From sbwoodside at yahoo.com Wed Mar 5 06:58:31 2003 From: sbwoodside at yahoo.com (S Woodside) Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2003 20:28:31 -0500 Subject: [Commons-Law] Re: [LIG] Free Software as an intangible world cultural heritage (fwd) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: So Free software is now cultural? How? Let's consult the OED... culture-- 5 a absol. The training, development, and refinement of mind, tastes, and manners; the condition of being thus trained and refined; the intellectual side of civilization. b (with a and pl.) A particular form or type of intellectual development. Also, the civilization, customs, artistic achievements, etc., of a people, esp. at a certain stage of its development or history. (In many contexts, esp. in Sociology, it is not possible to separate this sense from sense 5 a.) that seems a stretch for a technical pursuit. Heritage is even more disputable (can something that's 20-30 yrs old be a heritage?). Perhaps it would be more apropriate to call the "Free Software Movement" a cultural heritage, at least it can claim to be a moral ideology or philosophy, and thus somehow cultural. simon On Tuesday, March 4, 2003, at 02:55 PM, FN wrote: > cultural -- anti-spam: do not post this address publicly www.simonwoodside.com -- 99% Devil, 1% Angel From shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in Thu Mar 6 01:38:52 2003 From: shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Shamnad=20Basheer?=) Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2003 20:08:52 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Commons-Law] yahoo tea In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030305200852.28289.qmail@web8006.mail.in.yahoo.com> hi sudhir, you're right-the important question is to ask as to whether we need such protection at all for well known marks-on the contrary, going by the traditionale rationale of "customer confusion", it may even be possible to make a case against such grant on the ground that the more well known a mark, the lesser protection it deserves-since consumers would be well aware of the mark and less prone to confusion. regards-sham sudhir krishnaswamy wrote:hi shamnad yahoo tea and yahoo on the web could be registered under different classification categories for the purposes of trademark law.. then yahoo on the web would argue that it is a well known mark and entitled to anti dilution remedies. this poses the now familiar argument of why we should protect marks beyond consumer protection and unfair competition rationale and treat it as property. this is more the case when the term 'yahoo' has had a significant pulbic domain cultural life - a la shammi kapoor - of its own before the trademark claim! sudhir _________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________ commons-law mailing list commons-law at mail.sarai.net http://mail.sarai.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/commons-la Catch all the cricket action. Download Yahoo! Score tracker -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030305/7603b30d/attachment.html From raviv at sarai.net Sat Mar 8 11:14:59 2003 From: raviv at sarai.net (Ravi Vasudevan) Date: Sat, 08 Mar 2003 10:44:59 +0500 Subject: [Commons-Law] (no subject) Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.20030308104459.007e0c60@mail.sarai.net> From: "Ravi Srinivas" Reply-To: "Ravi Srinivas" To: raviv at mail.sarai.net Subject: fyki Please see Media Development, Issue 1, 2003 Intellectual Property Rights and Communication http://www.wacc.org.uk/publications/md/md2003-1/contents.html At present I am a visiting scholar with Law School Indiana University Bloomington. Ravi Vasudevan The Sarai programme: city/media/public domain Senior Fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi-110054 India Tel. 2395-1190, 2394-2119, 2396-0040 Fax. 2394-3450 From mary at sarai.net Tue Mar 11 04:02:58 2003 From: mary at sarai.net (Meyarivan) Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 04:02:58 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Commons-Law] CopyRight, CopyLeft, CopyConsent (edited & fwd) Message-ID: http://ccsindia.org/ipr.htm Centre for Civil Society Invites you to a Dialogue on --------------------------------------------------------------------------- CopyRight, CopyLeft, CopyConsent: IPR in the Information Age Panel: Swaminathan Aiyar, Times of India Ajay Shah, IGIDR & Ministry of Finance Moderator: Parth J Shah, Centre for Civil Society Venue: Conference Room 4, India International Centre Annexe, Delhi Date & Time: 5:30pm, March 15, 2003 Please join us for Tea at 5 pm. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Relevant Reading Material: -------------------------- * ARE PATENTS AND COPYRIGHTS MORALLY JUSTIFIED? THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROPERTY RIGHTS AND IDEAL OBJECTS By Tom G. Palmer http://ccsindia.org/Palmer_one.pdf * INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: A NON-POSNERIAN LAW AND ECONOMICS APPROACH By Tom G. Palmer http://ccsindia.org/Palmer_two.pdf * INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS: THEORY & INDIAN PRACTICE By Garima Gupta & Avih Rastogi http://ccsindia.org/IPR_India.pdf From monica at sarai.net Thu Mar 13 19:13:41 2003 From: monica at sarai.net (Monica Narula) Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 19:13:41 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Sarai Reader 03 : Shaping Technologies Message-ID: Sarai Reader 03 : Shaping Technologies Paperback, 392 pages, Rs. 295, US $ 15, Euro 15 ISBN 81-901429-3-3 Sarai, CSDS and the Waag Society for Old and New Media announce the publication of Sarai Reader 03 : Shaping Technologies. The book will be released on the 14th of March 2003 at Sarai, CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi. "Shaping Technologies " sets out to ratchet our engagement with the contemporary moment a notch higher, in directions that are sober, exhilarating and discomfiting all at once. The book brings to the fore a series of situations and predicaments that mark the encounter between people and machines, between nature and culture, and between knowledge and power. The issues covered span a wide range - from the cognitive and ethical dilemmas that beset the engineer, to the legal and cultural implications of copying in a digital realm, from software as art to the history of science fiction, from wireless manifestoes to the domestication of photography, from kitchen utensils to airplanes, from mobile phones to kerosene lamps, from body nets to biotech, from reproductive technologies to technologies of reproduction, from computers to radios and from coal mines to call centres. A cutting edge collection of original writing and images by theorists, critics, photographers, philosophers, engineers, activists, artists, designers media practitioners and programmers from many parts of the world. Editorial Collective : Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula, Ravi Sundaram, Ravi Vasudevan and Shuddhabrata Sengupta (Sarai) Geert Lovink and Marleen Stikker (Waag Society) Contributors include : Arun Mehta, Biella Coleman, Ana Viseu, Raqs Media Collective, Rabindranath Tagore, Sabina Gadihoke, Steve Dietz, Pauline van Mourik Broekman, Rana Dasgupta, Debjani Sengupta, Siddhartha Ghosh, McKenzie Wark, Andrew Feenberg, Eugene Thacker, Joanne Richardson, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, subRosa, Rupsa Mallik & Veena Das Interviews with : Arash Zeini, Janos Sugar, Hildegard Westerkamp Photo Essays by : Shahid Datawala, Monica Narula, Srinivas Kuruganti Published by Sarai/CSDS, Delhi and the Waag Society/for Old and New Media, Amsterdam for enquiries contact publications at sarai.net An online edition of the book is available at http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader3.html paperback, 392 pages, Rs. 295, US $ 15, Euro 15 ISBN 81-901429-3-3 For enquiries, contact: publications at sarai.net or write to Publications Sarai, CSDS 29 Rajpur Road Delhi 110 054 India -- Monica Narula Sarai:The New Media Initiative 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 www.sarai.net From shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in Sun Mar 16 01:20:01 2003 From: shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Shamnad=20Basheer?=) Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 19:50:01 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Commons-Law] ambush marketing Message-ID: <20030315195001.99491.qmail@web8006.mail.in.yahoo.com> thankfully, we didnt have another over-extensive ruling, importing vague concepts such as "ambush marketing" into our IPR regime and extending the right of publicity to events. shamnad ICC (Development) International Ltd. v. Arvee Enterprises & Anr.21 February 2003 ICC, through its event management arm, ICC (Development) International Ltd. (“IDI”), filed this suit seeking a permanent injunction against Philips’ use of the words ‘World Cup’ in its promotional scheme offering World Cup (“the event”) ticket-cum-travel packages to South Africa as prizes for customers purchasing Philips products. Philips purchased travel packages from the Indian sub-agent of the official tour operator of IDI for consideration, which were confirmed by the latter. IDI alleged that Philips had breached the terms of sale of the tour packages which specifically prohibited use of the same for promotion or as prizes for competitions. Philips stated that the said terms were not conveyed till the present suit was filed. The Delhi High Court on January 31 2003 declined an interim injunction on the following grounds: 1. Passing Off: The ingredients of passing off were not made out by IDI, as Philips’ advertisement merely showed that the purchasers of its goods may win a ticket and travel package to see the World Cup and nothing more. Thus, there was no likelihood of confusion in the mind of the purchasing public that Philips was, in any way, associated with the event. 2. Ambush Marketing IDI pleaded that Philips’ advertisement amounted to “Ambush Marketing”, because Philips has not paid to become an official sponsor, therefore it should be restrained from carrying on such activity whereby it seeks to ride on the goodwill generated by the event. Philips argued that contours of the term “ambush marketing” are not clear and that its activity does not fall within the ambit thereof. Further, no statutory or common law prohibits such an activity in India. Olympics is the only event that is afforded protection under the Emblems and Names (Prevention of Improper Use) Act, 1950. The court holding for Philips held that the phrase ambush marketing is used by marketing executives only and this form of opportunistic commercial exploitation of an event amounted to constitutionally protectable commercial speech. Thus, it was for the legislature to decided how far to curtail legitimate fair competition and freedom of speech. 3. Right of Publicity The court upholding Philips’ contentions observed that the Right of Publicity could not extend to non-living entities as: 1) There are alternative theories for protection of such events within intellectual property law; 2) Protection afforded to an event would be against the basic concept of “persona,” which, by its very definition can inhere only in an individual or any indicia of an individual’s personality. The court explained that though an individual may acquire the Right of Publicity by virtue of association with an event, however, that right does not inhere in the event in question, nor in the organisation behind the event. 4. Genericness Rejecting IDI’s argument that World Cup is not generic, the court ruled that World Cup is a dictionary term for an event or tournament where several countries participate. Thus, the terms, “World Cup” and “World Cup Cricket” are Generic. The court further rejected IDI’s argument that generic words are capable of acquiring secondary meaning. 5. Inducement to breach the contract IDI alleged that Philips’ activities would result in inducing the official sponsors, to breach their contract with IDI. The court upheld Philips’ argument that IDI’s plaint did not contain any averment to satisfy the ingredients required to establish a claim of inducement to breach. Catch all the cricket action. Download Yahoo! Score tracker -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030315/df06205d/attachment.html From tripta at sarai.net Fri Mar 28 20:17:04 2003 From: tripta at sarai.net (tripta) Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 20:17:04 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] amendments to the Copyright Law of 1996 in Mexico Message-ID: <200303282017.04469.tripta@sarai.net> http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/blog/archives/mexican.txt -----Original Message----- From: Sistemas Olivares & Cia. Sent: Tue Mar 25 13:10:07 2003 To: [snipped] Subject: Mexican Copyright Law Dear Colleagues: During the next days the Mexican Congress will be reviewing and discussing a bill with the purpose of making certain amendments to the Copyright Law of 1996. The bill motivated by the request of the former party in power. In essence, what the bill proposes is the implementation of a number of provisions granting additional rights to authors and holders of neighboring rights such as artists and phonogram producers. Thus, in among other aspects, the Copyright Law would be changed to reflect a compensation right for private copying of works of authorship. Among others, the electronic industry has strongly opposed to the measure, as it would be the manufacturers and vendors of equipment and media for reproducing copyrightable subject matter, who would bear the obligation to cover the compensation. The reform contemplates a droit de suite aimed at protecting authors of works of fine arts as well as creations of similar nature, with the exception of works of applied arts. A system would be established including procedures to fix compensations, transmitting rights mortis causa and imposing obligations upon brokers and dealers to inform authors or their representatives about any sales made of works of their authorship so that they get the right compensation. One change that has also become the subject of discussion is the increase of the patrimonial right term of life plus seventy-five years to life plus one hundred years. Once the term expires, the Government would have the power to collect fees from the use of works, which are no longer protected. Older statutes like the Copyright Law of 1956 followed a similar system, which was abolished during the eighties as it resulted unfair and inapplicable. In addition, the bill would suggest a provision on restoration of rights for works that fell into the public domain for lack of compliance with formalities in conformance with the Civil Codes of 1884 and 1932. The amendment has been strongly supported by authors and collecting societies but on the other hand; it has been rejected by the industry. Debates in Congress have intensified in so far as interested parties have had the opportunity to raise their arguments and positions. Many would hope that Congress fully meditates about the implications of the amendment not only in terms of what it would mean for the users of works but for society in general. The challenge for legislators is thus manifest. Lets see what it happens in the end and we will certainly keep you informed. Olivares Copyright and Technology group is comprised of almost 10 IP specialists, many of whom have technical degrees. The group handles complex litigation, brand protection and anti-piracy, licensing, copyright, and patent and trademark prosecution. For further information, contact: Luis C. Schmidt 52 55 53 22 3000 lsr at olivares.com.mx Sincerely, OLIVARES & CIA. PS: Please circulate this important notice. -- `The moroccans with the carpets seem like saints but they're salesman' From jeebesh at sarai.net Mon Mar 31 15:35:49 2003 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 15:35:49 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] File-sharing and piracy linked to terrorism? Message-ID: <200303311535.49064.jeebesh@sarai.net> Article: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/3/14/234939/956 Testimony of Jack Valenti President and CEO Motion picture association of america before the SubCommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property Committee on the Judiciary U.S. House of Representatives “international Copyright Piracy:Links to Organized Crime and Terrorism” March 13, 2003 America’s crown jewels -- its intellectual property -- are being looted. Organized, violent, international criminal groups are getting rich from the high gain/low risk business of stealing America’s copyrighted works. We don’t know to what end the profits from these criminal enterprises are put. US industry alone will never have the tools to penetrate these groups or to trace the nefarious paths to which those profits are put. For these reasons it is entirely suitable and necessary that the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property of the House of Representative’s Committee on the Judiciary hold this hearing and illuminate the nature of the problems and the effect on the copyright industries (consisting of movies, TV programs, home videos, books, music, computer games and software). The Economic Worth of the Copyright Industries The copyright industries were responsible in 2001 for some five percent of the GDP of the nation. Over the past quarter century, these industries’ share of GDP grew more than twice as fast as the remainder of the economy. They earn more international revenues than automobiles and auto parts, more than aircraft, more than agriculture. The copyright industries are creating new jobs at three times the rate of the rest of the economy. The movie industry alone has a surplus balance of trade with every single country in the world. No other American industry can make that statement. And all this comes at a time when the U.S. is suffering from some $400 billion in trade deficits. Digital Piracy: The Delivery Dream, the Piracy Nightmare It would be a serious mistake to take our past successes for granted. While piracy has been a sad fact illuminating our lives since the blossoming of the home video entertainment business a quarter century ago, the forms of digital piracy we now face raise serious, new challenges that we need your help in addressing. I must admit, with all appropriate modesty, that we had become fairly good at combating the old forms of analog video tape piracy. With the help of our government and international trade agreements, such as the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property, most countries have adopted modern copyright laws. We had been seeing declining loss rates in many of the traditional centers of piracy. Despite our successes, we were losing close to $3 billion dollars a year. And then the world changed. Digital technologies, which offer so much in terms of enhanced clarity of image and sound, and exciting new ways to deliver high quality entertainment directly to people’s homes, also gave birth to serious new forms of piracy. By now, I presume that all of you have heard of our concerns about Internet piracy – and I assure you, that dialogue will continue. The mysterious magic of being able, with a simple click of a mouse, to send a full-length movie hurtling with the speed of light to any part of the planet, is a marketing dream and an anti-piracy nightmare. Ask the music industry how Internet piracy can devastate an industry’s bottom line. As computer modem speeds accelerate and broadband access spreads across the United States and around the world, more people are gaining the ability to download full length motion pictures quickly. The threat to the motion picture industry from Internet piracy is growing. Internet piracy is not the only digital threat we face. Today, I’d like to focus on another form of digital piracy – widespread piracy of optical discs – CDs, Video CDs, DVDs, and recordable versions like CD-Rs and DVD-Rs. The piracy of DVDs and other optical media products is dominated by organized crime and increasingly threatens our international markets, which account for 40 percent of revenues earned by the filmed entertainment industry. Indeed, all industries that rely on intellectual property protection, including the music and video game industries, are facing huge losses from optical disc piracy, especially in international markets. Microsoft products are another favorite target for the pirates. The motion picture industry seized over 7 million pirate DVDs worldwide last year. DVD piracy didn’t exist for our industry as recently as 1999. “Die Another Day:” An Example of Pirates in Action The damage from pirated DVDs is enormous. DVD piracy erodes our home video revenues, but also corrodes revenues from our international theatrical business. Pirate DVDs often enter the market months before the release of legitimate DVDs – often before a movie is released into the theaters. Let me give you just one example. MGM’s latest James Bond film, Die Another Day, was released theatrically in major cinemas in the United States on November 22. The first pirate copy, camcorded from a press screening in the United States, showed up in pirated DVD format in Malaysia on November 21. By the 28th, only six days after its US theatrical release, every major market in Asia was already infected with pirate copies of Die Another Day. In Taiwan, theatrical release wasn’t scheduled until February 1 to coincide with Chinese New Years holidays – normally a big period for cinema sales in that part of the world. The pirates had nine full weeks to sell our products in pirated form before the film was legitimately released in theaters. A Snapshot of Optical Disc Piracy Around the World The problem of large-scale pirate optical disc production began in China in the mid-90s. When China cut off the export of piratical discs in the late 1990s, the pirates packed up their equipment and relocated to more hospitable areas where enforcement was lax or absent. Now we are seeing major problems with DVD production in Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, Philippines, and Indonesia. Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ukraine, and elsewhere in Central Europe are host to factories replicating pirate copies of music CDs. The music industry’s problems today are always a danger sign for us, since pirates often start with music and then move on to movies, video games and other products. In the past year, we have also witnessed a major surge of large-scale factory production of DVDs in Russia. Today there are at least 26 optical plants in Russia, including at least five that specialize in the production of DVDs. The number and overall capacity of these plants has more than doubled in the past two years. Nine of these plants are located on property owned by the Russian Government. Pirate DVDs have devastated the local market in Russia. Pirate DVDs have so saturated the Russian market that the pirates have resorted to selling them on the streets by the kilo. Pirate DVDs are sold everywhere – at street markets, in kiosks, in retail stores and over the Internet. Those 26 plants in Russia currently have capacity to replicate about 300 million DVDs and CDs a year; legitimate demand in Russia is approximately 18 million units. This excess capacity points to the fact that the Russian pirates are targeting export markets – OUR export markets. Piracy in Russia poses a major threat to revenues across Europe. In 2002 MPA’s anti-piracy operations seized pirate Russian DVDs in markets across Central and Eastern Europe. In July a raid at a retail market in Poland turned up over 4000 copies of pirate discs from Russia. Those discs contained 15 different language tracks – from Finnish and Swedish to Greek and Turkish, Dutch, Danish, to Indian and Arabic. If bold actions aren’t taken quickly to shut down this piracy, American sales of copyrighted works to Western Europe - our most lucrative market in the world - will be demolished by these pirated imports from Russia. The time to act is now before these criminals further build out their distribution networks and alliances throughout Central and Western Europe. Even before large-scale factory production has been brought under control, we are now seeing the rapid growth of local burning of movies and other forms of copyrighted content onto blank recordable media – CD-Rs and DVD-Rs. This kind of piracy is more dispersed geographically, since the piracy takes place in medium to small “labs” with banks of CD burners, but is often still highly organized. The retail markets in Taiwan are filled with this kind of pirate product; not coincidentally, Taiwan is one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of blank optical discs, fueling this problem around the world. The Organized Crime Connection Several U.S. government agencies are bringing attention to the link between organized crime and copyright piracy. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s website home page states the following: “Unlike criminals who engage in other types of criminal activity, those who commit IP crimes can not easily be categorized. Counterfeiters, software pirates, and trade secret thieves are as different as the intellectual property they counterfeit, steal, and sell. In general, software pirates have an acute interest in computers and by extension, the Internet. Many counterfeiters hail from foreign countries, such as South Korea, Vietnam, or Russia. They are frequently organized in a loosely knit network of importers and distributors who use connections in China, Southeast Asia, or Latin America to have their counterfeit and imitation products made inexpensively by grossly underpaid laborers. There is also strong evidence that organized criminal groups have moved into IP crime and that they are using the profits generated from these crimes to facilitate other illegal activities. There are a number of reasons for the dramatic increase in IP crime in recent years. First, many forms of IP can be produced with minimal start-up costs making IP crimes accessible to large numbers of people; second international enforcement of IP laws is virtually nonexistent; and finally, domestic enforcement of IP laws has been inadequate and consequently the level of deterrence has been inadequate.” The link between piracy and organized crime has been widely accepted by the European Commission, which recently organized a forum to address the prevention of organized crime and included a discussion of piracy and counterfeiting. Interpol has also acknowledged the link with organized crime and established the Interpol Intellectual Property Crime Action Group. Many national enforcement authorities, from the United Kingdom to Australia have recognized that piracy and organized crime go hand in hand. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the Rt. Hon. Dr. John REID, last year announced the Serious & Organised Crime Threat Assessment & Strategy. He identified as immediate priority areas of criminality: (1) Armed Robbery; (2) Counterfeit Goods – Intellectual Property Crime; (3) Tobacco and fuel smuggling; and (4) Drug Dealing. Case Examples of Organized Crime Pirate factories go to great lengths to conceal and harden their operations. One raid in October 2001, near Bangkok, revealed an underground tunnel linking a factory to a residential house. Pirate products were moved out of the factory on a meter-wide, specially installed electric rail system that ended under the kitchen sink of a near-by home. The products were trucked away from the back of the house, effectively hiding the movement of pirated goods out of the factory. The pirates employ sophisticated security systems, such as hardened front doors and surveillance cameras, to delay entry by enforcement officials into the factories. These security devices give the pirates the 10-15 minutes they need to destroy the evidence of their crimes in vats of acid kept specifically for this purpose. Local police have been forced to adopt equally sophisticated responses. In the raid on a factory in Thailand the police, accompanied by our anti-piracy enforcement team, broke through the roof of the factory and rappelled down ropes in order to maintain the element of surprise. Sophisticated Smuggling The pirates also use highly sophisticated smuggling methods. Macau Marine Police, working with Hong Kong Customs, intercepted two submerged, un-powered, purpose-built “submarines” in two, separate raids in April and May 1999. These submarines were towed behind fishing boats and had ballast and compressed air tanks that enabled the sub to be raised and lowered. If enforcement officials intercepted the fishing vessel, the tow line could be cut, the barge’s location marked with GPS positioning, and later recovered when the coast was clear. In these cases, however, the authorities, relying on sophisticated intelligence, knew what they were looking for and were able to recover 174,000 pirate optical discs in one seizure and 73,000 in the second. These cases demonstrate the scale and level of sophistication that criminal syndicates employ to evade detection. Traditionally, such methods have been reserved for the smuggling of drugs and other contraband, including firearms. Pirates use other ingenious methods to smuggle their products. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industries, in a raid with Polish Customs last year, intercepted a car suspected of transporting pirate CDs from Russia. When the authorities removed the car’s fender, they found a hidden compartment full of pirated CDs. MPA has found hidden compartments in shipping containers, stacks of DVDs concealed in bags of asphalt, and ingenious concealed cavities in what appeared to be stacks of flattened cardboard boxes. Sometimes the pirates try to ship pirated products by disguising them as legal products. A law enforcement official in Australia thought he had a shipment of blank DVDs – until he pealed back the label on one of the copies – and uncovered a shipment of pirated copies of the film “Ali.” With the cooperation of major express mail delivery services, we have made progress in cutting down the shipment of pirated DVDs from Malaysia. In a major raid last July in Penang, Malaysia, we discovered 418 separate parcels containing about 10,000 pirate DVDS destined for Australia, the Middle East, Europe and even the United States. Violence and Intimidation Pirates also employ violence and intimidation. A raid on a street market in Malaysia last summer turned into a riot. A vehicle driven by the pirates rammed the van transporting the Malaysian enforcement officials and MPA’s anti-piracy investigators to the raid. Bat wielding pirates attacked the enforcement team. Only after the Malaysian enforcement officials fired their weapons into the air did the crowd disperse. Pirates have directly threatened Government leaders. Last year, the President of the Municipal Council in a city in Malaysia received a personal death threat along with a threat that his daughter would be raped if the crackdown on illegal VCD traders continued. The Minister of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs in Malaysia also received a personal death threat. In the Netherlands two years ago, our local program helped smash a sophisticated and violent criminal organization that was distributing compilation pirate optical discs under the HiteXplosion and MovieBox labels. The discs contained monthly compilations of interactive games, movies and music. Two of the pirates had organized the torture of two associates for under-reporting their sales of pirated CDs and DVDs. The two were subsequently sentenced to four and a half year prison terms on charges of extortion and accessory to kidnapping and attempted assault. In the UK, there is increasing evidence that Chinese crime gangs control much of the pirate DVD business in London and the South East. Illegal immigrants have, it appears, been pressed into selling pirate DVDs by Chinese human traffickers (known as Snakeheads) to pay off family debts to the gangs. Governments Note Links to Terrorism Mr. Chairman, let me commend to your attention an article by Kathleen Millar in the November 2002 issue of US Customs Today entitled “Financing Terror: Profits from Counterfeit Goods Pay for Attacks.” With your permission, I would like to enter this article into the record. The article outlines the “close connections between transnational crime and terrorism.” It states that the participants at the 1st International Conference on IPR hosted by Interpol in Lyon, France in 2001 “all agreed the evidence was indisputable: a lucrative trafficking in counterfeit and pirate products – music, movies, seed patents, software, tee-shirts, Nikes, knock-off CDs and ‘fake drugs’ accounts for much of the money the international terrorist network depends on to feed its operations.” The article concludes that “The new link between commercial-scale piracy and counterfeiting has redirected public attention in 2002, and law enforcement agencies like Customs and Interpol are going after the organized crime syndicates in charge of what was too often viewed as a “victimless crime.” September 11 changed the way Americans look at the world. It also changed the way American law enforcement looks at Intellectual Property crimes.” The Police Service of Northern Ireland’s (PSNI) Anti-Counterfeiting and Racketeering Unit also reports that paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland regard counterfeiting as their preferred fund-raising option. According to the PSNI, these paramilitary groups last year made specific threats against officers involved in anti-piracy raids at Newtownards Market after PSNI officers had seized over £50,000 worth of counterfeit goods, including DVDs. An Appeal for Assistance To deal with this kind of organized crime, MPAA and our fellow copyright associations, need the help of governments – both here and abroad. It is simply not possible for a private sector organization to penetrate this kind of organized, criminal endeavor without the help of governments. Governments need to dedicate the same kinds of legal tools to fighting piracy that they bring to other kinds of organized crime: money laundering statutes, surveillance techniques, and organized crime laws. We also need your help to let foreign government officials whom you meet here or when you are abroad, know that inaction is not an option in the fight against piracy. The continued vitality of the copyright industries, one of America’s signature industries, is at stake. We need our enforcement agencies to help train and work with foreign enforcement agencies to stem the flow of piracy across borders. We also need the continued assistance of all the agencies that make up the “country team” at American embassies abroad. Ambassadors and their staff from State and Commerce have done outstanding jobs in offices from Moscow to Taipei in helping press for better laws and better enforcement. They help deliver the message that failure to address these high levels of crime has consequences for our bilateral relationships. The traditional enforcement agencies – Customs and legal attaches – are also playing an important role in some countries in engaging their counterparts in dialogue, in improving coordination among enforcement agencies around the world, and in training foreign law enforcement in all aspects of fighting organized crime – including copyright theft. Recently negotiated trade agreements are playing a crucial role in raising the standards of copyright law and enforcement around the world. The Office of the US Trade Representative has done an excellent job in the newly negotiated FTAs with Chile and Singapore incorporating provisions that raise the standards for copyright protection to the level of US laws and help provide the tools we need to combat this menace. The agreements also help open markets – and the more open the market, the less the incentive for piracy. I hope I can encourage you to support these Free Trade Agreements when they come before Congress later this year. Entertainment Industry Coalition for Free Trade I’m pleased to announce that in recognition and support of the value of trade agreements in helping to move our international agenda forward, we will be launching at noon today an Entertainment Industry Coalition for Free Trade. This coalition brings together a wide range of entertainment industries and associations – films, music, entertainment software, theater owners, and television programmers. We hope that many of you can join us at noon today as we launch this Coalition whose main objective is to spread the word that trade matters to our industries. In Conclusion Large, violent, highly organized criminal groups are getting rich from the theft of America’s copyrighted products. Only when governments around the world effectively bring to bear the full powers of the state against these criminals can we expect to make progress. Only when industry and governments join forces to fight these organized groups will we succeed in protecting one of the jewels in America’s trade crown. A singular truth exists in the movie industry: “If you can’t protect what you own, you don’t own anything.” -- Sunil Abraham, CEO MAHITI Infotech Pvt. Ltd. 'Reducing the cost and complexity of ICTs' 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 4150580. Mobile: 98441 01150 sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org _________________________________________ reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. Critiques & Collaborations To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. List archive: -------------------------------------------------------