Project Goliath

Would you believe that a cyber attack by a rogue nation led to the leak of confidential e-mails about a plot to take down Google?

Sounds incredible–but it’s true. Read on.

Background: On Nov. 24, 2014, Sony Pictures Entertainment was hacked and a considerable amount of confidential data, including personnel information and business documents, were stolen. Experts said this cyber attack was the first against a U.S. company and used a sophisticated and highly destructive data wiping virus that forced Sony to shut down its computer operation for over a week.

Although the hacker was never identified, North Korea is believed to be behind the cyber attack and was in retaliation for The Interview, a comedy about North Korea’s president.

Several movies that were about to be released were available for download on a piracy website. Also available for download was sensitive corporate information and e-mails. What proved to be very damaging were e-mails showing that Sony and other movie companies were working with the Motion Picture Association of America on a clandestine project against a company referred to only as “Goliath.”

Intrigued? Read on.

Project Goliath: Although never mentioned by name, Goliath is believed to be Google and Project Goliath may part of a broad strategy directed against online piracy. This hacked information proved useful to Google which is in a legal wrestling match with Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood. Hood had issued a 79-page subpoena in 2013 that demanded Google produce information, including whether it helps criminals by allowing searches to find pirated music.

Google filed suit against Hood and sought discovery of the e-mails leaked as the result of the Sony cyber attack to show, among other things, that Hood is in cahoots with the MPAA and has been receiving political contributions from the major film studios.

The legal wrestling match between Hood and Google is ongoing and well worth following.

I’ve enclosed three links in what is turning out to be a real corporate pot boiler.

http://variety.com/2015/biz/news/google-mpaa-mississippi-jim-hood-piracy-1201549228/

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/google-wants-mpaas-project-goliath-799808

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/22139/20141214/leaked-sony-emails-reveal-project-goliath-a-grand-plan-of-hollywood-studios-and-mpaa-against-google.htm

The FDA has developed the “Be Safe Rx Campaign” for consumer education and to address the need for caution in purchasing drugs online. Nearly twenty-five percent of people who have purchased drugs online have purchased from a site not associated with any pharmacy or health insurance plan.

http://www.fda.gov/downloads/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/UCM321495.pdf

Some red flags that could signal a fraudulent online pharmacy:  Beware of online pharmacies that are located outside the United States and are not licensed in the United States by a state agency. Another tipoff is an online pharmacy that allows you to buy medicine without a prescription or by asking you to complete an online survey instead of requiring a prescription, or offers very low drug prices that seem too good to be true. Many fake online pharmacies send spam or unsolicited e-mail offering deep discounts on medicine. Be wary of drugs shipped from a foreign country.

Fake pharmaceuticals are a growing problem.  The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the front line agency involved in the fight against fake pharmaceuticals and has developed CD-3, a counterfeit detection device that provides a real time, low cost, portable solution that can be deployed almost anywhere. (see Youtube video).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfYUkiKAJvA

CD-3 is intended as a low-cost and effective counterfeit drug-testing tool that is used by 50 FDA field laboratories.

I had an article published on Cybersquatting in the December 2010 issue of PI Magazine. I interviewed investigator David Woods of Associated Investigative Services and Tim Santoni of National Trademark Investigations . If you’d like to review the article, use the link below and register with PI Magazine to receive the December 2010 issue.

http://pimagazine.epage-edition.com/pi_mag/digital-view-signup1.php

http://pimagazine.epage-edition.com/pi_mag/digital-view-signup1.php

Most people think of counterfeits as involving fake Rolex watches and Louis Vuittan bags—but there is no limit to the number and kinds of consumer products that can be counterfeited, including wine. In what was a clever scheme, Rudy Kumiawan was ordered to pay $28.4 million in restitution to seven victims and forfeit an addition $20 million for selling fake wine in August, 2014.

Kumiawan, who was one of the world’s foremost wine collectors, knew many of the collectors who were in the market for rare and centuries-old wine. [To read a good article on rare vintage wines, see article by Patrick-Radden Keefe entitled “The Jefferson Bottles,” that appeared in The New Yorker in Sept. 3, 2007]

Mr. Kurniawan mixed the wines in his home kitchen and used fake labels. Because of his reputation as a wine collector, Kurniawan was able to swindle some of the country’s wealthiest people and leading wine enthusiasts.

One collector who was duped paid a quarter of a million dollars for a bottle of what Mr. Kumiawan palmed off as a rare wine.

Police raided Mr. Kurniawan’s home in Arcadia, Calif. His computer was seized and found to contain files with scanned images of rare wine labels. Many empty wine bottles were also seized.

The Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, better known as the “IP Czar” is Daniel H. Marti, managing partner in the D.C. office of the law firm Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton. He was appointed in April, 2015.

One of Marti’s first tasks after being nominated has been to reconstitute the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinating Committee, of which he is the chair, with senior department and agency heads.

Marti will also coordinate U.S. law-enforcement strategy around copyright, patents and trademarks and also the continuation of the White House’s Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement.

The Strategic Plan was put together by Marti’s predecessor, Victoria A. Espinel. It contains a wealth of information about the counterfeiting problem.

Counterfeit products have allegedly been sold on Alibaba Group Holding Ltd for many years, as well as on Taobao, one of Alibaba’s platforms.

Alibaba installed a good faith takedown program, which took effect April 1, 2015, to deal with the sale of counterfeit products offered for sale. Brands registering for the program have their complaints reviewed in one to three business days, compared to five to seven days previously. Additionally, a customer service official has been assigned to oversee the program.

The International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition (IACC) has developed a unique financial program in the battle against counterfeiting.  It’s called the RogueBlock® program, launched in January, 2012.

RogueBlock® is a “follow the money” tool that allows rights holders to report online sellers of counterfeit goods to enforcement agencies, as well as credit card and financial services companies.

Participating intellectual property rights holders utilize a secure online portal for sending information that goes through a network mapping analysis developed by the IACC; this is to avoid duplication and to identify suitable targets for takedown investigation. The network mapping analysis is coordinated with government enforcement agencies, credit card, and financial services companies.

The program has experienced great success and that, since 2012, our credit card partners and participating members have frozen nearly 5,000 merchant accounts and impacted almost 200,000 websites.

The program was enhanced in 2015 to include suspending and locking down an infringer’s websites in addition to terminating payment services.

In an informal poll conducted by NewYork Magazine in 2012, two interns conducted sidewalk interviews of one-hundred random sidewalk interviews about file sharing. Nearly everyone polled admitted to engaging in file sharing—and, interestingly enough, a majority said they also subscribed to iTunes or Netflix, sites that offer either music or movies for a monthly fee. It would seem that file sharing can co-exist with pay subscription services that offer the same content. Yet, the reality is quite different. This poll was taken the same year after several highly publicized events involving file sharing.

In January, 2012 the FBI raided the file-sharing site Megaupload. Criminal charges were brought against the owners who went to prison. A few months later, the founders of the notorious BitTorrent file sharing site Pirate Bay were sentenced to prison terms in Sweden. That same year, massive public protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property ACT (PIPA), both directed against P2P file sharing, led to the scrapping of both Acts without a vote in either the House or Senate. Wikipedia, Google and other sites held one day moratoriums to protest the two Acts, while members of Congress were inundated with e-mail protests. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) was essentially scrapped in 2012 when many countries in the European Union refused to ratify the Agreement because of massive e-mail and 1960s-style street protests in Romania, Germany and other European countries.

File sharing was certainly a hot topic in 2012!

What was amazing is how quickly the activists mobilized to protest SOPA in the United States and ACTA in Europe. The protesters numbered in the hundreds of thousands, even millions. The word was spread through a handful of grassroots coalitions that spread the news on the Internet.

The current book I’m writing has a working title of: “How P2P File Sharing is Shaping the Internet will be a monograph on P2P file sharing.” I’ve finished a chapter on Napster and another chapter on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

I’m amazed at how successful Napster was, because it didn’t advertise. The lawsuit filed by the RIAA and other music companies helped send Napster to the front pages.