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May 8, 2008
Pro Intellectual Property Act Passes House
The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act.despite opposition from the Department of Justice.
The act, sponsored by Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Lamar Smith (R-Texas), would allow for forfeiture of property such as computers and other equipment used by convicted copyright infringers.
While this is mainly aimed at music and movie piracy and is backed by the entertainment industry, it will be interesting if it could be applied to website content theft. If so, this could create all sorts of interesting developments for the future of the web.
Scrappers and other copyright material thieves could be risking a lot more than dropped Google listings.
Posted by Frank Watson on May 8, 2008 8:11 PM
Comments
It is fairly easy now to contact the intellectual property infringement staff at Yahoo to report web thieves. Their staff will actually respond and then shut down offending copy sites if you can prove you were the original creator of the content.
Getting the Monolith Google to respond probably takes something closer to a miracle. It makes sense that the music industry would have to spend millions of dollars to protect 18 dollar per CD windfall profits but it will be interesting to see a blogger or small web operator take intellectual property theft up to the next level.
Mal Sinclair May 10, 2008 6:43 AM
