Copyright Enforcement Faces International Hurdles

International enforcement is daunting to some private industry shops. All the more than 7,000 file sharing cases filed by the RIAA are against U.S.-based pirates. The lobby group said its international copyright enforcement is handled by the International Federation of Phonograph Industrialists based in London. The MPAA is suing American and foreign file sharers, but won’t disclose the geographic breakdown of the suits.

The Business Software Alliance only spends about 1/4 of its enforcement budget on international piracy because it can net more licensing settlements and have greater impact nabbing American miscreants. “We continue to devote the lion’s share of our resources to the much less sexy problem of illegal copies in the workplace,” said Bob Kruger, vp-enforcement for the BSA.

BSA isn’t eager to go after international infringers more aggressively, even though pirated member software is readily available on P2P sites around the world. “On the Internet, you've got a whole different thing going on,” said Kramer: “It’s that much harder to effectively combat.” BSA has tried unsuccessfully to take down the worst copyright pirate of them all, a Russian company called CD Cheap, which generates 95% of all software spam, said Kramer. Despite pleas to the DoJ for help, BSA has had no luck. “We can’t touch them,” he said.

“Intellectual property enforcement isn’t a priority in a lot of places around the world,” said a senior Dept. of Justice official: “We have to be like salesmen and convince [local law enforcement] that these are worthy cases.” DoJ has put considerable resources into the problem and currently staffs its Computer Crime and Intellection Property section with 12 full-time attorneys. The traditional distinction between piracy of physical goods and online piracy is blurring, he said: “The hard goods world and digital world are running together.”

In April, DoJ announced a major investigation called Operation Fastlink that identified 100 people suspected of trafficking in pirated software, games, movie and music files in popular warez groups. The investigation netted suspects in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden and the U.K. Prosecutions in these cases are pending, said the DoJ source.

In Nov., more online copyright pirates were snagged in Operation Buccaneer, a 3-year joint investigation between the DoJ and U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) aimed at the warez group DrinkorDie. After 70 search warrants were served, 38 defendants have been convicted.

Not every country cooperates, said James Plitt, chief of the Cyber Crimes Center at ICE. That doesn’t particularly bother him: “We've got plenty to deal with on our own” in the U.S. Some countries with little interest in intellectual property enforcement ultimately get motivated on moral grounds -- particularly in child pornography cases, Plitt said.

The dishonor roll of countries with weak intellectual property laws or lax enforcement can be found on the U.S. Trade Representative’s Special 301 Priority List. Among the offenders are India, Indonesia, Korea, Kuwait, the Philippines, Pakistan, Taiwan, Turkey and Russia. China isn’t on the list but was the subject of its own USTR report which found it lacking in enforcement of copyright laws.

Copyright enforcement should be handled in civil courts and paid for by private industry, said the DoJ source. In an Oct. report, the agency concluded intellectual property enforcement should be a dept. priority and made sweeping recommendations about how to go about it better. Meanwhile, the DoJ will continue to “go after bigger, organized groups,” said the source.