By Len Ramirez -
Like a lot of college students, Jason Mendencelles of San Jose State downloads a lot of music to his iPod -- a whole lot of music.
"There's about 1700 songs on it," he said.
But when asked if he paid for each one, he said, "Yeah. Um, some of them I did."
Songs are considered the intellectual property of the artists who created them, but millions of people are still downloading them for free from file swapping websites. Attorney General John Ashcroft calls that "theft," and says it adds up to a body blow on the U.S. economy.
"Intellectual property theft worldwide costs the United States, or costs our companies in particular, $250 billion annually," Ashcroft said in San Jose Wednesday.
Ashcroft was in the Bay Area to announce a new national crackdown on intellectual property theft, which goes much deeper than people stealing music and movies off the Internet.
The Bay Area already has the second highest number of intellectual property prosecutions, behind Los Angeles, in the United States. Here, innovative ideas and trade secrets are the life blood of Silicon Valley. But Ashcroft says those ideas are increasingly the target of spies and software pirates that threaten both security and jobs.
"The jobs intellectual property creates and the economic growth it generates are increasing imperiled by the theft of the innovation and hard work of American minds and hands," Ashcroft said.
Silicon Valley leaders welcome the efforts.
"Whenever you have Dracula at your veins, sucking the life blood from your companies, that hurts all of us," said Carl Guardino of the Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group. "We welcome this crackdown and hope it's more successful than previous efforts."
Ashcroft says U.S. attorneys will be more aggressive and prosecute cases overseas if necessary. But he also plans to increase education, encouraging young people to respect the intellectual property rights of others.
Source: CBS5.com
