I met Will Nix, former head of the Motion Picture Association’s Anti-Piracy program, while researching my book on trademark counterfeiting. He provided invaluable information, including speeches he had presented and personal interviews about the MPAA’s piracy problem. He was instrumental in establishing the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) in 1983 to battle what was a huge piracy problem in Europe, especially the United Kingdom. London was the center of motion picture piracy with an estimated eighty percent of the market gone pirate. Belgium was an estimated 70 to 75 percent; Ireland 50 percent. E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, a Steven Spielberg film and one of the most popular films of all time, was never legitimately released on video cassette in any country outside the United States because of piracy.
Today FACT is the UK’s leading trade organization to protect and represent the intellectual property rights of its members’ intellectual property (IP). The creative industries support 1.7 million jobs in the UK and account for over 5% of the UK economy.
FACT has many innovative programs, like the Fact Certification Scheme, which currently covers over 110 companies of all sizes and is administered by FACT on behalf of its members. Businesses wishing to provide services to the audio-visual industry must satisfy members they have sufficiently high levels of security in order to safeguard the intellectual property rights of FACT.
One of the largest online pharmacies in Canada, NorthWestPharmacy.com, a large Canadian online pharmacy, has recently issued a warning to consumers about unaccredited “Canadian pharmacies.” Of particular concern are websites that purportedly offer Canada’s drugs from a Canadian pharmacy without a prescription to Americans.
The warning comes in the wake of the indictment of Ram Kamath of Downers Grove, Illinois by the U.S. Justice Dept. for allegedly participating in a conspiracy to distribute $78 million worth of non-FDA approved counterfeit cancer medications through CanadaDrugs.com. The indictment was filed in US district court in Montana charging CanadaDrugs and its affiliates in the United Kingdom and Barbados with smuggling, money laundering and conspiracy.
CanadaDrugs’ affiliates bought their non-FDA authorized or mislabeled drugs abroad and shipped them to the United States to sell to physicians at lower prices compared with the U.S. equivalents, according to the indictment. The money would go to the company’s Barbados affiliate, which would then send the profits to Canada, the indictment said.
The FDA began investigating CanadaDrugs.com’s distribution of counterfeit versions of the cancer drug Avastin in 2012. Narinder Kaulder is alleged to have helped supply fake Avastin and is believed to be the head of operations for a U.K. drug wholesaler called River East Supplies, LTD. According to the indictment, River East was a subsidiary through which CanadaDrugs conducted its “clinical sales.”
I have a chapter in my upcoming book “How Peer to Peer (P2P) File Sharing is Shaping the Internet” about The Pirate Bay (TPB), whose founders became folk heroes in Sweden for their defiance of the copyright industry in 2009. After being sentenced to a year in jail for copyright infringement, the three founders fled and lived a life on the run until apprehended. These days, however, TPB is becoming the most censored website on the Internet. In August, a blocking order was issued by the Commercial Court of Vienna, acting upon a copyright holder complaint. Two domain names used by TPB have been blacklisted in Russia as well.
The International Criminal Police Organization or Interpol has a staff of over 700 and has its headquarters in Lyons, France. It was established as the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC) in 1923 and adopted its telegraphic address as its common name in 1956.
Interpol is not a police force, but is more of an intelligence gathering agency that liaisons with criminal law enforcement agencies and other agencies from different countries. It is expressly forbidden to engage in any intervention of a political, religious, or racial character. It is chiefly concerned with terrorism, human rights violations, genocides, organized crime, and the trafficking of drugs, guns, and counterfeit merchandise.
INTERPOL Notices are international requests for cooperation or alerts allowing police in member countries to share critical crime-related information. Interpol has other colored notices (Black, Green, etc.) covering various criminal activities. A blue notice is a request for more information about a particular individual in connection with a crime. A black is a request for more information about an unidentified body.
Notices are published by INTERPOL’s General Secretariat at the request of National Central Bureaus (NCBs) and authorized entities, and can be published in any of the Organization’s official languages: Arabic, English, French and Spanish.
In the case of Red Notices, the persons concerned are wanted by national jurisdictions for prosecution or to serve a sentence based on an arrest warrant or court decision. INTERPOL’s role is to assist the national police forces in identifying and locating these persons with a view to their arrest and extradition or similar lawful action.
In March 18 and 19th, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries (FPI) held an anti-piracy conference on music piracy at the Interpol, General Secretariat headquarters in Lyons, France. Eighty representatives from 27 countries attended.
The anti-piracy conference is the annual seminar organized by IFPI, which represents the recording industry worldwide, including record company members and affiliated national groups. The conference was supported by INTERPOL’s Trafficking in Illicit Goods and Counterfeiting (TIGC) unit, which since 2012 has helped coordinate some 20 operations involving 139 countries resulting in the seizure of fake and illicit goods worth hundreds of millions of US dollars.
In her opening remarks, IFPI Chief Executive Officer Frances Moore said: “We greatly value our relationship with INTERPOL. For us in the music industry, the objective is to create space for the legal, licensed digital market to grow. If we look back over the last few years we can see that it is a strategy that is working. We have to continue to work together against piracy and the organized criminal gangs behind it. The people behind the largest pirate sites are making huge amounts of money, diverting it from flowing to rights holders and often using it to fund other illegal activities. The operators of pirate sites don’t invest in artists and music, don’t pay taxes, don’t create jobs.”
Interpol’s Trafficking in Illicit Goods and Counterfeiting Unit was the lead in an operation Codenamed Maya II, a two week operation that ended in June. Working in coordination with other national law enforcement, fake goods with an estimated value of $60 million were seized across 19 countries and territories as part of a coordinated operation in the Americas and the Caribbean.
In one of the seizures, organized crime networks had infiltrated a distribution supply chain and were selling fake merchandise alongside the genuine in a shopping center in Santo Domingo. Interpol worked with the head of the Dominican Republic National police, Major General Manuel Elpidio Castro Castillo, who said: “The Dominican Republic’s involvement in Operation Maya II through NCB Santo Domingo underlines our commitment to combat all forms of transnational crime, to protect citizens and society for a safer world.”
A week later, Interpol issued global arrest warrants, referred to as red notices, against FIFA officials wanted by U.S. authorities. The red notice is a criminal complaint that is put in its database and is available to world-wide criminal justice organizations.
So what’s up with Interpol these days? One hardly hears about Interpol–despite the fact that it’s getting involved more and more with counterfeit and pirated goods around the world after introducing a Trafficking in Illicit Goods and Counterfeiting (TIGX) Programme in 2012.
“Trafficking in goods” covers more than just trademark counterfeiting and is a generic term for an array of criminal activities including selling genuine goods on the black market to avoid paying taxes.
One of the first Interpol operations was Black Poseidon, a month long operation in Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Turkey and Ukraine that involved working with national police and investigators in IP crime experts. Trafficked good valued at $122 million were seized and more than 1,400 individuals arrested.
If you’re a brand owner you should check out this website: http//www.Tabberone.com or do a google search for “Tabberone copyright infringement” or “Tabberone Hall of Shame.”
Tabberone publishes a list on its website called the: “Trademark and Copyright Abuser’s Hall of Shame.” Among the many brands that are listed in the Hall of Shame are John Deere, Krispy Kreme, Channel, NFL Properties, Tommy Hilfiger, to name a few. The list of abusers comes with a short description of abusive practices the brand has supposedly made and the outcome.
On the website, Tabberone explains that he has “been in federal court more than 15 times, without a lawyer, to defend against ‘improper’ eBay auction terminations and won the great majority of them.”
Tabberone appears to be on a mission, although his List hasn’t been updated since June, 2014. Nonetheless, Tabberone has spent a great deal of time putting together the Hall of Shame.
Tabberone’s goal is to identify brands that, in his opinion, misuse their intellectual property through aggressive use of the takedown provision of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) or the use of the cease and desist letter.
For example check out what Tabberone has to say about the Coalition to Advance the Protection of Sports Logos (CAPS). Tabberone offers tips on how to defend yourself against CAPS and makes other unflattering statements about this organization. As proof that its diatribe against CAPS is legitimate, Tabberone points out that CAPS would have shut down the website by now . . . this is a good example of circuitous logic.
If you’re a brand owner, you should check out Tabberone . . . Maybe you’ve made his Hall of Shame.
Two men were convicted last week for selling counterfeit botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT), known commercially as Botox. The fake Botox was sold via the website: onlinebotox.com. The fake drug originated in Turkey and was sold throughout the Missouri area. Scientists and other experts have always feared widespread and unlicensed manufacture and use of this deadly toxin.
Botox is the first microbal toxin to become licensed for treatment of human diseases like cercivic torticollis, a muscular disorder of the neck. The most common use of Botox is cosmetic. When injected in small amounts, Botox can prevent the development of wrinkles by paralyzing certain muscles in the forehead and face The FDA requires a warning label advising that, if injected, the toxin may spread from the injection site to other areas of the body, causing symptoms similar to those of botulism poisoning.
Fake Botox made national headlines in 2004, when four people developed symptoms after receiving Botox injections at a medical clinic in Oakland Park, Fla. The four victims were hospitalized with severe botulism poisoning that included temporary paralysis. The FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations (OCI) traced the fake Botox to a California laboratory that sold botulinum toxin for research purposes. OCI investigated the fake Botox for another four years, which resulted in 31 arrests and 29 convictions.
Legitimate sales of Botox exceed $2 billion a year–a large market that attracts counterfeiters who typically sell over the Internet. In 2012, the FDA warned doctors about Botox being sold online through CanadaDrugs.com. The drug offered for sale was an unapproved foreign version. In 2013, a Missouri doctor was sent to prison for lying to Federal agents about buying a foreign-made version online.
Weapon of Mass Destruction
Botulinum is an acutely lethal toxin and an infection with the bacterium may result in botulism, which is usually fatal. Just a speck of pure toxin, smaller than a grain of sand, can kill a 150-pound adult. Botox is also easy to manufacture, making it an ideal weapon of mass destruction. A biologist with a Masters degree and a few thousand dollars worth of equipment could make enough pure toxin to theoretically kill thousands of people.
It’s use as a weapon of mass destruction happened in March, 1995. The Aum Shinrikyo sect used an aerosolized BoNT (sarin) in a subway attack against the Japanese population, but the attack failed because its scientists mistakenly cultured a low toxin-producing strain. Nonetheless, thirteen people died and thousands were injured after cult members used umbrellas to pierce plastic bags containing the toxin on five subway trains. At the end of the Iraq war in 1991, 19,000 liters of BoNT were seized and destroyed.
The Sony hack that occurred on November 24, 2014 is believed to have been arranged by an elite North Korean cyber war unit known as Unit 121. It has a membership of 5,000 hackers who largely target South Korea.
The motive for the November 24th attack was revenge for the release of The Interview, a comedy about an attempt to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The North Korean government had threatened to take action if the film was released in June, with the result that the release was delayed while the film was re-edited.
A group that calls itself the “Guardians of Peace,” which has ties to North Korea’s Unit 121, claimed responsibility for the hack. Many cinema chains refused to show the film, which subsequently was only available for online rental
This cyber attack was the first hint that governments all over the world are involved in cyber warfare. This hack should also have served as a warning for U.S. government officials like Hillary Clinton, who is currently under investigation by the FBI for using her personal e-mail. Her personal e-mail could easily have been hacked and that would have been a major embarrassment in her bid for the presidency.
