• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, March 7, 2008

A House of Representatives panel Thursday agreed to delete a controversial provision of a new intellectual property bill that would have boosted copyright infringement penalties.

The now-deleted provision would have hiked damages for compilations by allowing owners to collect up separate fines for each track on a pirated album. Currently, the limit is usually $30,000 per album, regardless of the number of tracks.

Members of the House Judiciary Committee introduced the bill, the PRO IP Act (Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act), H. R. 4279, last December. Sponsors included Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), Howard Berman (D-Calif.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.).

Thursday, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property approved the measure, but without the provision raising damages.

The advocacy group Public Knowledge, which criticized the original language, said it welcomed the revisions. "We are pleased that the Subcommittee deleted from the bill the section ... that would have allowed multiplied damages for infringement of a compilation far beyond any reasonable levels," Gigi Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge, said in a statement.

Even without the boost in penalties, the copyright statute's damages provisions are controversial, with defense lawyers arguing they're out of proportion to the harm caused by piracy.

In Capitol Records vs. Jammie Thomas--the first online piracy case by the record industry against a user to go to trial--the jury ordered Thomas to pay $220,000 for uploading 24 tracks to Kazaa.

Her lawyer argued that the fine is disproportionate, given that the 24 tracks could be purchased on iTunes for less than $24. The U.S. Justice Department late last year weighed in on behalf of the record companies, filing a brief arguing that the damage award is not unconstitutionally excessive. The judge in that case is currently considering the issue.