Justice Department Wants $5 Million To Bolster Its Efforts As Hollywood's Private Police Force

by Mike Masnick
Techdirt
Feb. 15, 2012

While the proposed Obama 2013 budget for the federal government is supposed to be about cutting extraneous expenditures, one area where it's seeking more money is to expand the Justice Department's copyright enforcement efforts. You see, this is what happens when you hand the Justice Department over to the RIAA and MPAA. DOJ is seeking an extra $5 million to focus on these kinds of efforts, to hire 14 new employees, including nine lawyers, claiming that it's "had an increase in the number of cases that we're dealing with in IP." Oh really? You mean like the case of Dajaz1? The site that the DOJ illegally held and censored for over a year? Perhaps if they had a few more lawyers on staff, someone would have taken the time to realize that they were supposed to give the domain back within a specified time frame. Or perhaps they could have used those people to realize that the site was posting music sent by the copyright holders. Of course, that's not what would happen. Instead, they'd just focus on seizing more sites and creating more collateral damage. The real question, of course, should be why are we allowing the government to be Hollywood's private police force?