Singularity Law

Congress recent passed, and the President signed the PRO-IP Act (”Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2007″). The Act established a new cabinet-level position, an “IP enforcement czar,” that would report to the President and coordinate enforcement efforts across government.

Over the last 20 years we have seen a steady erosion of the balance that the copyright law was intended to establish between the rights of the copyright owner and those of the public. We have seen a series of laws, the PRO-IP Act being just the latest, where Congress has given copyright owners increasingly greater rights, with little consideration to their effect on innovation and on user rights.

As stated by Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge, a Washington, D.C.-based digital rights group, after the Senate’s passage of the bill: “The bill only adds more imbalance to a copyright law that favors large media companies. At a time when the entire digital world is going to less restrictive distribution models, and when the courts are aghast at the outlandish damages being inflicted on consumers in copyright cases, this bill goes entirely in the wrong direction.”

What is needed today is not an IP “czar” but an IP “ombudsman,” tasked with ensuring that legislation provides the proper balance between the rights of owners and those of innovators and users. We need someone who can speak for the public – a role that the Copyright Office abdicated years ago when it became a mouthpiece of copyright owners, and no longer the arbiter of a balanced copyright law. Yet, if we get a president that truly believes in a balanced approach, there is noting in the PRO-IP Act that would prevent him from appointing someone as IP “czar” that would provide a balanced approach to the development of copyright (as well as patent and trademark law). It’s a long shot, but one can only hope. . . .