Government and industry collaboration vital to crack down on criminal counterfeiting and piracy

The Business Software Alliance (BSA), the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team Task Force (REACT), hosted a conference yesterday to educate law enforcement officials and intellectual property rights holders on how to effectively investigate, prosecute and deter copyright offenders at the federal, state and local levels.

U.S. attorneys, investigators, agents and prosecutors from the DOJ's Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS), and the Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (CHIPS) Units as well as other federal and state agencies led sessions on how businesses develop and refer cases to law enforcement, best practices and case studies on recent intellectual property criminal investigations and prosecutions. Additional topics of discussion included: software piracy enforcement efforts by the DOJ; private sector assistance on federal cases; evidence used in intellectual property cases; sentencing issues at the end of a trial; and more.

"Counterfeiting and piracy of software products is a serious business, robbing the economy of thousands of jobs, billions in wages, tax revenues and critical investment in new technologies," said Neil MacBride, BSA vice president of legal affairs. "The BSA is working with the Department of Justice and REACT to provide copyright holders the tools needed to protect their intellectual property. Jointly, we are targeting those individuals with the mindset to steal software motivated by their greed for personal financial rewards while ignoring the damage to rightsholders and risks to consumers. Penalties must be strong enough to deter software piracy and we continue to work with Governments and law enforcement at local, national and International levels to assist in the investigation and prosecution of acts that damage the software industry and our economy."

In recent years the DOJ has increased its convictions for Intellectual Property offenses by more than 50% and increased the number of defendants prosecuted by 98%, demonstrating both the scale of the challenge as well as the heightened attention these illegal activities receive. In 2006, the DOJ trained over 3,000 prosecutors, judges, and agents from over 100 countries on how to tackle Intellectual Property crimes. Domestically, DOJ has a specially-trained network of 230 Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (CHIP) prosecutors in U.S. Attorney's Offices nationwide, and it has increased its efforts in Asia and Central and Eastern Europe to coordinate investigations with international law enforcement bodies. International collaboration is pivotal in most Intellectual Property investigations and bilateral agreements are in place with most other countries that allow suspected assets and evidence to be frozen and seized to support criminal prosecutions.

MacBride continued: "the information shared at this conference and the amount of interest from the private sector and law enforcement officials demonstrates the conviction that public/private collaboration is not only necessary but also effective in addressing counterfeiting and piracy. For example, BSA and its members provided significant assistance to DOJ last year on several successful prosecutions of criminals operating massive for-profit software piracy websites distributing millions of dollars worth of pirated software product. Several of these resulted in significant prison sentences of between 6 and 9 years and millions of dollars in restitution. We look forward to continuing to assist and cooperate with DOJ to deter further criminal piracy."

BSA on behalf of its member companies monitors and investigates tens of thousands of potential online software copyright infringements each year acting with ISPs and auction sites to remove offending products and, where appropriate, referring cases to law enforcement. -http://www.bsa.org