This needs to be stopped:

“H.R. 4279, Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008, is gaining momentum in Congress. It passed the House a few days back. It would allow the Feds to seize hardware that has even one file coming from ‘dubious origins,’ e.g. downloaded from P2P. If passed into law, the bill would establish an Intellectual Property Enforcement Division within the office of the Deputy Attorney General. Rep. John Conyers says the goal is to ‘prioritize intellectual property protection to the highest level of our government.'”

In detail, what does this bill do? This:

This legislation gives the government the power to seize property that facilitates the violation of intellectual property laws. The legislation also mandates the formation of a formal Intellectual Property Enforcement Division within the office of the Deputy Attorney General to enforce this madness. In addition, a new office called the Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative is created within the Executive Office of the President. If you boil it down to brass tax [sic], this legislation allows the U.S. government to lawfully seize your computer if it has one unauthorized mp3 file on its hard drive. It also provides the authorization for the creation of offices within the executive branch to enforce a law that is impossible to enforce.

This is not what the country needs. Hell, if this passes, I would not be surprised to hear law enforcement seizing computers to use in criminal investigations because a copyrighted picture was found in your browser cache from simple surfing. This is a terrible, terrible bill. This bill will redefine the concept of prosecutorial fishing expeditions and asset seizure.

*** Update ***

A summary of the bill, and the full text. The roll call vote is here, and it was passed 410-11 with 12 no votes.

Related.

*** Update #2 ***

Commenters say I am freaking out over nothing: