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