Rich Fiscus
24 Feb 2010 22:12
Last year, in the US, a law known as PRO-IP was signed into law. It mandated the creation of a Justice Department position responsible for the enforcement of intellectual property rights. The second part of that law, requesting comments about IP enforcement issues from the public, is now underway.
Specifically, they are looking for "written submissions from the public identifying the costs to the U.S. economy resulting from infringement of intellectual property rights, both direct and indirect, including any impact on the creation or maintenance of jobs."
Comments should be emailed to the Office of Management & Budget (intellectualproperty@omb.eop.gov) and must be received by March 24.
Comments received by the deadline will be published on a government webpage, so make sure you don't include anything you wouldn't want available to the general public.
PRO-IP (the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008) is a thinly veiled excuse to divert government resources to the entertainment industry's war against P2P file sharing.
The rationale for such a law is based on the flawed premise that file sharing is responsible for billions of dollars suddenly vanishing from the US economy and the loss of nearly a million jobs.