Congress hasn’t been able to control its own spending, pass a FISA bill that doesn’t give telecoms immunity, forestall the housing crisis, or agree on how to handle the financial meltdown. The negotiations are difficult, they say, complicated by partisan obstructionism and entrenched interests. Yet they had no trouble finding consensus and clearing their calendars to sell your rights to the highest bidder (Ars Technica):
The PRO-IP Act, which would ramp up enforcement of intellectual property laws and stiffen penalties for infringers, won approval by unanimous consent in the Senate Friday—but only after legislators stripped out a controversial provision that would have empowered the Department of Justice to litigate civil suits on behalf of content owners and hand over the winnings.
. . .
The Bush administration had also objected to a provision that remains in the bill, creating an IP “czar” within the White House to coordinate IP enforcement efforts.
These despicable gold-diggers came in on a Saturday and unanimously approved Big Media’s pet bill. Now that’s dedication to a cause!
I’ve written about PRO-IP before. Even without the DoJ enforcement provision, and notwithstanding Bush’s objections to sharing power with an IP czar, the law is a reckless extension of government powers reminiscent of the War on Drugs, and is likely to be abused with equal abandon. I wonder how much it cost them.
Our elected officials have sold our government to corporate interests, of which Big Media is but one, as this incident makes abundantly clear. There is a word for that type of governance, and it isn’t a very nice one. Our newly minted oligarchs must feel quite secure to dictate policy so brazenly.
This November, please remember that every senator and all but eleven representatives* voted for PRO-IP. A massive rejection of these trough-feeding, media appeasing incumbents would do much to decrease their comfort level.
*Donald Young, Jeff Flake, John Doolittle, Zoe Lofgren, Lynn Westmoreland, Dennis Kucinich, John Duncan, Ted Poe, Ron Paul, Fred Boucher and Gwen Moore voted against H.R. 4279.
