Major Accomplishments in the Battle Against Piracy Crimes
NOW THAT NUMEROUS FEDERAL, STATE, local, and international organizations have teamed up to take on the intellectual property pirates, with much of the leadership from the FBI and Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, what are their major accomplishments? While the January 2012 Megaupload/Kim Dotcom takedown made big headlines, numerous other website seizures, arrests, and convictions have occurred. However, due to little notice from the major media, the general public is unaware of these actions. But in the future, more media attention and a greater public awareness would help to increase involvement by the public, such as in providing leads to websites featuring pirated books.
To date, much of this law enforcement effort has targeted the pirates of counterfeit goods, films, and software, not books. But these successes show what is possible, setting the stage for focusing on book pirates in the future. As described in a series of IPR Center, DOJ, and ICE reports and press releases, these are the major results in the battle against online piracy since 2010, when this war against Internet piracy heated up:
1. In 2010, the DOJ and ICE launched the first-ever US government program for seizing websites—called Operation In Our Sites—that provided pirated content or sold counterfeit products. ICE had five major operations, resulting in the seizure of 125 domain names, and over half of them (eighty-four) were forfeited to the US government. Then, based on a court order permitting a banner display, a banner was placed on each site announcing seizure by the US government and explaining that willful copyright infringement is a federal crime subject to punishment for copyright theft and distribution or trademark violations. Since June 2010, when these sites were first seized, the sites showing the warning banner had over fifty million hits (http://www.iprcenter.gov/reports/ipr-center-reports/2011-joint-strategic-plan-on-intellectual-property-enforcement/view).
2. In February 2010, President Obama signed Executive Order 13565 establishing two intellectual advisory committees chaired by the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC). These committees included “a Cabinet-level committee comprised of the heads of the departments responsible for intellectual property enforcement and a committee comprised of Senate-confirmed Government officials from those departments” (http://www.iprcenter.gov/reports/ipr-center-reports/2011-joint-strategic-plan-on-intellectual-property-enforcement/view).
3. Also in February 2010, US Attorney General Eric Holder announced the formation of a Department of Justice Task Force on Intellectual Property to fight intellectual property crimes “by coordinating with State and local law enforcement partners, and with international counterparts” (http://www.iprcenter.gov/reports/ipr-center-reports/2011-joint-strategic-plan-on-intellectual-property-enforcement/view).
4. In October 2012, the Department of Justice made an increased commitment to protecting intellectual property by announcing $2.4 million in grants to thirteen jurisdictions around the United States to help them enforce the criminal laws related to intellectual property theft (http://www.justice.gov/css-gallery/gallery-ip-towson2012.html#1).
5. Ambassador Ronald Kirk and the Office of the United States Trade Representative issued a 2012 Special 301 Report, drawing on information obtained from global US embassies and interested stakeholders. The report provided information on the state of intellectual property protection and enforcement around the world, showing how the battle had become a worldwide effort. For example, some of the major events occurring in 2011 and early 2012 were the following:
• Malaysia passed copyright amendments that significantly strengthened its protection of copyrights and its enforcement against piracy, such as establishing a mechanism for Internet service providers to cooperate against piracy over the Internet.
• The US removed Spain from its Watch List because of Spain’s recent efforts towards IPR protection and enforcement, such as adopting the “Ley Sinde,” a law to combat Internet copyright piracy.
• The Philippines enacted specialized IPR procedural rules to improve judicial efficiency in IPR cases.
• Russia enacted a law to establish a special IPR court by February 2013 and amended its Criminal Code to reduce the criminal threshold for copyright. It also began criminal proceedings against interfilm.ru, an infringing website, and the court made civil findings against vKontakte, Russia’s largest social networking site, for copyright infringement.
• China established a State Council–led leadership structure, headed by Vice Premier Wang Qishan, to lead and coordinate IPR enforcement across China. Additionally, China’s leadership began measuring the performance of province level officials in enforcing intellectual property rights in their regions.
• In 2011, the Global Intellectual Property Academy (GIPA), a division of the US Patent and Trademark Office, designed to produce education and training on IPR protection and enforcement, trained over 5,300 foreign IP officials from 138 countries through 149 separate programs. Among the attendees were IPR policy makers, judges, prosecutors, customs officers, and examiners. Post-training surveys indicated that 79 percent of the attendees reported taking some steps to implement policy changes in their organizations to support IPR efforts.
• In 2011, the Department of Homeland Security’s Bureau of Customs and Border Protection conducted regional border training programs that focused on IPR enforcement in Morocco, El Salvador, Thailand, and India.
• The National IPR Coordination Center worked with Interpol to conduct training programs in eleven countries and conducted three advanced IPR training sessions at the US International Law Enforcement Academies (ILEAs) in Thailand and El Salvador for participants from twenty-two countries.
6. The Department of Commerce’s Commercial Law Development Program (CLDP)—which provides training to foreign lawmakers, regulators, judges, and educators—worked with over thirty-five governments and conducted cooperative programs in Central and Eastern Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia to better adjudicate IPR cases. The CLDP also organized interagency IPR enforcement programs in the Ukraine and Pakistan, as well as regional programs with Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, Kenya, and the East African Community member states (http://www.iprcenter.gov/reports/digital-and-online-ip-theft/2012-special-301-report/view).
While it may seem surprising that the US agencies are making such a widespread outreach to work with countries around the world on IPR training and enforcement strategies, such efforts are necessary because all piracy, including book piracy, is now a global problem. For example, Megaupload was based in New Zealand, but had servers in Hong Kong as well as Virginia. The Bookos.org website, which illegally listed eighteen of my books, is based in Panama. And the Internet piracy gangs have outposts and representatives all over the world.
As the 2012 Special 301 Report describes the problem:
“Piracy over the Internet is a significant concern in many U.S. trading partners … U.S. copyright industries also report growing problems with piracy using mobile telephones, tablets, flash drives, and other mobile technologies. In some countries, these devices are being pre-loaded with illegal content before they are sold. In addition to piracy of music and films using these new technologies, piracy of ring tones, apps, games, and scanned books also occurs. Recent developments include the creation of ‘hybrid’ websites that offer counterfeit goods, in addition to pirated copyright works, in an effort to create a ‘one-stop-shop’ for users looking for cheap or free content or goods. The United States will work with its trading partners to combat these growing problems, and urges trading partners to adequately implement the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) Internet Treaties, which provide tools necessary for protecting copyrighted works in the digital environment” (http://www.iprcenter.gov/reports/ipr-center-reports/2011-joint-strategic-plan-on-intellectual-property-enforcement/view).
In particular, the United States is seeking to work with numerous trading partners to strengthen their legal regimes, enhance enforcement, and encourage them to implement the WIPO Internet treaties, which provide protection against circumventing technological protection measures. Additionally, the US is encouraging its trading partners to enhance their enforcements efforts, such as by “strengthening enforcement against major channels of piracy over the Internet, including notorious markets; creating specialized enforcement units or undertaking special initiatives against piracy over the Internet; and undertaking training to strengthen capacity to fight piracy over the Internet” (http://www.iprcenter.gov/reports/ipr-center-reports/2011-joint-strategic-plan-on-intellectual-property-enforcement/view). The list of trading partners singled out for special encouragement for improvement includes about two dozen countries that range from larger countries like Canada, China, India, Italy, Switzerland, Mexico, and Russia to smaller countries like Belarus and Brunei. And the selected countries span the globe, including countries in North, Central, and South America, Europe, and Asia.
In turn, these efforts show a major commitment by US government agencies to fight the Internet pirates, although the general public has little awareness of these efforts. This government commitment, in the United States and other countries, has been building in the last few years and is much needed, since intellectual property theft has become such a big global business. To some extent, individuals and publishers can fight back through takedown notices and litigation; but the problem has become so big that a crackdown on pirates as criminals is needed by governments across the globe.
Now this global crackdown seems to be happening, as international teams increasingly act together against some of the worst criminals. In effect, these battles in individual nations have become a global war on piracy. Governments are realizing the need to work together, given the negative effect of piracy on not only individual victims, but on the society as a whole. Piracy results in huge amounts of money lost not only from the lack of legitimate sales but as well as unpaid taxes to the government. Numerous other problems arise from individuals buying substandard counterfeit merchandise, which can include books plagiarized from authors and reissued under other names.