Canada Fast-Tracks Draconian Anti-Piracy Law

Following pressure from the US Government, Canada is preparing to ram through a revamped copyright bill that will have disastrous consequences for consumers. The Government is hereby ignoring the public consultation held last year, where many Canadians spoke out against harsher copyright legislation.


In 2008, Canadian lawmakers proposed a new anti-piracy bill dubbed C-61. The plans met great opposition from the public and were eventually wiped from the table later that year prior to the federal elections. Last year, the Government decided to consult the public on what they would want from a new copyright bill.
In that consultation the public made it clear that stricter copyright laws are not welcome. However, it seems that this has had very little effect as Canada’s Prime Minister is about to announce a ‘new’, even more draconian law. Michael Geist, prof. E-commerce Law in Ottawa, described the bill as “the most anti-consumer copyright bill in Canadian history.”


The owner of isoHunt, one of the largest BitTorrent sites that will be directly affected by the law, is rallying opposition against the new bill. IsoHunt’s Gary Fung is warning of the effects the bill will have on Canadians.
“The effects of a draconian copyright bill in Canada can be far reaching. Things Canadians take for granted, like copying your music from your computer to your music player and vice versa, can be deemed illegal with this new bill,” Gary told TorrentFreak.


“ISPs can be forced to handover private information of users on a whim without due process. They may be further encouraged to throttle P2P traffic, even for entirely legitimate uses like game files distribution. The new bill also is unlikely to provide fair exceptions for breaking DRM for purposes that doesn’t violate copyright, which unfairly prohibits one’s tinkering with electronics he owns,” Gary added.


Gary’s warnings are justified. Although it is not completely clear what the details of the new bill will be, it is expected that it will be the Canadian equivalent of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This means that copyright takedown request become a censorship tool while consumers lose several ‘fair use’ rights.
IsoHunt is currently hosted in Canada and involved in a lawsuit against the Canadian Recording Industry Assicoation (CRIA). If this new bill is passed, this would mean that isoHunt’s chances of winning that long standing legal battle will decrease significantly.


Gary further told TorrentFreak that he is worried that the new bill will lead to increased censorship by copyright holders. “We need laws that support our neutrality and our ability to operate a search engine free of censorship and unreasonable constraints,” Gary told us, adding that the new bill would provide the opposite.


“We’ve seen record labels sending us takedown notices mixed with links to porn, and the new Canadian bill should provide recourse against rights holders providing false identification information. Unless music companies are really switching to distributing porn,” he added.
Once again, we have to encourage all Canadian readers to speak out against the bill before it’s too late. Although the Government ignored the people’s opinion during the consultation, doing nothing will mean that the war is lost for sure. Michael Geist encourages all Canadians to write a paper letter to their Member of Parliament and provides some further pointers.








Reference:
http://torrentfreak.com/canada-fast-tracks-draconian-anti-piracy-law-100506/

U.S Law Firm Behind China Piracy Suit Targeted in attacks

A U.S. law firm representing a Web content-filtering company in a piracy lawsuit against the Chinese government said on Wednesday that it received malicious e-mails in a targeted attack from China similar to recent attacks on Google and other U.S. companies.

At least 10 employees at Gipson Hoffman & Pancione received the e-mails on Monday and Tuesday, according to Gregory Fayer, a lawyer at the Los Angeles-based firm.
The firm filed a $2.2 billion lawsuit last week on behalf of Solid Oak Software against the Chinese government, two Chinese software developers, and seven PC manufacturers. The suit alleges that they illegally copied code from Solid Oak's Cybersitter Web content-filtering program and distributed the code as part of a Chinese government-sponsored censorship program involving China-created Green Dam Youth Escort filtering software.

The e-mails sent to the law firm, mostly to lawyers, came in three different formats, were made to look like they came from Fayer or one of two other lawyers at the firm, and had attachments or included links to outside Web sites, Fayer said. Some of the content of the e-mails expressed concern over viruses and other potential security issues, while another gave a link to an FTP site where large files could be downloaded, he said.

Fayer said he could not say what format the attachments were in or what malware was hiding inside other than that it was a Trojan horse.
The servers where the Trojans were located were found to be within China, and the traffic was traced through ISPs back to China, he said. "We don't know who is behind it," he added.
"As far as we know, no one has actually been duped by the e-mails" by clicking on the files or downloading anything, Fayer said.

He also said the attack was more sophisticated than one from China that targeted Solid Oak in June after researchers said they discovered Cybersitter code in the Green Dam software.
He could not speculate whether or not the attack on his law firm was related to the targeted attacks on Google, Adobe, and more than 30 other U.S. companies that were disclosed on Tuesday.

The U.S. FBI is investigating the attacks on Gipson Hoffman & Pancione, and members of the U.S. House of Representatives' Intelligence Committee also have been notified, according to the law firm. Representatives from the FBI in Los Angeles and the House Intelligence Committee could not be reached for comment on Wednesday evening.

Under China's censorship program, the government initially required that the Green Dam software be installed on all PCs sold in the country. Later, the government backtracked and said it need only be on computers in schools and Internet cafes. The lawsuit alleges that some of the defendant PC makers, which include Sony, Toshiba, Lenovo, and Acer, continued to ship PCs to consumers with the software installed even after the policy change.

Hells Angels sues California woman over alleged cyberpiracy

In days gone by, motorcycle club the Hells Angels seemed to follow a legal code not found in any American law book. Anyone who crossed it would face judgment in shades of black and blue.

Now, the famed and feared motorcycle club is seeking a more refined path to justice: It is suing a Visalia, California woman in federal court, alleging cyberpiracy and trademark infringement. The club says Fawn Myers illegally registered more than 20 internet domain names associated with the Hells Angels and then placed them up for auction on eBay.

Myers, the club says, registered domain names such as ha-mc.com and 81ca.com through the internet hosting service GoDaddy.com, which is also named in the suit. It was filed this month in US district court in Fresno, California.

The number 81, the suit says, has not only long been an identifier and pseudonym for the Hells Angels, but it also has been used on licensed merchandise such as hats, beanies, bikinis, pins and belt buckles. The letter H is the eighth in the alphabet; the letter A the first.
In her eBay listings, the Hells Angels allege, Myers specifically mentions the association of the domain names with the motorcycle club. The club says that amounts to trademark infringement and cyberpiracy, among other violations of federal law.
The Hells Angels is showing no mercy in its legal demands.

The motorcycle club wants a court judgment that Myers violated its rights under federal and California state statutes. It wants the domain names to be transferred to the club. And they want any profits derived from the domain names, as well as $100,000 (£70,500) in damages for each domain name found to belong to the club.
One legal expert thinks the Hells Angels might have a good case.
David S Welkowitz, an expert in trademark law at the Whittier Law School in southern California, said lawsuits such as the one filed by the Hells Angels are common - as are victories for the trademark owners.
Welkowitz said the key question is whether Myers has any legitimate claim to the domain names, and whether she can withstand a federal cybersquatting statute and prove she didn't make a "bad faith attempt to profit" from the domain names' association with the Hells Angels.
"Putting it on eBay is not going to help you," he said.
Fawn Myers could not be reached for comment, but a man who answered her home telephone number said the case isn't as clear cut as the court file makes it appear.
Terry Myers declined to say how he's related to Fawn, but he said he registered the domain names, not Fawn. And he said there is no way he can fight the Hells Angels.
"I have no money to defend this," he said. "They're going to win in court."

Source:http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/feb/18/hells-angels-california-internet-piracy

Bollywood's anti-piracy cyber attacks 'illegal'

India’s Bollywood industry has found a novel way to combat ‘pirate’ web sites that offer films and music for free – using ‘cyber hitmen’ to attack them and take them down. A very effective way to target these sites at the roots, India’s movie industry says. But experts say it’s illegal and breaks international computer crime laws.


Dutch IT expert Rob van den Hoven van Genderen, who works at the Computer/Law Institute at Amsterdam’s VU University, told RNW that various worldwide cyber crime conventions strictly prohibit the use of these online attacks. “We have internationally ratified treaties which state very clearly that no one is allowed to carry out activities like these,” he says.
 
Bollywood industry

Nevertheless, Indian IT company Aiplex Software says it has been hired by India’s Bollywood film industry to launch cyber attacks on international websites hosting pirated content. Sometimes films are uploaded to these sites only hours after they’ve premiered in Indian cinemas.
Bollywood experts say India’s prolific film industry is hit hard by online piracy, especially since much of its output never reaches cinemas in regions outside South Asia. Bollywood fans around the world who don’t have the patience (or the money) to wait for international DVD-releases, use pirate websites to watch the latest Bollywood flick as soon as it’s released in India.
 
Torrents

Aiplex usually locates pirate websites (or ‘torrents’) within a few hours after pirated material is put online. It then sends ‘firm messages’ to the owners of the site telling them to delete the illegal content or face prosecution.
If the site owner doesn’t respond to these notices, Aiplex carries at a so-called ‘denial of service’ (DoS) attack on the site. Basically this means the site is flooded with millions and millions of automated requests to download material. Most sites cannot handle that many simultaneous requests so they crash.
According to Aiplex, it’s a ‘very effective’ policy, as most site owners decide to withdraw the content almost immediately after such an attack.

Illegal

Effictive, yes, but perhaps a step too far. ‘Cyber attacks are simply illegal,’ says Mr Van den Hoven van Genderen. ‘International law prohibits this kind of activity. It’s interfering with international electronic infrastructure and that’s illegal in most countries, including India”.
 
Legal route

He doesn’t have any sympathy for Bollywood’s defence that anything goes in the fight against the huge financial losses they suffer from web piracy . “There are lots of other, legal ways to target these websites,” says Mr Van den Hoven van Genderen. “Bollywood should stick to those. See how Europe and the US are tackling [torrents site] The Pirate Bay. They’re using purely legal ways to keep this site from distributing illegal content”.
“Granted, it may be easier to target these sites in Europe than in Asia, but still - you simply cannot fight illegal activities with your own illegal activities.”


Source:
http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/bollywoods-anti-piracy-cyber-attacks-illegal

Pirated PC Software Weakens High Tech Sector &Cyber Security

I think this video can help us to understand better about the cyber piracy

Chinese Government accused of cyberpiracy

CYBERsitter, LLC which does business as Solid Oak Software, has filed suit in the US District Court, Central District of California against the Chinese government and two Chinese companies (among others) for software piracy in the theft of approximately 3,000 lines of code from Solid Oak’s internet content filtering program. This software called CYBERsitter, was designed to help parents protect their children from viewing inappropriate pornographic and violent content on the Web. CYBERsitter , the first commercially available Internet content filter, has been published for over 14 years and has over 2.4 million active CYBERsitter users worldwide, including 20 thousands of businesses, individuals, and schools in China.


The law suit alleges that Chinese software developers, in collaboration with the Chinese government, purported to design an Internet content filtering program known as Green Dam Youth Escort. Like CYBERsitter, the Green Dam program was allegedly designed to block pornographic and violent Internet content from children. Unlike CYBERsitter, however, the Green Dam program was found to contain filters to block political and religious content expressing views that differed from those of the Chinese government.

Solid Oak alleges that a group of independent researchers at the University of Michigan confirmed that the Green Dam developers had copied verbatim nearly 3,000 lines of code from the CYBERsitter program and incorporated it into the Green Dam program.


The stolen materials include the heart of the CYBERsitter software: its proprietary content filters. The Chinese government has issued Green Dam usage figures reporting — as of early June 2009 — that over 153 million computers marketed for home use had been sold with the Green Dam program, that the Green Dam program had been installed on more than half a million computers in Chinese schools and that Green Dam had been downloaded by users from the Internet an additional 3.27 million times.


The plaintiff seeks over $ 2 Billion Dollars in damages under a variety of theories including misappropriation of trade secrets, unfair competition and copyright infringement.

The court case will impose significant challenges for Solid Oak including defenses of personal jurisdiction and sovereign immunity and this litigation will take years to unfold.


Diplomacy has been unable to stop, or even thwart, the wholesale violation of US intellectual property rights in China. It will be interesting to see if civil litigation and the risk enormous money damages will provide the needed threats and sanctions to bring a stop to this piracy.


At the end of the day, i.e. years from now, this case will eventually settle - Just the cost of doing business with the world’s most populous economy.






Source: http://www.trendsininternationallitigation.com/2010/01/articles/foreign-sovereign-immunities-a/chinese-government-accused-of-cyberpiracy/

Anti-piracy trade body doubles takedown efforts against illegal software

Anti-piracy lobby group the Business Software Alliance (BSA) has more than doubled the number of 'take down' notices it issues to stop the distribution of pirated software.

The BSA uses its own systems to track the sale of illegal software on auction sites and its distribution through peer to peer (P2P) file sharing.
"In the first half of 2009, BSA stepped up its efforts in this area and issued almost 2.4 million takedown notices related to P2P and BitTorrent file sharing, an increase of more than 200% over the same period in 2008," the BSA said in a report entitled 'Software Piracy on the Internet: A Threat To Your Security'.
The body has also requested the removal of 103,000 torrent files, which help the process of downloading from P2P networks. This was also more than double the level of activity for the same period in 2008.
The BSA said that internet auction sites are another major distribution channel for pirated software. It said that it had made formal complaints about 19,000 auctions in the first half of this year.
The report said that the BSA believes that software piracy is related to the distribution of viruses and malicious software, called malware, though it admitted that no actual measurement of such a correlation has been made.
"Globally, there is significant evidence to link software piracy with the frequency of malware attacks. While this correlation has not been measured with precision, the evidence from industry sources suggests that markets with high software piracy rates also have a tendency to experience high rates of malware infection," said its report.
The report said that users of pirated software are vulnerable to malware because they do not have access to updates or 'patches' to software which block the ways in which viruses exploit the operation of common software products.
The BSA has also said that 41% of all software on personal computers is obtained illegally, and that the software used without publishers' permission would cost $53 billion to buy. It said that this figure emerged in research conducted for it by IDC which was published earlier this year.
"Software piracy, far from being an innocent, victimless crime, exposes users to unacceptable levels of cyber-security risk, including the threat of costly identity theft or allowing one’s computer to become a tool in further criminal activity," said its report.

Source: http://www.out-law.com/default.aspx?page=10442