Joining a bevy of other Obama Administration officials including the President himself — U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder spoke out forcefully in defense of strong IP and in particular copyright enforcement this week.

The AG spoke yesterday in Rio De Janeiro at the Prosecutor General’s office on IP enforcement (thank you Tech Law Journal for alerting me). As I’ve done before, rather than paraphrase, I’ll quote verbatim some of the more compelling parts below:

I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to meet with my Brazilian enforcement colleagues to discuss the challenges both our countries face in protecting the intellectual property that is so vital to our economic infrastructure and security. Our countries each need strong enforcement of criminal laws to protect intellectual property rights if we are to continue to foster innovation and creativity, safeguard consumers, and create economic growth.

Intellectual property is a critical component of the economies of both Brazil and the United States. If we cannot provide strong protection of intellectual property rights, our creative industries will suffer…

Thanks to advances in technologies — in particular the increasing accessibility of the Internet and improvements in manufacturing, transportation and shipping — digital content such as business software and movies can be distributed to a worldwide market almost instantaneously. Even small businesses have unprecedented opportunities to market and distribute their goods and services around the world.

Please note that this focus on the ability of creators, in particular small businesses and individual artists, to sell their work abroad through digital technology is one we have shared with the Obama Administration. It is a position we see articulated strongly by U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and his team.

More from AG Holder:

Unfortunately, the success of this worldwide, digital marketplace has also attracted criminals who seek to exploit and misappropriate the intellectual property of others. The same technologies that have created unprecedented opportunities for growth in legitimate economies have also created global criminal organizations that are eager to steal the creativity and profits from our domestic industries and workers. As Attorney General, I dedicate much of my time and attention countering the threats posed by these transnational criminal syndicates. These groups, who do not respect international boundaries or borders, have developed sophisticated, efficient and diverse methods for committing almost every type of intellectual property offense imaginable, including:

· widespread online piracy of music, movies, video games, business software and other copyrighted works;
· well-funded corporate espionage;
· sales of counterfeit luxury goods, clothing and electronics, both on street corners and through Internet auction sites; and
· increased international trade in counterfeit pharmaceuticals and other goods that pose a substantial risk to the health and safety of our consumers.

There is real harm that comes from organized crime in pirated creative works, as the RAND Corporation has documented. But of course the harms done from piracy abroad extend far beyond such blatant criminal enterprises.

More from AG Holder:

In the United States, we consider the theft of intellectual property to be a threat to our nation’s economic security, as I know you in Brazil do as well. This is a priority concern for President Obama and for me. The Obama Administration has taken a number of significant steps to ensure that protecting intellectual property rights remains a cornerstone of our country’s strategy for economic growth and prosperity. In 2009, President Obama appointed the first-ever Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator to serve in the White House and to work closely with an Advisory Committee composed of high level officials from all federal agencies across the United States. The IP Enforcement Coordinator, Victoria Espinel, will work with the Advisory Committee to develop a government-wide strategic plan to combat intellectual property violations. The plan will focus on all areas of intellectual property, including copyrights, patents, trademarks and trade secrets, both in the United States and abroad, and will include input from the public and from a broad cross-section of industries affected by IP theft.

Last December, Vice President Biden further demonstrated the Administration’s commitment to IP protection by convening an IP summit of high-level cabinet officials, including myself, as well as leaders of many of the IP industries, where he emphasized the importance of stronger enforcement of IP rights and improving government coordination.

And just two weeks ago, I announced the creation of a Department of Justice Task Force on Intellectual Property. This task force will help develop and implement a multi-faceted criminal enforcement strategy with our federal, state and international partners to effectively combat IP crime. Through this new task force, we will seek creative and aggressive enforcement strategies—under both the civil and criminal laws— to combat the ever-growing threat to intellectual property worldwide. Let me be clear again- this is a priority matter for my government.

You can find our praise of the DoJ IP Task Force here, our praise of the appointment of the IP Enforcement Coordinator here, and our praise of the summit by Vice President Biden here.

Any more, AG Holder?

We are also expanding our efforts to attack IP crime by incorporating the legal tools that we use to attack other types of economic crime, such as with criminal laws against smuggling, money laundering, and fraud. Moreover, because of its high profits and international scope, IP crime has increasingly become the province of international organized crime. That is why I incorporated intellectual property crime into the Department’s International Organized Crime Strategy, a strategy that seeks to identify and target the most serious criminal groups operating throughout the world. The International Organized Crime strategy and initiative bring the best our law enforcement agencies have to offer, working toward a common purpose: to dismantle the most serious organized crime groups wherever they are located throughout the globe, whatever their source of income. Increasingly, our investigations show that many of these crime groups are financing their illicit activities through the theft of intellectual property and sale of counterfeit goods. This poses a significant threat to all our economies, and it challenges us to work together even more to combat global organized crime…

Like the United States, I know well that Brazil has also suffered the effects of IP crime. Counterfeit products and pirated versions of copyrighted works directly undermine your economy and creative industries. But Brazil is rising to face those challenges through the groundbreaking work of the National Council to Combat Piracy & Counterfeiting (CNCP). Our colleagues on the CNCP bring creativity and hard work to bear on the task of protecting IP rights. Since 2004 you have increased enforcement actions; you have helped to amend the law to reflect the new and changing relationship between IP and technology, and you have conducted public awareness and education campaigns to make Brazilian citizens aware of the economic harm and personal risks associated with counterfeit goods and pirated works.

I often cite a conversation I had back in 2005 in Sao Paolo with a Brazilian software developer who marketed his Portugese-language business productivity software in Portugal but not Brazil. When I asked him why, he said if he tried to sell it to his own countrymen, he would sell one copy and pirated copies would proliferate after that. Rule of law and respect for IP rights gave him a shot at profit in Portugal, but not his home country. It’s positive to see Brazil — a nation traditionally associated with high rates of infringement — recognize that IP protection benefits its own entrepreneurs and economy.

So kudos to the Brazilian government, and kudos to AG Holder and the Obama Administration. We welcome your continued vigilance on behalf of artists and creators.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 25th, 2010 at 2:47 pm by Patrick Ross and is filed under Obama, economy, international, p2p, piracy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.