Imagine for a second that there was a law that made it illegal to produce artwork depicting or writing mentioning trademarked images or phrases. Meaning, no photos of gas-guzzling SUVs to illustrate an essay about fuel economy. Alternately, imagine a law that would make it illegal for one company to mimic the style of another company's clothes. To give a perhaps too personal example, no dress shirt from Target with the same pattern and texture as a more expensive one from Banana Republic. Am I being ridiculous, giving extreme examples to illustrate a point that isn't yet clear? Or am I simply describing two bills that are either actively moving through Congress or could be soon?

If you guessed the latter, give yourself a little pat on the back. In the case of the first law, the Trademark Dilution Revision Act, I'm sorry to report that it's moving through Congress like greased lightning. I only heard about it for the first time yesterday morning when a friend pointed me to a story on StockPhotographer.info, asking me what I knew about it. Doing a bit of research on the legislation, I was as dismayed by what it proposes as by the fact that it had been met with little meaningful opposition. Republican Congressman Lamar Smith's bill passed the House last spring in a 411 to 8 vote. The Electronic Frontier Foundation gives a good explanation of the bill.

The Trademark Dilution Revision Act (TDRA, HR 683) is a big company's dream. If it passes in the Senate, the lawyers policing a trademark could sue businesses and individuals for using words, images, or even colors that look vaguely like a famous brand - without even having to prove that the company is being harmed. In other words, TDRA would make it possible for UPS to sue Brown's Record Store, even though nobody in their right mind would get the two confused. This bill would chill speech and hand ownership of common words to big companies.

HR 683 was just passed by unanimous consent in the Senate, a sure sign that the legislation isn't really being debated if there ever was one. Thankfully, it was stripped of its most offensive proposal, the scrapping of the "non-commercial use" exemption. But who's to say what's commercial and what's not? Is a blog post commercial if the blog sells advertising space? Is a work of art commercial if it can be sold in a gallery? If Coca-Cola wants to say that people can't use images of their soda cans in advertising for another product, as it implies endorsement, I'm fine with that. But if General Motors wants to sue an artist who creates an image of a Hummer refueling at an oil well in the middle of the Iraqi desert, then that's an abuse of intellectual property law. These questions now have to be worked out between the House and Senate before the law is finalized.

And the other story, about "fashion piracy," comes from Lindsay Beyerstein. It seems that Republican Congressman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia has teamed up with some major fashion designers to make it illegal for clothing manufacturers to bite off designer styles and make them available for sale to the public at a reduced cost. Lindsay explains how this is different from what we've seen so far in the fashion IP wars.

Note that we're not talking about the fake Louis Vuitton bags that you find on Canal Street in Manhattan. Those are already illegal.

Goodlatte is trying to prevent designers from The Gap from spotting argyle socks on the runway and coming out with argyles of their own. So-called fashion piracy is just fashion: Designers set the trends, and mass marketers adapt them.

Mind you, I've never really considered myself much of a copyfighter. As a musician in the nineties, I completely embraced Napster and the idea of file-sharing in general, but that was less a matter of politics and more one of a personal desire to get my music out to as wide an audience as possible. (After all, at that level, the money's coming from live performances, not royalties.) But the recent trend in intellectual property law towards complete ownership of everything is mind boggling. It's one thing to support copyrights, but it's unacceptable to attack fair use as well. How long before Nestle goes after kids holding bake sales without cutting them in on the profits from the resale of Tollhouse Morsels? How long before I can't write that sentence without having to drop in the appropriate trademark and registration marks? Or more disturbingly, how long before I just can't write that sentence at all? Where does it all end?