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FBI, DoJ Add 35 Positions For Intellectual Property Battle
coondoggie writes "The FBI and Department of Justice said they were going to go hard after intellectual property crimes this year and so far they seem to be keeping their word, as today the agencies appointed 15 new Assistant US Attorney (AUSA) positions and 20 FBI Special Agents dedicated to fighting domestic and international IP crimes. The 15 new AUSAs will work closely with the Criminal Division's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section to aggressively pursue high tech crime, including computer crime and intellectual property offenses. The new positions will be located in California, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Washington. The 20 FBI Special Agents will be deployed to specifically boost four geographic areas with intellectual property squads, and increase investigative capacity in other locations around the country where intellectual property crimes are of particular concern. The four squads will be located in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the District of Columbia."
This news makes me want to use Handbrake to edit a few minutes from The Downfall where it shows Hitler planning his movements and attacks on a map and replace the captions with English describing 35 new positions in California, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington (while he's moving the markers across the maps of Europe).
Unfortunately that's no longer possible as Youtube/Google seems to have outlawed parodies and freedom of expression/dissent in favor of draconian law.
How appropriate.
My work here is dung.
Going after the big-time bootleggers churning out counterfeits and selling fake Photoshop and DVDs online = fine and good. Going after j. random filesharing = gaaak.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
According to the article, these new squads are not just for tech-related IP issues, but also counterfeit medicine and electronics. FWIW, we do need someone to go after those making counterfeit medicine before it enters the US supply stream. Also according to the article, even the Department of Defense has had run-ins with fake electronics. That kind of thing could lead to serious consequences, and therefor must be taken seriously.
I wish that movies/music/software "sharing" was separated from movie/music/software counterfeiting and fake medicine and goods of course, but either way the American public needs to be protected from those threats.
Back once upon a time, copyright infringement was a civil matter, not a criminal matter. Problem was (from the corporations' viewpoint), that meant they had to pay for lots of lawyers and lawsuits against individual file sharers. So they lobbied to make copyright infringement, at least in certain forms, into a criminal matter. That meant that the corporations were off the hook as far as paying for enforcement, now that burden would fall on the taxpayers. The Feds liked it too, as they now had another reason to legally spy on the populous, plus they could ask for bigger budgets to support all this spying and prosecution. As far as the corporations and government are concerned, criminalizing file sharing is a win/win. The only looser is the citizen.
They went into great detail in the article discussing counterfeit goods of all sorts that threaten health and safety and then merged and drifted over to counterfeit computer software that threatens stability and privacy. (That's malware, not infringed copyrighted software... malware like Sony's rootkit) And of course it's really all about **AA interests in digital media mentioned in the article as "digital products." Accurately, they state that there is no government agency that is tracking copyright infringement or the extent of it.
The article goes to great lengths to fill the details with things other than "digital product" infringement... things that have been historically handled by these same people who tracked down and nailed groups who created and sold counterfeit Cisco network equipment. This stuff has been dealt with and managed without adding 35 new positions. So clearly these new positions are intended to deal with a newer agenda rather than an older one.
I would like for the article to be true in the sense that I would love to see a crack down on sales of counterfeit medicines and other physical goods. Sadly, I don't think this is going to be the case. The spam and scam will continue as it always has while the real crackdown will be felt by individuals at home engaged in file sharing.
But unlike hacking, file sharing is mainstream; this is why it persists. I'm too young to have been a part of that scene, but from my digging I know that the "hackers" never went away; only the "open underground" disappeared. Discussing illegal computer breaching on open forums today is an unimaginable taboo, at least if you live in a western country.
Emotions! In your brain!
*bullshit*
Citation needed.
There's a child molester in every chat room.
There's a terrorist in every van.
Smoking a joint leads to crime, violence, and insanity.
Copying a music file cripples our economy.
Oh, and drinking alcohol doesn't hurt you.
Eating cheap processed chemicals doesn't hurt you.
Polluting our air and water is worth it.
Our climate is fine.
What do all these statements have in common?
They are making some entrenched interest a lot of money.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
The War on File Sharing is the new War on Drugs.
The approach being taken is quite similar: manipulated and fabricated studies and evidence, draconian international treaties to make sure no country is allowed to implement sane policies, suspension of basic civil liberties in the name of the war, etc.
Because jails are not full enough with non-violent 'criminals' already, maybe the US is trying to raise the incarceration rate to over 90%?
"When in doubt, use brute force." Ken Thompson
Google is a private entity, unless you think that they are somehow owned/run by the government... and thus do not have to allow *anything* on their site. It may not follow their "do not evil" mantra, but it's well within their rights, and it's now being "outlawed".
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
You saw the big circus over Chelsea King in San diego. Two cute girls dead and the whole fucking city shows up for a candlelight(soon to become torchlight) vigil. It was so disgusting, even the victims' family remarked that it turned their horrible loss into a insulting and condescending feeding frenzy of two-minute-haters pretending to feel their pain. From that article:
Yeah, duh. Emotional, but not at all logical to exploit abuse or loss for political gain and dedicate exorbitant resources, especially during a budget crisis, to statistically insignificant crimes. Piracy and CP will be convenient reasons to screw everybody over as long as enough tools(suburban housewives etc.) can be manipulated emotionally by shit-mouthed political climbers.
A matter of perspective indeed. There are more hackers (in the take-over-other-systems sense) today than there were in the 90s and they control more systems too. There's a story right now about getting private information out of the cellphone networks. There are millions of botnet drones which work harder for hackers than for their legitimate owners. People still hack, people still social-engineer. There are just fewer "stars" because hacking is so much more widespread and there's little left of the illusion that computers are all advanced technology which hardly ever fails. When we see news of another major hack, we shrug and move on. It's expected.
I think tax money could be better spent fixing the system.
I think that campaign contribution money has "fixed the system" quite well up to this point. I'm not sure I could stand any more "fixing".
That is all.
how much IP can you fit it 625GB?? . A LOT more than $50.... They can hire all the cops and snoops they want, these guys are getting nowhere. The agenda to kill off copyright law is, unfortunately for these guys, clearly set and fully adhered to by everyone -- ignore it. It's a perfect strategy, as it simply lets the law stand, but makes it irrelevant. It's a perfect mass movement joining millions and millions of dedicated people, with almost no coordination needed. The copyright war isn't over yet, but the battles ahead are mere formalities, it's hopeless.
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