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Justice Dept. Launches Campaign Against Counterfeit Goods
Counterfeit products and stolen intellectual property are estimated to deprive U.S. workers of some 750,000 jobs every year, and more than $250 billion in lost revenue for the U.S. economy. As the holiday shopping season gets under way, the U.S. Department of Justice is sounding the alarm to consumers, with a new ad campaign urging shoppers to “Get Real.”
Launching the campaign at a White House event the day after Cyber Monday—the big post-Thanksgiving online shopping day—Attorney General Eric Holder announced the seizure of 150 domain names for sites found to be trafficking in counterfeit or pirated products. Holder was joined by White House Intellectual Property Enforcement coordinator Victoria Espinel, and Acting Deputy Secretary of Commerce Rebecca M. Blank, who announced her agency’s forthcoming report on the economic impact of intellectual property theft. Denise O’Donnell, director of the Bureau of Justice Assistance, emceed the event.
According to a fact sheet on the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) website:
The U.S. Department of Commerce puts the value of fake products—such as CDs, DVDs, software, electronic equipment, pharmaceuticals, and auto products—at five [percent] to seven percent of world trade.
As we reported in May, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, expressing support for the Protect IP Act, sees solving the problem of counterfeiting, piracy and intellectual property theft as critical to creating and sustaining the jobs needed to revive the economy:
The economic well-being of workers in the United States—jobs, income, and benefits—turns more and more on our protecting the creativity and innovation that yield world-class entertainment, cutting-edge and sustainable manufacturing and construction, and disease-ending pharmaceuticals.
More information on the campaign against counterfeit goods and intellectual property theft can be found here, at the NCPC website. NCPC is funded by the Justice Department.
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9 Comments
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The justice department has more important things that need attention in America. This proves that corporations have the power.
Support OWS with money and actions as much as you possibly can ,it is the only chance we have.
Mr. Obama , please fire Eric Cantor , He is not helping you or the people .
Mr. Obama , Please fire Eric Cantor , He is not helping you or the American people.He would rather help the corporations.
Mr. Obama , Please fire Eric Holder , He is not helping you or the American people.He would rather help the corporations.
How is it hurting the American people?? Most of those Corporations are now off shore and don’t employ Americans anyway.
And listing pharmaceuticals is a joke. The pharmaceuticals rip off Americans as much as the banks do by over charging Americans when you can buy the same drugs cheaper in any other country, such as Canada or Mexico
This is just another move to help the 1% when they should be pushing and using their time to help the 99%
Politicians better start wising up, it may be the 1% who gives them the money to run, but it is the 99% who actually elects them
AND WE ARE NOW WATCHING THEIR ACTIONS AND WHERE THEIR LOYITY LIES
Obviously the Justice Department has the power to shut down Internet sites.
We don’t need the Protect IP Act!
Counterfeiting is certainly a nasty business, where physical objects are sold as impersonations of other physical objects in a market of objects. Many counterfeiters get and give money from and to sources that are of ill repute.
However, in the world of information, we run into a problem – data doesn’t behave like a physical object. And the “pirates” certainly aren’t hocking $5 Windows CDs in a Guangzhou marketplace with keyloggers on them for the Triads.
You can’t steal something that is infinite or omnipresent by it’s nature. These people aren’t making wooden or steel artworks. They aren’t making something that can be kicked or sold for $5 a pound – they are working in a world that does not abide by the laws of physics, and since the traditional laws of economy rely on the scarcity of physical reality, they do not work in cyberspace. While I believe that people should be paid to work, the model under which these people want to be paid does not work because you cannot contain the infinite behind a walled garden.
Despite the fact that the “revenue losses” from copyright infringement are entirely myth, that the Government Accountability Office said the loss estimation methods the media barons were using are constantly specious, that none of the reports include the transition from recorded to digital formats, the global crash, the already blatant abuse of the PRO IP Act, the fact that the industry is still growing exponentially, that most developers recognize it’s not nearly so detrimental, or anything else? Here’s solid reasoning showing that the attack against filesharing (which is not counterfeiting! Go after the counterfeiters, that’s where the danger lies) is unjustified:
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-423
Flickr cofounder:
http://caterina.net/archive/001216.html
http://adage.com/article/digital-columns/media-cos-customers-p2p-users/138587
http://www.rieti.go.jp/en/publications/summary/11010021.html
The Strumpf-Oberholzer 2007 report
http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ippd-dppi.nsf/eng/h_ip01456.html
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/708F20CD-E67D-45C7-AF95-3E1A6AC07C37.html
There is no solid basis for this argument other than simple fear and ignorance. The digital world does not operate on physical principles – you can’t kick it, sell it for $5 a pound – and you can have your cake and eat it too. Therefore the laws of supply and demand based on a finite physical world do not apply the same way to the digital world – and economics in a world of pure math becomes a strange and wondrous place where only the limits of math itself are the limits of economy.
The DMCA takedown system is honored by most pirates everywhere – only a few hardcore purists ignore them, and the thing works, and the media conglomerate has said it works. The fact is that all this not only does a ****-poor job of fixing any “problem (VPNs, proxies, encryption, darknets, niche ISPs always willing to take in new customers), but gives even more power to just disappear anything the corporations that run the censorship show don’t like. Malthusian? That’s not he point, and has already happened besides. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20062419-38.html
Continued
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The walls of the walled garden of recorded media are gone, and conglomerates refuse to evolve under pressure; instead, they use legislature to destroy new potential post-scarcity business models in an anticompetitive attempt to destroy competition. The media world is moving to a Jamendo/VODO/Spotify participatory media model – and they work, even though under the old world’s assumptions that people create to profit and everything is a scarce resource to be controlled by masters from on high, they should’ve gone under long ago.
The information industry’s model is not dying under the influence of evil – the model is changing and evolving, just like all business models do in the face of new technology.
I agree with most of the comments here, and it’s rather unsettling that the AFL-CIO would be promoting this horrible legislation. The Protect IP Act is the devil in disguise, as it would threaten our Free Speech rights by allowing the government and corporations to shut down sites like YouTube and Facebook. For more info, and to take action:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-57326767-501465/sopa-opposition-from-tech-heavyweights-google-facebook/
https://wfc2.wiredforchange.com/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=8173