Dear Tubal-Cain,

Thank you for taking the time to email me to express your concerns with S. 3325, the Prioritising Resources and Organisation for Intellectual Property Act. I welcome the opportunity to provide clarity.

I believe intellectual property (copyrights, patents, and trademark) is critical to out fiscal health and to American strength in the world economy. Unfortunately, this valuable property is also vulnerable and subject to numerous types of theft and misappropriation. In fact, American businesses lose $250 billion a year to intellectual property theft; the motion picture industry alone estimates that it loses more than $3.5 billion because of piracy annually.

With this concern in mind, Senator Leahy (D-VT) introduced S. 3325 to strengthen both civil and criminal laws against counterfeiting and piracy. Specifically, this legislation increases statutory damage awards in civil counterfieting cases, strengthens remedies availiable in the procecution of criminal cases involving counterfeiting and piracy, and enhances resouces (personnel, training, and equipment) for Department of Justice program that combat IP theft.

With that said, it is important to stress that counterfeiting costs America hundreds of billions of dollers a year and has harmful effects throughout the economy. Moreover, fake products can expose consumers to serious health and safety risks while the government loses out on tax revenues and is forced to divert law enforcement resources. While this legislation does not hinder innovation, it does provide law enforcement resources and tools to combat piracy and counterfeiting.

You should know that this legislation passed the Congress with large support and has since been signed into law by the President.

In closing, I would like to address your concern about my website and encryption. I have been in touch with our website provider and forwarded your concerns. Currently House Systems does not require encryption on Member's websites. For this reason, I encourage folks never to email me sensitive information, such as social security numbers of health records. However, I will continue to monitor this situation.

Again, thanks for taking the time to email me. If you should have any outstanding questions, please feel free to contact me. Please also take a moment and visit my website at [spam URL stripped] for an update of my work in Congress

Sincerely, Devin Nunes
Member of Congress