The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that the U.S. House of Representatives is considering criminalizing copyright infringement, again:

Two months ago, the Justice Department floated draft legislation to expand the scope of, and stiffen the penalties for, criminal copyright infringement, and now a related bill has been introduced in the House. This isn't the first time that Congress has taken up the DoJ's copycrime wishlist, and, for all the reasons we listed in a blog post about a proposal offered up last year, H.R. 3155 is an awful idea.

This bill goes even further than the prior bill in that it would ratchet up statutory damages in certain instances. Under copyright law, copyright owners don't need to prove that they have been harmed in order to get damages and can instead elect to get statutory damages, which a court can set between $750 and $30,000 per work infringed. Such disproportionate penalties can be especially dangerous when it comes to lawsuits against mass-market products like the iPod or TiVo that enable the making of thousands of copies.

Among other things, the proposed legislation, entitled "Intellectual Property Enhanced Criminal Enforcement Act of 2007," would make it a crime to attempt to engage in copyright infringement, which would be punishable by imprisonment of up to 20 years.

The bill was introduced on July 24, 2007 by Rep. Steven Chabot, and is currently sitting in the House Judiciary Committee. You can track its status at Govtrack.us and at OpenCongress.org.

To find out what you can do to derail this dangerous bill, visit the EFF's Fight The Justice Department's Copycrime Proposal!