From: NEWS.com and Reuters –

U.S. President George W. Bush signed two new bills into law yesterday, both of which tighten monitoring of Internet predators.

As NEWS.com correspondent Stephanie Condon points out, one of the bills has definite political overtones. The Protect Our Children Act contains a variety of provisions, some introduced by none other than Democratic VP nominee Joe Byden, Democratic Presidential primary candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican Presidential candidate John McCain.

The other new law, the Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators [KIDS] Act, requires all convicted U.S. sex offenders to register all of their Internet ‘identifiers’ with the U.S. National Sex Offenders Registry.

Reuters reports that Bush also signed into law a controversial new anti-piracy law (the PRO-IP Act), which tightens existing laws designed to fight piracy and counterfiting, and creates an intellectual property ‘czar’ to report directly to the U.S. President on matters relating to the security of the international copyright system.

The Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce all backed the new anti-piracy act, the chamber of Commerce noting that media piracy costs the U.S. economy an estimated 4260 billion annually.