO IP Act'. It heightens the penalties for infringement to an even more absurd level. If passed it would, among other things:

1. Institute a new office called the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative (USIPER) in the presidential executive office.
2. Heighten the penalty maximum per typical pirated album from $150,000 to a whopping $360,000
3. Make distributing $1000 worth of music :arrow: 10 years in the slammer. Already on the books, but the provision that you'd have to distribute at least 10 copyrighted works within 180 days disappears.
4. Most interestingly: Make civil forfeiture possible in cases of suspected copyright infringement. This means that whether you are guilty or not, the state can seize and auction off "Any property used, or intended to be used, to commit or facilitate the commission of a violation of section 506(a) of title 17 that is owned or predominantly controlled by the violator or by a person conspiring with or aiding and abetting the violator in committing the violation." AKA anything they fucking like and your neighbor's dog.

I munged this list from various blogs talking about the issue, so feel free to check out the full text if you are skeptical about any points.

The third provision is already common practice when it comes to drug cases in some states, where drugs in your car :arrow: bye bye car, whether you have anything to do with it and found guilty of any crime or not.

Now, this is only proposed law, so it is exaggerated in that typical 'see-what-sticks' practice, but nevertheless, you should know about this bill and make sure your representatives won't support it. If the topic is a bit too narrow and done-before, we can also talk about civil forfeiture in general and why in gods name people can be punished for crimes they are acquitted of.

One Thousand Cables

This is rather ridiculous, I must say. I don't really do a whole lot of that thing anymore, but this bill makes me shit my pants.

waterlogged

Not going to stop anything. Makes me pissed though, this is out of hand.

It's like the god damn DEA for music/movies.