Police to conduct "Intellectual Property Enforcement" around the country.
In a speech before an assembled crowd of law enforcement officials in Maryland this week, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the winners of a new federal grant that will send hundreds of thousands of dollars to 13 agencies in an effort to step up enforcement of copyright and trademark laws.
The Intellectual Property Law Enforcement Grant Award, which became available in January 2012, was given to a wide variety of local law enforcement groups, including the City of Austin, the City of Orlando, the County of Sacramento, the Virginia State Police, and most oddly, the City of Central Point, Oregon (population: 13,000).
"Although these awards will be utilized in a variety of ways, they will help to achieve our common goals: to advance prosecutions—as well as prevention and education activities—related to IP theft," Holder said in a speech at the event on Wednesday.
"Without question, these new investments are coming at a critical time. As our country continues to recover from once-in-a-generation economic challenges, the need to defend IP rights—and to protect Americans from IP theft—has never been more urgent. We have seen—far too often—that IP crimes are not victimless. Not only can they devastate individual lives and legitimate businesses, they also undermine our nation’s financial stability, can jeopardize the health of our citizens, and even threaten our national security."
The announcement marked the latest step in a series of moves that the Department of Justice (DoJ) has taken to clamp down on piracy and counterfeit goods. The DoJ has made no secret of its unilateral approach to seizing domain names and other digital property through "Operation in our Sites," illustrated most notably in the takedown and indictment of Megaupload in early January 2012.
The Bureau of Justice Assistance, the DoJ agency that administers the grant program, wrote an 18-page January 2012 application document (PDF), citing a 2009 Rand Corporation report (PDF) linking IP theft to organized crime. The document, however, ignores the 2011 major international study that basically countermands that conclusion. As we reported at the time, that study found "‘no evidence’ of systematic links between piracy and serious organized crime or terrorism."
Civil libertarian and legal experts question if this is a good use of federal money for enhancing investigation and prosecution of nonviolent crimes, particularly in large urban areas of the country, like Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and San Antonio.
"We too often see law enforcement overreach and target alleged copyright infringement in the name of protecting public safety when many more clear threats to public safety actually exist," said Julie Samuels, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "When this happens, it's important to ask ourselves if this is really how we want our tax dollars spent. More often than not, the answer to that question is no."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/your-tax-dollars-at-work-local-cops-now-paid-with-federal-money-to-troll-irc/