Europe is Leading The Way. SPN takes note that the American self-image of being a technological leader has fallen behind yet again in reality. This time it's cyber law, and the Europeans are ahead of the game in recognizing the criminality of acts of piracy. Fritz Bolkenstein, Europe's commissioner for internal markets, is pushing the European Parliament to pass a law criminalizing all kinds of intellectual property theft. Also of note is Romania, once a haven for crooks operating out of Bucharest's numerous cyber-cafes, now has cyber crime laws carrying a maximum of 15 years in the pokey, apparently twice the maximum sentence for rape (note to Romania: you might want to rethink that one). The American Congress needs to get with the program and start criminalizing piracy. There's nothing we'd hate more than giving the Europeans yet another reason to say "I told you so."

The BSA is No BS. SPN responded this week to Lee Gomes' thought-provoking WSJ column this week on the BSA's anti-piracy tactics:

We enjoyed your column on the heavy-handed tactics of the BSA. The remark on the treatment of violators as re-education camp prisoners was particularly on the money.
We, too, take issue with how they conduct their operation but our particular beef is with the choice of targets. Why does it have to be the poor mid-sized business owner that gets hauled off to the gulag, and not the actual thief? If someone sends their assistant to Office Depot to buy some supplies, and he shoves some extra pens in his pocket, does Office Depot go after the business owner? We think not. The individual committing the crime is held accountable.
So, if a company maintains a policy against stealing licenses and an individual working for that company violates that policy without authorization, is it fair for the BSA to fire off strike-style press releases humiliating the entire company? Probably not.
While not a fan of the BSA’s tactics, we cannot however fault the software industry for trying to stop piracy. Multiple industries now are forced to take dramatic civil action to stop the theft of their property. But in the end, theft is theft, and we think it is time for Congress to step in and criminalize the most extreme forms of this activity. A few large-scale pirates with jail time is the only way to get the rank-and-file to think twice about stealing digital property. Regrettably, that’s what it has come to.

Stopping piracy will ultimately depend on changing the daily decisions of millions of independent people not to choose theft. Civil actions may make a dent, but criminal enforcement may be the only way to effect a culture change of such magnitude.

Schumer's List. SPN is thrilled to see Congress finally start to take action against Spam. Sen. Schumer has introduced an amendment to the CAN-SPAM act that will create a do-not-email list, similar to the recent do-not-call list for telemarketers. We won't hold our breath for the efficacy of such an approach.

Sen. McCain, on the other hand, has hit a home run with his amendment to go after not just the sender, but the purveyors of the products. This is what we have said all along -- Follow The Money!!! If the people writing the commission checks are held criminally accountable for the spam that is sent on their behalf, the whole wretched spam industry would collapse overnight.

The High-Profile Attention Continues. The Wall Street Journal today had a special section on e-commerce. The first page article was devoted not to secure payments, catalog page design, customer relationship management (CRM) or any topic that you would typically associate with e-commerce. What was the lead story? -- copyrights, of course! Like it or not, dear readers, this digital piracy stuff is going to be a big part of e-commerce for the foreseeable future. Of partiular note in the WSJ article is a proposal from Prof. William Fisher, hailing from SPN's arch-nemesis, the Berkman Center:

The only palpable short-term taxation option would be to impose a levy upon services and things... [such as] ...ISP access, blank media, MP3 players, CD burners and so on. (Smith, Ethan. "Can Copyright be Saved?" The Wall Street Journal (20 Oct. 2003), p. R1.)

The esteemed professor proposes that this tax be used to redistribute the proceeds to revenue lost by forcing the cumpulsory nationalization of intellectual property. No kidding.

Given our mainly Libertarian leanings, some people might find it surprising that we agree with his idea of increased Internet taxes. The key difference is that we believe such taxes should be used to fund policing activities on the Internet -- not wealth redistribution.

Sadly, the result of unfettered access to digital content has been a total loss of self-restraint by the citizenry. Why? Because they can. As it stands right now, if it's online, there's no consequence to stealing it. "Information wants to be free," right? This needs to change, and SPN supports aggressive criminal enforcement of intellectual property rights. Fund it with Mr. Fisher's tax, and we'll be the first to sign the check.

RSS Question. Would you like to subscribe to an anti-piracy RSS feed? Would the best format be 91, 92, 1.0 or 2.0? Let us know. Check out (and subscribe) to one of our sister feeds, EventGuide, for a list of events worldwide.

They're Baa-aaaack. Napster 2.0 at 99c. The once-illicit service is now legit. Roxio, Inc. has reincarnated the brand with 99 cent song downloads and $9.95 album downloads. SPN still believes that the proper price point of all the competing download ventures will eventually converge on 25c per song, but 99c is better than what was going on before. Welcome home, Napster.

Pax Vobiscum? VeriSign and ICANN Kiss and Make Up. Faced with enormous public outcry and threats of fines from ICANN, VeriSign has suspended its controversial SiteFinder service. It appears to be just a cooling-off period to us, and it looks like VeriSign will try to get this service approved as a legit idea at some point down the road. SPN will keep up the pressure on exposing this new and twisted form of piracy, and we ask our readers to continue to do the same.

Schadenfreude. SPN has always been hyper-sensitive to the piracy of consumer trust via search engine spam. Looks like one of the worst enablers of search engine spam is seeing a little poetic justice. MSN just announced that they are dropping LookSmart as a provider of search engine results. Below is a copy of a letter sent by us to the most influential name in the Search Industry, Danny Sullivan.

For years we have been complaining to LookSmart that their Zeal "editors" were people with commercial interests that were promoting their own sites and excluding competitors. It's been a pretty disgusting state of affairs, and I swear if I hear one more search engine company talk about the integrity of their editorial decisions I am going to puke.

I am thrilled to see LookSmart take a hit and get put in its place. Now they'll have less resources to defend that class action that they face for more bad behavior on their part. Take a big bite of humble pie, LookSmart! (Signed by Mark Metz)

SPN's position has been from the start that to maintain the integrity of the Internet, search engine results need to be regulated and the rules need to be made open and fair. Piracy on the search engines has created a tragedy of the commons where all of us are losers. Search engine spam needs to stop. Now.