After nearly a year of being soundly criticized by various industry groups and copyright law concerns, the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008, or PRO-IP Act, has been passed into law. The act, among other things, allows for the creation of a "copyright czar" and permits the U.S. Department of Justice to conduct civil lawsuits on behalf of private copyright holders.
The most troubling part of the PRO-IP Act — to me, at least — is that it extends the concept of forfeiture to IP piracy. Usually used in cases of large-scale drug-dealing, Publicknowledge.org's Art Brodsky sums up forfeiture as it relates to IP thusly: “Let’s suppose that there’s one computer in the house, and one person uses it for downloads and one for homework. The whole computer goes.”
There's a whole tangled mess of lobbying and special interest that I'm sure will reveal itself as this law becomes more widely practiced, but for now we're left with one salient point made by the White House on the day of the bill's signing: "Terrorist networks use counterfeit sales to finance their operations."
