Life's getting more challenging by the minute for technology pirates, although it's not likely they'll be run out of business any time soon.
Hours ago, federal customs agents swooped down on 30 businesses in 16 states in a hunt for devices that enable pirated video games to be played on popular consoles.
(Customs) declined to release the names of those targeted but said they are allegedly responsible for importing, installing, selling and distributing foreign-made devices smuggled into the U.S.
Illegal chips and other devices used on gaming consoles violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. Sales of counterfeit or illegally obtained games costs the industry about $3 billion a year globally, not including Internet piracy, estimates the Entertainment Software Association trade group.
Piracy losses for Nintendo and its game developers and publishers likely totaled $762 million last year alone, said Jodi Daugherty, senior director of anti-piracy at Redmond, Wash.-based Nintendo America.
The states involved included California, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Maryland, my own Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin.
On a different stage, it was just last week that Google divulged a September delivery target for much-ballyhooed technology that will thwart piracy on YouTube. Reports the IDG News Service:
During a hearing in the copyright-infringement lawsuit that Viacom Inc. filed against Google, a Google attorney told the judge Google was working "very intensely" on a video recognition technology, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
The technology will be as sophisticated as fingerprint technology used by the FBI and Google plans to roll it out in the fall, "hopefully in September," attorney Philip S. Beck of Barlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott LLP told U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton, according to the AP. Fall runs from late September to late December.
And, in China, where some consider software piracy practically a birthright, the FBI has recently been assisting authorities there in an attempt to change that perception through a series of crackdowns. According to the FBI, nearly 300,000 discs worth some $500 million have been recovered in recent weeks.
In one of the raids, an alleged counterfeiter named Ma Ke Pei was arrested along with 10 other people in connection with fake Symantec software, the FBI said. In 2003 Ma was indicted in the U.S. for copyright and trademark violations related to Microsoft software but fled to China.
Other raids centered around Shenzhen, where some 70% of the counterfeit products are shipped to the U.S. to distributors and retail customers, the FBI said. Six manufacturing lines and retail facilities were dismantled, and 47,000 counterfeit Microsoft CDs were confiscated.
And, finally, also from China comes a sign that perhaps more vigorous law enforcement isn't the only way to combat the pirates. A decision by Microsoft to slash Vista prices in half there is being interpreted by some as a response to rampant piracy. Of course, as this report notes, the effectiveness of the tactic would certainly be open to question given that pirated copies can be had for merely a buck.
