The Bush administration has announced its strong opposition to a bill backed by the recording industry that would let federal prosecutors file civil lawsuits against peer-to-peer pirates.

In a letter sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that amounts to a veto threat, the administration said it was "deeply concerned" that the proposal would divert resources from criminal prosecution to civil enforcement, and create "unnecessary bureaucracy." Currently prosecutors have authority to file criminal charges.

The two-page letter said that copyright owners already have plenty of legal methods to target infringers, including seeking injunctions, impounding infringing materials, recovering actual damages plus statutory damages, and, in some cases, obtaining attorney's fees.

The letter was signed by Keith Nelson, a principal deputy assistant attorney general, and Lily Fu Claffee, the Commerce Department's general counsel.

The bill in question is called the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act, which the Senate Judiciary Committee approved in a 14-4 vote on September 11.

In addition, the administration said the bill was "objectionable on constitutional grounds" because it would create an "IP coordinator" inside the White House, the organization of which is traditionally a presidential prerogative.

It's relatively rare for a pair of federal agencies to oppose a bipartisan bill so strongly--Republican co-sponsors include Arlen Specter and Orrin Hatch--and the implied threat of a veto is likely to doom the proposal in its current form.

Here's the full statement:

"Our goal, when the T-Mobile G1 becomes available in October, is to provide affordable, high-speed data service allowing customers to experience the full data capabilities of the device and our 3G network. At the same time, we have a responsibility to provide the best network experience for all of our customers so we reserve the right to temporarily reduce data throughput for a small fraction of our customers who have excessive or disproportionate usage that interferes with our network performance or our ability to provide quality service to all of our customers.

We removed the 1GB soft limit from our policy statement, and we are confident that T-Mobile G1 customers will enjoy the high speed of data access over our 3G network. The specific terms for our new data plans are still being reviewed and once they are final we will be certain to share this broadly with current customers and potential new customers."

That sounds to me like T-Mobile hasn't given up on the idea of a soft cap altogether, but has decided that 1GB is perhaps a little too stingy. Which it is.

On Wednesday a federal appeals court affirmed that Qualcomm is infringing on two cell phone patents. It also upheld an injunction against Qualcomm selling products with technology that infringes the two patents.

The permanent injunction contains a sunset provision that allows Qualcomm to sell its products and pay royalties to Broadcom through January 2009.

Qualcomm and Broadcom have been battling each other in court since 2005. In the past couple of years, the smaller Broadcom has aggressively defended its patents and won several victories. Last year, it won a major victory when the U.S. International Trade Commission ordered a ban on the import of all new models of 3G wireless handsets with Qualcomm chipsets that infringe Broadcom patents.

said by Kearnstd :

they didnt clearly state in that report where the music was coming from. if its from the radio they dont have to pay and the PRS people are a bunch of crooks anyway, if they had their way then you would have to pay them to play CDs at a party in your own house or pay extra to have a bunch of guys over for some beer and to watch a fight on PPV.