US Vice President Goes On The Offensive Against Piracy

Appearing at a Washington D.C. press conference alongside Victoria Espinel (U.S. intellectual property enforcement coordinator,) Vice President Joe Biden has made an uncompromising statement about piracy of intellectual property.

“Piracy is theft. Clean and simple. It’s smash and grab,” Biden said “It ain’t no different than smashing a window at Tiffany’s.”

The US has recently published its 2010 Joint Strategic Plan On Intellectual Property Enforcement, a document which lists “We will work with our trading partners and with international organizations to better enforce American intellectual property rights in the global economy” as one of its key aims.
Though the language of the publication only seeks to provide a general overview of how this might be achieved, it does state that the US will seek to “combat foreign-based and foreign-controlled websites that infringe American intellectual property rights” (such as, we can assume, torrent sites.) The US government apparently aims to do this though “US law enforcement agencies vigorously enforcing intellectual property laws” and “US diplomatic and economic agencies working with foreign governments and international organizations.”

At this early stage it remains to be seen whether this approach will be any more effective than current attempts to keep places like The Pirate Bay offline.