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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.
In most cases what they deem to be "Intellectual Property" certainly is a crime. I think tax money could be better spent fixing the system.
20 FBI Special Agents dedicated to fighting domestic and international IP crimes.
So does that mean the FBI is going to be investigating US Citizens for IP of international origin, or somehow extending their Jurisdiction beyond the states?
Everyone knows the biggest file sharers in the world are Canadian.
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.
This 1 minute scene from the British comedy, The IT Crowd.
Relevantly, the assasin at the end is an FBI agent. FBI as copyright police
I point of thought, he is on foreign soil enforcing US DMCA. As a side note the makers of this series have strong opinions in this area.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
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!
Great response.
*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
Such as in the SEC so they can have some people that actually police industry, instead of watching porn all day???
Your government in action!
I take no responsibility for what I say. Even though I'm never wrong
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
But unlike hacking, file sharing is mainstream; this is why it persists
Sure, there are lots of differences. The question is which differences matter, which will make a difference. I don't think being mainstream is actually enough (and let's be honest, by 'mainstream' you mean lots of people do it, not that the majority of people do it).
Does being mainstream actually make a difference? Are there examples in history of cases where a behavior was mainstream, but then changed by legal/government action? If there are, then being mainstream can be nothing more than a contributing factor, it is not enough by itself to ensure the persistence of filesharing. These are the kinds of analyses you have to do if you want to figure out what will happen.
Qxe4
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
It may end up the same with file-sharers. Eventually the law will catch up with what they are doing, chase them down, and make the potential cost of sharing too much higher than the cost of music/movies. That's clearly what these guys are trying to do.
It won't happen. Whereas in the '80s or '90s there were perhaps a few thousand hackers, in 2010 there are millions. Public perception is changing, the vast majority of teenagers see that there really isn't anything wrong with file-sharing. Governments get their power from the people, eventually, we will have to have more relaxed copyright laws. Perhaps not in 2010, perhaps not in 2015, but soon.
Computer literacy was much, much, lower in the '80s or '90s, it was really reasonable that someone didn't have a computer or internet/BBS access at their house. Today? Almost everyone has access to a computer and knows how to use it. File sharing is going to continue to grow as long as bandwidth speed continues to grow and media size doesn't increase too much before internet speed.
Hacking (cracking) also violated the basic rights of others in that it could cause damage, disrupt or destroy computer systems. While in the vast majority of cases it didn't, the media could easily control a fearful, computer-illiterate world of the 'dangers' of crackers. Today, artists are on the web, facts have been released, its cheaper than ever to get out a product. Its becoming more and more clear that P2P is -helping- artists, not harming them. Its becoming clearer and clearer that artists produce albums not to make millions off of them (they rarely do) but rather to promote live concerts, something that filesharing can never replicate. The 'traditional' media is failing and new media is taking over.
Its becoming more and more clear to the general person that if an artist is good at what they do, they can make a living one only needs to look at Homestar Runner to see that, or Xkcd, or any number of sites that survive on ad revenue/donations. The public is realizing this, the more this happens, the more laws will need to change.
So, no. Filesharing will not die out over time like cracking did. Its really hard to justify cracking (in most cases) while in most cases P2P helps the artist.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Eventually the law will catch up with what they are doing, chase them down, and make the potential cost of sharing too much higher than the cost of music/movies. That's clearly what these guys are trying to do.
Or they could just, you know, change their fucking dead business model instead of spending all this money trying to screw with the laws, going against our social morals (sharing is good, selfishness/greed is bad), to try and make the cost of sharing worse than a criminal offense, ruining countless lives in the process.
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.
Nice job buy the media lobbyists. Get you and I to pay for the enforcement of their civil cases. IP issues are still a civil matter correct? Who is getting the fine money?
When my actual physical property is stolen, I am stuck with the very limited resources of the local overworked police force that pretty much does nothing but file a report for me to give to my insurance company. Even if they catch the perp, it is still a civil matter for me to get the value of my lost goods back. The media companies gets entire teams of federal officials at my expense to track down when their property is "stolen".
Some company in China sold ATmega328 slugs to SparkFun.
Sure. I don't say it's a decisive factor all by itself, but it's certainly a factor. We could be seeing the "mainstream" thing from two different angles; here in Sweden the newspaper polls show 50+ of questionees admitting to filesharing. An even nicer angle: most of these people are probably "adults" of voting age.
Emotions! In your brain!
We could be seeing the "mainstream" thing from two different angles; here in Sweden the newspaper polls show 50+ of questionees admitting to filesharing.
Very good point, and Sweden is one of the countries with a pirate party, so things could play out differently there than in the US. Furthermore, I don't know much about Swedish recording industry, but I'd bet the music industry in the US is a bigger segment of the economy, thus in a country like Sweden it could even conceivably be seen as 'sticking it to the US' or something. I don't know if that kind of thing is popular among Swedes, though.
Qxe4
Wow, you are so far behind the schedule! When's the last time you've been on Freenet?
Yes, it's sarcasm. Deal with it!
The "lumpenproletariat" and the working class is cursing loudly at any percieved incursion by the US; most of the middle and upper-middle professional-class people (at least those who lean towards the moderates/liberals) seems to have a more pro-globalization view of things, because it's in their interest; they want to be able to take their careers wherever they want. I think they also might want to distance themselves from the "lower" people. The country is going through a bit of political turmoil, from social democracy to a more liberal "lean" economy. I support this, because the old system was bloated and did not evolve, but I can feel the devil tugging at my heartstrings and bloodthirst dancing in the eyes of the more ambitious people around me. I don't want "Reaganism". The government has thus far kept itself from oversteering, but the balance feels a bit unstable.
Emotions! In your brain!
At the end of the day, though, Mitnick-style hacking requires getting into someone else's computer: there's always going to be a pissed off business on the other end of your hacking.
With piracy, though, the only way to know that it has happened is by conducting surveillance on the people who are committing it. You can certainly make life less convenient for the high-profile piracy groups, but the idea of piracy going the way of black hat hacking is pretty ridiculous.
Honestly, I think we're really only one major leap in storage before music piracy starts to become trivial. Assuming MP3 v0's, the record industry is only producing about 80gb worth of music per year. Once you can get 1tb of data on an optical disk, we're talking about an entire decade's music on one CD. What are you going to do, install surveillance software on every computer in the country? Install cameras and look for CDs? Give me a break.
Regardless of what people would like, recorded music is not scarce anymore, and therefore does not have economic value. Sorry!
There is a huge difference there though. Do you honestly believe everyone's iPod is filled with legal music? When did you have the extra money to dump 45k into music for your ipod? The difference is the number of people involved and the difference is breaking vs fair use.
Makes no distinction? This is a US-centric thread, so I'm using USC here. Counterfeiting, Trademark, Patents, and Copyright are all treated differently. In addition, there are separate rules for counterfeit Trademarks, counterfeit Coins (18 U.S.C. 485), counterfeit Dollars (18 U.S.C. 471), and counterfeit coins and dollars that are not exact copies but appear to be legit such as a $3 or $1000000000000 bill (18 U.S.C. 475 and 489). That's pretty specific, and the law does make very fine-grained distinctions.
that aside, I'd like to see any US law which says "1 kid sharing a song with a friend? GO TO JAIL". One court case would be acceptable, unless it was turned over on appeal. Lots of people copy stuff and sell it to people and get jail time, but "1 kid sharing a song with a friend" does not qualify. In fact, I'm not aware of any examples where "1 kid sharing a song with a friend" was ever prosecuted - it is sharing with numerous strangers which gets you noticed by MAFIAA lawsuits.
In short, I don't think you have the faintest idea what you're talking about. I'd love to read more.
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.
"Intellectual property crime", "IP offence"... George Orwell should rise from the grave and sue for "IP theft".
"Blah blah blah." - [citation needed]
You probably bought into the propaganda for this guy...sorry! You probably thought this government was to be, as his campaign touted "Open and Honest", but clearly neither is true. I can't find a single promise kept.
What he/they WANT is to have the tiniest hint of legitimacy in dealing with the net, so they can tax and censor it. Scaling up on IP means being on the net to show a "Demon" to fight, just like AIG, just like Goldman, so they can do whatever it takes to control that part of our lives, too.
You guys 'bomb' me all the time for being a troll...this is a very liberal enclave. But this man and his comrades in the congress are taking it all away from us. I've known the nature of this 'new America' for almost two years.
Don't be fooled...again...that this government is doing anything for openness nor fairness. It's all about control.
Not opinion: just look at the news stories. Look at the 150 banks put out of business, the health insurance companies about to fold, and the nationalization of industries.
It just might be that we're not permitted on the net, come November. He'll need every vote he can beg, borrow, steal, or fraud to stay in power.
Now: MARK ME AS A TROLL FOR WARNING YOU.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
I haven't ever used Freenet, but even if it's got tons of stolen software, child porn, and radical Wahabi rants that wouldn't prove how many sources the stuff is coming from. It could be 5.9 billion people or 59 people.
And to the point of the GGGP's post, I'd bet that there is more unauthorized IP on any kind of file sharing network than child porn.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Ah, but then they get arrested in Australia under child pornography laws.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Not the best comparison. Try comparing copying to sex, not to hacking or cracking.
Since long before "thou shalt not commit adultery", people have tried to regulate sex. In the Middle Ages they even refused medical treatment to people afflicted with diseases that were "obviously" caused by certain moral weaknesses. I have a 1948 English dictionary that defines masturbation with just 2 words: self pollution. On every least sexual advance, such as the Pill and other contraceptives, gay marriage, porn, obscenity, you name it, some have prophesied doom over and over. Society will lose its moral compass. Young people won't appreciate the value of hard work, and will grow up to be irresponsible hedonists. First the family will collapse, then the nation. And what really happened? The only thing that was lost was the credibility of these doomsayers-- if they had any to start with. They've utterly failed to stop sex that they don't approve of, and if they hadn't been such fools, they would have known the futility of trying. They can't scare or shame people into not doing it, can't prevent it by force of law, can't make it impossible by any technological means, such as chastity belts. Even mass sterilization wouldn't stop sex, though it makes it biologically pointless. Their scare tactics have been exposed as lies, and in many cases particularly stupid lies. It's a magnet for fools, and a gigantic sink for credibility. All this about sex sounds awfully like file sharing does it not?
Sharing will persist. Sharing a few files is even easier to do and harder to detect than sex. Someday, sharing will be entirely legal, and understood to be a huge public good. Future students of history will just shake their heads in pity at how stupid we were, allowing these vested interests to regulate, forbid, and prevent sharing, and at the wealth and knowledge we never discovered by doing so. If there are such things, cures for cancer and AIDS and a host of other problems could well be delayed for years, thanks to intellectual property rights. The industry's claims about the damage caused by sharing is about like claiming that every baby someone else has means less food for them (which may or may not be true), and that world governments should go to the expense of enforcing the use of condoms with DRM. Today, anyone who suggested that volunteers for Planned Parenthood ought to be jailed for promoting immorality would be laughed at. We're not quite there yet with sharing.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Besides that file sharing is much more commonplace and mainstream than hacking or cracking, as already pointed out, it's also the case that copyright is a compact between society and content creators (really owners). And many people, particularly those most aware of the history of copyright, strongly feel that the current balance of law is improperly tilted toward content owners, at the expense of society as a whole.
Thus copyright infringement in many cases can be seen as a form of civil disobedience. (Sure, we could all cry to our Congresscritters, and many of us already have, to no apparent avail, but who are we kidding? You think they are going to listen to us, or the corporations that provide their slush funding?)
Among the ridiculous abuses: "Happy Birthday to You". The song was originally "written" when kindergarten teachers Patty and Mildred Hill added the words "Good Morning to All" to an existing popular (and unattributed) melody sung (and even published) since at least the 1850s with similar, but different, words ("Happy Greetings to All", "Good Night to You All", "A Happy New Year to All", etc.). This they published in 1893 (though this original copyright has long since expired). Later, some of their (needless-to-say uncredited) 5-6 year old students spontaneously began singing it with the words "Happy Birthday to You". The real ridiculousness begins in 1935, when a publisher hired someone to (re-)add the "Happy Birthday" words to the long-existing melody, and gained a copyright on the whole thing. A number of corporate acquisitions later, and today that copyright is owned by Warner Music, who shakes down restaurant chains et al for royalties on all performances, with the copyright not set to expire in the United States until 2030 (unless Congress extends copyright yet again, in which case it might never expire). That is probably close to 200 years after the melody was first sung, and perhaps 150 years since the words were added, and neither the predecessors of the current copyright owner nor the "authors" granted the original, expired, copyright had much of anything to do with creating either the melody or the lyrics in the first place.
Once upon a time, we were Citizen. Citizens had rights. Now, we're mere consumers. Consumers think they have rights (but don't).
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Are you channeling Ayn Rand?
http://atlasshrugged.com/
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Looks like it's time for /. to add a "PoliceState" section. I suggest a boot stamp as the icon.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
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.
Well, at least you're half right.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
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.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Well, here is one I could remember off the top of my head, even though I'm not the GP...Al Gore will become a carbon billionaire if he gets carbon credits (which frankly is the stupidest idea since catholic indulgences) passed. That should take care of I believe 7 and 8 on the GP's list. Sorry that I don't have time to fill in the rest, but I have a major splitting headache ATM.
But the GP's point is valid...Since we are now faced with the biggest propaganda conglomerate in the history of the planet..the main stream media, or MSM, pretty much ANYTHING that you hear of through mainstream channels has the backing of one or more big money players looking to score major money. Sadly for all those "libertarian Yay!" types, this is what happens when you completely deregulate a market that has such a high barrier to entry. Last I heard nearly all TV/Radio/Print outlets were owned by..what? Seven major multinationals now? The odds of getting heard by the masses if your message isn't approved of by at least one of those multinationals is now pretty much zip.
And of course if you piss those multinationals off expect to have every talking head on the airwaves next week talking about what a crazy nutjob you are, and sadly most of the population will believe what they are told. Such is the incredible power of the MSM. Putting an issue on the ballot won't do jack shit if nobody ever gets to hear about it, which if you try to do anything that cuts off the money printing machine that is copyrights you can bet you last soon to be worthless dollar nobody will hear anything even remotely positive about your ballot. It will be a "job costing income robbing artist screwing socialist plot!" or something similar.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
> When it comes to kids sharing songs, that's civil, not criminal.
In theory, if you infringe upon the copyright of works with a retail value larger than a certain amount (I think it's $1000) in a certain period of time and you have a financial incentive (such as getting infringing copies of other copyrighted works in return), you can be prosecuted under criminal law. I believe the law that created those offenses is the NET Act (but get a lawyer if it ever applies to you).
Thing is, in practice, they don't charge normal people with that. Instead, they go after the release groups and other people high on the food chain. In short, they could prosecute some file sharers under criminal law, but in practice, they have better things to do with their time, but they do bust people who run big warez sites and things of that nature.