Have they gone too far, Appointing another Czar, To czar our bizarre? Geezus... just what we needed, Another Czar, All hail, The ruler supreme, 'cause you'll fail, Should he so deem, Your case can't be pleaded... It's not a matter of whether, They've got the feather, And, are applying the tar. A Czar to dictate freedom, A Czar to rule without check, Is likely cruel without balance, Doesn't someone wonder, "how come?" Quick! Make a difference, Before the Lord Of Language, Slaps ya with a gag, Quick! A Czar to emper our, A Czar to emperor, Not elected... nor, Public. I would say, "Give me liberty, Or... Give me death," But, the Police Of Intellectual Property, Might haul me away, Once more, My liberty stripped, What choice is left? "You bloke! You can not quote, Patrick Henry, Or, you'll make me angry. Now, off with his head, For what he's said." Yeah, just what we needed, Another Czar, To police our ideas, To police our words, It disturbs, Spreading fears. Conceded, Our ideas... too far, Conceded, Our words... too far, Conceded, To the Czar Of Our Bizarre.
Notes:
Reuters
November 23, 2004
By Brooks Boliek
WASHINGTON (Hollywood Reporter) - Buried inside the massive $388 billion spending bill Congress approved last weekend is a program that creates a federal copyright enforcement czar.
Under the program, the president can appoint a copyright law enforcement officer whose job is to coordinate law enforcement efforts aimed at stopping international copyright infringement and to oversee a federal umbrella agency responsible for administering intellectual property law.
Intellectual property law enforcement is divided among a range of agencies including the Library of Congress, the Justice and State departments and the U.S. Trade Representative.
It is hoped that designating a single overseer to coordinate copyright law enforcement will put some cohesion into the federal effort, said one Senate Appropriations Committee aide.
"You need a head. You need someone who has to answer," the aide said. "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 legislation, part of the bill funding Justice Department operations, also for the first time funds the National Intellectual Property Law Enforcement Coordination Council (NIPLAC).
NIPLAC is charged with establishing policies, objectives and priorities designed to protect American intellectual property overseas and to coordinate and oversee implementation of intellectual property law enforcement throughout the government. While NIPLAC has been around since the early 1990s, it has never done anything, and appropriators hope that giving the organization $2 million and a new charter will make the office effective.
"This is an effort to get some air under the wings of that interagency effort," the aide said. "NIPLAC is a good idea, but it hadn't taken off. You really couldn't point to anything they'd ever done."
Congressional aides say Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., chairman of the Senate subcommittee that doles out funding for the Commerce, Justice and State departments, and Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, chairman of the full Senate Appropriations Committee, took a personal interest in ensuring that NIPLAC was kept in the omnibus spending bill.
But their ambitions for a more robustly funded program were scaled back. Originally the subcommittee had designated $20 million for the program, but fiscal reality forced lawmakers to agree to one-tenth of that.
The legislative effort coincides with the administration's new emphasis on intellectual property protection. Under Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Justice Department has cracked down on intellectual property crimes, and the White House has set up the Strategy Targeting Organized Piracy program, which is designed to curb the production and importation of items ranging from fake purses to pirated CDs and DVDs.