IP Democracy: DOJ: Make "Attempted" Infringement an Offense

In a bold bid for an agency under extreme duress, the Justice Department yesterday sent a legislative proposal to Congress, the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007, that would expand the scope of what constitutes a punishable criminal offense under the Copyright Act. (Full PDF of the 29-page missive is here.)

The proposed legislation, which revises a similar legislative package that was floated and failed in 2005, would specifically make “attempted” copyright infringement subject to the same criminal penalties as actual copyright infringement. The letter accompany the barebones legislative language states that “It is a general tenet of the criminal law that those who attempt to commit a crime but do not complete it are as morally culpable as those who succeed in doing so.”

I didn’t see anything that defines what constitutes an “attempt,” but let’s hope that people who test P2P networks and try to download a pirated film for strictly professional reasons — say, hypothetically, these people have blogs and are interested in writing about how all this darknet film distribution stuff works — aren’t covered by this proposed statutory change. (I suspect that such P2P network testing failed anyway — hence an “attempted” copyright infringement by the hypothetical people.)

Even more frightening, the proposal authorizes wiretaps for Americans who are merely “attempting” infringement. Calling the proposal an “ill-conceived” attempt, Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said in a statement that “we wish DoJ had devoted more analysis to examining the fair use rights of consumers while presenting a more balanced view of the law.”

The good news: this bill is coming from the Justice Department. In a sly understatement, CNET’s Declan McCullagh noted that Attorney General Albert Gonzales “may not be terribly popular” among Members of Congress, and the draft legislation will surely carry some kind of burden as a consequence. But, as McCullagh also notes, Democratic legislators are favorable to Hollywood and Hollywood likes this bill. Stay tuned.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on May 15, 2007 3:55 PM to IP Democracy