Bush Administration Spending More Taxpayer Money On Intellectual Property Prosecutions

Techdirt — Bush Administration Spending More Taxpayer Money On Intellectual Property Prosecutions:

Back when for­mer Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was run­ning around push­ing for stricter copy­right laws, includ­ing mak­ing “attempted infringe­ment” a crime, we fig­ured that he was just look­ing for some sort of dis­trac­tion from the Congressional inves­ti­ga­tion con­cern­ing some of his other actions in office. However, it appears that pres­sure from the enter­tain­ment indus­try has actu­ally been effec­tive in turn­ing the Justice Department into the per­sonal enforce­ment agency of Hollywood. The Bush Administration is proudly talk­ing up how the Justice Department has increased its inves­ti­ga­tion and pros­e­cu­tion of intel­lec­tual prop­erty vio­la­tions. Considering that this is mostly a busi­ness model issue, and given the cur­rent state of the econ­omy (not to men­tion the war we’re still involved in), aren’t there some­what more impor­tant things for the admin­is­tra­tion to be focused on?