The Bush administration has announced its strong opposition to a bill backed by the RIAA that would let federal prosecutors file civil lawsuits against peer-to-peer file sharers. In a letter sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the administration said it was "deeply concerned" that the proposal would divert resources from criminal prosecution to civil enforcement, and create "unnecessary bureaucracy," according to CNet News.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the bill, known as the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act, by a 14 to 4 vote earlier this month. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said at the time, "We all know that intellectual property makes up some of the most valuable, and most vulnerable, property we have. We need to do more to protect it from theft and abuse if we hope to continue being a world leader in innovation."

However, the letter from Bush's office said that copyright owners already have more than enough legal methods to target copyright infringers, including seeking injunctions, impounding infringing materials, recovering actual damages plus statutory damages, and, in some cases, obtaining attorney's fees. In addition, the administration said the bill was "objectionable on constitutional grounds" because it would create an "IP coordinator" inside the White House, the organization of which is traditionally a presidential prerogative, says CNet. CNet added that the threat of a veto is likely to doom the proposal in its current form.

In related news, a federal judge on Wednesday declared a mistrial in the nation's first and only federal jury verdict against a peer-to-peer file sharer for distributing copyrighted music online. U.S. District Judge Michael Davis of Duluth, MN declared the mistrial in the case of Jammie Thomas, a Minnesota mother of three who was ordered to pay a $222,000 fine levied by a federal jury last year. Thomas appealed the decision on the basis that the court made it too easy for the jury to decide she infringed on copyrights, and that while she may have shared the songs on the Kazaa network, it was never actually proven that the songs were downloaded by someone else. Still, Judge Davis' decision does not derail the RIAA's case against Thomas on retrial. Davis ruled that the downloads from Thomas' open share folder "can form the basis of an infringement claim," according to Wired.