A controversial provision allowing three members of Congress to plow into any American's income tax return at will wasn't the only thing that found its way into the just-approved $388 billion federal spending bill. Buried in the bill was also a provision to create a federal copyright enforcement czar.
The full package has not yet been signed by President Bush, but the bill's provisions – part of the section funding the Justice Department – include one giving the president power to appoint a copyright law enforcement officer who would coordinate efforts to stop international copyright infringement and oversee yet another federal umbrella agency to administer intellectual property law.
Right now, that job is divided among a phalanx of offices including the Library of Congress, the Justice Department, the State Department, and the U.S. Trade Representative.
The provision would also give federal funding for the first time to the National Intellectual Property Law Enforcement Coordination Council, which was set up to set policies, objectives, and priorities aimed to protect U.S. intellectual property around the world and coordinate enforcement all around the federal government, according to the council's charter.
An unidentified Senate Appropriations Committee aide told reporters the idea of a copyright enforcement czar came out of a hope to put "cohesion" into federal efforts to thwart piracy in and out of cyberspace.
"You need a head. You need someone who has to answer," the aide was quoted as saying. "If staffed out and funded by a number of different agencies, it never does anything. Agencies don't want to give up good people. When you don't have an agency responsible, their attitude gets to be, 'I don't have to do anything about it'."
The aide also noted that the NIPLAC has never done anything since its birth in the early 1990s, and Congressional budget writers hoped giving them $2 million and a new charter would get it into action. "NIPLAC is a good idea, but it hadn't taken off," the aide said. "You really couldn't point to anything they'd ever done."
