The so-called Hollywood-friendly PRO-IP Act sailed through a House of Representatives vote last Thursday, securing victory with an almost-unanimous 408-11 vote.

Known formally as H.R. 4279, or the “Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008,” the PRO-IP Act makes substantial changes to federal copyright law. Among other things, the bill strengthens criminal and civil penalties for copyright infringements, in addition to providing “safe harbor” for inaccurate copyright registrations, strengthening restitution and forfeiture provisions in a civil infringement case, and requiring courts to protect seized data.

The PRO-IP Act also adds a brand new cabinet-level copyright czar to the White House, whose job will be coordinate the antipiracy efforts of a variety of federal agencies – including his or her ten new intellectual property attachés, which will be added to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Previously, the PRO-IP also contained a provision that allowed copyright owners to seek fines for individual songs on a compilation CD, as opposed to the CD itself – meaning that damages for a 10-song compilation disc would have increased from a maximum of $150,000 to $1.5 million. However, that provision did not make it past a House committee meeting last March.

 “Intellectual property protection is among the key issues that will determine America's competitiveness in the 21st century,” said Rep. John Conyers. “The ability to create, innovate, and generate the best artistic, technological, and knowledge-based intellectual property is the formula for continued growth in the global economy, and is fundamental to the promotion of human progress.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation called the bill’s creation of a new and “unnecessary” federal bureaucracy “outrageous,” noting that the bill’s new criminal provisions would drag the Justice Department into a war that it has historically and vocally opposed.

Last March, Rep. Rick Boucher announced an attempt to use the PRO-IP Act to strengthen fair use, which weakened significantly with the passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 1998. Unfortunately, it appears that Boucher’s additions – which would have allowed the circumvention of copy protection for the purposes of non-infringing personal use, among other things – never made it into the House’s final draft. For now, his ideas will remain in H.R. 1201, aka the “FAIR USE Act of 2007,” which Boucher himself admits to have shelved.

The PRO-IP Act now awaits passage through the Senate, before reaching the President’s desk.