House Votes 410-11 to Expand Federal Enforcement of Copyright Law, With Rep. Jeff Flake in the Tiny Minority Voting No -- And This Time He's Right!

Now that other candidates are running for the Democratic nomination in Arizona's Sixth Congressional District, I've been continuing to post, explaining why Rep. Jeff Flake should not be re-elected. There are a lot of reasons.

Nevertheless, I'd be intellectually dishonest if I did not post occasional pats on the back to Jeff Flake. There are times when his out-of-the-mainstream views get it right, as on his foresighted and lonely crusade to end our embargo of Cuba.

Yesterday, Rep. Flake was in a familiar place: in a tiny minority voting against the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO-IP) Act of 2008. The House passed it overwhelmingly, with only 11 members voting no. They include not only Jeff Flake but also his ideological soulmate Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX); another former presidential candidate, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH); and Silicon Valley's Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA).

I believe Jeff Flake was right on the mark to oppose this bill. As a staff attorney at the Center for Governmental Responsibility back in the 1990s, I worked a lot in the nascent field of digital copyright law as well as other intellectual property issues. I'm the author of a dozen books and a content provider online and for various print publications, so I have a particular interest in this area.

To explain why I agree with Rep. Flake's vote here, I go to an the blog of an organization I'm affiliated with, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which noted that

The bill would nonetheless significantly expand federal enforcement of copyright law.

The most outrageous provisions would create new and unnecessary federal bureaucracies devoted to intellectual property enforcement. None seems more ridiculous than language creating a Cabinet-level "IP enforcement czar" that would report to the President and coordinate enforcement efforts across government, a proposal that has been loudly opposed by the Department of Justice. Why is Congress spending our tax dollars on a new layer of officialdom that the cops themselves don't want or need?

Moreover, the bill also includes provisions — such as expanded forfeiture penalties and language "clarifying" that copyright registration is not required for criminal enforcement of the copyright -- that could be read to open the door to increased prosecution against individuals or innovators as well as large-scale commercial pirates.

Similarly, a Daily Kos contributor called Berkeleygrad writes:

It is backed by all the usual industry suspects (grouped together under the name of "the Copyright Alliance") and is a potential disaster insofar as it threatens to impede fair use and balanced enforcement while increasing the criminalization of non-commercial copyright infringement. H.R. 4279 would also create a new "Copyright Czar" within the federal government, a position that appears to be loosely modeled on the "Drug Czar" positions that have done so much to perpetuate the wasteful, expensive, and ineffective "war on drugs."

Those of us who value our digital rights and civil liberties should be concerned...

Rep. Jeff Flake was right this time, although for most middle-class families in Arizona, this issue won't matter much. More important was his other vote no yesterday, against helping those whose homes are being foreclosed.

Still, Rep. Flake should be commended for voting against PRO-IP.