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

FBI holds eight on piracy charge

The US authorities have charged eight people in connection with the illegal trading of copyrighted films, music, games and software over the net.

The Justice Department said they were key members of online piracy networks. They were charged following an international police operation across 15 countries.
Acting Assistant Attorney General John C Richter said the "charges strike at the top of the copyright piracy supply chain". "Cases like these are part of the Justice Department's coordinated strategy to protect copyright owners from the online thieves who steal and then sell the products they work so hard to produce."
 
Targeting warez
 
The eight men were charged with copyright infringement in Charlotte, North Carolina, following two FBI investigations known as Operation FastLink and Operation Site Down.
The Justice Department alleged the defendants were leading members in the illegal online trade of copyrighted material known as the "warez scene".
It said that once a film or game is copied, the pirated material is sent to servers throughout the world in minutes and then makes its way to file-sharing networks.
 
"This FBI Charlotte undercover operation was very successful in identifying and collecting evidence against those individuals who were the primary source of pirated digital material around the globe," said Acting Special Agent-in-Charge Robert Clifford. "Those committing the cyber crimes can be identified and located anywhere in the world," he said.


Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4727919.stm

Spyware and file-sharing bills to go before Congress

The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee yesterday approved two controversial measures that will respectively tackle music piracy on P2P networks such as Kazaa, and the growing threat of spyware on computers.

Both issues have been prominent in recent months, as the entertainment industry seeks to tackle the effect of file-sharing on its revenue stream, and consumers worldwide wake up to the fact that their computers are vulnerable to spyware - a type of software that secretly forwards information about a computer user's on-line activities to another individual or company.
 
The Piracy Deterrence and Education Act
 
Sponsored by Republican Congressmen Lamar Smith and Howard Berman, the draft Piracy Deterrence and Education Act was passed yesterday by the House Judiciary Committee.
The bill aims to criminalise file-sharing; to demand funding for the Justice Department to initiate an internet use education program; and to give the FBI powers to create an anti-piracy program that will warn those caught infringing copyright and share information about such incidents with copyright owners, enforcement agencies and ISPs.
According to the bill, those who make available: over $1,000 in copyrighted materials; 1,000 or more copies of copyrighted material; one or more copies of copyrighted materials worth $10,000 in value; or one or more copies of one copyrighted pre-release material, shall be liable to a maximum of three years imprisonment – or six years for a second or subsequent offence.
The trigger-level of $1,000 of copyrighted materials approximates to making available the tracks on around 70 albums. Those convicted shall also be liable to a fine, up to a maximum of $250,000.
There was one amendment to the bill, which will now allow devices such as ClearPlay's DVD player – which permits parents to edit inappropriate material out of films – to operate without breaching the law.
"Low risk and high profit is how criminals view piracy," said Smith. "This legislation increases cooperation among federal agencies and intellectual property owners, and assists federal law enforcement authorities in their efforts to investigate and prosecute intellectual property crimes".
It will now go forward for debate before Congress.
 
The Internet Spyware Prevention Act
 
Sponsored by Republican Congressmen Bob Goodlatte and Lamar Smith, the Internet Spyware (I-Spy) Prevention Act, also came before the Judiciary Committee yesterday, and is now to go forward to the full Congress.
This bill takes a narrow approach to the issue, aiming to criminalise those who deliberately access a computer without permission in order to:

• Further another federal criminal offence - punishable by fine or imprisonment for up to five years.
• Intentionally obtain or transmit "personal information" with the intent of injuring or defrauding a person or damaging a computer - punishable by fine or imprisonment for up to two years.
• Intentionally impair the security protections of a computer - punishable by fine or imprisonment for up to two years.

A separate anti-spyware bill has already been passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, but that draft, known as the "Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass Act", or SPY ACT, proposes to protect individuals from unknowingly downloading spyware by requiring that consumers receive a clear and conspicuous notice prior to downloading the software.
The SPY ACT also includes provisions to prohibit unfair or deceptive behaviour such as keystroke logging, computer hijacking and the display of advertisements that cannot be closed.
The two drafts will have to be consolidated before they can go forward for debate before the full House.


Source: http://www.out-law.com/default.aspx?page=4878

Alarm sounds on cyber piracy as online banking rises

THE rapidly expanding ranks of people banking online has raised questions over whether consumers can deal with the growing threat from cyber pirates.
In the past year, the number of online bankers in Australia has swelled by 1.3 million to 8.2 million, according to a Commonwealth Bank survey, accounting for 52 per cent of the population. Commonwealth Bank of Australia acting head of retail banking Ross McEwan said ease of access to personal computers at work and at home meant more people were now doing more online, including their banking.
"This increase in online banking goes across the board, with more than 1.3 million customers joining the online banking revolution in the last year alone," Mr McEwan said.
Security has become a major issue, with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) saying the threat of fraud through attacks against online accounts is increasing.
In a submission to a current review of the Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) Code of Conduct, which sets out the responsibilities of banks and their online customers, the ACCC argued that customers who used electronic banking, such as internet banking, faced severe threats from tech-savvy criminals. "The ACCC considers that widespread use of electronic facilities for banking and financial transactions will see continued growth in the number and complexity of related fraud which will target such transactions," it said.
Attacks from cyber criminals can take many forms. Two of the biggest threats are phishing — used to gain personal information for the purpose of identity theft — and malware, software designed to infiltrate or harm a computer system. The Consumer's Telecommunications Network believes many consumers are not adequately prepared to deal with the threat of such online attacks.
In a 2006 report, it said that although awareness of e-security threats might be reasonably high, consumers lacked understanding of how to protect themselves.


Reference:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/alarm-sounds-on-cyber-piracy-as-online-banking-rises/2007/06/02/1180205572138.html

Case: Virtual Works, Inc. v. Network Solutions, Inc., Volkswagen of America Inc., et al.

Court grants defendants Volkswagen AG and Volkswagen of America Inc. (collectively "Volkswagen") summary judgment, holding that plaintiff's use of defendants' "vw" trademark in a domain name, which also happen to be the initials of plaintiff's firm, constitutes cyberpiracy, trademark dilution and trademark infringement.

The court does not recite in its opinion the nature of either plaintiff's business or its use of defendants' "vw" trademark. From plaintiff's web site, however, (located at www.vw.net) it appears that plaintiff and its predecessors have, since at least 1996, been engaged in the business of providing web site development, hosting and other "e-commerce" solutions to its clients. Sometime in 1996, plaintiff's predecessor Virtual Worlds registered the domain name "www.vw.net" at which it apparently commenced a web site advertising its services.

According to the court, at some point in time, plaintiff offered to sell its vw.net domain to the defendants. In addition, at some point in time, plaintiff posted on its web site disparaging remarks about defendant, which contained, according to the court, "references to Volkswagen as Nazi's using slave labor." The court also found that there was evidence in the record of actual consumer confusion, in the form of e-mails plaintiff received that were intended for defendants.
Plaintiff commenced this action, charging the defendants with tortious interference with plaintiff's "vw.net" domain name. Defendants counterclaimed, alleging that plaintiff's use of defendants' mark in its "vw.net" domain constituted cyber piracy, trademark dilution and trademark infringement in violation of the Lanham Act.

The court found that plaintiff had run afoul of the newly enacted Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act by registering a domain name containing defendants' famous trademark. The court held that plaintiff undertook such registration with a bad faith intent to profit from a previously registered mark within the meaning of the Act. In reaching this conclusion, the court relied on the fact that "Virtual Works has never registered a trademark or conducted business using [the vw] initials," "vw" was not the legal name plaintiff's entity, plaintiff's use of the vw mark has created a likelihood of confusion and has been used to disparage defendants as set forth above, plaintiff had offered to sell the domain to defendants and defendants' trademark was famous.

The court further found that plaintiff had infringed and diluted defendants' trademark. On this latter point, the court stated:

Recent case law holds that internet cyberpiracy constitutes per se trademark dilution. ... VW being associated with Virtual Works instead of Volkswagen constitutes trademark dilution.

Source: http://www.internetlibrary.com/cases/lib_case117.cfm

China 'flooded' with pirate Windows XP

Pirated versions of Microsoft's Windows XP computer operating system have flooded Beijing's computer market, the local press reported, just days before its official launch in China.


Copies of Microsoft's latest product labelled "officially copyrighted" were freely available at the Zhongguancun computer market for about 30 yuan (£2.45; $3.60), the Beijing Evening News said.
Microsoft will launch a "simplified Chinese" version of Windows XP on Thursday with a price tag of 1,498 yuan (£123; $180).
Microsoft officials warned that the pirated versions were of sample versions and their use could cause damage to computers, the report said.
A number of a software manufacturers were also using the XP brand, with products called "Oriental Dadian XP" and "Jingying 315XP", to promote their sales, it said.


Piracy problem


Microsoft sold out of copies Windows XP within two hours of its official launch in Hong Kong last week, the company claimed, but copies of English and Chinese versions of Windows XP were already available in many shopping malls.

"The piracy problem is very serious for the local software industry but the Hong Kong Government should be congratulated for their efforts," Mark Phibbs, Microsoft general manager of business development for Asia said last week.
A recent report for industry body Business Software Alliance found China ranked second for software piracy after Vietnam.

The report valued the losses last year in China due to software piracy at $1.12bn, almost double those in 1999.






Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1637685.stm

FBI weighs into anti-piracy fight

CDs, DVDs, and video games in the US are to get an FBI seal in an attempt to deter people from copying them.

The new labels warn consumers that criminal copyright infringement could land them with a $250,000 (£133,000) fine and five years in prison.
They each carry the seal of the FBI, which says piracy is now its third biggest priority behind terrorism and counter-intelligence.
 
US entertainment firms says they are losing billions of dollars to piracy. "The theft of copyrighted material has grown substantially and has had a detrimental impact on the US economy, said the assistant director of the FBI's cyber division, Jana Monroe. The FBI said it was up to individual companies whether the label appeared on the packaging, or on screen.
The full warning reads: "The unauthorised reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.
 



"Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000."

The label has the backing of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and two groups representing the software industry, the Entertainment Software Association and the Software and Information Industry Association.
RIAA executive vice president Brad Buckles said: "As the seal attests, these are serious crimes with serious consequences - including federal prosecution - to making unauthorised copies or uploading music without permission, and consumers should be aware of them."
 
Last year the RIAA filed hundreds of lawsuits through the US courts against individuals it accused of swapping music online.
MPAA senior vice president Ken Jacobsen said the film industry was losing $3.5bn (£1.86bn) each year through piracy, before copying via the internet was taken into account.
 
"With hundreds of thousands of jobs at stake nationwide, piracy is a serious threat to the entire entertainment industry," he said.



Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3506301.stm

How cyber piracy affects you

The temptation is great: simply copy a program to CD and hey presto, software for free. The perfect crime where Bill Gates is the only victim, right? Not quite - the implications could be closer to home than people expect.


"Copying software is so easy, of course I've done it," says Matthew, a London-based IT specialist. "That was in my undergraduate years - I didn't know anyone who bought the stuff legitimately.

"Someone would turn up and say 'give this a crack, it's the latest version' and it'd get passed around until it was obsolete. It was mostly office and spreadsheet programs, the kind of stuff you can download from the web now."

After graduation, Matthew used a mix of licensed and copied software until 1998. "On holiday in Malaysia, I bought a copy of Microsoft's FrontPage from a guy at a dodgy market stall. For months it worked fine, but it turned out to be laced with the Chernobyl virus - it cost £600 to repair the damage."

His fingers well and truly burned - and his spending power far greater than in his student years - Matthew now only uses licensed software. "Not only do they work properly, I get all the technical support and upgrades I need.

"I think Microsoft and other big firms benefited from that early piracy by my generation. Yes we saved money, but we became much more computer literate and so are now regular customers. I bought a photo editing program last year - I wouldn't have been interested if I hadn't tried out a bootleg copy years ago."

Rip roaring trade


As Matthew discovered, illegal copies cost more than industry fat cats dear. New estimates find the industry is losing more than $10bn a year from pirated desktop software.

Piracy is at its most widespread in the Far East, where nine in 10 packages used are unlicensed copies, with Eastern Europe fast catching up.

A "pirate" can range from a student with a recordable CD drive, to a home user who trawls the net for illegal software; from a company which buys one copy of a program then uses it on several computers, to a dealer selling counterfeit packages. Organised crime rings are partly funded by counterfeiting.

For software companies, piracy means lost revenue, which in turn means fewer jobs, scaled-back operations and less tax for the public purse.

For users, counterfeit software may be a false economy. The program may contain a virus or be incomplete; and the user will have no entitlement to future upgrades.

For businesses, there's the threat of legal action and hefty fines - Microsoft, for instance, has been criticised for tackling charities which bought copied software in good faith - and even professional embarrassment. Under a new EU directive, organisations caught out may have to apologise in print as well as face fines.

Increasingly, innocent users are being "taken in" because of the difficulty of spotting counterfeit software. Victims have included Special Branch - the UK's anti-terrorism police - and Clackmannanshire Council in Scotland, which inadvertently bought fake product licences and had to pay £150,000 for new licences and legal costs.

In 2000 alone, the software industry in Europe lost $3bn to pirates. This is thought to be only a tiny fraction of the copying carried out every day on the internet.

The watchdog organisation, Business Software Alliance, says this is unacceptable for an industry that commits millions of pounds to research and development, and in recent years has contributed six times as much to Europe's GDP as the consumer goods industry.

"Because software is so valuable, and because computers make it easy to create an exact copy of a program in seconds, software piracy is widespread. Piracy exists in homes, schools, businesses and government," says a BSA spokesman.


Cheap and legal?

And it has shaped the nature of the industry. If Russia, for instance, cracked down on piracy, it would have more legitimate software companies. Instead it has become an enclave for pirated software.
If the pirates were stopped, it might just benefit the consumer. With more companies investing in new products, competition would increase and in turn prices could fall.

To this end, the EU and the UK Government have brought in tougher measures to curb copyright and trademark abuse. That's not to say these measures will be widely enforced. And as the EU expands, it takes time for new member countries to match its intellectual property laws.
The industry itself must help tackle the problem, says the Federation against Software Theft. Yet in the past, companies which made hard-to-copy software found sales suffered as users got fed up with the security measures involved.
The real challenge remains: how do you convince someone to pay £800 for a CD when they can easily pick up an exact copy for 80p?[1].




Source: [1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2924531.stm

What is Cyber Piracy and Why Should Legal Aid Care?

If a for-profit company listed themselves as the Legal Aid Society of Your Organization in your city's phone book, you would know how to react and would do so to protect your client community. Cyber Piracy involves similar deceptive practices, but uses the world wide web as its advertising source.


Recent studies by Pew Internet & American Life Project on low-income use of the Internet show that as of 2004, nearly half of low-income households had easy access to the Internet at home or work. (See: Digital Divide Quiz: Test your Knowledge of Client Use of Internet.) With more clients finding legal help online, legal aid programs have an opportunity to reach more people to promote its services or deliver information. Herein lies the threat.


Cyber piracy involves various deceptive practices that companies or individuals engage in to profit from online users. Within the legal aid community, these deceptive practices result in confusion for the public (particularly clients and potential clients) as well as take advantage of the good-will and reputation of legal aid organizations. Without a system to address cyber piracy, legal aid programs risk the chance that the public, especially unsophisticated online users, will not reach legitimate legal aid website and will be confused and possibly extorted on websites posing as legal aid.


Within the legal aid community, cyber piracy is a recent but growing problem. Today over fifty states and territories have launched statewide websites through LSC funding. In addition, hundreds of individual LSC and IOLTA funded programs maintain a program website that utilizes there organization’s name in the URL. These websites spend substantial time and effort providing content for and reaching out to low-income communities. As these websites grow in use and popularity, they become more and more likely target for these practices and the potential for harm to the client population and organizations increases.
There are a variety of practices within the term “cyber piracy” which may include cyber squatting, domain parking, and/or deceptive ad-word use. Each presents a unique challenge for a legal aid program that may lack the time, knowledge and resources to adequately pursue a resolution to these issues.


Legal Aid programs are vulnerable to predatory practices by companies because few programs have their names trademarked. In fact, many programs use generic, descriptive names to describe their program, which may be hard to trademark.


Legal aid programs need to know how cyber piracy is affecting their organization (see NTAP's Research to find out how your program fares online), know the practical steps you can take to protect your organization and clients, and know how to fight cyber piracy[1].






Source: [1] http://lsntap.org/CyberPiracy_Why_Care