Today, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that a founder of rogue website NinjaVideo.net was sentenced to 22 months in prison for criminal copyright conspiracy.  Hana Amal Beshara plead guilty to conspiracy and criminal copyright infringement, and is one of five NinjaVideo.net administrators to be indicted.  Three of her co-defendants have also plead guilty and [...]

As the House Judiciary Committee readies for markup of the Stop Online Piracy Act tomorrow, much attention is also being paid to a competing proposal that would utilize the International Trade Commission (ITC) as the venue for enforcing copyrights and trademarks online against foreign based rogue websites, outside of US jurisdiction. While the creative community [...]

Today, Texas-based author and grassroots Alliance member Karen Ranney had an oped in The Hill supporting the Stop Online Piracy Act.  As a published author, she has seen her entire library of work offered online, both for free, and for a profit to the pirates who stole them.  Of the need for rogue sites legislation, [...]

Top Administration officials today announced a new public education campaign created in partnership with the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) about intellectual property theft and its victims. Attorney General Eric Holder said, “As our country continues to recover from once-in-a-generation economic challenges, the need to safeguard intellectual property rights – and to protect Americans from intellectual [...]

The American Consumer Institute today announced the results of a survey illustrating that a vast majority of American consumers support stronger protection against websites trafficking pirated and counterfeit goods. The survey of 800 consumers found that 82 percent agreed that counterfeit goods, such as knock-off products, pirated software and imitation pharmaceuticals hurt the economy. Consumers [...]

A guest column in today’s New York Times may have set new records for overblown rhetoric about legislative efforts to curb offshore rogue websites profiting from illegal distribution of American intellectual property. In it, Rebecca MacKinnon of the New America Foundation accuses the bipartisan legislation of establishing blacklists, firewalls and censorship. Scary indeed, and who [...]

Sorry to stick that “round and round, round and round” tune into your head, but it seems appropriate for the activity of the last several days by a small but vocal cadre of technorati who are amping up the drama and fear factor related to enforcement of copyright laws online. First, a “new” group called [...]

The Washington Post today weighed in favorably on the Protect IP Act, legislation that would give law enforcement more tools to pursue offshore websites trafficking in pirated and counterfeited products. The Post rightly points out that these sites can leave consumers “saddled with shoddy goods and little or no recourse to get their money back”, [...]

An online activist has been indicted in Boston on charges that he used the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s computer networks to steal more than four million documents from JSTOR, a non-profit that provides online access to academic journals for a subscriber or individual user fee, with the intention of distributing the documents to one or [...]

A Different View on PROTECT-IP and the Internet Opponents of legislation to protect American small businesses, artists, authors and entrepreneurs from digital theft have waged a scare campaign about the supposed effect of the bill on the functionality of the Internet. Various individuals have rebutted these claims, including the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. A [...]