Congressional Action on IP Legislation Lacking, Says White House Report
Congress has made little headway on IP legislation the White House said amid glowing enforcement statistics in it’s annual IP report released Friday. Despite offering at least 11 copyright bills this session, Congress was only able to enact two of the administration’s 20 IP legislative recommendations in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the report said.
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Congress failed to pass SOPA, PIPA and the OPEN Acts in 2011 and their odds of passage are increasingly unlikely as Washington gears up for an election year. The modest provisions of the NDAA increased penalties for infringing goods that are sold and used by the U.S. military and law enforcement. The NDAA also gave the Department of Homeland Security the authority to assist rights holders in determining whether a suspected fake product is genuine or not.
The White House echoed its opposition to legislation that “reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk (including authority to tamper with the DNS system), or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.” The report also said that the administration is “interested in working with Congress to ensure that these issues are addressed in a manner that takes into account the challenges and opportunities of the Internet and that is consistent with the administration’s goals and public policy principles."
Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies seized $178.9 million worth of infringing goods in 2011 and the total number of seizures increased by 24 percent over the year prior. DHS said its agencies, Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement initiated nearly 25,000 IP seizures in 2011 that led to nearly 700 arrests, and 360 convictions, the report said.
Most recently ICE completed it’s ninth website seizure offensive under the “Operation In Our Sites” program in which it seized 12 domain names in December and arrested two men who were selling pirated copies of movies and television shows. The government now has 26 ICE-led intellectual property theft enforcement teams and four FBI-led IP task forces, the report said.
U.S. IP enforcement coordinator Victoria Espinel said: “Protecting what we invent, create and produce is always important, but at this time, when every job matters, it is especially important that we stop theft that harms our businesses and threatens jobs here at home."
The administration’s work to encourage the private sector to reach voluntary agreements to reduce IP infringement can “serve as a positive example for Internet policies in other countries,” the report said. In particular it touted an agreement with five major financial processing companies to curb the sale of counterfeit goods and reduce online privacy. The report also hailed an agreement between five major ISPs and content providers like the RIAA and MPAA to warn Internet users when their account is being used for infringement.
U.S. leadership of IP protection has had a positive effect on its trading partners, the report said. The U.S. Trade Representative’s Special 301 report noted positive steps taken by China to target websites that violate IP laws and improved cooperation with Argentina, Canada, Guatemala, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico and Pakistan.
The report also commended the government for signing the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) which represents “a considerable improvement in international trade norms for effectively combating the global proliferation of commercial-scale counterfeiting and piracy in the 21st Century.