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Piracy Czar?   Are you kidding me?  I thought we already had one of those…

According to the 2008 press release archive on the RIAA.org site, the following universities have been targeted for pre-litigation settlement letters. 

January 10th:  (18 universities)

 Arizona State University (33 pre-litigation settlement letters), Bowdoin College (11), California State University, Monterey Bay (25), College of William and Mary (15), Duke University (16), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (19), Mount Holyoke College (15), Rhode Island College (22), Saint Mary’s College of Minnesota (13), Stanford University (15), Texas Christian University (14), University of California, Berkeley (26), University of California, Los Angeles (26), University of Connecticut (25), University of Iowa (24), University of Nebraska-Lincoln (22), University of Texas at Austin (50), and Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University (36).

February 21st: (12 universities)

Boston University (35 pre-litigation settlement letters), Columbia University (50), Drexel University (33), Indiana University (40), North Carolina State University (35), Ohio State University (30), Purdue University (28), Tufts University (20), University of Maine System (32), University of New Hampshire (32), University of Southern California (50), and the University of Virginia (16).

On May 6th, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the PRO-IP Act which strengthens laws against illegal downloading, allows for seizure of property involved in the commission of said crime and gives new enforcement measures to investigators.  Billboard.biz quoted David Israelite of the Nat’l Music Publishers Assn:

“This bill will go a long way towards making sure law enforcement agencies have what they need to get the job done,”  

According to Mark Hefflinger of DMW Daily, the bill also-

The bill, which passed unanimously in the House Judiciary Committee last week, would also establish a White House-level piracy czar — dubbed the Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative — to coordinate law enforcement activities.   (emphasis mine)

 David Utter at Webpronews succinctly summed up the situation last year when the act was first getting off the ground:

More bureaucracy, another well-connected insider getting a sweet gig to graze at the taxpayer trough (we’re betting whoever gets the new IP Enforcement Representative job will have a big media background), and absolutely no impact on foreign counterfeiting whatsoever appear to be the salient points of PRO IP.

But Heaven help the first college kid busted under PRO IP for MP3 trading. It’s going to be brutal.  

Folks, this is a strong piece of legislation that kicks the Intellectual Property Rights game up a notch;  –it’s not just national in scope, it defines an international effort to set up rights and enforcement measures.  I predict that given the success the music industry has seen so far, within a year we’ll see an astronomical increase in pre-litigation settlement letter mail-outs.   And those won’t just be going to college campuses.