The Department of Justice is stepping up its efforts to help the entertainment industry battle the increasing threat of P2P. As many of our readers know, the entertainment industry, represented mostly by RIAA and MPAA has been suing illegal movie and music swappers. Now the target has changed - from going after the users to going after the operators of peer-to-peer hubs which provide information to individual users as to what files are located where on the network.

Trowbirdge of New York and Chocoine of Texas each pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to one count of conspiracy to commit felony copyright infringement. Both operated P2P hubs offering wide variety of computer games, music, and movies.

"Those who steal copyrighted material will be caught, even when they
use the tools of technology to commit their crimes," U.S. Attorney
General John Ashcroft says in a statement. "The theft of intellectual
property victimizes not only its owners and their employees, but also
the American people, who shoulder the burden of increased costs for
goods and services."

This is another of series arrests or pleas that the feds have reached in their increasing efforts to stop criminal copyright violations under the Copyright Act. Although copyright violations, large scale ones, are a major problem in the cyberspace, they are not nearly as dangerous of the problems that hackers and cyber-criminals pose to the critical infrastructure that almost all of the United States businesses rely on (which network do you think your bank uses to transmit info between branches?)

Although large amount of attention is paid to often teenage copyright violators who are arrested by brave officers, arraigned, and put to jail, very little attention is paid to serious networks of zombies, for example, that have the potential and capability to bring down a major Internet server, or worse. It seems like such intense federal efforts are driven by a deep-pocket interest in the United States, in the current case - the entertainment industry. Shouldn’t other deep pockets such as banks, utility companies, and ISPs join hands in lobbying Congress and the federal agencies in DC to step-up the true "criminal" threat online?  

An interesting story of viruses, research, copyright, and jail. News.com reports of the trial of a French researcher Guillaume Tena who in 2001 found a number of vulnerabilities in the antivirus software made by a French company named Tegam. Monseur Tena published his research online in 2002 and is now facing some serious litigation in his home country.  The research showed how the program worked, demonstrated few security flaws, and carried some tests with real viruses.

However, Tena’s actions were not viewed kindly by Tegam, which
initiated legal action against the researcher. That action resulted in
a case being brought to trial in Paris. The trial kicked off on Jan. 4.
The prosecution claims that Tena violated article 335.2 of the
intellectual property code and is asking for a four-month jail term and
a fine of about $7,900 (6,000 euros) . Additionally, Tegam is
proceeding with a civil case against Tena and asking for about $1.2
million in damages.

Tena, who is now with Harvard, was labeled a "terrorist" by Tegam and was sued in French court where the judge found that because the published exploits included some re-engineered source code from the software, they violated French copyright laws.

How would this complaint do if filed in the United States? Although the facts are not entirely clear, it seems like unless there was some measure to protect access and Mr. Tena circumvented it, the plaintiff would not have much of a case. Even if there is an access-control measure, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act has a provision which in Section 1201(j) allows circumvention of access control measures in cases of security testing and research, for which Mr. Tena could quality. And certainly the US copyright violations, in most cases and especially in this one, do not carry the stiff jail penalties that the French laws carry.

The US government is openly proclaiming its desire of increased use of the criminal system to punish and deter intellectual property theft - which is now mostly defended via the civil system.

China has "got to start putting people in jail" to show it is serious
about cracking down on widespread counterfeiting and piracy that costs
U.S. companies billions of dollars in lost sales every year, a top Bush
administration official said. [Reuters]

Although such words are pretty harsh and are not heard so loudly in the US, there are proposals floating in Washington, mainly offered by the MPAA/RIAA/friends, to criminalize an increasing part of the intellectual property enforcement. This would allow the government to go after fileswappers, instead of the industries having to waste their money and resources. Nice trick, but isn’t it an overkill? Also, aren’t federal law enforcement resources better spent on catching corrupt politicians, CEOs, and murderers, rather than on putting 18-year old fileswapping kids behind bars?

A Maryland man has been sentenced to 18 months in jail for criminal violation of copyright statutes by distributing pirated software over the Internet. As the Register reports, the man was running a pay-per-access website which offered software by Microsoft, Adobe with copyright protections removed (or cracked.    ) The value of the software allegedly distributed over a 6-month period was between $70,000 and $120,000.

The defendant plead guilty that he illegally reproduced and distributed copyrighted software software. The applicable US statutes are 17 USC 506 and 17 USC 2319. Under these provisions, it is a criminal infringement for someone to wilfully to reproduce or distribute one or more copies with value of over $1,000 or for personal commercial gain. 17 USC 506(a).

In a rare criminal charge under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, Yahoo News reports that federal authorities have raided a video game store and arrested two people for modifying video game consoles to play pirated video games. It appears that they modified an Xbox console with a bigger harddrive so that users can copy (or cache) their games on it.

The charges are conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and conspiracy to traffic in a device that circumvents technological protection measures. Both charges are under the DMCA.

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