IP ThievesIntellectual Property Theft: Everybody’s Doing It!

The Problems With Take-Down Notices

The Constable on August 24th, 2008

With all the illegal file trading sites on the Internet, one major thing keeps popping up among them.   This is the fact that more and more of these sites are hosting in other countries, most notably Russia.  The reason for this is that in countries like Russia and some others, copyright law is quite different than it is here in the United States, and the sites are free to do whatever it is they like.

Of course, just hosting in Russia isn’t enough to avoid the issue.  Ideally the sites are also registered to companies or individuals in these other countries so they can avoid all legal issues.  That said, with a lot of the action that is going on currently, most of the crackdown (other than the RIAA) has been to send sites “take-down” notices.  This generally also includes sending a notice to the site’s web hosting comany as well, implying that the host itself may also be culpable for any potential broken laws, lawsuits, or even (usually threatened) jail time.

Generally when it comes to sites that actively participate in what is considered (in the U.S. at least) to be copyright infringement, it is one of two cases: 1.) the site owner doesn’t realize he or she is breaking any laws, or 2.) the site owner knows, or expects a high possibility, that what he or she is doing may be breaking laws, but does it anyway.

In the instances of example one, a take-down notice will probably work by scaring the individual into taking the site down.  For this reason, some of what the RIAA has been doing has been effective, in that there are people out there who are scared from what they’ve heard on the news (whether suing your potential customers is a good business tactic is another question altogether).

It’s in the instances of example two, however, that take-down notices risk even furthering the problem by simply moving the site somewhere else. Look at textbooktorrents.com.  They were down, and are now back up on another server, and based on the current message on their site they are likely to move servers again the next time they are taken down at their host.  The same thing has happened several times with The Pirate Bay.

One can assume the inevitable result of all of this is that sites like these will all be hosted in other countries where copyright law currently allows it.  So what then?  If intellectual property really is one of the most valuable products of the United States, will the government eventually step in and force Internet Service Providers to block access to specific sites?  This currently seems unlikely, especially given the recent judgment by the FCC against Comcast for their throttling of bandwidth to torrent sites.

But if not this, then what?  Eventual legal persecution of people downloading the files?  Again, this seems to make as much sense as the drug war focusing on arresting everyone who does drugs but doing nothing about the dealers.  Will it lead to political sanctions, such as the threats between the WTO and Russia for allofmp3.com?  If the countries are defiant, again this will not work.

So is the real potential in all of this to actually go to war over intellectual property theft?  Or will the laws simply change?

Perhaps the copyright holders will save the day by changing their approach to licensing.

Perhaps… but I recommend you stock up on canned goods.  You know, just in case.

Tags: mp3, riaa, russia, take-down notice, torrent
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