Intellectual Property Police
I received this post from Slashdot this morning about a new bill making its way through the senate for HR 4279. The foundation of this bill is for the protection of intellectual property. The interesting thing about this bill is it helps the government establish a new division within the Attorney General’s office for Intellectual Property Enforcement.
An interesting advancement of this new division will be their ability to seize computers and/or other devices (phones, PSPs, etc.) that may contain as little as 1 file that has intellectual property rights of someone else.
Yes, we are in a financial, energy, and national energy crisis. Yes, we are still at war. But are we watching the bills being passed around our government that give them rights to seize our hardware with minimal cause? I am all for protecting intellectual property rights but I also know that removing the hardware tools of the people (and for the people) will have a ripple effect beyond just protecting creative rights. How does this work in such an open source environment when creative rights are not well established already?
I sigh an agreement with a comment posted by someone on Slashdot’s site: “Now we know what the next war will be about…”
