Peter Sunde Brings Criminal Charges Against BREIN, Claims They Falsified Documents Against The Pirate Bay

from the spectrial-indeed dept

You may remember, back in July, that a Dutch court made an odd ruling against The Pirate Bay at the behest of BREIN, the local anti-piracy group. Now, there was a lot of things odd about the case. BREIN has always been quite aggressive in demanding that sites be blocked or that ISPs be forced to block sites, but this case went really far. BREIN was able to bring the case without even letting any of the four defendants (the same four who were on trial in Sweden) know about the case. However, BREIN told the court that the defendants were fairly summoned, despite no evidence that was true at all. BREIN also claimed that The Pirate Bay had launched a DDoS attack on BREIN's website, and seemed so close to the court that when the defendants themselves asked the court for the very ruling made against them, the court told them that they could only get the copy directly from BREIN.

Of course, after all this happened, a second problem cropped up. Swedish authorities did an investigation and came to the conclusion -- as the four defendants had said all along -- that those four guys did not actually own The Pirate Bay. Instead, it was a company called Reservella, information that came out to the public after the attempt by GGF to buy The Pirate Bay (which has since collapsed).

BREIN wasted little time in adding Reservella to its lawsuits... but then did something strange. It came up with a credit report that purports to prove that one of the four defendants, Fredrik Neij, is the CEO and a director of Reservella. However, there were some oddities in that credit report, and Peter Sunde (one of the other defendants, better known as brokep) began investigating and has rather detailed evidence that the entire credit report is a fake. Almost none of the information on the report checks out, and the companies listed -- including Experian, who supposedly supplied the credit report, claim that they have no record of this particular credit report at all.

Sunde is now filing criminal charges against BREIN and its boss Tim Kuik, claiming that they forged a document and used it for fraud (trying to get money out of these four defendants). As Sunde notes, such charges seem to be far more serious than inducing copyright infringement. The evidence that Sunde lays out certainly looks convincing that the document is fake, but what's still not clear is how BREIN got the document, and whether it was responsible for creating the document, or if it was merely convinced that the fake document was real from someone else.

Still, it doesn't look good for BREIN to be caught using what appear to be faked documents in its lawsuit.

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Clothing Firm Pirated Itself... And It Worked Great

from the competing-in-the-market dept

As fashion designers in the US are, once again, pushing for a misguided new "fashion copyright," it's worth remembering that studies have repeatedly shown that knock off fashions are what help make the fashion industry so successful. They serve a few different purposes. They make the authentic versions appear more valuable (who would knockoff an unpopular fashion?). They help differentiate the market by letting the clothes diffuse to the lower end that would never buy the designer level clothes, and they push designers to keep innovating each year, because they want to keep coming out with something new to stay ahead of the counterfeiters.

Now, it appears that at least one clothing designer decided to use these facts to its own advantage. ReallyEvilCanine writes in to let us know how a South African t-shirt designer made its own counterfeit line of t-shirts and used that to boost the perception of the original line, while also being able to differentiate and sell into different markets:

The brand, Love Jozi, created the "knockoffs" using the name Luv Jozi, and plenty of people picked up on it, at times lamenting how the Love Jozi people must be upset, but noting that "all the biggest brands" get copied. The Love Jozi people let the whole experiment run for about two years before revealing it. However, in the process, they showed that rather than worrying about counterfeits and fakes, there's something to be said for cornering the market on such things yourself. As REC noted in the submission, even when counterfeiters don't "play fair," you can still sell looooooots of t-shirts.

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Is HP Finally Just Targeting Ink Counterfeiters, and Not Legit Refillers?

from the about-time dept

HP has stepped up its efforts to crack down on printer ink counterfeiters -- and with good reason. While the company plays up that it's helping consumers by getting shoddy products off the market, it's more about protecting its business. In the past, HP's put pressure on retailers not to carry cheaper alternatives to its expensive replacement ink cartridges, and it's tried to use patent suits to shut down cartridge refillers. But with sales down across the board, HP is moving to try and recoup some of the $1 billion analysts allege it loses to fake ink every year. BusinessWeek says "For years, HP could afford to ignore the problem," because of booming sales. But apparently, it couldn't afford to try and use patent lawsuits, pressure on retailers and other shady tactics to try and crowd lower-priced alternative products out of the market. It's perfectly fine for HP to go after counterfeiters selling inferior products under its name, trying to defraud consumers. But let's hope that's all it's now doing, and it's given up on trying to force legitimate alternative products out of the market.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Court Finds Web Hosts Liable For Counterfeit Sales By Web Sites

from the bad-precedents dept

While a US court last year (correctly) found that eBay is not liable for counterfeit goods sold by users, a recent court case won by Louis Vuitton surprisingly found that a web hosting company could be found liable, if a site hosted by the company sells counterfeit goods. The court finds the site guilty of both contributory copyright infringement and contributory trademark infringement, claiming that the host knows about the infringement due to notices from Louis Vuitton, without explaining how the hosting firm could possibly know if the complaints were legit or not (or whether the goods being sold were counterfeit or not). In a bit of a scary connecting of the dots, the court suggests that because the web host was notified, and because it could then disable the accounts, it's now liable as well. That creates a huge chilling effect for web hosts -- as it encourages them to basically shut off any website based on any accusation of selling counterfeit goods. If web hosts don't do that, they may face significant liability. There's nothing wrong with companies going after the actual sellers of counterfeit goods -- but going after the web host (and winning!) sets a dangerous precedent.

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Belgian Court Agrees With US Court That eBay Not Liable For Fake Products

from the another-good-decision dept

Just days after Tiffany appealed the correct US ruling that eBay isn't liable for counterfeit goods sold on the site, a Belgian court has sided with eBay in a very similar lawsuit involving L'Oreal. Apparently, the Belgian courts understand how liability works a lot better than their neighbors in France, who ruled the other way in a case involving Louis Vuitton.

L'Oreal says it's "surprised" by the decision and will appeal, but fails to explain why eBay, as a platform maker, should be responsible for what people do with that platform. About the only answer seems to be that L'Oreal recognizes eBay is an easier target than going after those actually responsible (those selling the counterfeit goods). It's nice that most courts recognize that the easiest entity to sue is not necessarily the proper entity to sue.

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A Little Sunshine Brings Out Rapid And Well Deserved Anger Towards ACTA Treaty

from the spreading-the-word dept

Last week, I wrote a post highlighting the faulty premises behind a secretly negotiated treaty between the US and many other countries, the so-called Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Since then a bunch of news articles have been written about ACTA, with most of the focus on how it will have border guards going through your iPod and computers to see if you have any infringing content. A bunch of folks have been submitting stories on this all week, despite the fact that we wrote about it last week. However, what's most interesting to me is how quickly this turned from a little story -- first posted to Wikileaks and a few blogs, into something that's been in major newspapers (oddly, mostly focused in Canada).

Even more interesting, however, is how this has so quickly turned into activism, with some newspapers already already calling for people to stand up against ACTA to protect our privacy rights. Think about that for a second. This was a treaty on the "boring" topic of copyright, that was basically pitched by the entertainment industry to politicians who wrote it up in secret. It leaked out to a single website, and within a week there were major newspaper editorials calling for people to stand up against it, and thousands, if not millions, of people informed about the potential harm this treaty could cause. So much for slipping it under the radar.

This is really the culmination of a few different factors, including the entertainment industry's misguided and rapidly backfiring battle against consumers, that has catapulted copyright from a boring "wonkish" issue into one that people recognize effects so many aspects of their daily lives. Combined with the wonderful communications ability of the internet, it makes it harder for the entertainment industry to simply pull one over on people like this. Of course, as we've noted, the industry keeps on trying, and they love sneaking through legislation and treaties before anyone recognizes it -- but the rapid response to ACTA (which is far from over, of course) suggests that some of the industry's advantages are slipping away. Hopefully, this issue will continue to receive the attention it deserves so that there's a real debate on whether or not such a treaty is needed (it's not).

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Should We Be Concerned That The Military Will Use Counterfeit Routers Bought Off eBay?

from the it's-not-pretty dept

There was a story last week that got a lot of press about how the FBI discovered that the military was using a ton of counterfeit technology equipment, including thousands of fake Cisco routers. Dan Wallach has an excellent writeup looking at the security implications of what happened. From the description, it certainly doesn't sound like any of the equipment was found to include any kind of questionable technology for spying, but the point is that it would have been easy enough if someone had wanted to do so. Basically, the background is that while the government only buys equipment from approved vendors, those vendors can subcontract out the actual tech purchases to anyone. That leads to situations where (no joke) one subcontractor purchased a bunch of fake routers off of eBay and then resold them to the government via an authorized vendor. Or, try to follow the details of the case of the US Navy contracting with Lockheed Martin for equipment. Lockheed outsourced the deal to an unauthorized Cisco reseller as a subcontractor. That subcontractor turned to its own subcontractor who (yup, you guessed it) hired another subcontractor who shipped the equipment straight to the Navy. If you lost count, that's five layers deep, with most of those layers having no real oversight on what they did. You would think the government (and especially the military) would be a bit more careful in where it sourced its products from, but it certainly doesn't seem as though that's the case at all. Given all that, it's almost difficult to believe that compromised equipment hasn't been sold to the government at some point.

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Chinese Drug Counterfeiters Even Set Up Fake Government Web Site?

from the it's-the-shadow-fake-gov't dept

There have been all sorts of stories about counterfeit goods and knockoffs made in China. Last year, we even had the amazing story of how counterfeiters had set up an entire fake version of the company NEC. Rather than just knocking off the products, they built an entire fake Chinese version of the company, complete with offices and business cards. By doing so, they were able to appear much more convincing as producing real NEC products. It appears that other Chinese counterfeiters are learning to go above and beyond in trying to make their fake goods appear as real as possible. Reuters is reporting that the makers of a fake diabetes drug aren't just touting the wonders of the medicine, but have created an entirely fake version of China's FDA website in order to make it appear that the fake drug had been approved by the real Chinese Food and Drug administration. Of course, even the official quote from a Chinese FDA official sounds somewhat fake (or sounds like it should appear in The Onion): "This site is definitely not for real. These lawbreakers have got some balls!"

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Who Cares How Many Discs Counterfeit Operation Could Have Made?

from the why-focus-on-that? dept

Information Week is reporting on two men who were sentenced to jail for what is being called the "largest CD and DVD pirating scheme to be prosecuted in the United States." From the evidence, it certainly sounds like these guys were counterfeiting all sorts of music, movies and software, so there's nothing wrong with them being caught, found guilty and punished. What I do find interesting, however, is how the various industry associations have been spinning this story (and how the press is accepting it without question). Since these guys were arrested, the story has been how they had equipment that could have made 300 million pirated CDs and DVDs. Note the "could have" part. Because, in reality, authorities only seized a bit less than half a million. It's still significant, but it's less than 0.2% (not 2%, but 0.2%) of what's going in the headlines. In theory, any DVD/CD burner could produce millions of counterfeit discs -- but that's not news. Why is it news in this case?

Of course, this is par for the course for the industry. Remember when the RIAA wanted to count high speed CD burners as multiple burners in trying to boost the size of a bust it made? Or when the MPAA claimed they seized $30 million worth of DVDs when in turned out to only be about $10,000? It seems they like to blow these things out of proportion with big, totally unsubstantiated numbers. Of course, that lets them make the laughable claim that each of these busts is "a significant blow" against piracy when nothing can be further from the truth. In fact, as we've seen, all these CD/DVD counterfeiting shops are facing a much more "significant blow" from the competition from free downloads. Yet, of course, the Information Week piece carries a quote saying that "It cannot be understated how significant it has been." Actually, I'd say it's been significantly overstated.

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German Court Says eBay Should Be Able To Tell A Fake Rolex From A Real One

from the got-any-watch-specialists-on-hand? dept

For many years, various luxury brands have had problems with people selling counterfeit goods on eBay -- leading to a variety of lawsuits. Of course, most of these lawsuits are incorrectly targeted. They're usually filed against eBay, rather than the seller of the goods. eBay doesn't inspect the goods or make any claim to the authenticity of them. That should be up to the buyer and seller to work out. However, a few months ago, it appears that a German court felt differently, and told eBay that it may be liable for fake Rolexes being sold on the site, even if eBay has no real way of knowing what's real and what's fake. The court seemed to indicate that eBay should be able to tell from the price, but that's not necessarily true. In the meantime, it's not clear why this isn't a problem that the market will start to work out by itself. For many, many years you've been able to buy fake Rolexes on the streets of New York City, but Rolex doesn't sue the New York City government for letting this happen. It recognizes that most people know that the Rolex you buy from a street vendor probably isn't real. Along those very lines, Rolex has introduced programs to designate legitimate Rolexes on eBay already -- so this seems like the type of "problem" that could work itself out without making eBay liable, but apparently it's too late for that.

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